Trump’s handling of Epstein case triggers backlash among young conservatives at MAGA gathering

At a gathering of some of President Donald Trump’s most devout supporters - young conservatives spending a summer weekend strategising on how to further the MAGA movement - a cloud hung over the convention centre.

Attendees of Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit erupted in boos over the Trump Administration’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased child predator.

Top MAGA leaders criticised the White House from stage and on their wide-reaching social media accounts throughout the weekend, attacking not only Mr Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi for declining to release more on the investigation and potential Epstein associates, but raising questions about why the president now seemed to be out of step with his base.

The concerns raised at the conference followed days of conservative foment that continued to build over the weekend, fueling anxiety among Mr Trump’s allies that conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein, widely promoted by Mr Trump and Administration officials before they took office, will continue to haunt them.

Even Mr Trump’s preferred cable network, Fox News, raised a warning Sunday morning, with “Fox & Friends” host Charles Hurt saying the White House needed to provide more answers.

“There has to be some explanation,” Mr Hurt said, “and I think that’s why you have a lot of people still ... with a lot of very valid questions.”

Anchor Kevin Corke and co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, the wife of Mr Trump’s transportation secretary Sean P. Duffy, agreed that his supporters needed a more substantive response.

Mr Trump has been undeterred, doubling down in support of Ms Bondi and issuing a rare rebuke to his base, calling on them to cease asking questions about a conspiracy theory that many in MAGA see as central to exposing the so-called Deep State and bringing transparency to Washington.

His defiance has only further ignited anger among some of Mr Trump’s most loyal supporters, raising questions about whether the fracture will do lasting damage to Mr Trump’s coalition.

“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” in MAGA, Mr Trump posted to Truth Social on Saturday night, dismissing his supporters’ calls for Ms Bondi’s ouster by writing that she was doing a “FANTASTIC JOB!” and that he wanted his administration to focus on other issues.

“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,” Mr Trump wrote.

The Gen Z audience inside the Tampa Convention Centre this weekend, wearing a mix of T-shirts and shorts, sports coats and ties, represented a demographic that swung notably toward Mr Trump in November and helped return him to office.

The crowd was thrilled that Mr Trump was back in the White House. But their reactions, at times, showed that they weren’t all thrilled about everything Mr Trump is doing there.

Some prominent conservative voices at the gathering worried that the dynamic could cost the Trump movement in next year’s elections and beyond, as they sought to raise alarms 900 miles away in Washington.

The “excitement I saw among younger voters could be defused,” said Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, in an interview with The Washington Post, likening it to “air out of a balloon.”

“Do I think this is the end of MAGA? No. I’ve never said that,” Mr Kirk continued.

“Do I think the extra 10 to 15 per cent of (less inclined to vote) bros that are trading crypto and wake up at 2pm every day … do I think they’re going to be, like, ‘Screw it?’ Yeah. That’s a huge risk.”

Across age demographics, some of Mr Trump’s most dedicated supporters are also uneasy about the White House’s decision to keep sending US weapons to Ukraine and disappointed by the prospect that immigration raids might spare some sectors of the economy.

At the Turning Point gathering, attendees were especially bothered by the Epstein situation.

Crowds of devout young conservatives still lined up to make donations to receive “47” hats and cheered as photos flashed on-screen of Mr Trump’s mug shot, of him raising his fist after surviving an assassination attempt, of him waving from a McDonald’s drive-through window.

They did the Mr Trump dance as “YMCA” played, and they gave frequent standing ovations as speakers championed aspects of the president’s agenda, such as securing the border and opposing “woke” ideology.

But other moments revealed that issues were “bubbling under the surface” of the movement, as Fox News host Laura Ingraham explained it.

“How many of you are satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation?” Ms Ingraham asked to resounding boos.

She asked the same question about Mr Trump “continuing to send weapons to Ukraine” and offering deportation “carve-outs” for migrant workers in the farm and hospitality sectors. More boos rang out each time.

White House officials and Mr Trump have argued that a vocal but small minority of his supporters were upset over Epstein, though the outcry on social media and elsewhere has been difficult for his advisers to ignore.

Mr Kirk warned that Mr Trump’s newer young male supporters are especially rankled by what they see as a lack of transparency on Epstein.

“Their trust of government is zero,” Mr Kirk said. “The only reason they were able to succumb to engaging was because of Trump.”

He jokingly described young Mr Trump-voting men as becoming the “Lost Boys of MAGA,” saying that they’re more likely to merely become politically disengaged because of “mass cynicism” than they are to veer to the left and “become card-carrying members of the Mamdani movement,” referring to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist mayoral candidate in New York.

Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said that Mr Trump “is keeping his promises to his MAGA base on a daily basis” and that the GOP under Mr Trump “is more unified than ever.”

Ms Jackson said Mr Trump “will never stop listening to the voices of his closest allies and delivering for the American people.”

But the prospect that the White House might alienate key segments of the movement that returned Mr Trump to Washington was a constant theme in speeches from some of the biggest commentators in MAGA politics.

“This could actually cost Trump in the midterms,” conservative podcaster and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said, as she spent more than half an hour railing against Ms Bondi.

“We can’t lose any of the MAGA base.”

Former senior White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, taping his daily podcast from a small stage in the convention centre Friday morning, was even more alarmed.

“It’s deeper than Epstein!” Mr Bannon shouted as a crowd gathered around him.

The administration’s refusal to release more on the investigation and Epstein’s potential ties to power, as it had once promised to do, is “not about just a pedophile ring and all that,” he said.

“It’s about who governs us.”

“For this to go away,” a fired-up Bannon continued, telling his producers they’d have to blow through the scheduled commercial break, “you’re going to lose 10 per cent of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10 per cent of the MAGA movement right now, we’re going to lose 40 seats in ’26, we’re going to lose the presidency. They don’t even have to steal it.”

Tucker Carlson, another former Fox News host, said the official response to criticism over Epstein reminded him of the Biden administration.

“The fact that the US government, the one that I voted for, refused to take my question seriously and instead said ‘Case closed. Shut up, conspiracy theorist’ was too much for me, and I don’t think the rest of us should be satisfied with that,” Mr Carlson said.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom from the stage. Mr Trump’s administration was well represented at the gathering, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., a longtime friend of Mr Kirk’s, was among the speakers praising the work of Turning Point.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, also a former Fox News host, pitched the young audience on a career in the military, touting the administration’s spikes in enlistment numbers since January.

Border czar Tom Homan spoke Saturday night, as did Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem.

And most young supporters in the crowd said they were still happy overall with Mr Trump. Mingling among tables selling MAGA-themed coffee (“Stay awake! Not woke!”), “Based Nutrition” liver supplements and “Birthright” prenatal vitamins, they said they had no plans to leave the movement.

“The last two weeks have been both a great surge with the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ and then sort of a bit of a drop-off with all the other stuff,” said Alex Peña, a 24-year-old from Tampa who works in education, wearing a cowboy hat patterned like the American flag.

A child of Cubans who he said immigrated legally, Mr Peña, too, was opposed to Mr Trump offering safety from deportations for some migrant workers. He was flummoxed over the Epstein announcement, and he described Mr Trump’s continuation of Ukraine military aid as “the same stuff we were complaining about under Biden.”

Vince Smith, an 18-year-old from Redwood City, California, who is preparing to begin studying construction management at Virginia Tech in the fall, said he was impressed by the Mr Trump campaign’s social media strategy last year and how it “organically” fit with what teenagers were already seeing online.

“I’d say a larger subset of youth is worried about more ‘America First’-style policy, so just ensuring that they stay on track with that, and that sort of happens in parallel to anything that might be more controversial - that’s really important,” Mr Smith said.

Mr Trump’s base has proved resilient, handing him the 2024 presidential nomination after a period of political uncertainty in the wake of his 2020 loss and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, even though some formidable Republicans tried to stop him.

But now that Mr Trump is back in the White House with a wider coalition - tech workers in Silicon Valley, more Latino voters and Black men, longtime liberals disenchanted by Democrats’ handling of covid restrictions and vaccine requirements, and young men not previously engaged with Republican politics - it remains to be seen whether they’ll all stay in the MAGA fold for good.

“If we do not improve the material conditions of the younger voters, and do it quickly, the Mamdani effect will spread,” Mr Kirk told The Post, calling on Mr Trump’s GOP to make a big statement by instituting a “we’re going to build 10 million homes, Marshall Plan-type thing” to address affordability.

From onstage, Mr Kirk celebrated the gains that he and other organisations made in persuading young people to support Mr Trump.

Gen Z was “making all the liberals confused” over their shift away from the Democratic Party, he said, describing it as “the greatest generational realignment since Woodstock.”

“We turned that red MAGA hat from a symbol that everyone was afraid to wear back in 2016,” Mr Kirk said, “where now in 2024, we turned that into a symbol of hope, into a symbol of optimism, of patriotism and taking back our country.”

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