Trump Approval Drops During Ongoing Epstein Controversy

Controversy has recently beset the White House, DOJ, and FBI, since the FBI/DOJ released a memo saying it had no evidence suggesting that Epstein didn’t kill himself or was blackmailing prominent individuals. Recent statements from Trump and the White House have doubled down on the claims in the memo, saying the referenced documents related to the case are a Democrat hoax, indicating that it is becoming increasingly unlikely that more disclosure will occur. The latest polls indicate that this ongoing story has hurt Trump’s approval.

In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump registered only 41% approval and 54% disapproval, while the latest Rasmussen Reports had approval tied at 49%-49%. The RCP Average for Trump’s approval places him in the middle of those two polls, with 45.6% approval and 51.1% disapproval. This is down from the -1.8 net approval Trump had last month on June 7.

Part of the discontent with the president, the Reuters poll found, was his handling of the Epstein files. When asked about Trump’s handling of the files, only 17% of adults approved of how he’s handled the situation, while 54% disapproved. Even among Republicans, only 35% approved, while 30% disapproved.

Sixty percent also said they thought “the government is hiding information on Epstein’s death,” while only 12% thought they weren’t. In the memo released by the FBI that found no evidence that Epstein killed himself, the bureau also released a video purporting to show that nobody entered or left Epstein’s cell block during the period of time when he died, indicating that he killed himself. However, WIRED discovered that the video wasn’t “raw” as the FBI claimed but instead was an edited video of two different clips, with approximately three minutes missing.

Another concern was the list of Epstein clients, which 69% of respondents said they thought the government is hiding, including 62% of Republicans.

The backlash has caused some rifts in the MAGA camp. Over the weekend, after the initial memos were released, conservative commentators Charlie Kirk, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson commented on the Epstein situation at the conservative Turning Point Action conference. Tucker Carlson said that he thinks that Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, was behind Epstein: “I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American … Now, no one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that’s naughty.”

In response, Trump called Charlie Kirk and asked him to stop talking about the Epstein issue. Kirk said on his show Monday that he was “done talking about Epstein for the time being. I’m going to trust my friends in the administration, I’m going to trust my friends in the government to solve it, ball’s in their hands.”

Since then, Trump has criticized Republicans asking for more disclosure on multiple occasions. Comparing the Epstein files to the “discredited Steele Dossier” and other “scams and hoaxes,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

At a press briefing on Thursday, RCP’s Phil Wegmann asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “Does Trump believe justice was served in the Epstein case?” Leavitt responded, “Look, the president believes that he directed the Department of Justice to do an exhaustive and thorough review, and they did that, and they all agreed – the FBI director, the deputy FBI director, the attorney general – on the memo that they drafted and they released,” indicating that more movement on the case is unlikely. Leavitt also said that Trump “would not recommend” a special prosecutor to investigate the Epstein case.