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Barbara S. Held is Barry N. Wish Professor of Psychology and Social Studies emerita at Bowdoin College in Brunswick.
The admonition “Do as I say, not as I do” has been used by parents forever, to no avail. And it’s not helping Donald Trump get MAGAs past the Epstein files either.
Diverse explanations for MAGA’s fixation on Jeffrey Epstein abound. David French of the New York Times called it key to “their indictment of America’s so-called ruling class.” Amanda Marcotte of Salon pointed to MAGA’s need for “moral absolution” after accepting Trump’s sexually abusive behavior. Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic said the “sexual abuse of underage girls is more visceral than more abstract harms of, say, taking away peoples’ access to health insurance.”
Yet most agree that Trump’s reneging on his promise of transparency about Epstein intel contributes substantially to the uproar. Having spent years marinated in Trump’s conspiracy theories, MAGAs are addicted — they can’t let go of Epstein despite Trump’s saying “nothing to see here” and now making outrageous claims to change the subject. There’s even a self-help group for addicted MAGAs, Leavingmaga.org, whose mission statement could have come straight from Alcoholics Anonymous. Essentially, MAGAs lost their identities to Trump’s lies, as alcoholics have to drink.
Many MAGAs are doing as Trump always does with conspiracy theories — holding tight to their truth. Though to their credit, many aren’t doing what he says they should, namely, move on from Epstein.
Trump and his Department of Justice appointees touted the Epstein conspiracy theory when it benefitted them. But now even Trump is being called out by some MAGAs for his “ultimate betrayal.” As Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online maintained on Bannon’s WarRoom, “You [Trump] trained us to go after this issue”—meaning a “full excavation” of all the Epstein evidence. Right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk requested transparency more politely: “The way that you taught us is that we need to go after the rogue intel agencies. . . . We are your students in dismantling the deep state.”
MAGAs want Trump to act like he did before the DOJ memo claiming that investigations “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” What happened to that Trump, the guy who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t push relentlessly? As Billy Joel sang, “Don’t go changing.”
Missing from explanations for Trump’s reversal is one that’s overlooked, and it goes back to the famous 1961 Bobo Doll experiment conducted by social psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura investigated “whether children learn aggressive behaviors through observing adults.” Children were assigned to one of three conditions: observing an adult who punched a bobo doll, observing an adult who didn’t punch a bobo doll, and a bobo doll with no adult present. He found that children who observed aggression displayed significantly more aggression afterwards.
So too, MAGAs are emulating the actions of their favorite role model, Trump, who like Bandura’s bobo dolls always bounced back when struck — until now. This means he might have become a different person. They therefore need reassurance that he’s still their guy, fighting the “deep state” on behalf of “truth” and “justice.” But now he’s got a well-earned identity crisis in their eyes: His withholding Epstein evidence speaks louder than his Dems-did-it words.
Trump has therefore put himself in a lose-lose situation: If the files don’t come out, the conspiracy theories will likely persist. And if they do come out, the conspiracy theories will likely persist. That’s because even if Trump isn’t implicated in them, his base won’t be satisfied with any amount of intelligence.
After all, as Trump has insisted endlessly, there’s always hidden government malfeasance we must defeat, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented. That’s what makes conspiracy theories so resistant to evidence. Conspiracy theories aren’t born of fact, and they don’t die of fact. If they do die, it’s because their believers move on to another one, which Trump readily supplies ( see Obama committed treason). As long as MAGAs keep buying Trump’s theories, American democracy remains on the endangered-species list.
