Jul 26, 2025 4 min read

By Richard Robbins

Never in his political career has Donald Trump done so much dodging and weaving, so much bobbing and ducking. His friendship with the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt the president. And his administration’s failure to release the “Epstein files” tripped off what appears to be a major schism in MAGA-world solidarity.

Can Trump repair the breach?

He’s trying. The distraction he first attempted was tame enough. He went after celebrity comedian-actor Rosie O’Donnell, whose most famous turn came in 1992, when she had starring roles in both A League of Their Own and Sleepless in Seattle. “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” went off the air in 2002. She later was a host of “The View,” where she had a public spat with, eh, you guessed it, Manhattan real estate tycoon Donald Trump. That was in 2006-2007.

I suspect youthful members of the Trump coalition might have a hard time identifying Rosie, who now lives overseas. Trump threatened to revoke her U.S. citizenship. O’Donnell was born in upstate New York in 1962.

The Rosie gambit was a non-starter.

The president then dove into the world of sports. More precisely, he insisted that the Washington Commanders football team revert to its former franchise name – the Redskins.

He also took on the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, which switched its moniker in 2022 from the Indians. (From the now-you-know department, prior to 1915, Cleveland’s baseball nine were variously known as the Lakeshores, the Bluebirds, the Broncos, and the Naps.)

“Our great Indian people want this to happen,” the president intoned. “Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them…. MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN.”

So spoke The Great White Father, who failed to connect on this one. Terry Francona, the former Guardian skipper, dismissed critics of the name-change, including, presumably the president of the United States, saying, “Let people complain” all they want.

Thanks in part to Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the next White House attempt at distraction was a reprise of the James Comey affair, who as FBI director failed to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.

This return to email computer-gate also fell flat.

Within days of first invoking Rosie O’Donnell and as the Epstein controversy continued to roil MAGA-land, Trump took the escalator all the way to the top floor by taking on Barack Obama.

Anchoring this distraction, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard unveiled what she called “overwhelming” evidence of illegal behavior by Obama and his national security team.

Gabbard’s charges go to the very heart of deep state skullduggery, as defined by the president to his millions of supporters: the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Donald Trump.

It never happened, Gabbard said. Oh, the Russians tried messing with our heads, she stated, but it wasn’t with the goal of aiding Trump.

This was on Friday. Two days later, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account an AI-generated video of Obama being hauled off to jail from the Oval Office. Trump is shown smiling as the former president is forced to his knees by police. A final shot shows Obama behind bars.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that Obama was guilty of treason. “They tried to steal the election,” the president said.

The next day, at a White House press briefing, Gabbard provided the media with a fuller airing of the Obama charges.

Against this background, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives took off for its summer recess a day early. Instead of grappling with the Democratic party’s betrayal of democracy, it chose to go to the beach.

In a Wednesday post, Trump wrote that his former supporters had fallen for the Epstein story “hook, line and sinker.”

Later, in an exchange with reporters, President Trump referenced “stupid Republicans” who have “fallen” for the Epstein hoax.

It’s clear, or at least it should be, that the Epstein case’s staying power rests with the GOP base that Trump is normally able to secure. This time things may be different.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.