In defending how his administration is handling supposed files on Jeffrey Epstein, he said "some stupid Republicans" fell for a hoax.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is shocking some colleagues by fully embracing efforts to exploit divisions between President Trump and his MAGA base over the administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

President Donald Trump’s strategy has been to downplay the uproar over the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case as his supporters demand the Justice Department release much-hyped records in the investigation.

As his supporters erupt over the Justice Department's in Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking investigation, President Donald Trump's strategy has been to downplay the issue.

Prong No. 1 of Trump’s crisis-PR strategy on this front has been to call his voters idiots, as he did Wednesday morning with another very long post about the matter on his Truth Social site, in which he claimed that the Epstein story was a Democratic hoax:

Trump dismisses the Epstein case as old news: “He’s dead for a long time.” Well, Jeffrey Epstein hasn’t been dead for that long a time. He died less than six years ago, during the first Trump administration, in a federal prison, and not of natural causes. The cause of death was officially determined to be suicide.

Now the persisting furor over files related to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has forced Trump into an unfamiliar role: trying to shut a conspiracy theory down. Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender,

The rhetoric marks a dramatic escalation for the Republican president, who has broken with some of his most loyal backers on issues in the past, but never with such fervor.