Make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

That's conservative commentator Megan Kelly, addressing a crowd at the Turning Point USA conference in Florida last weekend. CNN's senior correspondent Donie O'Sullivan was at the convention to speak with MAGA supporters, and all they could seem to talk about was Jeffrey Epstein.

This is the first topic that all of us as Americans, not as Democrats, not as liberals, not Republicans, are actually lining together and saying we all want the Epstein files.

I think they're going to maybe give us pieces and maybe not the whole thing and think that that's going to suffice, and I don't think people are going to be quiet about it until they really do it.

'Since Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo saying that Epstein committed suicide and there's no evidence he kept a so-called client list, some members of the MAGA movement have been up in arms and demanding more answers. The pressure has only built throughout this week, and Trump has lashed out, calling his former supporters who were pushing the Epstein controversy, quote, "weaklings." To break down this fallout, I wanted to talk with Donie, who's done a ton of reporting in the MAGA world. He's also the host of Persuadable, a podcast about conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they impact our democracy. I'm CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, David Chalian, and this is the CNN Political Briefing. Donie, thanks so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me, David.

I kind of want to go through the anatomy of a conspiracy theory in Trump's orbit with you, just to understand. You've studied it for so long, you've covered it for so long in so many different facets. And so I guess my first question for you is, how long has the Epstein case been sort of a life force inside of the MAGA world, and what has changed in this moment that causes Donald Trump to be at odds with some of his biggest supporters?

'Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of layers to this, David. And I mean firstly, I think just pulling back, we should point out that, you know, you don't have to be in QAnon or you don't have to a MAGA or a Trump supporter to have questions and suspicions and even believe in conspiracy theories, I mean, and especially when it comes to Epstein. I mean I have a lot of Democratic friends who have questions about the Epstein files. And in some ways, you now, all of this sort of goes back to the paranoid style in American politics. This is fundamentally a part of what American politics is about. But specifically when it comes to Trump's base, and actually that's something I'd like to talk to you a little bit about, get your take on how we can split up that base from this sort of very loud QAnon or MAGA voices. But when it come to Epstein, this is such a fundamental part to, I would say, the MAGA scene online. There are two conspiracy theories you basically hear every day. Things that, you know, news media will stop talking about things, they'll float out of the public consciousness, but every day you're pretty much guaranteed to hear that the 2020 election was stolen. You'll hear that conspiracy theory if you're listening to MAGA world. And you'll hear something about Jeffrey Epstein. And the reason Jeffrey Epstine has such, I guess, staying power as such is that obviously the circumstances around his death, now the release of these files. When he died in 2019, that came about two years into QAnon, or what we now know as QAnon. Q, the anonymous persona that started posting, that started back in 2017. So this all sort of came together at one point, and Q would talk a lot, post a lot about Epstein. And I mean, if we really wanna go way far back, and I think something that isn't being talked about a lot right now, which is also another element of this, is that Epstein also fits neatly into very anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about cabals running the world that actually go back centuries. Now, just because you have questions about Epstein and just because maybe you're in MAGA and have questions about Epstein doesn't make you antisemitic, doesn't mean you're in that, but it is part of the background that is also helping propel this forward.

You know, when you say the base, so you know, my whole line of work in covering politics and campaigns, I look at Trump's base, which by the way, a base of supporters like your most reliable, you can count on these supporters showing up as a politician, right? So for him, it's like male, white, predominantly, I'm speaking, you know, broadly Republican, like that is what I think of Donald Trump's base of support. The man got 77 million votes from Americans in the last election, which is like his base plus whoever, you know, came along for the ride in that particular election. But we're talking about tens of millions of Americans who are part of Donald Trump's political base. How do we get at, there are loud, vocal, influential voices in a MAGA mediosphere, if you will, and clearly they're paying attention to their audiences, Donie, right? Like they're understanding a pulse of some sense of the people, and yet it still may not be an enormous swath of Trump's political support.

Yeah, and I mean, that's I think we always sort of run into this difficulty because I mean part of American politics right now is how much credence do we give these voices, but they turn out to be very influential. Here's how I look at it and from going to a lot of Trump events, a lot a Trump rallies, you know, despite what some Democrats and people on the left might want to think, not everybody who goes to a Trump rally is, you know, a nut and believes in all the QAnon stuff or whatever.

I mean, I would say the vast majority do not.

Exactly, exactly. What I will say, though, is that part of the appeal of Trump, of course, right, is a distrust in establishment politics or however way you want to describe it. And so I meet a lot of people out in the road who want nothing to do with QAnon, nothing to with any of that stuff. A lot of the Trump supporters think Trump goes way too far with a lot this stuff. However, they will say, well, you know, when it comes to the 2020 election, I have my suspicions. So that's the sort of vein, I think, where the Epstein stuff spills into more sort of broader swath of the electorate, where it's like, this thing is so sticky that you don't have to be down these rabbit holes to be like, wait, there must be something there. And so I think that's where this could maybe be problematic. But also, again these are folks that are, you know, they're not obsessing about this. So they might be like, okay, and then sort of move on from it.

So then take me into this moment that we're in. So when Donald Trump or his attorney general, who's only acting at his behest, obviously, she's not sort of an independent force here, comes out, and a DOJ memo is put out there. In the memo, it says like, and no further information is coming. I mean, you mentioned the 2020 election. Put that in the context of like, how dramatic that would be if Trump had come out and said, there's nothing to see here on the 2020 election.

'Exactly. I mean, that's how big a deal Epstein is. And I've been trying to, like, how best to communicate it this week, and I think I've landed on this is that Epstein is almost as big in, let's say, call it the MAGA-verse or that sphere, as the 2020 election lie. And Trump, for years, you know, going back. I mean, I remember I was, a couple of weeks before the 2020 election, two days after Trump's town hall with Savannah Guthrie on NBC News. And that's where he like refused to disavow QAnon. He said, I know nothing about them, but I know they're against pedophilia, and so am I. I was actually at a QAnon event, indoors, I might add, in October 2020. And they played that clip. And I mean everybody there was going nuts. They were like, he is on board with us. By him not disavowing us, he's 100% on board. We've seen from the liberal watchdog group Media Matters that over the past few years on Truth Social alone, Trump has reposted or reshared accounts that are QAnon promoting accounts, something like more than a thousand times. So for these people, like all of that is Trump saying, yep, I'm with ya, and because QAnon is fundamentally about Epstein, I am with you on that, too. So it is like Trump turning around and saying, yeah 2020 election wasn't stolen. That's a hoax. Maybe Democrats came up with that hoax that it was stolen. That is how much of a lead balloon what he said this week about Epstein is.

'Wow. And, obviously, as you were just talking about sort of Trump's flirtation with or not disavowing QAnon. I mean, I remember that so clearly. I remember him in the briefing room in the summer of '20 being asked about it. And he clearly sees currency in this. He does see this as a swath of his avenue of support and doesn't want to in any way dissuade that support from showing up for him, right, politically. And so he seems to want to sort of travel in the currents without getting washed over by it. And now he seems caught between a rock and a hard place. And when we come back, I want to dig into sort of the specifics here of what this universe is looking for from him on the Epstein case. We'll have a lot more with CNN senior correspondent Donie O'Sullivan in just a moment. I'm fascinated, Donie, because so much of Donald Trump's relationship with these influential voices, part of the relationship is, sometimes they pick a topic, and then Trump runs with it, and there's sort of symbiosis there, right? And then sometimes Trump is putting something out, and they are a full-on echo chamber for it. So to see a disconnect here is just a rare thing, and the fact that it's lasting. And so to me, that begs the question, what are they looking for on Epstein? What what do they believe exists that they haven't seen, or what could possibly be the reason Trump wouldn't share anything and everything possible to put this all to bed?

Yeah, there was this sort of incredible cognitive dissonance, I guess, for a while, whereby, for years, you know, there's photos of Jeffrey Epstein with so many famous people on both sides, namely Trump and also the Clintons, everybody else. But for years I mean, people ignored, a lot of Trump supporters ignored the fact that Trump had been seen with him and very much focused on the Democrats that had been photographed, and so the expectation was that this would all come out and look really bad for Democrats and prove that they're doing crimes and every other sort of thing. But I mean, there's also just a lot, I mean you sort of think of the sort of Michael Flynn side of this. I mean, they just, they don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, like it's a full clearing out of the deep state. So they're not really discriminating by party. This for them is, the Epstein files just symbolizes the deep state, it symbolizes that cover up, and this is the way to get transparency. And I will say, I was at Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA event in Tampa last weekend.

And this was like topic number one, right?

'Oh yeah, on stage and off stage. And look, we should be very clear, like there's no suggestion whatsoever that Trump and Epstein, there was any wrongdoing in Trump's relationship with Epstein etc. And, you know, any person I spoke to last week at Turning Point said just that. They were like, well, you know, if there was something bad on Trump here, the Democrats would have released it. Now you can argue that or not, but that's what they said. But what I have seen, you know, because Trump has gone so, I mean, his posts this week have been quite unhinged on it. I have seen people saying, wait a minute, who's Trump now covering for? What's going on? So there is that suspicion in there, too. And, you know, one thing I find very interesting about all of this, too, is that Trump, of course, as always, his sort of familiar maxim of calling out the media, the sort of trying to blame the media for inflaming this, I think it also points to a disconnect that maybe he doesn't understand, or maybe he's plain dumb, but maybe he actually doesn't understand the moderate media ecosystem that he has leveraged so well just quite as well as we thought he did. Because if you think back to Tuesday, when maybe this story could have died down, the House Speaker went on Benny Johnson, which is another sort of MAGA-verse podcast. So and like, I think he doesn't appreciate just how much what's happening in MAGA world can actually influence what's happening on mainstream media and all across.

Usually he's so skilled at being able to either truly kill a story or distract from it or what have you, but the questions aren't stopping, and then it's annoying him, and then he's fueling it by lashing out at his own supporters. Of course that's gonna be fodder for news pickup when the president is sort of taking on his own loyal base of supporters. So he perpetuates the cycle.

Yeah, and I think the Trump campaign was lauded for its use of the podcast space. You know, Trump doesn't have to sit down with 60 Minutes, he can sit down with Joe Rogan. But Trump himself, and Kaitlan Collins pointed this out on air as well last night, Trump himself is a boomer, right? And he reads print editions of newspapers, and he watches a lot of cable news. And so even though he can leverage politically the new platforms, I think a lot of the way he consumes it is still very much more in that sort of traditional sense. So I think, you know, I think he seems to be struggling here to really have a grasp on this MAGA media base that he has created.

And that the people he's now put in powerful positions, like, actually fueled, right? I mean, Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, this was part of their reason for being. I mean it was part of their sort of brand and identity was to continue to call into question. And now they are the ones that are saying like, nothing more to see here, or, at least, I guess, expressing dissatisfaction with the way in which the administration is trying to put it to bed.

Yeah, I mean, Dan Bongino is not going to be deputy FBI director forever, right? And he does want to, I'm guessing, go back to his pretty lucrative podcast business at some point. I mean it was actually Tucker Carlson who on a podcast this week sort of made this exact point, is that these guys trade on the deep state, the perception of the deep state. And so I think Bongino appreciated going into this that this could be tricky for him. I remember some of the comments he made as he was going in. But, like, this totally destroys your credibility among that base of audience if now you are part of the coverup. You know, we do have this just incredible scenario where you have people who are very senior in government running in the FBI and whatnot. And part of their calculation here is, well, how's my influencer career gonna go after this?

Now you just said part of the cover up. I mean, but we don't know if there's a cover up or not, right? Isn't that also, like, isn't that fundamental here?

Precisely. But I mean, in the view of, I should say, in the view of Bongino's audience, there's always, always has been, and there always will be a cover up. I mean you could release everything, right, and you're not going to convince a lot of people that it's everything. So that's always going to be there. And the fact that he's been tainted now by this is something that's gonna stick.

So is there a bottom to this? Like, do we get, like...

I don't know.

Or do we just live in a descending rabbit hole? I don't know.

I called yesterday a QAnon influencer, he's a guy down in Florida, he is a big QAnon fan. He has a Qanon show, and I'm about to say, obviously he's fringe guy, etc, etc. However, Kash Patel, the FBI director, has been on his show multiple times over the years.

Fringe no more.

And he is very much in the QAnon space, and he, some of them are starting to buy into what Trump is saying on this Democrat plot and cover up or whatever. So there's a layer to that sort of extreme belief of base that they can do those mental gymnastics to that degree, but I mean I think that what he's doing right now and sort of as you mentioned earlier just the whole Democrat thing I don't see the likes of any of the Charlie Kirk's etc even trying to rationalize that at the moment.

Well, watch this space, because that'll be a really fascinating development to watch. Donie O'Sullivan, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us about this. Nobody has the perspective and the depth on this stuff like you do, so it's really wonderful to get your expertise. Thank you so much.

Thanks, David.

CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Podcasts. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Podcasts. Our senior producers are Faiz Jamil and Felicia Patinkin. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow.. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.