EVEN WHEN RIGHT-WINGERS CARED ABOUT EPSTEIN, THEY DIDN'T CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN

I'm sure that Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic is correct when he says that this is one reason Pam Bondi just lost her job as attorney general, but it's not the main reason:

President Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi after more than a chaotic year marked by her indignant congressional hearings and woeful mishandling of the Epstein files....

Bondi’s ouster is the culmination of Trump’s growing frustrations around the intense, inadvertent scrutiny that she brought upon the administration, as she went from saying the Epstein client list was on her desk, to claiming it didn’t exist, to handing out big dramatic white binders for a photo op with MAGA influencers that contained no new information. She continuously tried and failed to declare the case closed, while exposing Epstein’s victims to more abuse by identifying them in the files. Eventually, even Republicans on the House Oversight Committee agreed to subpoena Bondi over her “possible mismanagement” of the files.

In The New York Times, Glenn Thrush and Tyler Pager appear to rank-order the reasons Bondi lost her job, and their ranking seems plausible:

Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.

President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files.

Right -- "her inability to prosecute the people [Trump] hates" and to meet his "unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies" is the main reason she's out.

Mr. Trump has been particularly angry about the Justice Department’s failure to win cases involving his political opponents, including against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.

One key Trump adviser outside Ms. Bondi’s line of authority, the federal housing official Bill Pulte, had long pushed for her firing, blaming her for slow-walking and bungling the James and Comey cases, among other things, according to people familiar with the situation.

Her firing was primarily because she couldn't mount and win unwinnable cases against Trump's enemies.

Trump's anger is shared by the rest of his party. Listen to Congressman Chip Roy on Fox Business this morning. What's he talking about? Vengeance and propaganda-driven right-wing witch hunts, not Epstein:

Rep. Chip Roy on what he wants out of Trump's next AG: "We want the people who were harassing J6ers held accountable. We want to know the truth on Arctic Frost. We want to see heads roll. We want to see John Brennan and Jim Comey held accountable. The next AG needs to be very aggressive."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 3, 2026 at 8:27 AM

Roy says:

We've got to deal with things like antifa. The president rightly declared them a terrorist organization. We want to see people who are affiliated with these Marxist networks funding antifa, creating all sorts of danger for the American people, we want them held accountable. We want the people who were harassing J6ers held accountable. We want to know the truth on Arctic Frost. My records were targeted under Arctic Frost, Jack Smith. We want to see heads roll. We want to see John Brennan, who the Judiciary Committee referred to the Department of Justice, held accountable, and Jim Comey.

These are all things that we think need to happen. The next attorney general needs to be very aggressive, and I hope the president will pick somebody that will do that.

Arctic Frost was Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- and yes, all your right-wing relatives know that, and assuming you know what they mean when they say "Arctic Frost." As part of that investigation, calling records of some D.C. Republicans were accessed -- just records of who called whom, not audio of the calls -- and Republicans, both in D.C. and back home watching Fox, will never stop being angry about that.

And here's another GOP congressman from Texas expressing similar views in a Newsmax interview -- and saying that his constituents agree with him:

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, said Thursday on Newsmax that President Donald Trump's firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to reflect frustration inside the administration that the Justice Department had not moved fast enough to deliver what many supporters see as long-promised accountability....

Cloud, speaking on "Bianca Across the Nation," said the issue went beyond pursuing Democrats and centered on what he described as abuses under the previous administration....

" ... I will say back when I'm back at home, the number one thing I would hear from people is this is the administration of accountability. And we expected to see action and accountability brought to all that malfeasance that we've seen in the previous one."

This gets us back to Jeffrey Epstein. When your right-wing relatives cared about the Epstein story, it wasn't because children were made to suffer. It was because they believed the guilty parties were exclusively Democrats (and non-right-wingers from overseas). They wanted accountability in the Epstein case in order to bring down their political enemies, not because cruelties were inflicted on children. As soon as it became clear to them that Epstein's circle included people on their side, they lost interest.

Republican voters want their enemies crushed. They still support Trump because they see him pursuing this goal. (His Ahab-like obsessions are their own.) They want their enemies jailed or executed whether or not they believe these enemies consorted with Epstein. Most of them don't connect Jack Smith or James Comey or, say, Anthony Fauci or Barack Obama with Epstein, but they hate them and want them punished. Epstein's crimes are just a pretext for them. They'd want their enemies punished even if there had never been a Jeffrey Epstein. They want it as much as they want all undocumented immigrants, Muslims, and trans people (and liberals, for that matter) killed, jailed, or banished from the United States.