“Where is Mark Levin on Epstein?” influential MAGA commentator Tucker Carlson asked last week.
“I notice that all these very voluble people who do not hesitate before imposing their opinions on the rest of us suddenly don’t have very strong opinions about Epstein,” he continued. “What is that?”
Carlson’s questions came in the wake of the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s releasing a memo on the late Jeffrey Epstein. The memo closed the case on the notorious sex trafficker and made the surprising claim that there was no evidence he kept an “incriminating ‘client list,’” something that Attorney General Pam Bondi had once insisted did exist. The Trump administration also said that there was no evidence Epstein had blackmailed prominent people, and that the FBI had conclusively determined the wealthy and well-connected convicted child sex offender definitely committed suicide, though many suspect he was murdered.
MAGA couldn’t take it. The Trump administration’s attempt to shut down the Epstein investigation upset Trump’s ideological core more than any other event in memory, with the president receiving more criticism from his most avid supporters than he’s accustomed to.
That’s when Fox News host Mark Levin weighed in.
Levin shared a Truth Social post in which Trump defended Bondi and dismissed anyone concerned about Epstein. Levin agreed. “President Trump has had enough of the Epsteinian kooks,” Levin wrote on X.
Epsteinian kooks?
Levin hasn’t always been so dismissive of the so-called “conspiracy theories” about Epstein. In an early spring interview, he told Pam Bondi, “I want to get into this Epstein thing a little bit. I think the American people are very curious about who’s on this list.” Bondi assured him it would be released.
Levin prodded further. “So once all that’s gathered you are going to put it out in the public… for the perpetrators, I assume we will see those names, yes?”
“Certainly,” Bondi responded.
Questioning the official narrative about Epstein has been part of the American right since at least the rise of MAGA. And it’s even become a mainstream fixation, with cable news networks now regularly covering Epstein’s crimes and entertaining the possibility of a government cover-up.
When did asking such questions become kooky? And what unites those voices seeking to shut down skepticism of the official narrative?
After the Trump administration released the memo about Epstein, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro swooped in to defend the DOJ and FBI’s findings, instructing his audience, “It’s time to change your view on Epstein.”
Shapiro has long been a strong supporter of Israel’s government and an advocate for U.S. military action against its chief adversary, Iran. Levin takes the same staunch pro-Israel and anti-Iran stance. So does former vice president Mike Pence, who years ago fell out with Trump but now praises the president for striking Iran and seemingly breaking from GOP “isolationists.” Pence has said nothing lately about Epstein, but most neoconservatives are following the Levin-Shapiro playbook of defending the administration’s handling of the investigation, while the Never Trumpers among them say that the real reason no Epstein evidence is being released is because Trump is implicated.
Perhaps. Regardless, few neocons seem interested in evidence that Epstein was an intelligence asset whose heinous crimes involved powerful American elites. Indeed, neocons tend to malign those who ask legitimate questions about Epstein.
As in: What did he do? What harm might have been done to others? And why?
Progressive pundit Cenk Uygur offered, “I agree with [Tucker Carlson] that it's strange that the neocon crowd, like [Mark Levin] are very quiet about the Epstein files. They don't seem as outraged as the rest of Trump voters.”
“I think they might accidentally be telling on themselves,” Uygur added, “or telling on their beloved Israel.”
What did Uygur mean, exactly?
It has long been speculated that Epstein may have worked for Israeli intelligence and that the sex trafficking for which he is infamous was part of a government-backed scheme to compromise political leaders and business tycoons.
According to Tucker Carlson on Friday, “every single person in Washington DC” thinks this. “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think that,” he said. “I don’t know any of them that hate Israel. But no one feels they can say that.”
Tucker Carlson said during his speech at a Turning Point USA event Friday that Epstein may have been running “a blackmail operation.”
“I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American. And we have every right to ask, on whose behalf was he working?” Carlson asked.
Carlson insisted it’s okay to ask these questions.
“Now, no one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that’s naughty,” Carlson said. “There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing hateful about saying that.”
“There’s nothing anti-semitic about saying that,” he added. “ There’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that.”
Carlson observed, “And you have the right to expect your government will not act against your interests, and you have a right to demand that foreign governments not be allowed to act against your interests.”
Mark Levin wasn’t happy with Carlson. Nor was former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. Despite there being enough evidence to at least discuss this, pro-Israel voices across the board seemingly do not want these kinds of questions being raised.
Several U.S. lawmakers are asking questions nonetheless. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has asked if Epstein worked for intel. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) has asked his X followers if they believe Epstein was a government intelligence asset. (94 percent said yes.)
After Carlson shared his belief that Epstein worked for Israeli intelligence on Friday, Massie shared a video of those remarks and wrote on X, “Tucker isn’t afraid.”
Levin and other neocons would have you believe that asking questions about Epstein—questions Levin himself was asking just four months ago—is all crazy talk now. They really don’t want anyone bringing it up.
What are they so afraid of?
The overnight shift by right-wing hawks was best summarized by Matt Walsh, perhaps the Daily Wire’s most prominent voice after Shapiro. “Up until 10 seconds ago there was unanimous agreement that Epstein was a pedophile and child sex trafficker with high profile clientele who all must be exposed and brought to justice,” Walsh wrote. “Now, out of the blue, we're being told that none of that is true and anyone who believes this thing that everyone believed is a whack job and a conspiracy theorist.”
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Mark Levin and other neoconservatives now label as anti-semitic anyone who questions the establishment narrative on Epstein, in the same way LGBTQ+alphabet city woke activists call those who question their orthodoxy “transphobic” or even “fascist.”
The idea for such groups is to bully those who question them into silence.
It doesn’t work anymore. And as much as it may upset Israel First ideologues and annoy the Trump administration, MAGA isn’t remotely finished with asking questions about one of the most depraved and mysterious figures of the last half century.
