I don’t live in MAGA World and I don’t think like a MAGA Republican, but I’ll take Politico Playbook’s word for it that these folks are “reeling” over two recent decisions from the Trump administration. The first is Trump’s decision to overrule the Putinphiles running the Pentagon and resume sending defensive weapons to Ukraine. It’s really the only pro-Ukraine thing I can remember Trump doing that wasn’t under some kind of duress. What makes it interesting is that he filled the Pentagon with Putin-lovers for a reason. So, why is he now stepping in and interfering with their effort to destroy Ukraine?

Trump’s followers appear to see the cognitive dissonance at play here, because they’ve been conditioned to think of Putin as a good guy and Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an enemy of their dear leader. And I guess many of them are throwing a fit over it.

But this is apparently nothing compared to their reaction to the Department of Justice’s claim that Jeffrey Epstein was not murdered in prison and did not posses a client-list of powerful pedophiles he was blackmailing. Now, I’ll confess my own disappointment that there will not be accountability for the monsters who utilized Epstein’s services to rape and sexually assault underage girls. But I never saw this through any partisan lens. I know that creepy men come with all political persuasions and that both parties would be horribly embarrassed by the revelation of a true Epstein client list. I would have welcomed the opportunity to purge the left’s ranks.

In MAGA world, however, they’ve been set up to believe that the day was soon coming when the left, and only the left, would be decimated by the release of the client list. They were told, quite explicitly in the case of Attorney General Pam Bondi, that the list existed and was in DOJ’s possession. To turn around now and say that no list even exists is definitely an example of “either you were lying then or you are lying now.”

This could be a situation similar to Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. In that case, Hussein felt he needed people to believe he had WMD as a deterrent and it prevented him from doing the one thing that might have saved his regime, which is proving that he had not revived the programs. Perhaps Epstein did not have to blackmail people so long as he maintained a credible threat that he could. Maybe he avoided keeping a list since it would be incriminating. But I do wonder if he had video and/or audio recordings, and what became of them.

Because Bondi said the list was “on her desk,” the above scenario isn’t going to be accepted. Instead, suspicion will be shifted onto the administration. They must have taken a look at the list and realized it wasn’t good for them. But the thing about habitual liars is that you can’t tell when the lying started. It’s completely possible that no list was ever in Bondi’s possession but, for whatever reasons, she said she had it. If so, that wasn’t very far-sighted.

Anyway, on the list of things I’ve been eagerly anticipating, the client list reveal is absent. It was barely on my radar at all. So, while I’m disappointed, I will go on with life without having my whole worldview overturned.

Where I have to reassess some is with the first decision, which is the defensive weapons for Ukraine. After the way he and J.D. Vance treated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, I did not expect any mercy for Ukraine at all, but rather a slow strangulation. Maybe a genuine rift has opened between Trump and Putin for the first time.

I wouldn’t bank on it lasting. Putin can still expose Trump and cause him major problems. And, of course, Trump can’t operate if his MAGA horde won’t stand behind him.