ArcaMax

As if he didn’t have enough on his mind in late summer, President Trump has called on two professional sports teams to revert to their former names — which unfortunately sound to many ears like racial slurs.

Is Trump just looking for trouble? Or is he whipping up controversy to direct attention away from other trouble that he is in?

Last Sunday on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, Trump called on the NFL’s Washington Commanders and MLB’s Cleveland Guardians to go back to the team names they used before they rebranded in response to complaints about the use of Native American names and imagery.

Referring to Washington team, Trump posted, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.”

Moreover, he wrote, “Cleveland should do the same with the Cleveland Indians.”

Ah, the old one-two punch of bigotry and extortion.

For fun Trump added, “MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)!”

Right. Somehow, I don’t expect indigenous Americans to be very impressed by his demand.

But I suspect this interlude is merely a message to his followers to remind them what binds the MAGA movement together. Trump has freed them from the need to consider the feelings of people of other races and nations. Trump has also willingly used the power of the presidency to attack the bureaucracy, the universities, the media, the arts — all of them full of "elitists" who have sought to impose their views on speech and thought about race. Trump has the power, in word and deed, to hurt these people and institutions, and he glories in doing so.

That is the message to MAGA of these posts. But why now?

Trump is trying to move the news cycle past the mysteries surrounding the late Jeffrey Epstein. More news has emerged tying him to the late financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while in prison nearly six years ago.

The Epstein story took an unexpected turn earlier this month when the Justice Department announced that it would not release the so-called Epstein files, despite the fact that Trump surrogates had spent months, and in some cases years, making lurid promises to do so.

Then, the week before last, the Wall Street Journal reported that a risqué birthday letter sent to Epstein in 2003 bore Trump’s sexually suggestive signature. Trump went ballistic, suing the Journal, its owners and the reporters for $10 billion, contending that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

However, he sounded a bit more muted after the Journal's subsequent report that Trump was briefed by his attorney general, Pam Bondi, in May that his name appears multiple times in FBI documents related to the Epstein case.

The Epstein case is a grave vulnerability for Trump. A nontrivial segment of the MAGA movement is rebelling at his attempts to quash publication of the "files." Trump in turn is accusing these people of being "duped" by Democrats. He went so far as to say that he doesn’t want the votes of those who show such little faith, and he called those who continue to demand the release of the files "weaklings."

Meanwhile, the White House has been digging deeply into its repertoire of treason accusations against former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, complete with a fresh promise to prosecute all involved in the decade-old investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

That’s our president! Always ready, when all else fails, to play the old hits like the familiar blame-the-media ploy. But blaming the messenger doesn't seem to be playing as well as usual.

A CBS/YouGov poll published last Sunday found that 9 in 10 respondents think the government should release all of its information on Epstein. Republicans were split almost evenly on approval of the Trump administration's handling of the controversy, though self-identified MAGA Republicans were more likely to say they were satisfied.

As for his overall performance, an overwhelming 89 percent of Republicans approved of the job he’s doing as president, despite his approval slipping to just 42% of all respondents in the survey.

That could be because the Epstein case isn't the most important issue respondents considered in evaluating the job he's doing. Top of the list for saying an issue mattered "a lot" in their evaluation was immigration and deportation policies (61%), followed closely by inflation and prices and the tax-and-spending bill that recently passed Congress (both at 56%). About 36% said the Epstein case mattered "a lot" in their assessment of Trump.

Yet the case isn't going away any time soon.

In order to avoid a procedural vote making information about the Epstein case public, House Speaker Mike Johnson instead sent House members home early for a month-long break from Washington. The vote would have forced Republicans to pick a side.

Meanwhile, U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche, who last year acted as Trump's criminal attorney, has been dispatched twice to speak with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice who is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking. Is Blanche visiting Maxwell as a high official sworn to protect the people of the United States or as Donald Trump's personal fixer? It's hard to know if there's a distinction in Trump's mind.

As one who has grown quite weary of the epidemic of conspiracy theories that boiled up in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, I am amused to see the masters of MAGA get a taste of their own paranoid theories. But I am also deeply worried about what they will permit themselves to do to get out of the Epstein pickle.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)

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