Trump has been riling up his fan base and conspiracy theorists since the election. Actually, he has been riling them up since the 2016 election by accusing the dems of all being pedophiles and saying he was going to lock them up. But in the 2024 election, he talked about Epstein specifically quite a few times and led his base to believe he would actually release the Epstein files. Unlike the economy, which you can use various metrics to claim it’s doing good or bad (stock market, grocery prices, etc.) Epstein is a pretty black and white case of “he’s literally a pedophile and was found guilty for doing lots of horrible things.” Everyone, conservatives and liberals, has spent many years rightly hating the guy, but also waiting for everyone he was involved with to also be punished. The maga base was dumb enough to believe that it was only dems and maybe a few unimportant republicans on the list, but they’re out for blood that Trump is refusing to give them, so they’re starting to actually turn on him, a little at least. Trump’s big mistake was thinking that he could use the Epstein files like he’s used everything else so far. In his mind, pedophilia is no different to Hillary’s emails: just a way to rile up his base and use their anger. He assumed that if he stopped talking about it then they would too. He’s so out of touch and evil that he didn’t realize that to the average, non-elite American pedophilia is unforgivable and it’s something conservatives will actually fight against (that’s why republicans accuse trans and gay people and basically anyone they don’t like of being a pedophile: it’s wildly effective)