The Tiger by the Tail

Erick Erickson on Jul 18, 2025

Catching the tiger by the tail, like catching lightning in a bottle, is a difficult task. More difficult is letting go of the tiger's tail. In 2015, President Donald Trump wove together a collection of grievances against the ruling elite in Washington, D.C. and rode into office intent on smashing established shibboleths. Leaving, ignominiously, in 2021, Trump claimed the election had been stolen, the deep state was behind it and began stringing together various ever wilder grievances that led him to Jeffrey Epstein claims.

The Epstein stuff was always below the surface. Pizzagate went viral in 2016. An online fringe believed the center of a global child sex trafficking ring led by a satanic group of global elite had its headquarters in Comet Ping Pong, a pizza joint, in Washington, D.C. The conspiracy took on a life of its own online and, ultimately, a man from North Carolina drove to Washington, entered the restaurant, and fired a rifle in search of the truth.

Pizzagate and QAnon wove together and many of the conspiracy theory adherents gravitated to Trump, who promised to tear down the existing order, stamp out the deep state and end the control of the globalist elite. Trump, J.D. Vance, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and others fanned the flames of the Epstein matter. The government was protecting the global elite human traffickers. If Trump got elected, they would blow it all open and reveal the truth. Then, a funny thing happened.

They won.

Upon entering the White House, the FBI, the Department of Justice and elsewhere, the Trump team realized there was no one there. Certainly, there were lists of names of potential Epstein clients who may or may not have been inappropriate with underage girls. But there was no list compiled by Epstein for blackmail or other purposes. As long as the Epstein case went on, lawyers for the victims insisted there was no written list. Their voices were drowned out by the conspiracy theorists who have long insisted in a deep state global cabal that Donald Trump would shatter. Now, he is not only not shattering the global cabal, he is saying there is no list.

The Trump team, not Trump himself, botched the rollout of the Epstein files. First, they trotted a group of social media influencers to Washington. This group had staked their reputations on the Epstein conspiracy, and they were promised the Epstein documents. They got previously released information instead, much of it redacted. Then the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, insisted the deep state was hiding information. The FBI Director and Deputy Director, themselves formerly believers in the conspiracy theory, insisted there was nothing else to make public. Now, even Bondi concedes as much and released a tape of the Epstein jail cell, which was not only not his jail cell, but was also edited.

President Trump now insists he never amplified the claims about Epstein, the people obsessed about Epstein are weakling former supporters, and everyone needs to move on. People got out of the way of the tiger as it led Trump to the mountain top, and now he is letting go of its tail. Having convinced people of a hidden hand pulling strings, Trump now says there is nothing to see.

Among the President's supporters, most would not list Jeffrey Epstein in the top 25 issues that matter to them. But among the social influencers who helped Trump, most of them built their own careers pushing conspiracies and half-truths. Their credibility is on the line along with their gravy train. It does them no good for Trump to dismiss their conspiracies.

For the president to dismount the tiger's tail, he would be wise to bring in Robert Hur, who built up his reputation in the investigation of former President Joe Biden's classified documents. Let him examine all the evidence and tell the public what actually exists, what does not exist, what exists and cannot be revealed and why it cannot be revealed. Also, tell us what is not true that people believe is true. It gives the president a way to distract the tiger just long enough to be rescued from its hunger.

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To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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