You Can't Un-Ring the Bell

"We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files. Like, we just did."

During his second appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Vice President JD Vance offered a surprisingly straightforward assessment of one of the Trump administration's most persistent political controversies. Vance conceded that the administration had mishandled its messaging around the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, pointing specifically to former Attorney General Pam Bondi's public statements about an alleged "client list." According to Vance, Bondi had overstated what the government actually had, creating expectations the administration ultimately could not fulfill.

Vance is right, but "comms failure" grossly undersells the administration’s shortcomings in handling the situation. Not only did the administration repeatedly fail to explain itself, but it also spent years cultivating the expectations and anti-establishment distrust that eventually made its own explanations nearly impossible to sell.

The first mistake was expectation management. Long before the administration found itself defending its handling of the files, prominent figures on the right had already elevated the Epstein case into something far larger than another criminal investigation. His connections to wealthy and powerful figures, combined with the bizarre circumstances of his 2019 death, made the case an apt vessel for broader suspicions about government secrecy and elite impunity. Members of Trump's own political orbit, most notably Bondi, kept those suspicions well fed.

Bondi added fuel when she appeared to suggest an Epstein "client list" was sitting on her desk for review. The Justice Department then distributed binders labeled "The Epstein Files: Phase 1" to conservative influencers, only for much of the material to already be public. Months later, the department concluded no such client list existed and declined to release additional material, citing concerns of protecting victims. The backlash was immediate, coming from Trump's own supporters as much as anyone: the consequences of years of training its audience to read disappointment as concealment were catching up with the administration.

The second failure: consistency. Trump and his allies shifted between several different approaches as the controversy grew. The administration initially cast itself as the force that would finally expose the truth, but as pressure mounted, Trump pivoted to dismissing continued interest in Epstein as politically motivated and labeling the entire controversy a Democratic "hoax." He then reversed course again, backing legislation to compel the Justice Department's release after previously resisting it — legislation Congress passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, pushing the administration toward the transparency it had once promised.

Each reversal gave critics another reason to ask why the story kept changing. That is a particularly dangerous game to play with an audience already primed for institutional distrust. A steadier strategy would have set realistic expectations from day one: release everything legally permissible, explain the redactions, and be upfront that sorting through millions of pages takes time. Less thrilling than promising explosive revelations, sure, but effective crisis communications rarely depends on sensationalism.

The third — and greatest — failure was misreading the audience itself.

Trump has survived countless controversies by turning factual disputes into partisan ones. Rather than convincing every voter that an accusation is false, he typically feeds his supporters a reason to distrust whoever is making it: Democrats, journalists, bureaucrats, and countless other institutions recast as hostile actors, so that attacks on Trump end up reinforcing the divisions that already work in his favor.

Epstein never fit that model. The criticism was not confined to Democrats or hostile media. Republican lawmakers, conservative influencers, and members of Trump's own base joined the calls for disclosure. Representative Thomas Massie proved an especially effective messenger, working hand in hand with Representative Ro Khanna to frame the issue as a bipartisan test of whether powerful people are ever actually held accountable — a framing considerably harder to dismiss as partisan noise. The conflict had quietly shifted from Trump versus his usual opponents to the administration versus an anti-establishment sentiment shared across both parties.

Was this ever going to be more than a messaging problem? Polling suggests it already was one. A February Reuters/Ipsos survey found 69 percent of Americans believed the Epstein files showed that powerful people in the United States are rarely held accountable, including 58 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of independents. By June, only 10 percent of Americans — and just 21 percent of Republicans — believed the administration had helped bring anyone connected to Epstein to justice.

Whether these results translate into midterm consequences is a separate question. Voters may have more immediate concerns, and Epstein alone won't decide control of Congress. However, Republican lawmakers and strategists have already warned that lingering frustration could dampen turnout among Trump voters who see transparency as core to the movement's anti-establishment identity.

Perhaps that is the most substantive lesson of the whole episode. Trump built much of his political appeal on the idea that America's institutions are dishonest, that its elites protect one another, that conventional authorities can’t be trusted. Such a message can be an extraordinarily handy tool when running against the establishment, but it becomes difficult to wield once you are the establishment.

The administration may have "screwed up the comms," as Vance puts it. The deeper issue is that no messaging strategy could have fully resolved the contradiction it built. After years spent telling supporters to question powerful institutions, the administration eventually needed those same supporters to take its word for it. You can blame the establishment for hiding the truth, but only for as long as it takes to become the establishment yourself.