Good morning. It is August 2nd. I'm Ali Valshi for much of his political career. Donald Trump

carefully cultivated an alliance with America's conspiracy-minded fringe. He didn't just tolerate

them for his political purposes. He activated them just tolerate them for his political purposes. He

activated them, stoked them, honed them. He brought them out of the shadows. He fed their fears.

He made them feel seen. He launched his political rise on the lie of birtherism, the idea that

Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim. Now, let me tell you from a place of authority,

I actually am a Kenyan-born Muslim, and for what it's worth, Barack Obama was never at any of the

meetings. But Trump knew that. It was just a ploy, signaling early on that he was willing to go

wherever the fringe's paranoia would take him. He tapped into the same voter base that was convinced that a global elite protected by the

deep state was running a dark web of trafficking and exploitation.

It started with a conspiracy about Hillary Clinton, who was, they alleged, running a

pedophilia ring centered in the basement of comet ping pong pizzeria in D.C. On December 4th, 2016, a gunman from

South Carolina entered the pizzeria to rescue the children from the basement. Shots were fired.

There were no children. There were no pedophiles. The restaurant didn't have a basement. That conspiracy, Pizza Gate, was a bust. But what wasn't a bust was the conspiracy that Trump and his supporters helped flourish with Jeffrey Epstein at its center. Trump gave the Epstein conspiracy's wildest belief airtime. In return, they backed him. They reposted, they voted, they got elected. He got elected.

In part on the strength of a base of conspiracy theorists, he groomed.

But now he's president again, and those same conspiracists are becoming a big headache for him.

They're out of control, and he's poised to toss them aside.

He's lashing out at some of his most loyal supporters,

calling them stupid, foolish, weaklings, all because they are pressing him on one issue.

The Epstein Files. This isn't just another kooky day in Magaland. This moment marks a significant

rupture. For all his authoritarian instincts, Trump has always relied on one illusion,

that he was one of them, a truth teller, a rebel, a man fighting the man.

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