The rush to exonerate Trump from the implications of the Epstein birthday book message reveals a contradiction at the heart of MAGA.

In the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Journal July scoop about the smarmy message Trump included in the book of friendly tributes assembled in 2003 for Jeffrey Epstein's fiftieth birthday, Vice President JD Vance rode to his defense, calling the reporting "complete and utter bulls—-," an echo of his master's words. Trump had said, "This is not me. This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a picture in my life." Vance could have stopped there, having fulfilled his loyal henchman duty, but he continued with words that haven't aged well in two months. "Where is this letter?" Vance tweeted. "Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?"

Where is the letter? Well, the birthday book has now wound up on front pages all over the world. The House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed it from the Epstein estate and has released images from it — complete with Trump's unmistakable signature over the pubic region of a female form. So that's where the supposedly nonexistent book is. As for Vance's second question, is he serious? Of course, it sounds like Trump. He's a person of low character with a severe case of arrested development. He taunts political opponents, journalists and foreign leaders with middle school insults, brags about "inspecting" naked teenage beauty pageant contestants, and ranks women on how rape-worthy they are. Do you really think such a person is incapable of lewd chortling with a fellow perv about his "wonderful secret"?

Vance, the vanguard of those defending Trump's honor, was soon joined by the MAGA minions. Laura Loomer called the story "totally fake." "Time for @newscorp to open that checkbook, it's not his signature. DEFAMATION!" tweeted White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich. Rep. Byron Donalds also declined to see reality, insisting, even after the publication of the image in which Trump's signature is clear as day, "What I see is not his signature. I've seen Donald Trump sign a million things." Rep. Tim Burchett likewise sees only what the tribe permits: "Anybody can do a signature. To me, it's just bogus. The whole thing is bogus right now." Others recirculated Trump's dubious accounts of why he kicked Epstein out of Mar-A-Lago, and Speaker Mike Johnson offered that the president had actually been acting as an FBI informant, dropping a dime on Epstein (a claim he walked back on Monday), but still maintains that the story is "much ado about nothing."

Yes, they all look foolish now, but that's only part of the point.

At the heart of the case for Trump has always been the notion that, sure, he's rough around the edges, but we have to put aside our piddling character concerns and just be glad that he is so strong, because the left presents such an existential threat to America that we cannot survive without Trump. It was always the Flight 93 election. When you are drowning, you don't question whether the man throwing you a life preserver is a decent person or not, you're just grateful he's there.

They knew Trump was a louse. They knew he lied, betrayed his business partners and his wives, spread false rumors, played dirty and did it all without a flicker of conscience. When Trump's character was raised as an issue by opponents, the knee-jerk MAGA response was not to defend him, not really, but to stress the enormity of the Democrats. This carried them through Trump's escalation of offenses — from bullying and lying to inciting a rebellion, to standing by while a murderous mob hunted his opponents (including his vice president), to the machine-gun fire he's now spraying at our institutions. We need a tough guy, they say, because the Democrats are so dangerous.

But now they find themselves defending Trump against the one sin that has given their movement its chief moral stature: child abuse. It was QAnon, Pizzagate and other iterations of the vast child abuse conspiracy that reassured MAGA that no matter what Trump did, the other side was always worse. Thus, the obsessive focus on Jeffrey Epstein.

And it appears that Trump was more than a little accepting of Epstein's crimes. He actually found them amusing. Not only that, he wrote in the birthday message that he and Epstein "have certain things in common."

For a decade, MAGA and most of the GOP have excused every Trump outrage on the grounds that America needed him to counter a widespread Democratic conspiracy to victimize innocent children. But the only powerful figure to be tainted by the Epstein revelations is Trump himself. No claims of "we need a tough guy" or whataboutism can square this circle.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, "Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism," is available now.

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