A guy who never dies

Jeffrey Epstein has embroiled Trump in the kind of conspiracy theory he loves to cultivate View in browser Fred Harter • Thursday 17 July 2025 Dear friend, Welcome to today's Sensemaker. Long stories short Labour suspended four MPs for breaching party discipline. Israel bombed Syria's military headquarters (more below). Captain Tom Moore's daughter joined TikTok as a 'resilience coach'. A guy who never dies Donald Trump said yesterday that the Maga backlash over the Jeffrey Epstein case was a "scam" by Democrats and that his past supporters had bought into it "hook, line, and sinker". So what? It is his current allies who are asking questions. Conspiracy theories are Maga's lifeblood and the one about Epstein, a sex offender who died by suicide in 2019, is the most enduring. The main claim is that the financier kept a 'client list' and was murdered in his cell to stop him releasing compromising material on prominent individuals. This has been fuelled by: Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, who said in 2021: "The Epstein thing drives me crazy. They're hiding something." Kash Patel, head of the FBI, who said in the same year that Congress should put on its "big-boy pants and let us know who the paedophiles are." JD Vance, the vice president, who said in October: "Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing." Full circle. After spending much of his political career piggybacking on conspiracy theories, Donald Trump finds himself embroiled in one. Trump and Epstein were friends who regularly partied together in New York and Florida. Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that Epstein was a "terrific guy". In a now infamous line, he added: "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Tit-for-tat. Since falling out with Trump, X owner Elon Musk has repeatedly referred to this relationship. Last month he said, without evidence, that Trump was in the Epstein files and that was the "real reason" they're not public. To note. Being in the files would not be prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. FBI investigation caches typically include call logs and statements by victims and witnesses. But Trump's base is convinced Epstein's also contain evidence of secret crimes committed by the rich and powerful. Damp squib. The spark for the current controversy came in February when Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Epstein's client list was "sitting on [her] desk". She invited right-wing influencers to the White House and handed them a bunch of files. These mostly contained information that had been publicly available for a decade, including Epstein's address book. Good try. Last week the Justice Department and FBI released a short memo that concluded there was nothing to the conspiracy. It said there was no "client list", no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed high-profile individuals, and that the financier had taken his own life. Cue the outrage. The memo has lit a fire under the Maga movement. TV host Tucker Carlson alleged that Bondi was covering up "very serious crimes by their own description". The House speaker Mike Johnson said: "We should put everything out there and let the people decide it." Unanswered questions. Trump has urged supporters to "stop revisiting" the conspiracy and called it "fake news". But several points remain murky, including: What exactly is in the files. This is the main thing that Maga acolytes want to know. Epstein's final hours. The DoJ and FBI released 11 hours of "raw" CCTV footage from outside Epstein's jail cell the night before he was found dead, but Wired found that around three minutes had been removed. Trump's level of friendship. The journalist Michael Woolf claims he has a hundred hours of taped conversations with Epstein detailing his "deep relationship" with Trump. Coalition cracks. The furore is the latest rift between the president and his base. Others include bombing Iran, giving weapons to Ukraine, and supporting H-1B visas for tech workers. What's more… Of all these, it is the Epstein story that has caused the most fury. As Trump puts it, he's a "guy who never dies." Out of the line of fire Thirty-three thousand Afghans who worked with British authorities in Afghanistan have had their names and addresses accidentally spilled out into the world by the Ministry of Defence. At the heart of the MoD's response to the debacle there is a moral question: when it decided not to tell people who appeared on the leaked list that their safety had potentially been compromised, was the MoD acting in their interests or its own? Read Ceri Thomas on the most dangerous data breach in British history. The Observer News Matrix The Nibs Capital Economy, business and finance Inflation nation All eyes will be on the Bank of England next month after inflation accelerated to 3.6 per cent in June, reminding the chancellor Rachel Reeves that the UK's cost of living crisis is not over. Britain has the highest inflation rate in the G7, which leaves the Bank with a tough choice: if it cuts interest rates too fast it may add to inflationary pressures, if too slow then mortgage costs will stay high and consumers will be less inclined to spend and help Reeves go for growth. The government will also continue to pay expensive borrowing costs. Contributors to inflation include a jump in air fares, possibly a reflection of summer travel, and food prices, which some have attributed to an increase in national insurance contributions and the living wage. The Bank is still likely to cut interest rates in August, but its pace may not satisfy the markets – or borrowers. Technology AI, science and new things Sound of silence This week Mark Zuckerberg was meant to do a video interview with The Information about the power and potential of AI, a technology to which he's committed hundreds of billions of pounds. Unfortunately the conversation was called off after the sound cut out for more than a minute. This encouraged enterprising journalists at 404 Media to test whether AI could recover the lost dialogue. Spoiler alert: it couldn't. The reporters tried ChatGPT and Zuckerberg's own Meta AI, but neither was able to lip read accurately, or at all, although a bespoke AI lip-reading app got fairly close. In the original transcript, which has since been released, Zuckerberg said that "super intelligence is now in sight". Perhaps in sight, but not within earshot. The 100-year life Health, education and government Rubbish removal Cuba's labour minister has resigned after denying the existence of beggars in the country. During a parliamentary session, Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera said people on the streets who go through rubbish look like beggars until you realise they are "pretending to be beggars to make easy money". The comment was never going to go down well. Cuba is facing its biggest economic crisis since the 1959 revolution, with housing, food and fuel shortages. Power cuts are a regular occurrence and many Cubans have to hunt for basic medicine. Things show little sign of getting better. Donald Trump recently tightened restrictions on Americans who want to travel to a country that depends on the waning returns of tourism. But the scale and creativity of the backlash against Feitó was notable given that political dissent is a punishable offence in Cuba. She is perhaps the first official on the island to be brought down by memes. Our planet Climate and geopolitics Damascus strikes The US said all parties had agreed to end violence in Syria after Israel bombed the country's military headquarters on Wednesday. At least three people were killed, according to the Syrian health ministry. There have been several outbreaks of sectarian violence in the country since Assad was overthrown in December. The latest came this weekend in deadly clashes between government forces, Bedouin tribes and Druze militia in the province of Suweida. Attacks on the religious minority have drawn retaliation from Israel – which has the world's largest Druze population – including on this occasion. The Druze in Syria want autonomy and have accused the new leadership of failing to protect them, but many also reject Israel's patronage. Benjamin Netanyahu has previously called the Syrian government an "extremist Islamic regime". Culture Society, identity and belonging Missing piece An erotic mosaic panel has been returned to Pompeii some 80 years after it was stolen by a Nazi captain in the Second World War. The relic, which depicts a pair of lovers in sexual repose, was tracked down by a special unit of Italy's police dedicated to protecting the country's cultural assets. The group has repatriated millions of stolen artefacts since it was formed in 1969. Nazis plundered European countries during the Third Reich, targeting Jewish property for valuable objects but also deaccessioning treasures from public institutions. More than five million items were recovered by the 'Monuments Men', a band of museum directors, curators and artists who operated during the final years of the war. But hundreds of thousands of artworks remain missing, including Van Gogh's masterpiece The Lovers. A Wehrmacht officer gave the Pompeii mosaic to a German citizen, whose family contacted the Italian unit following his death. Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends to sign up and tell us what you think. Fred Harter @FredHarter Additional reporting by Xavier Greenwood, Bex Sander and Serena Cesareo. Graphic by Bex Sander. Edited by Xavier Greenwood.     More from The Observer Read 'There is no political power without power over the archive' Titles banned, data deleted, the nation's librarians sacked without explanation – Donald Trump's war on books is a threat to democracy across the world, writes the head of Oxford University's libraries Click here to read → Follow Follow The Observer on social media on your preferred platform:   The Observer     The Observer Food Monthly The Observer Magazine The Observer New Review   Listen Listen for free in the Tortoise app or wherever you get your podcasts: Want to change how you receive these emails? Update email preferences Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media. All rights reserved. Did this email get caught in your spam filter? 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