The Epstein Theory Goes Mainstream—About Trump’s Iran War
Most Americans now believe Trump’s Iran war was meant to distract from the Epstein files.
Welcome back to The Red Letter.
I had a conversation this week with Team Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan about a new poll that, on its face, sounds like something you’d expect to see floating around the internet—not reflected in actual public opinion. But it is.
A survey commissioned by Zeteo, Drop Site News and the center-left think tank, Data for Progress, found that 52 percent of Americans believe Donald Trump launched the war in Iran, at least in part, to distract from the Epstein files.
So we’ve moved on from fringe theories on Reddit to a majority of Americans suspicious about the origins of this war, and it’s only been 18 days.
And when you break it down, (see the exact questions, methodology, and results here) it’s even more striking: 81 percent of Democrats believe it. A majority of independents do too. Even one in four Republicans agree.
This isn’t just polarization. It’s something deeper: a collapse of trust in how decisions—especially about war—are being made.
A Different Kind of War
What stood out in my conversation with Mehdi wasn’t just the Epstein question, it was the broader shift in how Americans are reacting to this war.
Historically, Americans rally around military action even controversial ones like the Iraq War. Sure, there was skepticism, but there was also a sustained effort by the government to make the case to Congress, to allies, to the public. There was a narrative, however flawed. There were efforts to get buy-in from the American people, from Congress, the UN and our allies.
This time, we’ve been presented with mixed messages about a war that seemed to arrive overnight. There was no drawn-out argument. No clear explanation. No defined objective.
And Americans noticed as you can see in the polling. Multiple polls show the public does not support this war—a sharp break from the earlier stages of past conflicts.
But more importantly, they’re asking a different question than usual. It’s evolved from “Is this war justified? to “What is this really about?”
Their fears of an ulterior motive are being validated each day, like this morning when Joe Kent, the U.S.’s top U.S. Counterterrorism Official announced that he’s resigning as Director of National Counterterrorism Center because he can’t support the war.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent told the New York Times.
The Question No One Is Asking
According to this polling, millions of Americans are openly wondering whether this war is tied to Epstein. And yet, in Washington, that question is barely being asked out loud.
I was at Trump’s golf club in Doral for his first press conference after the war began last week. We were nearly two weeks in and the questions felt familiar — controlled and safe.
So I asked around: Had anyone asked him directly if this was about Epstein? I was surprised to hear that the answer was no especially since Congressman Thomas Massie suggested that the strikes on Iran were designed to make the files go away.
At the time, Trump still hadn’t held a press conference but there were a number of scrums and he was taking phone calls from dozens of reporters.
The gap between what the public is thinking and what the press is asking has rarely been this wide and I don’t think it’s accidental. There’s been a chilling effect on what the press asks ever since the Associated Press was blocked from the press pool for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. It was a move by the White House Press Office designed to destroy their business because wire services depend on access. I’m told from my friends in the press corps that they are regularly blocked from events because of their coverage but it goes unreported out of fear of antagonizing the administration even future.
Mehdi saw this all as business as usual. The press still operates with a kind of deference—especially during wartime—where certain questions are treated as out of bounds. But clearly the public has moved on from that model.
“Wag the Dog” Is Now a Polling Question
There’s a term for this kind of thinking: wag the dog—the idea that a leader might use war to distract from a domestic scandal. Even before we invaded Iran, I wrote about why Trump would consider this option in Vanity Fair to distract from the files in a piece titled “Epstein’s Ghost Is Calling All the Shots in Trump’s White House.”
That phrase and idea has long lived in movies and political shorthand. And now it’s polling at 52 percent.
I think this is partly because of the uncanny timing as elected officials finally started to take the the Epstein files seriously and we started to see repercussions across the globe.
And it’s likely partly because of fatigue. After decades of Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are more skeptical of official explanations than they used to be.
I also think it’s partly because of credibility. When the rationale for a war is unclear, people fill in the gaps themselves and that’s what this poll is capturing.
What This Actually Means
You don’t have to believe the theory to understand what it represents. This isn’t really about Epstein, it’s about legitimacy. When a majority of Americans are willing to entertain the idea that a war could be launched as a distraction, it tells you something fundamental has broken.
The old assumptions—that leaders act in the national interest, that the press will ask the obvious questions, that the public will rally in moments of conflict—don’t hold the way they used to. And that creates a vacuum, turbocharged by algorithms that feed on conspiracy, speculation and fear.
And every day, the president—who somehow still retains the trust of much of the public despite repeated falsehoods—is squandering the most valuable and scarce currency in politics. You can see it in the polls, and even in the reaction from parts of MAGA that once held a near-cultish belief in him.
This Story Isn’t Going Away
If there’s one thing Mehdi and I agreed on, it’s this: the Epstein story isn’t over.
It may get crowded out. It may fade from the headlines. But it keeps coming back—because the underlying questions haven’t been answered. Most of the data remains in the FBI’s hands, and we still don’t know why.
That lack of transparency has fueled a deep distrust in how the administration has handled the Epstein files. And now that distrust is showing up in national polling—shaping how Americans interpret foreign policy and even understand war itself.
At this point, it’s no longer something Washington can ignore.
Please call it by the real name, Department of Defense
Good article Tara ! Just want to mention this - https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/epstein-imessages-trump-military-speculation-1782286. - this is telling. Epstein in the emails predicting Trump will strike Iran if cornered …