自2018年以来，特里莎·霍普一直奔走全国，以“前排乔”（Front Row Joe）的身份参加了特朗普总统的42场集会，该群体由特朗普最忠诚的一些粉丝组成。但她最近对《政治》杂志表示，如果共和党在中期选举中失利，而民主党明年弹劾特朗普，“我将走进国会大厅，支持这一弹劾。”
Since 2018, Trisha Hope has crisscrossed the country to attend 42 of President Trump’s rallies as a “Front Row Joe,” a group of some of Trump’s most committed fans. But she recently told Politico that if Republicans lose the midterms and Democrats impeach Trump next year, “I will be walking the halls of Congress in support of that impeachment.”
她的采访在中期选举前不到一个月就如同一颗炸弹般引发轰动，届时共和党预计将失去国会一院甚至两院的控制权。如果一些“前排乔”已经抛弃了特朗普，那么谁还留在了他身边？然而，霍普的脱离并非新鲜事。她已经公开表示对特朗普的支持感到后悔超过一年。早在四月，她甚至呼吁援引第25条修正案将其罢免。“他疯了，”她在X上写道。
Her interview landed like a bombshell less than a month before the midterm elections, where the Republican Party is expected to lose control of one, if not both, houses of Congress. If some of the Front Row Joes have abandoned Trump, who was left? Yet Hope’s defection wasn’t new. She has been publicly regretting her support for Trump for more than a year. In April, she even called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove him from office. “He’s insane,” she wrote on X.
她对总统在第二任期内感到不满的明显理由有很多：伊朗战争、油价、通胀，以及那种肆意蔓延的腐败，使特朗普及其家人在不到两年时间里净赚数十亿美元。但霍普抛弃特朗普的原因完全不同：杰弗里·爱泼斯坦。
There are plenty of obvious reasons for her to be unhappy with the president in his second term: the Iran war, gas prices, inflation, the wildly rampant corruption that has enriched Trump and his family by billions of dollars in less than two years. But Hope dumped Trump for another reason entirely: Jeffrey Epstein.
在2025年7月的一次内阁会议上，特朗普打断了一位记者，该记者曾询问司法部长帕姆·邦迪政府所掌握的与已故性侵犯者的两起起诉相关的大量未公开文件。“你还在谈论杰弗里·爱泼斯坦吗？”特朗普愤怒地说。“这个人已经被谈论了好多年。”
During a July 2025 cabinet meeting , Trump interrupted a reporter who’d asked Attorney General Pam Bondi about the government’s huge trove of thus undisclosed documents related to the two prosecutions of the late sexual predator. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”Trump fumed.
霍普感到震惊。“特朗普总统对爱泼斯坦受害者的漠不关心以及他对记者提问的冷淡回应，”她在X上发帖称，“彻底终结了我与他的关系。”
“This guy’s been talked about for years.”Hope was shocked.
面对特朗普政府几乎每天都在发生的丑闻，全国大部分地区以及主流媒体已经转移了对爱泼斯坦文件的关注。但对于特朗普最忠诚支持者中的一个关键群体而言，这些文件仍然是焦点所在，而特朗普阻碍其公开发布的行为，正是一些MAGA支持者脱离的重要因素。“我认为这对特朗普来说是一个真正的转折点，”《库克政治报告》的执行编辑凯莉·丹恩说道。
“President Trump’s lack of concern for the Epstein victims and his callous response to the reporter’s question,” she posted on X , “ends my relationship with him.”In the face of near-daily Trump administration scandals, much of the country, and the mainstream media, has moved on from the Epstein files. But for a key segment of Trump’s most committed base, they remain front and center, and Trump’s having obstructed their release has been a key factor in some MAGA defections.
特朗普意外崛起的很大程度上源于他能够与一群此前从未投票过的失意保守派边缘群体互动。与几乎所有此前的候选人不同，他成功地将他们纳入自己的阵营，方法是利用他们对广泛阴谋论的信仰。其中最突出的就是“比萨门”阴谋论——即认为由希拉里·克林顿及其亲密顾问领导的全球精英恋童癖集团，正在华盛顿特区彗星比萨店的地下室里运营一个撒旦恋童癖网络。
“I think it was a real turning point on Trump,” says Carrie Dann, managing editor of the Cook Political Report. Much of Trump’s i mprobable rise to power was driven by his ability to engage with a bloc of disaffected conservatives on the fringes who had never voted before. Unlike virtually any candidate before him, he successfully brought them into his coalition by tapping their belief in widespread conspiracy theories.
“比萨门”在2016年总统竞选期间迅速传播，其传播得到了如今亲近特朗普政府的人士的助力。其最知名的传播者之一是杰克·波索比克，他是一名极右翼影响者，目前在五角大楼的官方新闻团队中任职。这名前海军情报官员甚至在DC西北部郊区那家家庭友好型比萨店外，直播了他业余“调查”该恋童癖网络的结果。大约一个月后，一名北卡罗来纳州男子持着突击步枪出现在彗星比萨店，声称是去营救儿童。他在餐厅内开了一枪。幸运的是，没有人受伤。
Chief among those was Pizzagate, the notion that a global cabal of elite pedophiles headed by Hillary Clinton and her close advisers was running a Satanic pedophile ring out of the basement of DC’s Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. Pizzagate went viral during the 2016 presidential campaign, helped along by people now close to the Trump administration. One of its best-known promoters was Jack Posobiec, a far-right influencer currently in the Pentagon’s official press corps. The former Navy intelligence officer even livestreamed the results of his amateur “investigation” into the pedophile ring from outside the family-friendly pizzeria in leafy northwest DC. About a month later, a North Carolina man toting an assault rifle showed up at Comet on a mission to rescue the children. He fired a couple of rounds into the restaurant.
尽管枪手并未发现被囚禁的儿童，更不用说地下室了，这并未削弱该阴谋论的影响力。枪击事件后进行的一项民意调查发现，近一半的特朗普选民仍然相信这是真的。即使在枪击事件六年后，本月刚刚短暂担任特朗普新闻秘书的凯蒂·扎卡里亚，仍在社交媒体上放大这一理论。
Fortunately, no one was injured. The fact that the shooter found no captive children, much less a basement, did not put a damper on the conspiracy theory. A poll conducted after the shooting found that nearly half of Trump’s voters continued to believe it was real.
比萨门事件并未消失，但它演变成了QAnon，这是一种类似邪教的运动，其信徒的行动指令来自一位神秘的网络发帖人Q。有影响力的特朗普支持者，包括特朗普第一位短命的国家安全顾问迈克尔·弗林，成为其拥护者。
Even six years after the shooting, Katie Zacharia, who was briefly Trump’s press secretary this month, was amplifying the theory on social media. Pizzagate didn’t go away, but it did morph into QAnon, a cult-like movement whose believers took their cues from a mysterious internet poster known as Q. Influential Trump supporters, including Trump’s first short-lived national security advisor Michael Flynn , became proponents.
2018年，特朗普开始向QAnon信徒发出信号，表明他站在他们一边。布兰登·斯特拉卡是美国国会山骚乱事件中首批被捕的参与者之一，他在2019年特朗普集会的舞台上甚至引用了QAnon的口号，在演讲结束时哭喊：“我们走一起，我们走到底！”
In 2018, Trump started signaling to QAnon believers that he was with them. Brandon Straka, one of the first people arrested for participating in the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, even invoked the QAnon motto from the stage at a 2019 Trump rally, crying at the end of his speech, “Where we go one, we go all!”
Q大约四年前就没有发布任何内容了，但他关于全球精英中存在儿童性侵者的狂野设想已经从互联网的疯狂角落走向主流，这在一定程度上要归功于特朗普。到2024年底，PRRI民调显示，近20%的受访选民以及32%的特朗普支持者表示相信该阴谋论的核心主张。因此，当杰弗里·爱泼斯坦在2019年第二次被捕，随后 allegedly 因自杀而在狱中死亡时，这位财富雄厚且关系广泛的性侵犯者被视为证明该阴谋论并非完全是骗局的证据。
Q hasn’t posted anything in about four years, but his wild visions of child predators among the global elite have escaped the fever swamp of the internet and gone mainstream, thanks in part to Trump . By the end of 2024, nearly 20 percent of voters polled by PRRI, and 32 percent of Trump supporters, reported believing the conspiracy theory’s core tenets. So, when Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for a second time in 2019, and later died in prison, allegedly by suicide , the wealthy and stunningly well-connected sexual predator became proof that the conspiracy theory was not entirely a hoax.
特朗普本人在公开场合很少提及爱泼斯坦，但在他下台多年的岁月中，他的代言人反复呼吁政府公开相关文件，包括他们视为圣杯的所谓客户名单。“一直在呼吁公开所有内容，以便公众能够追究责任，”现任FBI局长卡什·帕特尔在2023年12月的社交媒体上写道。“我们必须查明是谁和爱泼斯坦有染。”
Trump himself rarely invoked Epstein in his public statements, but during his years out of office, his surrogates repeatedly called for the government to release the files, including their holy grail: the alleged client list. “Been calling for ALL of it to be released so the public can have accountability,” now-FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media in December 2023 . “We must find out who pedo’d around with Epstein.”
“立刻公布所有爱泼斯坦的客户名单！!!” 特朗普小子唐纳德·特朗普 Jr. 同年在社交媒体上要求。“谁会去保护那些渣滓？”
“Show us all the Epstein client list now!!!”Don Trump Jr. demanded on social media that same year. “Why would anyone protect those scum bags?”
“立刻公布所有爱泼斯坦的客户名单！!!” 特朗普小子唐纳德·特朗普 J. 同上在社交媒体上要求。“谁会去保护那些渣滓？”
“Show us all the Epstein client list now!!!”Don Trump Jr. demanded on social media that same year. “Why would anyone protect those scum bags?”
“卡玛拉之所以得到如此多的支持，部分原因在于，如果特朗普获胜，”埃隆·马斯克表示，“那个爱泼斯坦客户名单将会公开。”
“Part of why Kamala is getting so much support is that, if Trump wins,” Elon Musk opined, “that Epstein client list is going to become public.”
现在就把所有爱泼斯坦客户名单公布出来！!! 谁会去保护那些渣滓？每天问自己这个问题，答案就会变得非常明显！！ 小唐纳德·特朗普 (@DonaldJTrumpJr) 2023年7月8日所有这些有助于解释为什么特朗普在上任后未能公开所有爱泼斯坦文件，对他的支持者产生了如此大的影响，而许多其他议题却没有。正如《风暴正临》一书的作者迈克·罗斯柴尔德所说：“所有这些影响者曾让他们相信，特朗普是奉神之命进入白宫的，目的是拯救儿童。”
Show us all the Epstein client list now!!! Why would anyone protect those scum bags? Ask yourselves this question daily and the answer becomes very apparent!! https://t.co/FU8KC2Lg44 — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 8, 2023 All of this helps explain why Trump’s failure to open all of the Epstein files once he took office had such an impact on his supporters in ways that many other issues have not.
但他再次上任后，“当他们要求他公开文件时，总统只是对他们竖起了中指。”他说：“这是第一次真正的背叛。你可以实时看到粉丝群体意识到他们被欺骗了。”
“All these influencers had convinced them that Trump was on a mission from God to get into the White House” and save the children, says Mike Rothschild, the author of The Storm is Upon Us about QAnon. But once he took office again, the president “just waved the middle finger at them” when they demanded he release the files.
特里莎·霍普是一个很好的例子。她是得克萨斯州的一名房地产经纪人。作为“前排乔”，她曾自出版《仅推文》——一本收录他2018年社交媒体帖子的书——之后，她驾驶房车遍布全国，只为参加特朗普的所有集会，站在最前面。作为2024年共和党全国代表大会的特朗普代表，她身穿“J6战俘”外套，并游说对被定罪的国会山骚乱者实施大赦。（她本人并不在其中。）“就像匕首刺入我的心脏。就像灯开关被打开，面纱被揭开，我看到了他真正的样子，从此我再也无法忘记这一点。”
“It was the first real betrayal. You could watch in real time as the fan bases recognized that they had been lied to.”Trisha Hope, a Texas real estate agent, is a good example. As a Front Row Joe, she’d traveled the country in an RV to be front and center for all of Trump’s rallies after self-publishing Just the Tweets , a book of his social media posts in 2018. As a Trump delegate to the 2024 Republican convention, she sported a “J6 Prisoners of War” jacket and lobbied for blanket pardons for convicted Capitol rioters. (She was not one of them.) “It was like a dagger in my heart. It was like a light switch went on and a veil lifted, and I saw him for who he was, and I have not been able to unsee it since.”But Trump’s cavalier dismissal of the Epstein files in July 2025 changed everything.
但特朗普在2025年7月对爱泼斯坦文件的轻率态度彻底改变了一切。“就像匕首刺入我的心脏，”她对《政治》杂志说。“就像灯开关被打开，面纱被揭开，我看到了他真正的样子，从此我再也无法忘记这一点。”（她拒绝为本故事发表评论。）这可能并不令人惊讶——当选国会的首批QAnon信徒之一、众议员玛乔丽·泰勒·格林（R-佐治亚州）也一直是少数几位转而反对特朗普的共和党议员之一。
“It was like a dagger in my heart,” she told Politico . “It was like a light switch went on and a veil lifted, and I saw him for who he was, and I have not been able to unsee it since.” (She declined to comment for this story.) It’s probably no surprise that one of the first QAnon believers elected to Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), has also been among the only Republican members to turn on Trump. Along with three other Republican women, she helped Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) push through a discharge petition that forced the Justice Department to release more of the Epstein files after Trump obstructed their disclosure. Trump pilloried her for her perfidy, and she ended up resigning her seat.
她与另外三名共和党女议员一起，帮助众议员托马斯·马西（R-肯塔基州）和众议员罗·坎纳（D-加利福尼亚州）推动通过了一项撤回请愿书，迫使司法部在特朗普阻挠其公开后释放更多爱泼斯坦文件。特朗普因她的背叛行为而严厉指责她，她最终辞去了席位。但如今，她已经有了许多同伴。
But today, she’s got a lot of company. Derrick Evans , who livestreamed himself yelling “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol” on January 6, pleaded guilty in 2022 to a felony count of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder, and was sentenced to three months in prison. Trump pardoned him in January 2025 along with most of the other rioters, which should have ensured deep and enduring loyalty.
德里克·埃文斯在2021年1月6日直播自己大喊“德里克·埃文斯在国会大厦内”，2022年因在民事骚乱期间妨碍执法而认罪，罪名为重罪，被判处三个月监禁。特朗普于2025年1月赦免了他以及大多数其他骚乱参与者，这本应确保他深切且持久的忠诚。
But like Hope, Evans quickly became disillusioned with Trump after, yes, the same July 2025 press conference. “Are you happy with the way this Epstein situation is being handled?” he asked his 870,000 followers on X a week after the press conference.
但就像希望一样，埃文斯在是的，同上一场2025年7月的新闻发布会后，很快对特朗普感到失望。“你对这次爱泼斯坦事件的处理方式满意吗？”他在新闻发布会一周后向其在X平台上的87万粉丝提问。“我不满意，但也许我只是少数派。”他附带了一项民意调查，在近13,000名受访者中，有88%的人表示他们也对特朗普对爱泼斯坦事件的回应感到不满。
“I am NOT happy, but maybe I’m in the minority.”He included a poll, in which 88 percent of the nearly 13,000 respondents said they too were unhappy about Trump’s Epstein response. Are you happy with the way this Epstein situation is being handled? I am NOT happy, but maybe I’m in the minority. I want to know how you truthfully feel.
你对这次爱泼斯坦事件的处理方式满意吗？我不满意，但也许我只是少数派。我想知道你真实的感受。（投票匿名）— 德里克·埃文斯 (@DerrickEvans4WV) 2025年7月16日“我们投票不是为了掩盖爱泼斯坦名单。我们投票是为了让特朗普逮捕他们，”他上个月在X上写道。“如果共和党在中期选举中失利，这不会是厌倦被撒谎的保守选民的错。唯一应对此负责的人就是唐纳德·特朗普。”
(Votes are anonymous) — Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) July 16, 2025 “We didn’t vote for the Epstein List to be covered up. We voted for Trump to arrest them,” he wrote on X last month . “If Republicans lose the midterms it will not be the fault of conservative voters who are tired of being lied to. The only person to blame for this is Donald Trump.”
特朗普甚至失去了自封的“报复部长”伊万·雷克林，他是一名退役的绿色贝雷帽士兵和律师。他曾是“阻止窃取”运动中的一名普通士兵，该运动旨在推翻2020年大选的结果，并曾发布过一份所谓“深层国家目标名单”，列出他希望在2024年大选后因叛国罪被起诉的所谓叛徒。如今，他在许多问题上成为特朗普的坚定批评者，其中之一就是爱泼斯坦文件。
Trump has even lost the self-anointed “Secretary of Retribution” Ivan Raiklin, a retired Green Beret and lawyer. He had been a foot soldier in the “stop the steal” movement to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and had published a “Deep State target list” of alleged traitors he wanted prosecuted for treason after the 2024 election. He is now a relentless Trump critic over, among many other things, the Epstein files.
10月5日，雷克林在X平台发布了一篇长文，标题为《特朗普对爱泼斯坦阶层的保护：时间线》。文中详细列出了特朗普因支持者致力于公开爱泼斯坦文件而对其进行报复的多个实例，包括泰勒·格林、马西以及众议员劳伦·博伯特（共和党-科罗拉多州）。“玛乔丽·泰勒·格林说，当她与唐纳德·特朗普交谈时，”雷克林在接受我采访时表示，“他说‘公开爱泼斯坦文件会伤害我的朋友’，我的下一个问题是，好吧，你朋友的名字是什么？是杰拉德·库什纳吗？是霍华德·卢特尼克吗？”
On October 5, Raiklin wrote a long X post slugged “Trump’s Protection of the Epstein Class: a Timeline.”It details instances when Trump had retaliated against his own supporters over for their work to release the Epstein files, including Taylor Greene, Massie , and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo). “Marjorie Taylor Greene says that when she spoke with Donald Trump,” Raiklin told me in an interview, “he said that ‘releasing the Epstein files would hurt my friends,’ My next question is, well, what are the names of your friends? Is it Jared Kushner? Is it Howard Lutnick?”
尽管爱泼斯坦文件在今年的许多民意调查中并未被提及，但在那些涉及该议题的调查中，选民对特朗普处理此事的态度普遍非常负面。Cook Political Report在四月的一项民调显示，当被要求评价特朗普在多个不同议题上的表现时，有63%的人对其处理爱泼斯坦文件的方式表示不赞成，这一比例几乎高于所有其他议题，包括伊朗战争。只有他在生活成本问题上的表现被评价得更差，但差距仅为两个百分点。
The Epstein files have not appeared as questions in many polls this year, but in those where they have, voters report very negative feelings about Trump’s handling of them. An April poll from the Cook Political Report found that when asked about Trump’s performance on a host of different issues, more people—63 percent—disapproved of his handling of the Epstein files than almost any other issue, including the Iran war. Only his handling of the cost of living fared worse, and even then, by only two points.
然后是这份9月份的民意调查，由于它是由《信使新闻室》委托进行的——该媒体发布内容以支持民主党候选人，因此结果需谨慎对待。该调查发现，在2024年投票支持特朗普的四分之三的人表示，对爱泼斯坦受害者的正义将是他们在中期选举中决定投票方式的首要议题。该群体还研究了竞选信息，发现涉及爱泼斯坦受害者正义的语言比伊朗战争议题更能引起选民共鸣，高出17个百分点；比跨性别女孩参加体育运动的议题更能引起共鸣，高出15个百分点。
Then there was this September poll, to be taken with a grain of salt since it was commissioned by the Courier Newsroom , an outlet that publishes content to support Democratic candidates. It found that three out of four people who voted for Trump in 2024 said that justice for Epstein’s victims would be a top issue in deciding how to vote in the midterms. The group also looked at campaign messaging and found that language addressing justice for Epstein’s victims resonated with voters by 17 points more than the Iran War and 15 points over trans girls in sports.
如果这些数据接近真实，这或许能解释为何今年如此多的民主党候选人在竞选中提及爱泼斯坦。例如，俄亥俄州参议院候选人谢罗德·布朗的广告就将他的共和党对手、现任参议员乔恩·赫斯特与爱泼斯坦联系起来，理由是赫斯特曾获得亿万富翁莱斯·韦克斯纳的捐款——韦克斯纳是爱泼斯坦长期的资助者。德克萨斯州参议院候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科在9月曾会见部分爱泼斯坦的受害者，同时批评他的对手、前州检察长肯·帕克斯顿忽视了这些受害者。
Those numbers, if anywhere close to accurate, may be one reason why so many Democratic candidates have been invoking Epstein in their campaigns this year. Ads for Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, for instance, have linked his GOP opponent, incumbent Sen. Jon Husted, to Epstein by invoking the donations he received from billionaire Les Wexner, Epstein’s longtime benefactor. Texas Senate candidate James Talarico met with some of Epstein’s victims in September while bashing his opponent, former state attorney general Ken Paxton, for ignoring them.
但虽然许多MAGA忠诚者可能已经抛弃了特朗普，这并不意味着他们今年会成为蓝色浪潮的一部分。“绝对没有可能，”雷克林告诉我。“我说得非常明确。我无法用更强烈的语气来说。”尽管特朗普的背叛令他感到“绝对令人震惊和厌恶”，但他认为，如果卡马拉·哈里斯当选，国家的情况会糟糕得多。
But while many of the MAGA faithful may have abandoned Trump, that doesn’t mean they will be part of a blue wave this year. “Not a chance,” Raiklin told me. “I say that unequivocally. I can’t say that more forcefully.”Despite Trump’s betrayals, which he calls “absolutely appalling and disgusting,” he thinks the country would have been much worse off if Kamala Harris had been elected.
“我患有特朗普失望综合征，”雷克林说，“但我不会因为对他失望而自杀，然后去投民主党的一票。”
“I have Trump disappointment syndrome,” says Raiklin, “but I’m not going to commit suicide because I’m disappointed with him” and vote for a Democrat.