While the MAGA-verse convulsed over President Trump’s dismissive response to the Epstein scandal, the founder of the far right Oath Keepers militia is warning that his base’s discontent is not about to just go away.
“I believe 90% of his own base understands that Epstein was up to something and we know that’s the tip of the iceberg,” Stewart Rhodes told a gathering at the Comfort Inn in Granbury, TX, late last week, the Daily Beast has learned.
“It’s really disheartening to see President Trump just declare that to be a hoax. I don’t think it is. And I think it’s going to cause him trouble in his own base. It already is.”
Were it not for clemency granted by Trump, the Yale-educated Rhodes would still be serving an 18-year term for sedition in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S.Capitol.
“I spent a total of three years in prison,” he said. “I was finally set free by President Trump.”
But that meant Rhodes was now at liberty to stand in a hotel meeting room with a cowboy hat pulled low over the eyepatch that makes him instantly recognizable and commit what has until recent days constituted sacrilege.
He questioned Trump’s judgment, saying the president was being misled by “bad guys” doing the bidding of the supposed Deep State.
“Their job now is to distract him, run the clock out until he’s gone without him actually going after the root of the deep state, the heart and soul of
It,” Rhodes said. “And I do believe the heart and soul of the deep state is all the dirty laundry that’s held in all those files in the FBI, CIA, NSA against all these political elites.”
He went on, “Someone in his circle has convinced him that, ‘Oh this is like Hunter Biden’s laptop story.’”
He continued, “It’s not. This is the deep state’s dirty laundry in the deep state’s greatest Achilles heel.”
Rhodes said he still believes that Trump owed his survival at the Butler, Pa. rally last year to divine intervention.
“I just sincerely hope that he keeps in mind that God saved him for a purpose.,” Rhodes said. “That purpose is to defeat the deep state. It’s not to make great trade deals. It’s not to have a great economy. It’s not any of that stuff. The real heart and soul of it is to defeat the deep state. Because if he doesn’t do that it’s going to be exponentially worse for all of us.”
Rhodes nonetheless spoke admiringly about the president, saying that even his fellow prison inmates had been impressed by footage of the bleeding Trump rising with an upraised fist after his ear was nicked by a would-be assassin’s bullet.
“They were all like, ‘Man, Trump’s a legit OG!” Rhodes recalled “That’s like that’s like the ultimate compliment in prison, right? You’re your original gangster.”
Rhodes’ experience behind bars also added to his continued doubt that Epstein had committed suicide in prison. Rhodes said that he had served as an inmate suicide watch companion.
“So it doesn’t smell right that Jeffrey Epstein was on suicide watch and yet somehow was left alone and somehow the cameras at that same moment also were turned off,” Rhodes said. “I just don’t buy it.”
Rhodes also said that FBI director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Don Bongino had fallen down on the job by not firing every agent who worked on the January 6 case. Rhodes told the gathering that the agents are now just waiting for Trump to leave office.
“When that happens, their real bosses will come back into power,” Rhodes said. “The deep state bosses that they’ve always been.”
He continued, “When the real bosses return, they’ll go right back to business as usual, which will mean coming after all of you.”
Trump has been seen as a superhero taking on the Deep State, but with his recent dismissal of the same Epstein conspiracy theories he once touted, Rhodes and no doubt others of the base suddenly seem to feel his powers are as limited as his remaining time in office. The would-be regent suddenly seemed a lame duck.
“I believe we have a limited opportunity now, [a] limited window to defeat the deep state,” he said. “If we don’t do it now and do it all the way, when they come back into power…”
And the man freed by Trump joined seemingly all of MAGA in calling on his president to release everything the government knows.
