A February 20, 2026 opinion column in The Nation argues that many Trump-aligned conservatives have become less concerned about Jeffrey Epstein-related disclosures involving President Donald Trump, citing polling shifts among Republicans and a series of high-profile comments highlighted in the piece.
In an opinion column published February 20, 2026, The Nation’s Kali Holloway argues that the political right’s reaction to new disclosures connected to financier Jeffrey Epstein reflects what she describes as a deepening moral and political cynicism within Trump-aligned politics.
Holloway cites polling and reporting to contend that Republican concern about the Epstein matter diminished over 2025. She points to a late-July 2025 survey result reported by The Daily Beast and later fact-checked by Snopes indicating that 47% of Republicans said their support for Trump would not change even if he were “officially implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.” She also cites CBS News/YouGov polling showing that the share of Republicans who said the Epstein files mattered “at least a little” to how they assessed Trump fell to 36% by November 2025, while the comparable figure for Democrats was 64%.
The column notes that the Epstein material circulating publicly has included at least one allegation that Trump sexually assaulted an underage girl—an allegation long denied by Trump and not resolved in court—and contrasts that with what Holloway characterizes as extensive, documented social associations between Trump and Epstein.
Holloway also quotes a formulation commonly known as Wilhoit’s Law—attributed to composer Frank Wilhoit and popularized online in 2018—about how law is applied differently to “in-groups” and “out-groups,” using it to frame what she calls selective moral outrage.
Later in the piece, Holloway cites reporting that lawmakers were given access to a large cache of Epstein-related records and highlights a claim by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who said that when he searched for variations of Trump’s name using the government database interface, it returned “more than a million” results. Raskin later cautioned that he did not have time to review each result and could not confirm that every entry referred to Donald Trump, describing the search tool as confusing.
The column also references an NBC News report that said at least a half-dozen senior officials in the Trump administration had connections to Epstein, and it quotes conservative commentator Ann Coulter speaking on the Triggernometry podcast in August 2025, where she described Trump’s presidency as highly corrupt but said she still supported his policy goals, including a border wall and mass deportations.
Holloway broadens her argument by citing reactions from prominent right-wing figures and media personalities to two separate Minneapolis-area deaths that had become national political flashpoints: Renée Good, who was killed in a federal immigration enforcement encounter, and Alex Pretti, who was killed in a later incident involving federal officers. Holloway points to Vice President JD Vance describing Good’s death as “a tragedy of her own making,” and notes that crowdfunding campaigns raised nearly $800,000 for Good’s killer, according to a report cited in the column.
To underscore what she sees as unconditional support for Trump, Holloway cites a New Yorker interview with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro in which he said, “I don’t know what ‘disqualifying’ means,” when asked whether Trump could do anything morally disqualifying.
Holloway’s essay is presented as commentary, arguing that these episodes together illustrate a political environment in which many voters and influencers, in her view, prioritize outcomes and power over consistent moral standards.
