It does seem like the most significant schism he’s had, with Massie, MTG, and some podcasters etc defecting over this. I may be out-of-date. But I don’t think it’s gone very far though, considering some of these defections are considered to be career suicides, and that he got away with reneging on one of the party’s big bogeymen that just happened to be his former best friend. If this was a big weakness, there would be screams for impeachment and ditching him.

Agreed on the general principle of building your movement on conspiracy theories of the elite and then becoming elite. The situation is even worse for him; he was already friends with the subject of the conspiracy theory long before the public at large even knew about it, and then by some combination of bad luck and hubris he let the party chase the conspiracy. We’ll see if there’s anything bad for him in there that sees the light of day, and what his opposition makes of it.

This is pretty easy to summarize from my point of view.

1) There is 0 non circumstantial evidence that Trump had a sexual encounter with a minor. There is 0 evidence (circumstantial or not) that there is any prepubescent children involved.

2) Calling anyone who voted (past tense) for Trump a "pedophile supporter".

Combining these two things togtheter seems pretty obvious why Maga supporters dismiss most of what the public outrage, in fact they will dig their heels in even harder since the "other side" is just attacking them personally.

Agreed. I would add to the mix, however, that MAGA and adjacent groups made the Epstein scandal a big deal. Remember among them you can count QAnon, the Pizzagate, the people who believe the elections were "stolen", the Capitol stormers, etc. Some of them are conspiracy-oriented people, fueled to rage by conspiracy oriented alt-right influencers. So they are very eager to call others cannibals, traffickers and pedophiles wihout a shred of evidence. It's just when someone they respect is in the eye of the storm that they reel and engage the reality distortion field.

Remember that even less than "circumstantial evidence" is what fuels 90% of Trump's bold assertions. And they lap it up. Even now they are trying to make this about Bill Clinton! (Can you imagine what would have happened if Clinton was Epstein's friend but Trump wasn't? Or if Hillary was in some photos? I can guarantee there'd be no redactions at all).

So now MAGA voters cannot complain when Trump is the target of unconfirmed rumors.

And indeed, even a portion of MAGA is susceptible to this particular scandal: Epstein. They had a minor falling out with their leader over this!

I do agree attacking all of MAGA is a counterproductive tactic though, because it puts them on the defensive. Mounting evidence against Trump without attacking his voters is more sensible.