This week, Minna Ålander turns to the question of how to move from defensive reactions to Russian hybrid warfare to an effective deterrent. (Spoiler: not easy)

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estimated reading time: 5 min In July 2025, the connection between United States President Donald Trump and his base of supporters was fractured by the announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI that no “Epstein list” exists. That is, they say, there is no list of clients or participants identified by convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein prior to his death by apparent suicide in 2019. No further documents related to the Epstein case would be released. This announcement angered and confused many among Trump’s core constituency, including prominent loyalists and influencers. Weeks later, alienation among his base continues. Read more: Trump's Epstein problem is real: New poll shows many in his base disapprove of his handling of the files, and some supporters are having second thoughts about electing him This is puzzling. But in part, it’s unsurprising. Trump’s support base includes the conspiracist “QAnon” believers who are convinced that Democratic Party politicians and donors run a hidden global ring of child sex abuse. In QAnon circles, it has been practically an article of faith that the Epstein files would validate these accusations against liberal elites. Trump’s release of the files was keenly anticipated. Naturally they’re upset that he and his appointees have changed their tune. U.S. President Donald Trump in in the Oval Office of the White House on Aug. 25, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Longtime friendship Yet their dismay is surprising nonetheless. Trump’s extensive relationship with Epstein has been well known for years. His repeated well wishes for Epstein’s longtime associate, convicted collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell, were widely reported following her sentencing on child sexual trafficking charges. His comments about “getting away with” walking into beauty pageants’ backstage areas among young women and underage girls wearing “no clothes” were made prominently, on the Howard Stern Show. His base somehow managed to believe Trump was a secret champion of minors against sexual exploitation in the face of his own boasts. Commuters walk past a bus stop as activists put up a poster showing President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein near the U.S. Embassy in London on July 17, 2025. Has Trump been bullshitting his supporters about his ties to Epstein? (AP Photo/Thomas Krych)The role of bullshit How could this new development somehow be worse for Trump than his own confessions? One partial explanation centres on Trump’s use of what’s known as bullshit rhetoric as a weapon against political enemies. Bullshit in this context is a quasi-technical notion meaning, roughly, an indifference to truth or to the audience’s right to truth. Read more: Why Donald Trump is such a relentless bullshitter Even most liars respect the truth enough to try and deceive people about it, but the bullshitter doesn’t much care either way. As my colleague Jennifer Saul and I have argued in our research, Trump’s brand of authoritarian speech is deliberate and explicit in its bullshit. It advertises its status in order to show contempt for one audience, typically as part of a performance of strength for another audience. This helps explain why Trump’s relentless bullshitting never harmed his standing with his base in the past, and has even buoyed it. His supporters know he’s a bullshitter, but they recognize he isn’t bullshitting them. They are in on the joke, enjoying the spectacle as Trump performs his power over mutual enemies, including political opposition, news media and state institutions. The new tension over the Epstein files reflects the extent to which some among Trump’s base perceive, perhaps for the first time, that they are now targets of his weaponized political bullshit rather than amused witnesses to it. And they don’t like it. Read more: Bullshit is everywhere. Here's how to deal with it at work Trump responds with more bullshit In one striking example, news media have reported that, before the FBI/Department of Justice announcement, Trump was informed by Attorney General Pam Bondi that his name occurs repeatedly in the unreleased documents. The significance or context of those occurrences is of course not known; other people who deny wrongdoing are also named in them. But after the existence of a list was denied, Trump responded to questioning about whether his name appears in the documents by claiming that the files were made up by former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey. The assertion that the Epstein files are merely hoax documents cooked up by Obama, Biden and Comey is so outrageously false that it can’t be meant even as a serious deception. That makes Trump’s claim a bald-faced lie to many people. Bald-faced lies count as bullshit, Saul and I argue, because they lack the deceptive intent of other lies. They are a kind of unconcealed bullshit that advertises the speaker’s impunity. For Trump, this sort of overt bullshit has been reserved for liberals and news reporters. This time his own supporters are in the line of fire. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, on Aug. 26, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Trump’s supporters apparently don’t like being bullshitted. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)Strongman politics Trump’s base can’t be truly dismayed by the facts about his relationship with Epstein because they should have been upset long before now in terms of his own past confessions and well-known association with Epstein. Instead, they seem to be irked they’ve been lumped in with their enemies in being recipients of Trump’s bullshit rather than onlookers to it. And if we focus on polarization and strongman politics, we can better understand Trump’s responses to the criticism from his base. After all, Trump didn’t say these angry supporters have misunderstood the evidence. He said they were “pretty bad people,” likened them to “fake news” and said he didn’t want their support. He didn’t call them mistaken; he called them weaklings. To some this might sound absurd or childish. To supporters of an authoritarian figure, being called weak is more serious than being accused of being wrong.

European Commission president will raise Hungarian spying report with Olivér Várhelyi directly “at the earliest opportunity,” spokesperson says.

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