Speculation US president started conflict as a distraction spreads across political spectrum
Another sign shows a picture of an American serviceman killed in the conflict, standing in front of the Stars and Stripes. “Cody Khork did not have to die fighting Iran for the Epstein class”, it reads.
Four days before the bombing of Iran on Feb 28, a report revealed that the Department of Justice (DoJ) removed more than 50 pages of interviews about Mr Trump from the files, including one victim who claimed the now president abused her when she was a child decades ago.
Was it a coincidence that Mr Trump decided to bomb Iran when the Epstein files threatened to expose him?
It sounds like pure conspiracy theory, but the idea that Mr Trump began the war — hitting Tehran from the skies — to distract from Epstein has also circulated among respected pillars of American society: from Republicans to Democrats, and influential podcasters.
“PSA: bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will,” wrote Thomas Massie, a Republican who has clashed repeatedly with Mr Trump over his demands to release the documents.
He is not alone.
“For years we demanded to release the Epstein files... not a single person has been arrested and likely won’t be: no accountability, no justice,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump ally and House representative, said on the day the bombing started. She added: “Instead, we get a war with Iran on behalf of Israel that will succeed in regime change in Iran”.
Graham Platner, a Maine Democrat, felt much the same, telling a crowd in Brewer the day after the strikes that “this war is also being pushed because Donald Trump is in the Epstein files, and other people in the White House, and other people connected with the Epstein class,” he said, “they are terrified that we have noticed what they are doing”.
In June 2025, Joe Rogan, the American podcaster with 11 million monthly listeners, voiced similar thoughts after Mr Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. “Just bomb Iran and everybody forgets. Everybody forgets about it,” he said.
It is not just politicians who think there may be a link.
A recent poll for Zeteo, a Left-wing website, and other outlets found that 52 per cent of people in the US believe the president attacked Iran because of the headlines about Epstein.
It found that 81 per cent of Democrats thought the war was a deliberate distraction, compared with 52 per cent of independent voters and 26 per cent of Republicans.
Chris Edelson, a lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said it was “certainly possible” that the war could have been to distract from Epstein. “What we have seen in the files is shocking stuff related to Trump,” he said.
“They passed a law to make the Epstein files public and they didn’t and kept back some of the most damning stuff,” he added. “If that was the calculation then it’s trademark Trump but it’s been a disaster... what’s followed isn’t better, it’s just a different kind of terrible situation.”
On March 6, six days after the war began, the US justice department released more files pertaining to the president’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, including interviews with the alleged child victim.
The anonymous accuser said that she met Mr Trump through Epstein around 1983, when she was between 13 and 15 years old.
The Trump administration dismissed the woman’s claims as “baseless allegations”, and they have failed to have significantly affected public consciousness, or newspaper headlines, since the beginning of the war.
In a statement, the White House said the idea that Mr Trump began the war to stop the Epstein headlines was “such a ridiculous take that it could only be concocted by true morons, such as Thomas Massie and the Democrats”.
But the “Operation Epstein Fury” posters remain, as does the public speculation.
“When confronted with a faltering economy and the persistent political radiation of the Epstein matter, a war with Iran looked like a perfect narrative reset,” said Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist.
“For Trump, war is the ultimate political reset, no matter its cost.”
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