Within weeks of becoming president, Donald Trump found there was a sticky piece of gum on his shoe involving the late Jeffrey Epstein that he couldn’t scrape off. This was surprising, because Trump had survived sex scandals involving a porn star, a libel suit over alleged sexual abuse, a tape of crude “locker room” talk about groping women’s genitals, and more.

Trump thought he could cry “hoax!” about his friendship with the billionaire paedophile and his Maga base would meekly fall silent. Some did. Others dismissed the furore as “Me Too” hysteria, or are pointing the finger at liberals like Bill Clinton who were in the sex offender’s orbit. But ask Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor whether the Epstein scandal ever truly goes away.

Trump’s election-winning shtick was that his “woke” opponent Kamala Harris was for “they/them” (such as immigrants and transgender people), while “Trump is for You”. This is the year he revealed himself to be for “he/him” and for “they/them”, not us, enriching himself, his family and the billionaire tech and finance bros.

If there is a date when the rot set into the Trump presidency, it was when attorney general Pam Bondi announced on 21 February that a list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk”. A week later she infuriated the Magaverse’s slavering conspiracy theorists, who were certain there was an establishment cover-up, by releasing binders of recycled old news.

This broke the bond of trust between Trump and his supporters, who felt played for fools. It led Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor-Greene to crash furiously out of his fanzone and announce she was quitting Congress in the new year. But most of all, it made Trump look like the sleazy swamp........

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