Epstein sexplosion behind India tariff explosion?

Francis Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, taught us something on Netflix’s House of Cards. As vice-president scheming for more, he'd turn to the camera, break the fourth wall, and whisper to those who understood him. Many populist leaders take this route. They speak to their support base. Donald Trump is no different. Trump, too, breaks into the fourth wall and speaks to his MAGA support base, at times, without addressing them directly but dropping a subtle hint. His Truth Social post declaring tariffs and a penalty on India, ended with MAGA.

MAGA isn't just Make America Great Again, it is a support base that has grown to be a hungry monster that suckled on Trump's anticipation during his campaign. Now, with Trump as the President, MAGA's demand that promises be fulfilled has exploded. It is hungry for action.

In his campaign, Trump was clear: he wanted to free America from the clutches of the deep state. Nothing symbolised that more than his vow to release the Epstein files. Yet when he came to power, the Epstein files stayed sealed.

Despite the pledge, the vault never opened. And in Washington, the whispers grew: Trump’s own name appeared in the very records he had promised to expose.

Even Tesla boss Elon Musk, in a now-deleted X post, alleged that Trump's name featured on the list.

"Time to drop the really big bomb," Musk posted on June 6. "Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public."

With his tariff tactics against any and every country, Trump is trying to appease his MAGA monster, and India finds a special mention here because of the inherent hostility that the MAGA crowd has towards the country that supplies the US with tech talent.

That's likely why when Trump posted about imposing tariffs on India, he did not forget to mention MAGA.

"India will therefore be paying a tariff of 25%, plus a penalty for the above, starting on August first. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Maga!," wrote Trump.

WHAT ARE EPSTEIN FILES AND WHY THEY ARE CONTROVERSIAL?

The Epstein files are a cache of unsealed court documents from civil cases tied to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network.

They contain testimonies, depositions, and records that expose not only the scale of abuse, including of minor girls, but also the web of influence and connections Epstein cultivated among powerful political figures and celebrities.

The politics surrounding the release of the documents, commonly referred to as the Epstein Files, has reignited scrutiny of how his crimes were enabled and covered up for such a long time.

"Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it. I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it," Trump had said during the campaign, according to an ABC report.

Trump’s MAGA base has long embraced conspiracy theories that Jeffrey Epstein was killed to silence him, claiming he possessed compromising material and a hidden “client list” of powerful figures, according to media reports.

In 2025, however, a Justice Department and FBI review concluded there was no evidence of such a secret list.

What was released instead, a cache of flight logs and fragments of contact lists, was presented as the beginning of an unprecedented exposure, but fell short of the explosive revelations many had expected.

However, the files were never released.

WHY EPSTEIN FILES STILL REMAIN SEALED?

There was a catch: Trump’s own name appeared in the flight logs for Epstein’s private jet, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Records from the Maxwell trial showed that he had flown several times in the 1990s, mostly between Palm Beach and New York.

According to a Newsweek report, the US President being named in the documents did not imply wrongdoing, and Trump himself has never been accused of Epstein’s crimes. Still, the association cast a long shadow.

Commentators like Bill O’Reilly tried to defend him, arguing that Trump hesitated because a wholesale release risked smearing innocent names. But for MAGA, that rang hollow.

They remembered the campaign promise to open the vault. What they got instead were scraps, delays, and silence where revelation had been pledged.

Among a collection of letters gifted to Epstein in 2003 for his 50th birthday included a sketch of a naked woman bearing a note and the name of Trump, revealed The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Trump junked the report and sued WSJ. "I never wrote a picture in my life," he said.

MAGA TIRADE AND INDIA TARIFF

And while the fate of the Epstein files hung in the air, angering his support base, Trump moved decisively on something he had never promised at all: tariffs on India.

On July 30, Trump slapped sweeping 25 percent tariffs on Indian exports, pairing them with penalties tied to New Delhi’s defence and energy ties with Russia.

The move served two purposes. It punished a nation that had resisted Trump’s demands, and it played directly into the instincts of MAGA voters who already harboured suspicion towards India.

At a moment when Trump’s failure on the Epstein files was eroding confidence, the tariffs gave his base a visible show of strength.

MAGA'S HOSTILITY TO INDIANS: H-1B AND BUSINESS OWNERS

That hostility toward Indians within the MAGA base has deep roots. It comes from a volatile mix of economic anxiety and cultural suspicion.

On the immigration front, Indian tech workers are the largest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa programme. For decades, US companies have used H-1Bs to bring in engineers and coders from India, often through outsourcing giants like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro. MAGA supporters have framed this as "cheap foreign labour" displacing American workers in Silicon Valley.

But Indians were not only employees. They were employers too.

Across American towns, convenience stores, motels, gas stations, and franchises were disproportionately owned and run by Indian families. Not just that, several American tech giants, from Google to Microsoft to IBM, are headed by Indians.

For many in the MAGA base, who saw themselves as victims of the rising Global South, Indians became a visible face of the "outsider success story" — living proof that others were advancing while they struggled.

Layer onto this the differences in accents, religion, and tightly-knit community networks, and the sense of grievance sharpened. To the MAGA imagination, Indians were at once taking jobs through the H-1B pipeline and taking over Main Street through small business ownership.

It was this mix of resentment and suspicion that Trump’s tariffs tapped into.

His anti-immigrant policy, action against international students and move against H-1B visas should leave no room for doubt what the India tariffs are intended for.

Though tariffs and visa crackdown will appease the MAGA monster for now, it will sooner or later rise up in hunger for the Epstein Files.

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