If there’s one thing we’ve been able to count on in American politics over the last decade, it is the MAGA base uncritically swallowing everything Donald Trump says. His attempt to strong-arm Ukraine into falsely smearing Joe Biden, the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and of course the Big Lie that Biden stole the 2020 election—in each case, his base instantly believed his ridiculous blustering lies. (One minor exception was Trump’s hesitant advocacy for the COVID-19 vaccine, though he quickly reversed course on that one, and now is a full-blown anti-vaxxer.)

Trump’s ability to get his base to believe him didn’t involve anything particularly ingenious. He would essentially say the blue sky is red, and MAGA would agree. The bullying of Zelensky in Ukraine was a “perfect call,” Russian interference was a “hoax,” and the election he lost was “rigged.” The mere assertion was enough.

But now Trump has stoked real anger and disappointment among the MAGA crowd over his refusal to release supposed files about Jeffrey Epstein’s client list. Despite increasingly irritable posts on Truth Social and comments to reporters, calling his own supporters “stupid” and “foolish,” and despite Trump’s most loyal toadies like Charlie Kirk and Tim Pool attempting to change the subject, segments of MAGA aren’t obeying. Right-wing accounts on Truth Social are lambasting or pleading with Trump, while several high-profile MAGA voices, including Alex Jones, have refused to let it go.

On first blush, this is somewhat mysterious. Claiming the Epstein files are a “hoax” is, if anything, less preposterous than the 2020 Big Lie. And hitherto it has been hard to discern limits to MAGA brain rot. These people can plainly believe just about anything, even if it literally kills them—witness, for instance, the unvaccinated Texas GOP official who was posting anti-vaccine memes on Facebook right up until he died of COVID.