So this is the thing about stories like the Jeffrey Epstein saga: There’s always new stuff waiting to come out. The explosive story that The Wall Street Journal dropped Thursday evening about Donald Trump’s alleged note to Epstein in a “birthday book” compiled for the child molester in 2003 by Ghislaine Maxwell was bound to come out. And if other things are out there about Trump’s history with Epstein—as there almost certainly are—they’re bound to become public someday, too.

That’s the first reason Trump needs to be worried. Even if his name does not appear on some master list created by Epstein with a heading like “Good Friends of Mine Who Raped Underage Girls With Me,” it still has to be the case that there are emails, photographs, and other material that at the very least won’t look good. (I couldn’t help wondering what Maurene Comey, the sex crimes prosecutor in New York’s Southern District who was fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, knows about Epstein and Trump.)

And here’s the second and more interesting reason. These cracks in the MAGA coalition right now are only that—cracks—but time may prove this week to have been a pivotal, even decisive, moment in MAGA history. 

-Michael Tomasky in The New Republic