“I think it’s really time for the country to get on to something else,” President Donald Trump asserted two months ago in response to questions about the new batch of Epstein files. Despite Trump’s usual success in diversion, he can’t seem to shake the looming shadow of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Pew Research Center found in January that public confidence in the president has dropped across the board over the last year. Americans increasingly see him as lacking the leadership skills, the physical and mental fitness, the democratic values and, most of all, the morals of a strong president. These drops are visible “particularly among Republicans,” according to the survey. In large part due to the Epstein files, Trump is beginning to lose his own base. But why is Trump’s Epstein problem the one that he can’t seem to escape?
Most problems in the news follow a standard “issue attention cycle,” as proposed by Anthony Downs in 1972 in his essay “Up and Down with Ecology—the ‘Issue-Attention Cycle.’” Downs suggests that the amount of public focus on a given political issue is governed less by the severity of the issue and more by where the issue sits within this cycle. Think about the war in Ukraine, for example. When Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022, it was all over the news, social media outlets and day-to-day conversation. Now, over four years later, the conflict seems non-existent in American political discourse, even though 2025 was the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since the first year of the conflict. As an issue persists, the ability for the public to give it attention dwindles because the public either realizes the cost of solving the problem or grows bored of it.
This cycle has been pronounced by the way modern news is consumed and the increasingly-short attention span of the average citizen. Though news has long served as a form of entertainment, the rising prevalence of short-form media only exacerbates the problem. News outlets now compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, and thus need to ensure their content is exciting and novel. In a digital world, the issue attention cycle is cycling faster than it ever has.
So then why is the Epstein issue sticking around? I think there's two reasons.
First, the “solution” of finding justice for the many victims of Epstein and his co-conspirators comes at an extremely low cost for the average citizen. Compare this to environmental issues, which often conclude with a plea to reduce driving, use paper straws or some other inconvenience that eventually outweighs the individual desire to solve the problem. Solving the Epstein problem only negatively affects those who are guilty and those who seek to protect the guilty.
Secondly, there is an intrinsically exciting quality around the Epstein files. The idea that the country’s elites were involved in a grand sex-trafficking ring that reached far and wide is horrid yet captivating and holds viewers’ attention. As news acts more and more like entertainment, the Epstein scandal comes as close to a TV show as it gets, complete with scheduled content releases. Consumers wait for the newest installment of the Epstein files to look up who’s in the newest batch: Which new celebrity will have a suspiciously worded email or an unflattering photo? The over-censoring of it all adds a mystique that draws audiences in, curious to know more.
Despite Trump’s hardest efforts, his usual attempts to distract the public by getting them worked up about something new has largely failed. His unprecedented capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro had its time in the limelight, but as a one-time event that will not negatively affect the lives of the average American, the public has already stopped talking about it. The same cannot be said of Epstein.
Though Americans should find some hope in our temporary defeat of the issue attention cycle, we shouldn’t confuse attention with action. Tufts University political science professor Eitan Hersh coined the term “political hobbyism” for this kind of relationship in which politics is solely content to be consumed. Those who consume a lot of political content feel involved but rarely do anything to materially effect change. While talking about an issue and keeping it in the mainstream does help, it can have adverse effects too, like signaling to politicians that the only issues we care about are low-cost and high-excitement ones that act as TV shows to be followed solely for entertainment.
Some progress has been made on the Epstein issue, such as the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025 and the arrest of foreign figures such as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in February. But there are yet to be any additional arrests in the U.S., and the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been widely criticized for failing to follow the Epstein Files Transparency Act completely by keeping certain files unlawfully redacted. While this may seem hard to influence, there are ways, such as organizing or participating in protests and writing letters to representatives, that can turn your attention on an issue into action, however marginal it may seem.
We can start here at Dartmouth by continuing to call for the name of the Black Family Visual Arts Center to be changed, given both that Epstein was involved in the management of the center’s namesake Leon Black ’73’s funds at the time of his donation and that Black himself has faced multiple accusations of sexual assault and rape.
By urging each other to turn our attention into action, we can take a stand and show that we are more than consumers of media but people with empathy toward victims and hearts toward justice. Though these problems are not our fault, they become our responsibility when we are fortunate to be a part of an institution that grants us the ability to make change.
Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
