Angry White House blowup over a devastating betrayal of MAGA has a certain Trump lieutenant second-guessing the President, reveals MARK HALPERIN

President Donald Trump once infamously joked to a receptive Iowa Christian college audience during the 2016 presidential campaign that he could, ‘stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.’

For a time, that rang true. Perhaps, no longer.

Make America Great Again foot soldiers are drawing a line in the sand over which even the father of the movement cannot cross. And sources close to the president tell me that makes White House lieutenants uneasy.

Matters of acute concern are threefold. In recent days, the Trump administration has shown a sudden softening in the crackdown on undocumented immigrants; expressed an evolving stance on renewing military aid to Ukraine; and – igniting the hottest fury – reneged on the promise to release more materials related to the case of deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

On the Ukraine issue, the friction is familiar. Trump’s MAGA base — at least its populist wing — is opposed to ongoing US aid. But donors, generals, and foreign policy advisers are expressly warning what Trump has never liked hearing: that abandoning Ukraine could embolden Vladimir Putin and destabilize Europe. Its a tug-of-war between Tucker Carlson and NATO, and Trump’s the rope.

Then there’s immigration. Trump has signaled an openness to ‘common-sense reforms’ that would allow certain undocumented immigrants working in agriculture and hospitality to remain under revised legal status.

That’s music to the ears of hotel magnates, supermarket stockists, and Napa vineyard owners — but MAGA diehards see it as amnesty by another name. This is the Trump version of hugging the cactus, and while the spines might feel like restorative acupuncture to big donors, it’s pure barbed wire to the base.

Make America Great Again foot soldiers are drawing a line in the sand over which even the father of the movement cannot cross. And sources close to the president tell me that makes White House lieutenants uneasy.

Trump has signaled an openness to ‘common-sense reforms’ that would allow certain undocumented immigrants working in agriculture and hospitality to remain under revised legal status. (Pictured: Federal immigration officials raid California cannabis farms on July 10)

The reneged promise to release more materials related to the case of deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has ignited the hottest fury.

For many of the MAGA-hat faithful, these are not mere setbacks, but ideological betrayals.

Of course, those disruptions in the dependably elastic MAGA ecosystem pale in comparison to the tectonic shift underway over the long-stalled, abandoned, reopened and re-closed investigation into Epstein and his suspicious death inside the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan on August 10, 2019.

On Sunday, Trump’s Justice Department and FBI released a report concluding they had no evidence that Epstein kept a ‘client list,’ blackmailed powerful people, or was murdered.

The disclosures – conveniently dropped during the long July Fourth weekend – hit with the force of a magnitude of 8.8 in MAGAland.

And the president’s allies have offered no satisfying explanation for the nothing-to-see-here nature of their report. ‘There’s no political upside to shielding Epstein secrets,’ one Trump lieutenant confided to me. ‘Unless, God forbid, there’s a very good reason not to.’

The conspiracy theorists — these days often more mainstream than wackadoodle — have galloped in like rodeo clowns to fill the information vacuum. They point to suggestions (posted willy-nilly on Reddit threads, tossed about on podcasts, whispered at dinner parties from Beverly Hills to Bal Harbour) that Epstein may have served as an intelligence asset for the US, the British, or the Israelis, with kompromat on high-level figures in every hemisphere, and the young victims discarded as collateral damage.

This has led to dark suspicions: not only that Trump knows things, but that he’s protecting reputations — possibly his own, and perhaps those of others in his Mar-a-Lago and Upper East Side tier.

Over the years, men and women who dealt with Epstein have told me that he dangled assignations with young females like appetizers at a hedge fund mixer. And he didn’t hide the blackmail vibes: they reeked openly.

Much of the blame has landed on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been cast in the role of the glammed-up gatekeeper to elite secrets. FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino also have absorbed some collateral criticism.

Axios reports that Bongino didn’t show up at work Friday, after he and Bondi had a blowup in the White House on Wednesday over the administration’s handling of the release of their Epstein probe conclusions.

‘Pam said her piece. Dan said his piece. It didn’t end on friendly terms,’ reported Axios’ Marc Caputo about the ‘heated’ discussions.

But Trump, for the most part, has skated on the turmoil.

Mostly.

FBI director Kash Patel (right) and his deputy Dan Bongino (left) also have absorbed some collateral criticism.

Axios reports that Bongino didn’t show up at work Friday, after he and Bondi (pictured) had a blowup in the White House on Wednesday over the administration’s handling of the release of their Epstein probe conclusions.

The mood changed somewhat after a tense exchange on Tuesday, when Trump snapped at a reporter who broached the Epstein affair during a White House cabinet meeting.

Trump’s tone was more Roy Cohn than Ronald Reagan. ‘Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?’ he cut in before Bondi could answer. ‘This guy’s been talked about for years. Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.’

Trump cited matters of business he reckoned more worthy. ‘I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened [with the flash floods] in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.’

The clip made its rounds on MAGA Telegram channels, and not in a flattering light.

To many, Trump looked truculent rather than transparent, panicked rather than placid.

Among the commentariat, frustration is reaching fever pitch. Sophisticated stalwarts such as Charlie Kirk and Megyn Kelly have delivered passionate monologues deeming Trump’s recent actions a slap in the face to every voter who believed in draining the swamp.

Privately, some of Trump’s most diehard defenders are fully fed up. ‘I’ve had dozens of Trump supporters come to me, forlorn, asking what it’ll take to make him reverse course,’ said one conservative influencer. ‘They’re not mad — yet — but they are bewildered. The Epstein thing stinks.’

A young first-time voter, who went for Trump in 2024, told me on Thursday that he felt deceived: ‘Like I cringed watching [Trump] respond [in the cabinet meeting],’ Colin from Tallahassee told me during a 2WAY discussion. ‘It is just on this and everything else from the Iraq war to the financial crisis to COVID. It just feels like we’re constantly being lied to and being told, “Don’t believe you’re lying eyes.” You know, we know better. Just the constant lying. It seems like this is just another example of that.’

The clip of Trump snapping at a reporter made its rounds on MAGA Telegram channels, and not in a flattering light. To many, Trump looked truculent rather than transparent, panicked rather than placid.

Some have suggested Trump is positioning himself for the midterm election, trying to sand off the hard-right edges and appeal to moderates. With suburban voters up for grabs, the Epstein file is a political IED best left untouched. Still, many say this is simply Trump being Trump — improvising, responding to pressures invisible to the public, rejecting linear strategy, and hanging on to loyalty from his supporters like a balloon that he occasionally forgets he’s holding.

Will he reverse course? History says maybe.

Trump does U-turns more often than a sleep-deprived Uber driver at Dulles Airport.

But the motivations that brought him to this odd trifecta — Epstein opacity, immigrant leniency, and NATO-nal wobble — remain shrouded.

In the meantime, the current conventional wisdom is coagulating: That Trump is a guy whose political compass is a weather vane in a hurricane. But even weather vanes don’t twirl without something blowing hard behind them.

For now, the MAGA movement waits, stews, and scrolls — wondering whether the man they believed would tear down the metaphorical villas of the elites is now repainting their walls, grouting their mosaics, frosting their windows, and landscaping their towering hedges.