How Republicans became shameless hypocrites

Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.

This past week, the seemingly never-ending Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has dogged President Donald Trump resurfaced with the release of damning emailshinting at more extensive connections between the two, including a claim that Trump “knew about the girls.”

Ironically, after years of campaigning against LGBTQ+ people and inventing nonexistent connections been transgender people and child abuse, the right has been pushing excuses for Trump’s connections to Epstein—and it’s been down a similarly hypocritical road before.

In the 1990s, conservatives attempted to make political hay out of former President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The right portrayed itself as the party of “family values,” purportedly in contrast to Democratic debauchery.

But at the same time he was pounding the table about Clinton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cheating on his wife as she fought cancer—and he eventually married his mistress.

A few decades later, many of the same right-wing figures lined up behind Trump—who infamously and publicly cheated on multiple wives—while railing against figures like former President Barack Obama as anti-family. Obama has been married to his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, since 1992.

GOP leaders like Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina have induced whiplash. At one point, she spoke up for victims of sexual abuse but then quickly turned on a dime, saying that she supported Trump in the 2020 election despite his history of sexual assault.

The right has embraced hypocrisy and now thrives on it. But how did that happen?

For years, conservatives have made the concept of “owning the libs” central to their political ideology. The idea is to engage in behavior and use rhetoric that supposedly makes liberals angry, driving them to exhibit this anger, which conservatives then mock.

Even if their behavior doesn’t provoke a tantrum, conservatives have elevated this brand of mockery above nearly everything else, including policy and ideology. This has resulted in the right, including right-wing media like Fox News, becoming fixated on “culture war” issues.

Gingrich’s hypocrisy thus became more or less acceptable on the right because he spent his time as speaker trolling Democrats, pushing offensive rhetoric about the party or insisting that Republicans were morally superior. It didn’t matter what he did behind closed doors—as long as he “owned” the liberals.

A figure like Trump has taken this ethos and turned it up to eleven. Everything about him is orchestrated to incite liberal ire, from his racism and embrace of crackpot conspiracies, to his childish insults and overt corruption. And his underlings like White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt and aide Stephen Miller constantly insult the left to win over their boss.

This creates a permission structure on the right where Republicans are allowed to be contradictory, as long as a liberal somewhere is purportedly mad about it.

But this kind of posture has a limit.

Trump can “own the libs” and embrace hypocrisy all he wants—he is a significantly unpopular leader. The public has also made clear that, on the Epstein issue, Trump is the true outlier. The public has repeatedly called for transparency and justice for the victims, survivors, and their families. This shaky ground for Trump has led to Republican defections, which is a departure from the norm.

Shameless hypocrisy might work at the core of the GOP base, but voters outside of the conservative bubble are more than willing to throw Republicans out of office.