Distracting from the Epstein files? Media attention and short-run shifts in Trump's Truth Social posts

Abstract

Political "circuses" may undermine democratic accountability if leaders facing scandal can reliably pull media coverage toward fresh topics and away from substantive investigations or evaluations. We investigate whether politicians strategically alter their messaging during damaging media coverage ("strategic diversion") or maintain consistent provocative communication regardless of scandal coverage ("always-on circus"). Using computational text analysis of Donald Trump's Truth Social posts during the 2025 Epstein revelations, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in scandal coverage is associated with communication patterns that deviate from baseline by 0.28 standard deviations over a 4-day window. Although these findings do not provide formal causal identification, they are robust to timing placebos and falsification tests, are consistent with the interpretation that leaders may deploy diversionary communication specifically within their own friendly media ecosystem, which has implications for accountability in polarized democracies.