Actor Alan Ritchson, the 6'3" tower of muscle that stars in the series Reacher, angered MAGA minions after criticizing their idol, Republican President Donald Trump, his administration, and his enablers on a pair of podcasts.
Explaining his political views during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ritchson said:
"I care deeply about the outliers, the maligned people who have very difficult lives, people who are forgotten and overlooked and unwanted and unloved. Like I care deeply about making the world more fair and free for those people. And a lot of politicians have lost the plot."
Ritchson was especially critical of the Trump administration's actions regarding the files compiled in 2019 by Trump's Justice Department and FBI to indict and arrest previously convicted and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Ritchson, a classmate of former Florida MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz, made clear during his sitdown on both the Happy Sad Confused and Armchair Expert podcasts that covering up pedophilia and other sex crimes and protecting the perpetrators was unpresidential behavior. He also questioned what the Trump administration does prioritize and divert money toward.
On the Armchair Expert podcast, Ritchson said of Trump:
"I'm just supposed to let go of my resentment that this f*cking guy is just raping the world that he lives in for whatever gain he personally can have, and I'm supposed to let that go?"
You can see clips from both podcasts here:
Ritchson's opinions were widely applauded across social media, but the actor, who trained for years in musical theater and made it to the Hollywood round of American Idol in 2004, drew immediate ire from Trump's devoted fans.
On Fox News' The Five, MAGA comedian Greg Gutfeld responded, claiming:
"This has nothing to do with politics... It says absolutely nothing about Donald Trump, but it says too much about [Ritchson]."
"If you look at him, it is really a powerful contrast: a guy that is so physically fit, but spiritually, he’s diseased. It’s probably likely connected, the obsession is a distraction. He’s not enjoying himself.
"I think the interviewer was trying to get at the fact that it’s the resentment that is eating him alive, and essentially poisoning himself, and no amount of squats and bench presses are going to get rid of that."
Abandoning the usual defense MAGA uses against any criticism of their Dear Leader, Gutfeld added:
"This is not TDS. TDS is something else... If you remove the ‘Trump is evil’ narrative, there is something else there. And this just happens to bring it out."
You can see Gutfeld's rant in defense of Trump here:
Even on right-wing bastion X, Gutfeld's attempt at deflection got no support outside the MAGAsphere's most devoted members.
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Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell were longtime close friends of Trump. Early reviews of the Epstein investigation files, which had been sealed by court order until 2024, revealed Trump was heavily featured in the records.
In 2002, decades into Epstein's sex trafficking operation, Trump told New York Magazine:
"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
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In July of 2025, Trump finally let slip why he and Epstein parted ways.
Unlike his defenders claims it was because of Epstein's sex crimes against girls and women, the POTUS told the press Epstein's "inappropriate" action was poaching Trump's female employees, including underage Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, from his spa at Mar-a-Lago.
Despite campaigning on a promise to release the full Epstein files, Trump's tune changed once elected. The Trump administration has alternately claimed they had the files, there were no files, the files were a hoax, and the files were created by former Democratic Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discredit Trump, despite Trump's own DOJ creating them.
It took an act of Congress, the bipartisan sponsored Epstein Files Transparency Act, to get any records released. Despite deadlines coming and going, the Trump administration hasn't released unredacted files exposing perpetrators.
Instead, Trump's DOJ released heavily redacted files that primarily exposed names of victims, causing the files to again be withheld from the public.
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