What's Resonating: Thursday, July 17
Epstein, Coca-Cola, and Love Island
We’re back with another edition of What’s Resonating – a daily newsletter from the Resonate team that delivers a data-driven snapshot of the stories, trends, and messages shaping online culture and politics.`
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Now, let’s dive in.
What’s Resonating
The Epstein scandal remains the highest-engagement topic as Trump tries to distract
Israel attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus
Love Island continues to dominate cultural spaces
Today’s Takeaway: Left-leaning pages should keep posting about the Epstein scandal, calling out the corruption behind Trump and Republicans’ refusal to release the files, and wherever possible, lift up right-leaning and neutral voices driving this narrative.
Email users: Click through for the full chart.
Yesterday on Social Media
🟦 Left-leaning accounts
Left-leaning pages maintained focus on the Epstein scandal:
Gavin Newsom responded to Trump’s Coca-Cola announcement with a suggestion that it was a distraction from the Epstein scandal in the second most-like left-leaning post yesterday. (123,000 engagements)
Occupy Democrats reposted the exchange on Facebook, earning the most-liked post (203,000 likes, 8x average likes)
In an interview with Crooked hosts, Newsom also wondered if Trump was on the Epstein list (744,000 views)
The Daily Show posted a clip of Jordan Klepper’s Epstein theory (1.5 million views) and Jon Stewart explaining how the right is finally getting a taste of how Trump treats the left (782,000 views)
MeidasTouch posted that TikTok has put a ban warning on their account for covering the Epstein coverage. (355,000 views)
Carlos Eduardo Espina shared a clip of Gavin Newsom making tortillas to his Facebook page, earning nearly 900,000 views and 4x the average likes for the account.
Occupy Democrats also shared that the Mexican President is planning to sue ICE over the death of a Mexican farmworker during a raid in California. (101,000 likes, 5x average likes)
🟥 Right-leaning accounts
Right-leaning pages also continued to focus on Epstein:
End Wokeness argued Trump is making the “Epstein saga worse for himself every single time he talks or posts something on it” (10th most-liked right-leaning post)
Matt Walsh claimed “Yelling at me to stop talking about a subject is the number one way to make sure that I keep talking about the subject” and that he did not want to stop caring about Epstein.
Candace Owens did an Epstein Files episode (909,000 views)
Marjorie Taylor Greene shared Massie’s post, sharing she would co-sponsor the discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
The Babylon Bee: “Man Who Vowed To Release Epstein Files Berates Idiots For Believing There Are Epstein Files”
Several top right-leaning posts covered Trump’s announcement that Coca-Cola will switch to real cane sugar for U.S. production.
Trump’s official account reposted the Team Trump FIFA World Cup edit video. (2.2 million views)
John Kennedy attacked NPR for biased reporting (73,000 engagements)
🟨 Neutral (Political) accounts
Two top posts covered Israel bombing Syria (the Daily Mail earned over 15.6 million views across two posts)
The Daily Mail highlighted a clip of Trump questioning the persisting “fascination” on Epstein (4.5 million views, 2x average views)
CBS News shared a video of a Camp Mystic survivor who rewrote “Hallelujah” with her story. (4.8 million views)
Metro reported activists are planning to relaunch the Donald Trump baby balloon for his UK visit in September (2.8 million views, 2x average likes)
🟨 Neutral (Cultural) accounts
Call Her Daddy interviewed several Love Island USA cast members following Sunday’s finale with teaser posts making up two of the top three most-liked tracked posts from yesterday.
Note: Love Island interviews, clips and reactions continue to dominate on TikTok, the clear top topic among neutral cultural posts yesterday
Theo Von retweeted a Call to Activism post clipping Von’s interview with J.D. Vance on the Epstein files, asking “what changed?” (279,000 engagements, 11th most-liked tracked post)
Ilona Maher plugged the Women’s Rugby World Cup while accepting an award at the ESPYs (2 million views)
Your Rich BFF posted a video on “What the Big Beautiful Bill Means FOR YOU!” (46,000 views)
Today’s Analysis: The Staying Power of the Epstein Files
As seen above, the Epstein story shows no signs of going away any time soon. Today we’re going to answer a few questions:
Who’s talking about this?
Both the left and the right continue to press the issue online, with left-leaning pages leading on both engagements generated and post volume. In fact, Tuesday marked a peak: left-leaning pages posted 1,300 times about Epstein, 500 more than the day before or any other day in our tracking. Across all political leans, the pages that have driven the most engagement on Epstein across platforms in the last week are MeidasTouch, Carlos Eduardo Espina, Benny Johnson, Brian Tyler Cohen, and The Daily Show.
On the one hand, the efforts are working. On the other hand, we wanted to lift up Dan Pfeiffer’s guidance from his Message Box Substack yesterday:
We can’t put too much spin on the ball or overreach. If the issue becomes too associated with a Democratic effort to hurt Trump, it will polarize the issue along party lines and push the dissatisfied MAGA voters back into Trump’s camp….Because the goal to drive a wedge between Trump and his base, the best messengers will be the MAGA media influencers who are mad at Trump for breaking his campaign promise to release the Epstein files.
In this case, amplifying right-leaning or neutral messengers in clips and retweets (as Call to Activism did or Chris Hayes does here) and keeping the attention squarely on the perceived cover-up is likely more effective than gleefully celebrating the drama or proclaiming Trump’s downfall.
How big is this?
Epstein is indisputably the largest politically-adjacent topic on social media right now. However, it’s not all-consuming in the way some major breaking news events can be on social media. Below is a chart of engagements for four major topics this summer across all tracked pages.
Here are those highest single-day spikes compared, with context:
Epstein: 13 million engagements (July 8th)
Floods: 22 million engagements (July 7th, Camp Mystic floods)
Note: the NYC flooding this week gave this topic a modest bump this week, but nowhere near the national attention that the Camp Mystic floods got.
Big Beautiful Bill: 30 million engagements (July 3rd, House passage of the bill):
Note: We tracked over 7,000 posts related to OBBB on July 3, more than 2x any other single-day volume for the other topics listed)
Immigration and ICE: 39 million engagements (June 9th: Los Angeles riots, amplified by prominent voices like Dutch, Doechii, and Gavin Newsom)
So, put into perspective, the Epstein files are a major topic of conversation, but have not yet had the all-consuming peak of some other major news stories this summer. On the other hand, this story has sustained its peak engagements for 10 days, an impressive feat and far longer than most topics that come and go quickly online. Even more, Epstein is still currently eclipsing other similarly ever-present issues like immigration and the Big Beautiful Bill post-passage, driving more engagement than both of those topics combined.
Today’s Takeaway: It’s possible all it may take is another ill-timed quote or press conference from Trump to drive this topic to new heights, but left-leaning pages should maintain pressure by posting about the Epstein scandal. Amplifying right-leaning and neutral pages and calling out the corruption behind Trump and Republicans’ refusal to release the files can be effective in avoiding splitting support down typical party lines.
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