WASHINGTON (TNS) — “Bring in the clowns” is a great motto for a circus but a bad one for a political party. I know because I was there when the Republican Party and conservative journalists started inviting in the Trumpy clowns in 2009 at the conservative Washington Times. We all know the result is that they took over the Republican Party.

Now that the MAGA wing of the GOP is tearing itself apart over Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision not to release the Epstein sex trafficking files, Democrats are jumping into the debate with both feet, hoping to divide Republicans and put themselves on the right side of the conspiracy theorists who think there are earthshaking revelations hidden in the FBI archives.

So far:

• The Democratic National Committee launched a bot to spread the word. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff launched an attack from the campaign trail calling the Trump administration decision a “broken promise.”
• Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, posted: “Why are the Epstein files still hidden? Who are the rich & powerful being protected? On Tuesday, I’m introducing an amendment to force a vote demanding the FULL Epstein files be released to the public.”
• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, wrote: “Wow, who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?”

The Democrats are fueling the fires of conspiracy in an attempt to undermine the Trump administration’s decision to tell the apparent truth about the Epstein files. Now that the Trump administration is angering its wackiest fringe, Democrats are welcoming the red-nosed fools with open arms.

It is the same dangerous move that conservatives and Republicans made when they embraced Donald Trump’s false allegations that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus ineligible to be president.

At The Washington Times, where I was a senior editor in the opinion section, I watched as my news colleagues covered every factual development that raised any question about the issue, no matter how preposterous, quoting the most extreme Republican conspiracy theorists with a straight face. In the opinion section, we used any excuse to mention Kenya and Obama in the same sentence no matter how ridiculous while telling ourselves that by staying just barely on the side of factual accuracy, we were just having fun with the issue to torture our political opponents.

In the copy I was responsible for, mostly outside commentary, I never did it, but I didn’t make an issue of it when others played along. I probably wouldn’t have won a fight over it, but I didn’t try. I regret my role, no matter how minor in fueling Trump’s early rise to Republican dominance. I didn’t invite the clowns, but I didn’t try to push them out, either.

If Democrats keep going down this road, lending their credibility and amplification to wacko conspiracy theorists on the right, they’ll regret building the forces who are destroying our political culture.

This won’t be the last opportunity for Democrats and their progressive media allies to score political points by doing the wrong thing when hard realities force the Trump administration to abandon its endorsement of fringe thinking.

Trump and his administration have made common cause with the purveyors of a number of dubious conspiracy theories, including that Ukraine invited the war with Russia, that the 2020 election was stolen and that vaccines cause disease. As the Trump administration unfolds, reality is going to force Trump to begin to reckon with the facts, and in some cases he might choose to tell the truth, as Bondi did on Epstein.

It is already happening with Ukraine, as Trump is allowing more American weapons to get to Ukraine’s defenders. It might not be too long before Russia’s behavior forces Trump to abandon his relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin altogether.

Just this weekend, Trump tried to use the administration’s investigation of the 2020 election as a shield against its Epstein detractors, saying that uncovering 2020 wrongdoing was a much bigger deal than sex trafficking. Since there was no such corruption, the Trump Justice Department is going to have a hard time coming up with indictments to make their case. Eventually, the true believers will notice.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. is going to have to make his case that vaccines are a health threat and take action to end their use. Reality is likely to intervene, forcing the Trump administration to back off that stance.

Democrats should cheer Trump administration steps to move closer to reality and tell Americans the truth, not embrace the clowns to score political points. Given how conservatives and Republicans have acted in the past, I don’t have high hopes that the left will do any better.

(David Mastio is a national columnist for McClatchy newspapers and The Kansas City Star.)