The survey found that a solid 52-40 majority of voters agreed with the statement, with the other 8% saying they were unsure as to his motivations. The findings will come as little surprise to a public that has morphed Trump’s codename for the war, Operation Epic Fury, into “Operation Epstein Fury.”

The belief that Trump is trying to knock Epstein off the front pages by going to war with Iran is most strongly held, unsurprisingly, by Democrats, who agree with the statement by an 81-14 margin. For those under 45, it is approaching an article of faith, with a 66%-26% majority agreeing with the idea. But even a quarter of Republicans told pollsters Trump launched the war as a distraction from Epstein.

The public’s belief that Trump waged the ongoing war to distract from the Epstein scandal was branded as antisemitic this week by the Anti-Defamation League and the Washington Post, which said the viral claim owed its popularity to a “pro-Iran propaganda network.”

“Pretty quickly after the conflict began, this conspiratorial rebranding of Operation Epic Fury into ‘Operation Epstein Fury’ started circulating on social media platforms,” Oren Segal, the ADL’s “senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence,” told the Post. An ADL report said the phrase “Epstein Fury” has been mentioned more than 90,000 times by roughly 60,000 accounts. The Post did not explain why it was antisemitic to believe that Trump launched the war to distract from the Epstein scandal beyond noting that Epstein was Jewish.