When my sister was in second grade, we went to church on a Friday morning for her first confession.

The church was huge, with an echoing quality amplified by its tomblike silence. One by one, the little kids shuffled into the confessional while parents and other Catholic school students sat in the pews.

And then it happened. A booming screech came from behind the wooden door, reverberating off the stone walls like the voice of the Lord.

“Oh my God! I HAVE SINNED!”

But it wasn’t the Almighty. It was my tiny sister, less than a yard tall and mostly blonde pigtails.

It wasn’t that Becky was coming to terms with her soul. She hadn’t murdered anyone. She was just doing what she had been trained to do.

You see, when you go to Catholic school, sometimes your wires can get a little crossed. In one class, Becky was learning about the sacraments and what to do for confession. But that class was followed by reading, where she was being taught to look for context clues and read with expression.

Oh, she did. She expressed the heck out of her part in the confessional. The nuns were … well, let’s say they weren’t thrilled.

I relate this story not just to embarrass my sister. (That’s part of it.) It’s also to underscore a political truth.

You can’t teach someone to do something and then get upset when they do. That is what is happening right now with a lot of MAGA supporters.

An attention on certain theories has long been important to certain corners of President Donald Trump’s base. The truth of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes and his death is one of those. From grassroots supporters to high-level appointees, getting to the core of that apple has been a vocal and oft-repeated cry.

But now that Attorney General Pam Bondi says there is nothing to see and records won’t be released, it is creating a dissonance within the group. Megyn Kelly says she is still a Trump supporter but smells a conspiracy. Alex Jones pushed back on the administration’s stance. X.com, with the help of owner and former DOGE-master Elon Musk, is dripping with comments and confusion.

And, on Wednesday, the president hit back at his supporters in a rare fit of pique for his own people.

“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” he said on Truth Social.

He called the whole thing a scam. He said it was a hoax. He said Republicans who believe it were stupid and foolish.

But this is kicking a dog for barking when you’ve trained it to bark.

It isn’t just that conspiracy theories in general have been accepted or spread by Trump, his campaign and his supporters. It’s that this one in particular was nurtured and fed. The promise of the release of records has been a refrain. The call is coming from inside the house.

It’s understandable the president would like people to think about anything else. It’s just as understandable that his followers will want the red meat they’ve been promised for years.

It isn’t fair to attack those supporters when they are just responding to what they have been told was coming.

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