It's a slow weekend and I'm going to wildly speculate with some theories that have probably been mentioned a thousand times before.
I do think Trump is on the list. (And wasn't that public knowledge already? Did anybody NOT know he associated with Epstein?) I don't think he's a child fucker. Not because I consider him to be a moral person, but because there's no way the Uniparty would've sat on substantial evidence of it. They tried to burn down the entire country to keep him out of the Presidency. They tried to have him killed directly, twice. Don't tell me that outing him as a pedo would be a bridge too far. So, a few possibilities.
Maybe he's using it as blackmail.
Maybe he isn't a pedophile, but friends/family/political allies are.
Maybe pretty much EVERYBODY is on the list, and releasing it would bring down the entire government overnight.
But that doesn't explain why he would continue to promise to publish the list once he assumed office. Presumably he had some idea what was on it at that point. If he continued to promise it without even looking at it when he had the chance, that is historical levels of idiocy. To be clear, I am not discounting that possibility, but I don't think it's the most likely explanation.
Here's the thing. If we reasonably assume that Trump saw the list after taking office, continued to talk about releasing it, then tried to pretend it never existed, something changed. Something caused Trump to totally reverse course on this.
I honestly think the strongest possibility is this: The Illuminati (whoever the fuck they actually are) show up and tell Trump, if you release this, we're going to kill you and your entire extended family. We won't miss this time. The consequences won't matter because we'll have nothing left to lose. Publish it, we dare you.
Something like that is the only thing I can think of to explain the complete 180.