When a reporter asked Attorney General Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein investigation last week, President Trump could not contain himself a moment longer.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he said, pushing back against the question. “This guy’s been talked about for years. … Are people still talking about this guy?”

It was a day after the Justice Department concluded the convicted sex offender died by an unassisted suicide — not by foul play, as countless rumor-mongers and conspiracy theorists had alleged.

Sorry, conspiracy junkies. The DOJ uncovered none of the rumored “client list” of powerful friends from both parties who in the world of paranoid politics were widely speculated to have reasons to silence Epstein.

Epstein was accused of trafficking and sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. He pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting in a Florida state court in 2008 as part of a deal to avoid federal charges.

He later was charged with sex trafficking in New York federal court but died in jail while awaiting trial.

Yet this case, like any other “heater,” as prosecutors often call an attention- grabbing case like this one, is not about to slip far out of the rumor mills and conspiracy theorists across party lines.

Whether they exist or not, “the Epstein files” became a story in themselves, unfettered by anything as mundane as a lack of evidence, and easily available to be weaponized by various factions.

The files found their way into the news more recently as Trump’s feud with his former ally Elon Musk heated up. The billionaire entrepreneur claimed that the Trump administration had withheld the “files” because the president was named in them.

Well, who wasn’t named in the “files,” if you believe the rumors? I don’t believe them, but in the age of social media, the never-ending cascade of information and misinformation at least offers some entertainment value if you don’t take it too seriously.

Yet it’s ironic that the reporter’s question about Epstein provoked the president of the United States into an on-camera hissy fit. I also detect a measure of cosmic justice. After all, it was Trump who made a campaign promise to open the “Epstein files” in what he implied would be a day of comeuppance for his political enemies.

Historian Richard Hofstadter was a pioneer observer of what he called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which he described in a 1964 Harper’s Magazine analysis of the use of loose facts and pseudo-facts to build an alternative reality for political ends.

He was inspired partly by conservative Republican Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign that year. He lost the campaign against President Lyndon B. Johnson, who led a landslide in a nation still shaken by President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but history shows that loss led to the conservative ascendancy and Republican recovery that continues today.

The DOJ memo says no one else involved in the Epstein case will be charged. Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offenses.

Is this a significant turn in the political firmament, or is it merely an indication that Trump’s tactical use of conspiracy theories is having unintended consequences? It’s hard to say, but it may not bode well that his administration is stuffed with conspiracy theorists, including two — FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who have pushed the “Epstein files” narrative.

I don’t expect much in the way of reliable further revelations, but news is a business that tries to prepare for the unexpected — with healthy skepticism.

As an old-school journo, I still rely on the advice of the old Chicago City News Bureau slogan: If your mother says she loves you, check it out — especially if it arrives in a tweet.