Why Epstein has Trump crashing out
The
hole gets deeper every time he opens his mouth.
Aug 01, 2025
Trump
at the White House on Tuesday. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty)
Jeffrey Epstein has proven an unshakeable anchor for Donald
Trump’s presidency, and if this proves to be the one jam Trump can’t
successfully wriggle out of, he’ll have no one but himself to blame.
While in Scotland on Monday, Trump was pressed about the
infamous Epstein files. One of his responses was particularly revealing.
“You know, it’s a hoax that’s been built up way beyond
proportion. I can say this: Those files were run by the worst scum on Earth,”
Trump told reporters. “They were run by Comey. They were run by Garland. They
were run by Biden. If they had something, they would have released them. Now,
they can easily put something in the files that’s a phony.”
Note how Trump projects his criminality onto others. He
has weaponized the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi —
his personal consigliere posing as attorney general — and he can’t comprehend
why his political opponents wouldn’t have done the same, especially when it was
in their political interest.
Former President Joe Biden was underwater in the polls for
months. If he had damaging information against Trump, especially after that
disastrous June presidential debate, why wouldn’t he have ordered Garland to
release the files immediately? Obviously, any fair-minded observer would point
out that’s not how Biden and especially the norms-obsessed Attorney General
Merrick Garland operated, but Trump, who claims that every criminal case
against him was a political hit job, can’t fathom that his foes have actual
scruples.
Trump's effort
to distance from Epstein complicated by his deep ties to Epstein
·
Jul 19
Trump simultaneously insists that his name isn’t in the
Epstein files, but if his name is in the files, bad actors
must’ve somehow “doctored” them, then failed to release the damaging info
during the actual campaign when it would’ve made sense for them to do so. That
wacky Democratic “scum” just left the “doctored” files as a weird “gag gift”
for his administration to find. Does your head hurt yet?
The logic makes zero sense, but it reflects how frazzled
Trump is after he reportedly learned in May that he appears multiple times in
the investigate files related to the deceased sexual predator. The news must’ve
genuinely unsettled the president based on his increasingly desperate behavior
as he tries and fails to make the story go away.
Who cares about Jeffrey Epstein, anyway?
In July of last year, the Washington Post published a piece headlined, “Trump and
Jeffrey Epstein: No links shown in latest documents,” which claimed that
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu and liberal social media posts had mischaracterized
Trump’s relationship with Epstein. It looked as if Trump had dodged another
political bullet, and in the fall Trump went as far as to suggest he’d release Epstein
investigatory documents if he won the election.
While Trump failed to deliver on his campaign promises to
instantly lower grocery prices and end Russia’s war in Ukraine, releasing the
Epstein list and exposing those involved seemed like an easy slam dunk — at
least assuming the new president wasn’t worried about implicating himself. He
must’ve felt some sense of security based on how his picks for attorney general
and FBI director initially spoke about the issue.
The conspiracy to free the world's most notorious sex trafficker
·
Jul 30
During his Senate confirmation hearing in January, FBI
Director Kash Patel told Sen. Marsha Blackburn, "Child
sex trafficking has no place in the United States of America. And I will do
everything, if confirmed as FBI director, to make sure the American public
knows the full weight of what happened in the past and how we are going to
counterman missing children and exploited children going forward.”
Blackburn accused former Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin
and former FBI Director Christopher Wray of stonewalling her efforts to “get
those records of who flew on Epstein's plane and who helped him build this
international human trafficking sex trafficking ring.” Blackburn is a
thoughtless MAGA stooge, and it’s unlikely she would’ve pushed for the public
release of information that she believed might compromise Trump.
On February 21, during a now-infamous Fox News interview, Pam Bondi said Epstein’s client
list was “sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s
been a directive by President Trump.” But that directive changed abruptly in
May.
Not long after Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche reportedly told Trump privately that his
name was mentioned “multiple” times in the Epstein files, Bondi issued a memo
stating that there was no “client list” and Epstein’s death was a suicide —
“case closed,” nothing to see here, kindly forget you ever heard the name
“Jeffrey Epstein.”
The MAGA cult, however, didn’t buy it, and there was
significant backlash. Right-wing groups attacked Bondi and claimed Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan
Bongino were “hostages of the deep state” because of how they handled the case.
As the agita mounted, Trump defended Bondi in a rambling
Truth Social post on July 12:
What’s
going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” They’re all going after
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team,
MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE
TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy
who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again.
That unhinged post is where Trump first suggested that the
Epstein files were written by everyone he’s ever hated (emphasis ours):
Why
are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey,
Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned
the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE
LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like
they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used
on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands.
Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was
ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use
it?
That gambit backfired spectacularly, as Google searches for
Epstein only increased after Trump demanded that everyone shut up about him. A
significant number of comments to Trump’s post expressed frustration and
disappointment with their mad king: “This statement breaks my heart, Mr.
President,” one commenter wrote. And another demanded, “We want the
ELITE PEDOS exposed!”
An attendee at Turning Point USA’s Student Action
Summit told Steve Bannon, “In 2016, we trusted
the plan with Trump, but now Trump has become the deep state …What is more deep
state than covering up for pedophiles?”
Trump betrays his conspiracy-addled base
·
Jul 15
A few days later, Trump told reporters the Epstein files
were “boring,” like he was reviewing one of those streaming TV series set in
regency England. And he feigned shock over the ongoing “fascination” with the
case.
“He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in
terms of life. I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of
interest to anybody,” he said. “It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's
boring, and I don't understand why it keeps going. I think really only pretty
bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.”
Of course, Trump himself kept this going for years.
He fueled conspiracy theories about Epstein
dating back to his first term. Back in 2019, he retweeted a post from conservative actor
and comedian Terrence K. Williams that stated, “#JefferyEpstein had information
on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.” He also shared a post from a random user
who claimed recently unsealed documents had revealed that Bill Clinton “took
private trips to Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedophilia island.’”
Trump can’t put Epstein back in the box
Trump acts as if his supporters will just forget about
Epstein because he said so, but that’s incredibly naive. He doesn’t fully
appreciate the monster he created. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump, blasted him
last week for not releasing the files and accused the administration of
“gaslighting.”
"This one's a line in the sand because this is one
where there's a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was going
to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved," Rogan said.
You’ll notice that Rogan’s stated expectations for Trump
are consistent with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which contends that Trump
himself is destined to defeat a “Satanic cabal” of high-profile pedophiles that
included Epstein.
Trump himself spent years spreading QAnon nonsense online.
Media Matters reported last year that Trump reposted or
promoted QAnon-affiliated accounts on Truth Social more than 800 times since
his social media site launched. QAnon imagines Trump as their white knight
against sex abuse. It was always weird casting for the man caught on tape
boasting about grabbing women by the genitals and saying, “when you’re a star, they let you do
it. You can do anything.”
Trump continues to find reasons to avoid releasing the
likely damning files, all while digging a giant hole for himself. Lately, he
can’t even seem to discuss his past relationship with Epstein without sounding
like a total freak.
Monday, he told reporters, “I never went to the island. And
Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times ... I never had the privilege of
going to his island.”
Late night talk show hosts immediately leaped on Trump’s
use of the world “privilege” to describe invitations to an island where Epstein
and his equally sick friends abused young girls.
Most bizarre was Trump’s explanation for why he finally
banished Epstein from Mar-a-Lago more than 20 years ago.
“That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t
want to waste your time by explaining it,” Trump said. “But for years, I
wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that
was inappropriate.”
Shockingly, Trump doesn’t mean all the sex trafficking and
child rape. No, what he considers “inappropriate” and truly unforgivable is
that Epstein “stole” employees from him.
“I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again,”
Trump complained. That’s when Epstein became “persona non grata” in Trump’s
view. “I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know
the truth.”
This is like saying you cut ties with Jeffery Dahmer
because he never returned a cook book you loaned him. However, it is consistent
with Trump’s narcissistic megalomania. He only really cares about perceived
offenses against himself.
Even worse is the revelation that the employees Epstein
“stole” were in fact underage girls, including then 16-year-old Virginia
Giuffre, who said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to wealthy
and powerful sex predators. She died by suicide in April.
“I don’t know,” Trump said when a reporter pressed him
further about Giuffre. “I think she worked in the spa, I think so. I think that
was one of the people — yeah, he stole her. And by the way, she had no
complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.”
This revelation alone would be a presidency-ending scandal
in a normal administration. Ghislaine Maxwell — the convicted sex offender
Trump is considering pardoning — recruited and groomed Giuffre for Epstein’s
sex trafficking ring at Trump’s own residence. Trump was aware enough of what
was going on to hold a grudge against Epstein for “stealing” what he considered
his property, but he remained silent. And to distract from this, Trump and his
Republican enablers have spent the past two weeks concocting conspiracy
theories about Barack Obama that are so outlandish they’re impossible to take
seriously unless you have brainworms.
At this point, Trump might as well release all the files.
They can’t do any more damage than he does himself whenever he opens his mouth
on the subject.
