11 months ago
25
ARTICLE AD BOX
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday offered a menu of reasons for why Jeffrey Epstein should not be a President Donald Trump problem.
She blamed the media for focusing on something that she suggested wasn’t important to most Americans when Trump is doing so much of such import such as meeting with foreign leaders and working to curb drug overdoses. And for those who want to focus on the supposed lack of transparency, it’s really the Democrats who are to blame because former President Joe Biden should have released the files, she said. But, of course, there is no transparency problem, she noted during the same press briefing, because Attorney General Pam Bondi has released all relevant information.
Got it?
The multiple choice answers come as the Trump administration tries to move past a storyline that has divided the MAGA base like few others. Right-wing influencers and Trump supporters are furious over the Justice Department and FBI’s decision to withhold files related to Epstein, the disgraced mega-financier who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and was facing a slew of federal sex-trafficking charges when he killed himself in jail in 2019.
A Department of Justice memo last week — which ruled out foul play in Epstein’s death and claimed no existence of a “client list” — further enraged MAGA world after many in Trump’s orbit, including Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, teased big revelations and spent years fanning conspiracy theories.
Even as White House officials downplayed Epstein’s importance to everyday Americans, the president elevated the issue when he,in a social media post on Wednesday, denounced his own base, saying he didn’t want the support of people who trafficked in what he referred to as “bullshit.”
It’s not what most Americans care about
“The president doesn’t like to see Democrats and the mainstream media covering this like it’s the biggest story that the American people care about,” Leavitt responded to the first of nine questions about Epstein during Thursday’s briefing.
She pointed out that Trump on Tuesday signed the HALT Fentanyl Act, making it easier to jail and prosecute fentanyl traffickers, and chastised cable networks for not covering the signing live. She added that protecting innocent children was a top priority for the administration, which is why they are working to end gender-affirming care for minors, an issue dear to the MAGA base and one that helped the president retake the White House.
“The president made it a very early priority to sign very strong executive orders to cut off the funding for any hospital or any medical facility in this country that provides such barbaric procedures,” she said. “These are barbaric practices that no children, no child, innocent child should have to endure. And the president wants to protect the innocence of children.”
It’s the Democrats
“The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn’t do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes,” Leavitt said. “It was this president who directed the Department of Justice and the Attorney General to do an exhaustive review of all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which they did.”
Trump, on social media, compared Democrats’ focus on Epstein to the first-term investigations surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 election, which many in the MAGA movement assert was a hoax.
“It’s all [Democrats] have,” Trump posted. “They are no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates.”
But Trump also noted that Democrats “stick together like glue,” an implicit rebuke of the party he nominally controls. Conservative influencers including Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, have called for more transparency in the Epstein case. Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday also called for the Department of Justice to release all of its information on Epstein. Leavitt had little explanation for the daylight between Johnson and Trump and declined to comment on any conversations they may have had.
Trust the attorney general
The Trump administration officials overseeing the review of the Epstein files are “great patriots, some of the most trusted voices in the Republican party movement,” Leavitt said — while emphasizing that the investigation was led out of the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, not the White House.
And in response to four separate questions, Leavitt said Trump had encouraged Bondi to put forward any new “credible evidence” she comes across — leaving open the option, and for some supporters, hope, that new information may come to light.
“The president believes that he directed the Department of Justice to do an exhaustive and thorough review, and they did that, and they all agreed — the FBI director, the deputy FBI director, the attorney general — on the memo that they drafted and they released,” Leavitt said.
English (US) ·