Three thoughts on the delicious and deserved Jeff Epstein wildfire currently engulfing MAGA world.
First, a follow up on my post from last week. I stand by what I said about general skepticism about the whole Epstein meta story — the belief that some significant number of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men slept with teenaged girls procured by Jeff Epstein and have used their power to keep the truth of their crimes secret. But some of you said I was either letting Epstein, his purported co-rapists or the MAGA movement off the hook. Not at all. I expressed something very specific which is that there are a lot of things that seem widely accepted about Epstein and his world for which there seems to be pretty thin actual evidence. But that’s totally consistent with wanting to turn over every stone to find out what’s real and what’s not. It is even more consistent with putting MAGA to its task. They created this. They ran on this. They used it to tarnish countless of their enemies based on little or no evidence. So there’s zero way anyone should let them just take a mulligan on the whole thing now. “Hey, so we took a look at all the secret information and it turns out it’s all fine. So we’re moving on.” No way.
Which brings me to the second point. MAGA and particularly MAGA social media and the broader penumbra of MAGA-adjacent influencers are completely on fire over the White House’s “nothing to see here.” Trump himself is getting roasted alive on Truth Social, his vanity social network, over his demand to move on. It’s a reminder that the Epstein story permeates into popular culture in a way that almost no other politics-related story does. And apropos of that point about traction outside the world of politics, my son a few days ago flagged for me that video of the Trump Cabinet meeting where Attorney General Pam Bondi gets asked by a reporter about the Epstein story and Trump jumps in and shuts the whole thing down. Move on! It’s done!, he says. We’re not talking about this anymore.
I’ll be frank with you: that single interchange shook my skepticism.
This weekend, Trump also started insisting that the “files” in the government’s possession are meaningless because they’re the work of Barack Obama and “Crooked Hillary,” John Brennan and James Comey. More fabrications like the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.” My skepticism about the broader story can’t armor me against the pretty obvious conclusion that there are some pretty bad “files” that have to be discredited as the work of “Crooked Hillary.”
Back to the Cabinet meeting.
It goes without saying that whatever Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are up to comes directly from and in the service of Trump. So it’s not like I think they’re freelancing or pursuing some angle on their own. But for him to jump in like that, really in earnest … well, that’s another level. Even with his own angles Trump can seldom resist playing both sides of the game on occasion, if only rhetorically. It’s part of him being in charge, always looking for his angle. So, as I said, this shook my skepticism.
Finally, third, something pretty weird. Yesterday I watched this video in which Sid Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz (Sid does most of the talking) interview the journalist Michael Wolff about Trump and Epstein. If you have any interest in this story I’d strongly recommend watching the video. The gist is that Wolff says he has like dozens of hours of interviews with Epstein (apparently for a never-pursued book project) from 2017 and 2018 and that Epstein and Trump were supposedly very close friends and partiers for like a decade until some falling out in 2004 over a real estate deal. At least in this interview he doesn’t allege anything illegal. But descriptions of years and years of them partying together, traveling together, sharing girlfriends. Wolff also alleges that Epstein showed him snapshots of him and Trump together with topless young women in rollicking, partying type contexts. He says Epstein described Trump raping journalist E. Jean Carroll, or at least a set of facts that is clearly that incident. He goes on to say that he’s pitched the material to big media but they’ve generally shied away, considering it too hot to handle. It honestly never occurred to me that Trump and Epstein had the kind of relationship that Wolff claims Epstein described to him in anything but anti-Trump speculation and fever dreams.
This again shook my skepticism, not so much in the Epstein meta story as in a possible Trump-Epstein story.
But let me point to some very real skepticism. Wolff is both a very prominent journalist who has written for all the big glossy mags and also kind of notorious. He’s clearly teasing this stuff to land a book contract or something. But that’s what his kind of journalists (by which I mean big-time, insidery journalists) do. Of course he wants a big payday and platform. But to me it kind of beggars belief that there are endless hours of Epstein on tape describing being like best friends with Trump for a decade and that somehow hasn’t gotten out — that the interviews haven’t at least gone public. As I’ve said, I’m not an expert on Epstein world. So I’m not saying their existence has been a total secret. Apparently they’ve at least been alluded to before. And Wolff has actually alluded to this Epstein book project and the interviews at least as far back as 2021. But again, that kind of motherlode is out there and it’s remained under wraps? And they’re in the hands of a very big time and very skilled at self-promoting journalist? That kind of beggars belief to me.
I’m completely willing to believe that no big-time media company has been wiling to touch this since January 2025. But what about before January 2025 or November 2024? It doesn’t really add up to me that no one would touch this? Now? Under Trump II rules? Sure. But before? That doesn’t really compute to me. Let’s add that Wolff claims to have seen these snapshots seven or eight years ago. But he has no proof of that. He doesn’t even claim to have proof.
The whole story just rattles too good to be true to me.
There’s one additional point. My understanding is that Epstein’s lawyer at the time of his imprisonment said that at the moment when Epstein had the greatest incentive to spill the beans, he told him that he just didn’t have any beans. At least not on Trump. If that’s true, where does that fit?
But here’s the thing. Those tapes either exist or they don’t. The interviews happened or they didn’t. And as much as I’m very willing to believe that Wolff is gilding the lily about the closeness of the relationship between Epstein and Trump, playing up enticing details and more, it’s pretty hard for me to believe that Wolff would simply make up these interviews, at least a rough sense of what they contain or — if I’m understanding this right — the existence of tapes of the conversations still in his possession. That doesn’t add up to me, not for someone of Wolff’s prominence, reputation, etc., etc. Could it be made up? Sure. And I’ve already said it seems to beggar belief to me that these tapes have just been sitting around. But again, that just doesn’t play to me.