Now Trump Is Really Scared by Epstein: Biographer
Author Michael Wolff said the president is “p***ed” at his own people for hyping up the Epstein files.
President Donald Trump appears distraught after realizing the Epstein scandal won’t be easy to resolve, author Michael Wolff told The Daily Beast podcast on Monday.
The Trump biographer told Daily Beast editor Hugh Dougherty that the president was “happy to ignore” the long-running controversy surrounding financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein until his supporters began promoting the infamous “Epstein Files.”
In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that she had a list of Epstein’s clients on her desk. FBI Director Kash Patel urged Republican lawmakers in a 2023 interview to “act responsibly and reveal the identities of pedophiles.” His deputy, Dan Bongino, also said there was “a reason to hide” this client list, which conspiracy theorists believe includes prominent figures in politics and business.
Wolff said: “They were going to expose Epstein without realizing that by exposing him, they would most likely expose Donald Trump. So they made a mistake in announcing their intention. Trump got angry about it. They then tried to cover up their mistake by saying, ‘No, there’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.’ And here we are.”
A wave of outrage erupted earlier this month after the FBI announced in a memo that there was, in fact, no client list and that Epstein had committed suicide in custody in 2019.
Trump’s inner circle quickly called for Bundy’s head for not handing over the files she had been talking about for months. But she brushed off the criticism at a recent cabinet meeting: “My response [to Fox News] was, ‘It’s on my desk for review,’ meaning the dossier, plus the ones on John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. That’s what I meant.”
Wolff said of Trump: “I think, first of all, he’s at war with his own Justice Department. This is a problem of their own making. And I think Trump has been determined to ignore the Epstein case for years.”
Trump and Epstein have been close friends for more than a decade. “I was Donald’s best friend for 10 years,” Epstein told Wolff in a 2017 interview. Similarly, the president told New York magazine in 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. He’s a great guy. He’s a great guy to be around.” It’s even said that he appreciates beautiful women as much as I do, often younger ones.”
Wolf added: “Because of what ultimately happened to Jeffrey Epstein, what he became, and what he symbolizes, being Jeffrey Epstein’s closest friend, Donald Trump, is a risky business. So he wants to ignore it. He simply wants to ignore it.”
Wolff said Trump wondered why his supporters continued to talk about the Epstein files.
“His mindset is one of pure denial. ‘Why are people talking about Epstein? There’s no truth to it. I’m not involved in this. It happened a long time ago.’ So, again, denial, denial, denial. And you know, Trump is very good at that,” he said.
However, some of Trump’s most prominent spokespeople have agreed to tone down their criticism of the administration for the gaffe. Conservative radio host Charlie Kirk told his audience he was “done with Epstein for now” after Trump called him on Saturday.
He said, “I’m going to trust my friends in the administration, I’m going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, to solve the problem. It’s in their hands.” »
