MAGA comes to Trump's defense on Epstein after WSJ turmoil
The Journal reported on Thursday about an alleged letter the president sent to Epstein in 2003 for his 50th birthday. The letter, a copy of which was not featured in the piece, reportedly has text framed by the outline of a naked woman and features the line 'Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.'
Trump has denied writing the letter. The president sued the Journal the next day in federal court in the Southern District of Florida's Miami division, demanding billions of dollars in damages.
'This lawsuit is filed not only on behalf of your favorite President, ME, but also in order to continue standing up for ALL Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media,' the president said on Truth Social.
Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who last week called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to review the Epstein files, said on his 'War Room' show Friday, 'In fact, we made the recommendations that are the best for President Trump in this movement, which is President Trump is best when it's attack, attack, attack. This is the deep state. This is the ruling class in America. They're trying to use it to destroy President Trump.'
On the podcast, Bannon asked MAGA podcaster and influencer Jack Posobiec, 'Where are we in all of this, sir?'
'We're so back. Look. Everyone is firing on all cylinders. The MAGA movement is completely united behind this fight right now,' Posobiec said.
Conservative commentator and host Megyn Kelly, who has called out Trump supporters who deferred to the administration's posture on the Epstein controversy, said the Journal article on Thursday was the 'dumbest attempted hit piece I've ever read.'
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose relationship with Trump soured in recent months amid a public fallout, said the 'letter sounds bogus.'
Hours after the Journal article was published, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday night to release relevant grand jury testimony in the Epstein case.
The order from Trump was welcomed by MAGA as parts of the base have expressed deep dissatisfaction with the administration following last week's release of an unnamed joint DOJ and FBI memo, stating that Epstein did not keep the so-called 'client list' and that he died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial.
After Trump issued the order to Bondi on Thursday night, Turning Point USA founder and conservative activist Charlie Kirk wrote on X that it was a 'major move. Let's go!'
The DOJ followed through on Friday, filing a pair of nearly identical motions to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, requesting to unseal the grand jury transcripts. The DOJ said it would shield the names of potential victims and 'personal identifying information' prior to releasing the transcript. The release of grand jury transcripts is rare due to sensitive information, but not impossible.
Right-wing activist Laura Loomer, an ardent supporter of Trump, slammed the former Chairman of News Corp Rubert Murdoch and argued that the president should 'cut him off' forever. News Corp owns the Journal.
'Rupert Murdoch should never be allowed to have access to Donald Trump ever again. He's a slime ball. He's a liar and he obviously tried to weaponize his News Corp to, and his media platform, very wealthy, multi-billion-dollar media platform, to assassinate the character of President Trump, because he was not successful in assassinating President Trump's 2024 presidential election,' Loomer said Friday while on Bannon's 'War Room' show.
Trump bashed GOP voters earlier this week for being overly focused on the Epstein case and told his supporters that they should move on to other issues. The president also wondered why the Democratic Party lawmakers did not call for the release of the Epstein files while they controlled the White House and had the majority in the Senate.
'If there was a 'smoking gun' on Epstein, why didn't the Dems, who controlled the 'files' for four years, and had [former Attorney General Merrick] Garland and [ex-prosecutor Maureen] Comey in charge, use it,' Trump said Friday on Truth Social, adding 'BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!'
Even if the administration releases all of the grand jury testimony, Trump said on Saturday that even those disclosures will not be enough to please the 'troublemakers and radical left lunatics.'
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Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But Epstein clearly has posed a problem for the White House. At minimum, it has been a distraction at a time when Trump wants to tout his legislative victories. If it continues to grab public attention, it could pose a more significant threat at a time when Trump's standing with the public already has been on the decline, though polling shows him steady with his own party. Advertisement Trump lashed out at the Journal's story after it was published, threatening to sue both the newspaper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, who has been an important, although inconstant, political ally. The next day, he filed a libel lawsuit in federal court in southern Florida, alleging the article defamed him. Advertisement Trump's handling of concerns related to Epstein, the wealthy child sex predator who died in jail in 2019, recently provoked a rare eruption among the president's most loyal supporters, prompting MAGA leaders to caution that some in Trump's base could become disillusioned enough to sit out the midterm elections. Many Americans believe the U.S. government has hidden information on possible associates of Epstein who may also have committed sex crimes against minors. Some have questioned the official ruling that Epstein's death was a suicide. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Tuesday and Wednesday found 60 percent of Americans think the 'government is hiding details about Epstein's death,' including 55 percent of Republicans. And 69 percent said the federal government is hiding details about Epstein's clients, including 62 percent of Republicans. The belief that others took part in Epstein's abuse of minors was especially prominent among some of the president's strongest supporters, who believed Trump would expose the corruption upon retaking office. The Justice Department's announcement this month that there were no more files from Epstein's case that warranted release caused intense anger among those people and among some MAGA influencers. At least among prominent MAGA figures, however, the Journal article has triggered a now-familiar reaction - causing Trump's fractured base to quickly rally around him as a victim. That has quieted much of the recent MAGA frustration. At least for now. 'This is primarily a within-MAGA problem,' Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster, said of the Epstein situation. 'The vast majority of Americans don't spend every waking moment wondering what happened to Epstein.' Advertisement The other group of Americans among whom the Epstein case could pose a problem for Trump, however, are the less-partisan, more disengaged, occasional voters among whom Trump did extremely well during the 2024 campaign. Even before the Epstein case, Trump had been losing ground among such voters. A characteristic quality of such voters is disaffection from the political system and suspicion that it favors the wealthy and well connected. The Epstein case plays into those voters' existing feelings and could cause some who have supported Trump to lose faith in him. Democrats have tried to capitalize on that, seizing on the issue and calling for the Trump administration to release files about the Epstein case. At least so far, however, not many voters have been closely tuned in to news about the case, although online search traffic has increased sharply in recent days. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted over the past week found that a relatively small share of voters, 2 in 10, said they were following news about the Epstein files 'very closely.' Top right-wing commentators over the past week issued negative predictions, some dire, about Republicans losing down-ballot seats in next year's midterm elections. Some longtime MAGA supporters felt betrayed that Trump was not sufficiently going after the so-called Deep State, they warned, while other newcomers to the movement, including young men who were not previously politically active, would simply be disenchanted and not bother to show up again to the polls. By the end of the week, most of those warnings from prominent Trump supporters had quieted, replaced by solidarity behind the president. Among those recently sounding the alarm was Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's former adviser who hosts a daily talk show popular with Trump's MAGA supporters. 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Prominent conservatives were quick to mock the allegations raised against Trump, posting their own stick-figure drawings of women as a nod to the Journal's reporting that Trump's 50th birthday card to Epstein included an apparent hand-drawn outline of a naked woman. Trump allies - and even one recent high-profile enemy, Elon Musk - also quickly dismissed the alleged text included in the card, saying it did not sound like something Trump would write. Trump and his White House advisers have expressed annoyance for much of the past two weeks at the continued focus on Epstein. Fresh off a July 4 signing of Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill,' which the White House has touted as the fulfillment of some of Trump's campaign promises, the president and his team have wanted to talk about anything else. Advertisement 'I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country's history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,' Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier in the week. By Thursday night, that aggravation had turned to anger, with Trump vowing to sue Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal over the reporting on a letter he said was 'fake.' While Trump and his administration have insisted that the general public is not concerned about Epstein or their review of documents related to him, recent polling shows that voters across the spectrum question his handling of the case. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found 54 percent of Americans disapproved of how Trump was handling the issue, while just 17 percent approved. Republicans were split on Trump's handling of the issue, with 35 percent approving, 30 percent disapproving and 35 percent unsure or not answering the question. 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The MAGA provocateur has nailed the Trump 'trifecta,' according to Michael Wolff.
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