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Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's pre-election comments about ‘Epstein files' resurface in edited Fox News interview
Last summer, roughly five months before Election Day 2024, Donald Trump sat down for one of his many 'Fox and Friends' interviews, which didn't generate a ton of headlines at the time. (One of the hosts asking the Republican questions at the time was, oddly enough, future Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.) But the interview resurfaced this week because of Trump's comments about the so-called Epstein files. At the time, Fox News' Rachel Campos-Duffy (wife of Trump's current transportation secretary, Sean Duffy) began by asking the then-candidate whether he would declassify government files related to 9/11, and Trump said he would. She then asked about declassifying John F. Kennedy assassination files, and he again said he would. The co-host went on to ask, 'Would you declassify the Epstein files?' referring to the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the late millionaire pedophile who was arrested during Trump's first term. What viewers saw at the time was Trump replying, 'Yeah, I would.' But what those who tuned into the interview didn't see was the rest of his answer. In a video that resurfaced in light of the ongoing controversy surrounding his team's handling of Epstein-related documents, Trump, after saying he supported access to the files, quickly added, 'I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don't know, you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.' Asked if such a move would help restore public trust, he added, 'Yeah. I don't know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died. It'd be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn't happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I'd go a long way toward that one.' To be sure, this isn't altogether new information. In fact, Semafor had a good report on this last summer. (Fox News did not respond to the outlet's request for comment at the time.) But it's returned to the fore for a couple of reasons. First, the comments Trump made last summer are newly relevant given his administration's efforts to make this ongoing fiasco go away. In fact, it seems likely that many who want the White House to follow through on its earlier commitments will take a keen interest in this year-old appearance. Second, the fact that Fox News edited the interview this way also seems newly significant given that the president has been quite hysterical for months about CBS News' '60 Minutes' including some benign edits in a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Indeed, the Republican was so outraged — or at least pretended to be outraged — by the edits that he recently accused the news magazine of 'fraud,' airing 'defamatory' segments, 'illegally' intervening in the last presidential election, 'corruptly changing major answers to Interview questions' and being a 'Political Operative' that has engaged in 'unlawful and illegal behavior.' He added that CBS 'should lose' its broadcast license and 'pay a big price,' while calling on the FCC to 'impose the maximum fines and punishment.' Whether the president would expect Fox News to face similar penalties — or endorse Harris filing a $20 billion lawsuit against the network, which was the amount of the since-settled civil suit he filed against CBS and its corporate parent — remains unclear. This article was originally published on
Boston Globe
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Hegseth pulled airstrike info from secure military channel for Signal posts, NBC News reports
Advertisement The person spoke on condition of anonymity of out fear of reprisal for speaking to the press. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up It's the second chat involving Hegseth to be called into question This is the second chat group where Hegseth posted the Yemen airstrike information. The first leaked Signal chat accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic and has caused an inspector general investigation in the Defense Department. Hegseth has not directly acknowledged that he set up the second chat, which had more than a dozen people on it, including his wife, his lawyer and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired as a senior liaison to the Pentagon for the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the secretary blamed the disclosure of the second Signal chat on leaks from disgruntled former staff. Hegseth has aggressively denied that the information he posted was classified. Regardless of that, Signal is a commercially available app that is encrypted but is not a government network and not authorized to carry classified information. Advertisement 'I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,' Hegseth told Fox News on Tuesday. 'I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That's what I've said from the beginning.' Former defense secretary calls it a 'serious' breach Based on the specificity of the launch times, that information would have been classified, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the AP in a phone interview. 'It is unheard of to have a Secretary of Defense committing these kind of serious security breaches,' said Panetta, who served during the Obama administration, and who also was director of the Central Intelligence Agency during Obama's term. 'Developing attack plans for defensive reasons is without question the most classified information you can have." The news comes as Hegseth has shaken up much of his inner circle. He is said to have become increasingly isolated and suspicious about whom he can trust, and is relying on an increasingly smaller and smaller circle of people. In the last week he has fired or transferred six of his inner support circle, including Hegseth aide Dan Caldwell; the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, Colin Carroll; and Hegseth's deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick. Those three were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department hunts down leaks of inside information, and in his 'Fox and Friends' interview Tuesday, an agitated Hegseth accused those staff — whom he had worked with and known for years — of 'attempting to leak and sabotage' the administration. Advertisement Hegseth confirmed Tuesday that chief of staff Joe Kasper would be transitioning to a new position. Former Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell is also temporarily shifting to a more direct support role for Hegseth, and former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.
