Politics

Donald Trump, One Big Beautiful Bill Act , White House
President Donald Trump attends an event promoting his Administration’s “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act”, on June 26, 2025, in the East Room of the White House. Photo credit: The White House / Wikimedia (PD)

Donald Trump on Tuesday blew up when a reporter asked a question about Jeffrey Epstein, which will likely only fuel speculation about what is in all those files the FBI has been reviewing.

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Donald Trump, who routinely talks about the inanest issues at length and will answer almost any question posed to him, went off on a reporter of the right-wing New York Post who asked Attorney General Pam Bondi about Jeffrey Epstein at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump interjected angrily.

The president is correct, of course.

People have been talking about his old pal Jeffrey for a long time.

In this case, “people” means right-wing influencers who have told Trump’s most loyal supporters for years that Epstein, a wealthy pedophile, had a list of clients, i.e., fellow pedophiles, that he blackmailed.

That list, according to MAGA lore, also includes Bill Clinton.

However, more recently, another president’s name has been mentioned in connection with that list: Trump’s.

Elon tweet
Screenshot of Elon Musk’s deleted X post.

That’s perhaps not altogether surprising since Trump seemed to be at least aware of Epstein’s pedophiliac preferences.

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine more than two decades ago in an interview about Epstein. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

For Trump, having been mentioned in connection with the “client list” was never going to be good.

However, the timing was particularly unfortunate for the president because, only a month after Elon Musk said that the real reason why the Epstein files have not been made public is that Trump is in them, his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in a memo that a review of all available evidence “revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” that there is “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” and that the Bureau “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

That did not sit well with MAGA nation.

Even a Trump post on his own social media website was flooded with comments casting doubt on the findings of the FBI, and criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and his deputy Dan Bongino, the latter two of whom have pushed Epstein-related conspiracies themselves.

And that may explain why Trump was a bit testy when an Epstein question came up during the cabinet meeting.

“You’re asking — we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable,” an agitated Trump said. “I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy, with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”

Usually, Trump does not have any trouble answering even the dumbest questions.

Last week, for example, the president responded to a question about whether it was “a dream come true” for him that immigrants in a Florida concentration camp would be surrounded by alligators since he mused all the way back in 2018 about putting crocodiles in the Rio Grande.

He didn’t seem to be bothered by the inanity of that question one bit.

But Epstein appears to be off limits, and it looks as though the Trump administration just wants this topic to go away.

However, we don’t think the president’s supporters will let this one go so easily.


In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.  

  • Klaus Marre is a senior editor for Politics and director of the Mentor Apprentice Program at WhoWhatWhy. Follow him on Bluesky @unravelingpolitics.bsky.social.

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