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While Donald Trump has been chastising his supporters for demanding transparency in the case of his former pal, child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and is trying to make the issue go away, Vice President JD Vance on Sunday undercut his boss’s argument that it is all just a hoax.

In a wide-ranging and largely reality-challenged interview with Fox News, Vance criticized Democrats for only now caring about the release of the Epstein files. 

To a certain extent, that is a valid criticism.

Previously, it was largely MAGA supporters who demanded the release of more information on Epstein and his child sex trafficking operation in order to find out who else was involved.

“I laugh at the Democrats, who are now all of a sudden so interested in the Epstein files,” he said. “For four years, Biden and the Democrats did absolutely nothing about the story.”

True.

Then again, Biden was not friends with Epstein, he was not aware of his proclivity for young women, and he is not mentioned in those files. 

Trump, however, was close to Epstein, he did publicly comment on how his buddy was “a lot of fun to be with” and on him liking women “on the younger side,” and his name does apparently appear in the files.

All of that certainly explains why the president keeps melting down when he is asked about his former friend, dismissing the entire thing as a “hoax,” and disavowing supporters of his who want transparency in the case. 

In that regard, Vance did Trump no favors. 

After claiming that the president wants “full transparency,” which is a ridiculous thing to say in light of the president’s clumsy efforts to distract from the story and make it go away, he noted that there are thousands and thousands of documents to sift through before taking a shot at his political opponents. 

“We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires,” he said. 

First of all, this is true in at least one case… because Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009 (and we are assuming that the vice president means “Democrat” when he says “left-wing).

More importantly, however, while Vance wanted to take a partisan shot at Democrats, his statement will do absolutely nothing to make MAGA supporters demand the release of all information any less. 

After all, they believe that top Democrats, including Bill Clinton, were deeply tied to Epstein (and it is absolutely true that the former president and the disgraced financier were friends), so Vance stoking those sentiments will make them want to see the documents even more that Trump so clearly would prefer to keep hidden.