MAGA is peeved that President Donald Trump not only made no mention of the Epstein files during his State of the Union address, but also featured Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “front and center.”
The decision to trot out Lutnick—revealed to have been an “Epstein Island” visitor and a longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein—and seat him with the rest of the president’s Cabinet was slammed as “disgusting” even by some who typically align with the president.
“I like Howard Lutnick,” said the right-wing X influencer Mario Nawfal. “But this doesn’t mean we all forget he lied about going to Epstein’s island and act like nothing happened. This is not how accountability works.”
That proved to be a common opinion that emerged on social media whenever a smiling Lutnick was shown during State of the Union broadcasts.
An influencer named “ThePatrioticBlonde” was among those, writing to her 135,000 followers on X that Lutnick’s presence at the address was a grim sign for the Trump administration.
“The fact that Trump unashamedly paraded Howard Lutnick, one of Epstein’s best customers, before the camera last night, knowing Epstein’s victims would be watching, should tell you what a truly sadistic government this is,” she wrote.
That same influencer revealed in a later post that she proudly voted for Trump three times—but is not impressed with his actual performance in the Oval Office.
“Trump’s State of the Union speech last night was well written, well spoken, passionately delivered, and reminiscent of the Trump I voted for three times,” she wrote. “He’s EXCELLENT at giving speeches. Just not at being president.”
Lutnick, like many Epstein associates, has been busted for lying about when he cut ties with the disgraced financier, who became a registered sex offender in 2008. Lutnick insisted that he and his wife stopped speaking to Epstein in 2005 after becoming his next-door neighbor in New York City and, supposedly, getting creeped out during a tour of his home.
He told the Pod Force One podcast in October about his immediate reaction to the decades-old tour, “In the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”
Files released by the DOJ last month revealed that to be untrue. Records show Lutnick and his family visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2012. Then, in 2017, Epstein donated $50,000 to a charity dinner honoring Lutnick—the same year the two men discussed opposing an expansion to a museum near them that threatened to block their views of Central Park.
A Mother Jones report revealed this week that the men also discussed a joint business venture as recently as 2018, a year before official say Epstein killed himself while in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. In other correspondence discovered by the site, Lutnick referenced a property he called “pierre”—likely referring to a penthouse at the Pierre Hotel in Midtown Manhattan he purchased—in an email to Epstein in May 2018.
Epstein, who was then Lutnick’s neighbor, responded: “i can buy my guest house?”
Lutnick has thus far only lightly addressed his newly revealed, more recent connection to Epstein.
A spokesperson for the Commerce Department told CBS News earlier this month, “Secretary Lutnick had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”
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