President Trump railed at the radio host and author Charlamagne Tha God early Sunday morning, after the host said that the administration’s handling of information related to Jeffrey Epstein was fueling a “coup” in the Republican Party.
“I think that traditional conservatives are going to take the Republican Party back,” Charlamagne said on a Fox News program on Saturday hosted by Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and a former co-chair of the Republican Party. “I think there’s a political coup going on right now in the Republican Party that people aren’t paying attention to,” Charlamagne said.
Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social early Sunday, saying that Charlamagne “knows nothing about me or what I have done.”
Mr. Trump was friendly for nearly 15 years with Mr. Epstein, the disgraced multimillionaire financier and convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The Trump administration has been lambasted for its refusal to release the federal files of Mr. Epstein’s case, after the president and top officials had for months suggested that they would expose hidden truths about his death. The reversal triggered outrage among Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters.
Charlamagne, who was born Lenard McKelvey and is best known as a host of the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” said in the interview on Saturday that the episode meant that “traditional conservatives” could “probably take their party back” without angering the president’s MAGA base. “I think they’re going to do that,” he said.
Ms. Trump was skeptical. Charlamagne, who interviewed Kamala Harris before the 2024 election, went on to acknowledge that “Donald Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime, one-on-one political juggernaut,” but maintained that “we have the opportunity to have, like, a huge reset.”
Charlamagne also said on Ms. Trump’s program that the comedian Jon Stewart should run for president in 2028, and have his fellow late-night TV host Stephen Colbert as his running mate, “because Colbert’s not going to have a job,” referring to the announcement by CBS that it was canceling his show.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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