Donald Trump told aides that he cannot fathom the public fixation with his links to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, saying that Palm Beach in the 1990s was a different time, according to a report.
The president may have had a reprieve from the wall-to-wall headlines and calls to make public files that will purportedly show just how close he was to the late, disgraced financier, although it refuses to die down entirely.
But back in the summer, with his long-standing friendship with Epstein very much under the microscope and his MAGA base livid at his refusal to release the files, things were very different as the White House scrambled to contain the crisis.
According to the Wall Street Journal, on day two of a July conservative conference in Tampa, Trump hit the phone to influential allies, demanding to know why everyone was so fixated on the issue and asking what could be done to make it die down.
The Journal even claims he told aides that “people don’t understand that Palm Beach in the 90s was a different time,” referring to the era in which he and Epstein used to socialize at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago exclusive members club regularly.
The account lays out a frantic scramble inside Trump World as the president tried to counter a drumbeat of Epstein storylines—including revelations of a “birthday book” compiled by Epstein’s partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell, which he has called “fake,” and over which he is suing the Murdoch title.
The Journal describes weeks of finger-pointing and botched messaging as aides tried—and failed—to make the Epstein headlines stop.
Advisers pushed the well-worn line that Trump “fell out” with Epstein before the financier’s first arrest in 2006, even as the president lashed out at a reporter for “still talking about Jeffrey Epstein.”
However, it was reported that Epstein remained a dues-paying member of Mar-a-Lago long after he was indicted on sexual offenses in 2006, with fresh scrutiny over whether the club or Trump knew he’d been charged and on bail when he was finally struck off the list of Palm Beach’s most infamous social orbit.
Trump himself has swung between praising Epstein in the past—“He’s a lot of fun to be with,” he told New York Magazine in 2002—before later claiming he was “not a fan.”
Trump has also privately fretted that friends could be named in the files and griped that the conversation should be about his administration’s wins—not Epstein—according to people familiar with his comments who spoke to the Journal.
At other times, he mused that the files might have been altered to harm him.
“This may be the worst managed PR event in history,” Ty Cobb, who led the Trump White House’s 2017 response to the special counsel probe into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, told the Journal.
In the Oval Office earlier this month, the president dismissed as irrelevant questions about the Epstein files, which he described as a “Democrat hoax.”
“Really,” Trump said, “I think it’s enough.”
That, however, seems unlikely. While the matter may be slightly quieter—with MAGA having focused its attention on the September 10 shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Wednesday’s shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas—next week could bring it roaring back again.
House members say they’ve finally hit the magic number to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files—after GOP leaders spent months ducking the issue.
A bipartisan bloc led by Republican Thomas Massie, a frequent Trump antagonist, and Democrat Ro Khanna, has pressed to make the documents public, despite Speaker Mike Johnson’s resistance.
Earlier this month, Massie filed a discharge petition to compel a floor vote, which stalled at 217 signatures—one shy of the 218 required—while Republican leaders were accused of running interference for a Trump White House eager to move past its botched rollout of the files.
That final signature is now expected from Adelita Grijalva, the Democrat elected Tuesday in an Arizona special to succeed her late father, Raúl Grijalva.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast: “This is a lazy rewrite of a dead story. It’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep.
“Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents.”
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