Following adjudicated rapist Donald Trump's June 2 interview on Fox and Friends, The Daily Show's Ronny Chieng didn't hold back in roasting Trump's "suspicious" reaction to one, seemingly softball, question.
Trump's reaction, as Philip Bump noted in The Washington Post on June 3, was so filled with "awkwardness" that it was actually edited out of the interview as aired on Fox News. The only place to find it was on YouTube.
Here's what regular Fox News viewers didn't see
Trump was asked by host Rachel Campos-Duffy if he would, if re-elected, declassify the 9/11 and the JFK files.
To those questions, Trump had no problem answering “yes.”
The next question wasn't so easy.
"Would you declassify the Epstein files?" asked Campos-Duffy.
“Yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so..." said Trump.
By that point, according to Chieng, you could see the panic in Trump's eyes. "I’ve seen more relaxed people in the exit row of a Boeing flight," he joked.
The comedian told The Daily Show viewers that, in the interests of fairness, they should hear Trump out. But as the clip played on, Trump only dug himself deeper:
I guess I would. I think that less so... because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.
Chieng rightly ridiculed Trump's contention that he cared about anybody's reputation but his own:
I mean, this is the same guy who said Obama was born in Kenya and Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK. Now all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Look, if you put inaccurate information out there, it can really destroy someone’s reputation.’
You can watch that whole Daily Show segment here.
Others also noted Trump's discomfort when asked about the Epstein files. Here's how Jimmy Kimmel handled it.
And that might have been the end of the story, but...
On June 9, Semafor's Max Tani revisited the issue in an article noting that the network, whose hosts "have a habit of trying to lead Trump to certain answers during interviews," had "massaged" the broadcast version of the interview to allow "the former president to continue to cater to conspiracy theorists."
The truth of Tani's take was made clear when Donald Trump, Jr., the Trump Crime Family's Chief Conspiracy Officer took the stage at a Turning Point USA event on 15 June.
Speaking to an audience of impressionable youth at an organization with its own history of employing "groomers" and "pedophiles," Trump, Jr. projected the sins of his father (and his event hosts) onto fictional others, saying in part:
If you're in this room right now, you're probably on the FBI list... You're in with me, my father, my family, so you're in good company. I am on every list except the Epstein list. We haven't heard anything about that one in a while. I'm fine with all the other lists, as long as I'm not on the Epstein list, we're good, right? Speaking of which, how is it that my father can be convicted of 34 crimes, but no one on Epstein's list has even been brought to light... it's almost like they're trying to protect those pedophiles for some reason, I can't imagine why. We're not allowed to say they're groomers, but when they act a lot like groomers, sort of tells you everything you need to know, right.
Trump Jr. later reposted that video footage on X, with the caption: “You know who’s not on the Epstein list? My father… because if he was, it would have leaked in about half a second!!!! That’s a fact!”
Fact-checking Donald Trump, Jr.
As Andi Ortiz wrote for The Wrap, "Trump Jr. was fact-checked immediately," by Seth Meyers, who reminded viewers "that in reality, the ex-president has been connected to Epstein after appearing on his flight logs seven times."
“He wasn’t just on Epstein’s plane, he had platinum status,” Meyers joked. “They let him board before uniformed military personnel."
As regular readers of this newsletter already know, the self-confessed serial sexual predator Donald Trump not only had "platinum status" on the Epstein jet. He also committed many of his worst sex crimes in the vicinity of Trump Tower on "Epstein's Other Island"—Manhattan.
Trump lived just a few blocks from Epstein's notorious New York mansion and was a frequent attendee at child sex parties there. Trump has been accused of having sex with many Epstein "girls" and was credibly accused of raping a 13-year-old at Epstein's NY home in 1994. He also "dated" one of the girls Epstein groomed and raped for years as a teenager after supposedly being "introduced" to her by Ghislaine Maxwell once she turned 20 in 1997.
And that's not all.
After Trump was made immune from prosecution in 2007 thanks to the sweetheart deal given to Epstein by Florida prosecutor Alex Acosta, he later rewarded Acosta with a position in his Cabinet in 2017—a position for which Acosta was notably unqualified and from which he was forced to resign in shame once the Epstein story became news again.
And it doesn't end there.
Epstein was re-arrested in NY by Trump-appointed prosecutor (and former Giuliani law partner) Geoffrey Berman in 2019 and somehow died in highly suspicious circumstances at a jail that hadn't seen a suicide in 20 years while under the care of AG Bill Barr, whose own pervert father gave Epstein his initial access to young children at the Dalton prep school and, with it, his entrée into New York high society.
Bill "Cover-Up King" Barr swiftly shut down four investigations into Epstein's death, ignoring serious questions raised by the forensic pathologist and "medical legend" Dr. Michael Baden, who had been hired by Epstein’s brother to observe the autopsy.
But wait. There's more.
During the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, we also were told that another Trump-appointee, FBI Director Christopher Wray, had somehow allowed a crucial "trove of evidence" found in Epstein's safe to disappear.
As Donald Trump, Jr. might say: "it's almost like they're trying to protect a certain pedophile for some reason."
Donald Trump, Jr. knows that no public figure (apart from Ghislaine Maxwell) is more entangled with Jeffrey Epstein in life and death than his own psychopathic, pussy-grabbing father.
But Trump, Jr. also knows that the poorly educated MAGA cult will eagerly swallow any bullshit he serves them.
In fact, Trump, Jr. had already been brutally fact-checked on X in January when, as the UK's Independent noted, he was hit with a community notice after posting an article about the Epstein list with his dad's name in the headline but removed that fact from his caption.
His latest claim was also community noted on X.
Thank goodness for screengrabs. Because for some reason the factual addition to Junior's false claim was later removed by the Trump-friendly, Musk-owned platform.
Should Biden call Trump's bluff?
On Substack on 18 June, Brian Beutler suggested "it's time to call MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein bluff," pointing out that we don't have to wait for Donald Trump to release the Epstein files.
Dark Brandon could do it today.
"Let the chips fall where they may," wrote Beutler.
Because whatever the files might reveal, we know one thing for certain: Donald Trump is not just on the Epstein List.
He's in the Epstein Hall of Fame.
Thanks for reading! While paid subscriptions (billed to TLD Media LLC) and one-time tips are always welcome, all content to this ad-free newsletter is free, so subscribe for $0 and you won’t miss anything. And feel free to share this content knowing there’s never a paywall!
Subscribe to Unprecedented
Subscribe to the newsletter and unlock access to member-only content.