By Andrew Sanford | News | July 23, 2025

I never thought that, after being hired at this site to cover the late-night scene, I would bear witness to its death at the hands of a crybaby convict who’s friends with pedophiles. Seeing late-night die because it has become a bit of an outdated medium that doesn’t generate the kind of ad dollars it used to? That makes sense. The writing has been on the wall for years, but the people involved in it are so talented that they’ve been able to justify keeping their jobs and giving late-night a slow and steady death that it deserves. Instead, we’re seeing it speed-run toward its death thanks to the fragile, authoritarian ego of the aforementioned rapist.

That doesn’t mean the folks in the late-night scene aren’t fighting back! All current hosts showed up on Stephen Colbert’s first show after the announcement of his firing, showing support for the soon-to-be former host (not until May, but that’ll be here before ya know it). Jon Stewart went on a fiery tirade on The Daily Show, enlisting a choir to tell the President to go f*** himself. Even Jimmy Fallon, who once rubbed Trump’s head like a puppy, keeps taking time to roast Trump on his show. What’s better, everyone is taking a similar route of attack: talk about Jeffrey Epstein.

The only thing I currently know for sure is that Trump does not want to talk about his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Despite being extensively documented and discussed when Epstein was alive, Trump’s supporters have mostly turned a blind eye to his relationship with the New York Financier/monster. However, they did so under the impression that Trump would release the Epstein files at some point and take down his cabal of friends. It seems pretty clear that, once Trump remembered he was a part of that cabal, he couldn’t release the files, shaking some of his most confident supporters.

Now, after spending years mostly avoiding discussing his friendship with Epstein, it’s all anyone wants to talk about, and it’s becoming harder to avoid. Hell, he’s even suing Rupert Murdoch because the Wall Street Journal released a damning investigation into Trump giving Epstein a creepy message for his birthday, which involved him wishing each day was “another wonderful secret” and saying how “enigmas never age.” The weirdest, creepiest shit possible, just written there for people to see. Barf. On the good side, however, it’s given the late-night hosts lots of fodder, including Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s not even working right now (Alan Cumming is filling in and taking plenty of worthy shots at Trump in the interim).

Since the President has a bunch of bald, jack-booted losers doing his racist bidding, he has plenty of time to post on Truth Social. There, he claimed that Jimmy Kimmel would soon be fired, with Jimmy Fallon following. He also mentioned that he hopes he had something to do with their removal. It’s baby shit mob speak, since we know damn well he had something to do with it, so he talks around it, even though he shouldn’t mention it at all, but he’s too stupid to be an actual mobster. Like, it’s just a threat.

We’ll have to wait and see if Disney or NBC/Universal caves to Trump’s demands or decides to have spines. Until then, Kimmel isn’t hesitating to turn the conversation right back toward Epstein. He posted Trump’s Truth Social rant on his Instagram with a simple yet effective caption: “I’m hearing you’re next. Or maybe it’s just another wonderful secret.” Maybe late-night will have the slow death I was hoping for, because I don’t think this is ending anytime soon.

Trump calls for the release of Jeffrey Epstein grand jury testimony

toggle caption Evan Vucci/AP

After intense public pressure and criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum, President Trump has called for a federal judge to release grand jury testimony related to the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sexually trafficking children.

The Department of Justice has also formally asked the federal court judge who was assigned to the Epstein case to unseal the testimony. In a motion filed Friday to the Southern District of New York, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote: “Given the public interest in the investigative work conducted by the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation into Epstein, the Department of Justice moves the Court to unseal the underlying grand jury transcripts in United States v. Epstein, subject to appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information.”

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On Saturday morning, Trump posted about the request on his Truth Social account, writing : “I have asked the Justice Department to release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval. With that being said, and even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request. It will always be more, more, more. MAGA!”

However, Trump continues to distance himself from Epstein, and denies that he had any involvement in the allegations against the disgraced financier, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal child sex trafficking charges. (Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide . Ghislaine Maxwell, who helped run the trafficking ring that ensnared young teenagers, was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.)

This past week, Trump lashed out at both Democrats and members of his own party interested in the Epstein materials, calling them “stupid” and “foolish” in comments he made at the White House. On Wednesday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bull*****’ hook, line, and sinker.”

toggle caption New York State Sex Offender Registry/AP

Epstein’s imprisonment and death have spurred a number of conspiracy theories, including one amplified by several prominent individuals who serve in the Trump administration that his death is evidence that the government is actually run by a “deep state” determined to undermine the president.

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Much of the public pressure to release materials related to Epstein has come from both media influencers and rank-and-file Trump supporters, many of whom have been intensely interested in such conspiracy theories, and some of whom have publicly aired their disappointment that Trump had seemed to renege on campaign-era assurances that he wanted to see the files released.

On Friday, President Trump filed a federal lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, accusing the news outlet of defaming him in a report published Thursday that said Trump had written a birthday card to Epstein in 2003 that included sexually suggestive language and a lewd drawing. The president maintains that he did not draw or write any of these materials.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that the Journal “falsely claimed that he [Trump] authored, drew, and signed a card to wish the late–and utterly disgraced–Jeffrey Epstein a happy fiftieth birthday.”

The suit asks for at least $10 billion in damages and also names the Journal’s parent company, NewsCorp (which also includes Fox News); NewsCorp chief executive Robert Thomson; and Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo, the two Journal reporters who wrote the story.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike have been calling for the release of files on the Epstein case. On Thursday, AP reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson said , “All the credible evidence should come out.” On Tuesday, Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a discharge petition to force a House vote on releasing the complete Epstein files. “We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes,” Massie wrote in a post on X.

On Weekend Edition Saturday , Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) also called for all files related to Epstein to be released. “We need full transparency,” Khanna said. “We need the interview memos to see which rich and powerful men were involved with Jeffrey Epstein. We need to see the emails, the texts. We need to of course protect victim identity. But the president promised this when he campaigned. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, promised this.”

Khanna said that the need for transparency with the Epstein documents goes far beyond the particulars of this case. “It goes to the heart of trust in the government,” Khanna said. “It goes to the heart of whether our government is granting impunity to the rich and the powerful who may have abused, assaulted, abandoned young girls, or whether we’re going to stand up for children and stand up for truth. And many people view it as an issue of whether our government in Washington has been corrupted.”

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WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but the White House can’t seem to kill his story.

President Donald Trump and his aides have settled on silence as a strategy to stamp out criticism of his refusal to release files detailing the federal government’s investigation of Epstein, according to a senior administration official and Republicans familiar with the White House’s thinking.

For weeks, stories about Epstein, the financier and pal to political luminaries who died by suicide awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, have been making headlines.

In a break from Trump’s usual crisis communications template — which emphasizes an all-hands-on-deck approach to defending him on television and on social media — the Epstein case has been met with more restraint from the White House.

Trump himself has signaled that he doesn’t want members of his administration talking about the matter nonstop, a person close to the White House told NBC News. And White House aides have made it clear that no one in the administration is allowed to talk about Epstein without high-level vetting, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“The communications office has to be directly involved in every aspect of this,” the official said. “Every ‘i’ must be dotted, and every ‘t’ must be crossed through us.”

Trump’s aides would like for the Epstein storm to pass, but they know they can’t keep Trump and other administration officials off television at a time when they are trying to promote his policy wins and agenda.

The senior administration official said White House officials won’t stop making appearances in the media, which will inevitably lead to Epstein questions. But they are still trying to determine how to balance defending Trump on the issue while deflecting inquiries by touting his accomplishments.

That represents a shift of sorts for a president who has generally liked his top deputies and administration officials to robustly defend him to the media, regardless of the issue.

“The questions are going to come, but whether we engage or not is part of the consideration,” the official said.

But Trump, who is accustomed to driving the news, is finding out there are limits to his ability to pivot away from an issue that has angered parts of his MAGA base, consumed news media, broken into popular culture and mobilized a Democratic Party that has been dormant and divided since he was re-elected in November.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Florida ruled against the Justice Department’s request to unseal grand jury testimony in the Epstein case, launching a raft of new headlines. Then, The Wall Street Journal, owned by Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told Trump in May that his name appears in the Epstein files — even though he told reporters in July that Bondi hadn’t informed him that he was named.

“The fact is that the president kicked [Epstein] out of his club for being a creep,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media, just like the Obama Russiagate scandal, which President Trump was right about.”

Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” in 2002 but said in 2019 that they had a “falling-out a long time ago.” He has said he had no knowledge of what Epstein was doing.

On Tuesday, Trump baselessly accused former President Barack Obama of committing “treason” because U.S. intelligence agencies found, during the heat of the 2016 campaign, that Russia had tried to interfere in that year’s election to assist Trump.

Trump made the highly charged allegation in response to a reporter’s question about Epstein, and it prompted a rare rebuke from Obama’s office, which called the remarks “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

White House officials hope to limit the blast radius of a self-detonated scandal, which Trump and members of his administration fueled by accusing leading Democrats of hiding information about Epstein when he was seeking the presidency. Bondi raised expectations among Trump supporters in February by promising to release long-sought files, telling Fox News that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” But her own Justice Department said this month that it didn’t have any such “client list,” and other files remain in his administration’s hands.

Trump’s quick pivot to a flurry of other issues that also animate his base have contained much of the unease among top MAGA influencers. Still, political operatives in both parties see the issue as one that is hurting Trump and helping Democrats.

“Things are, obviously, different with this one,” said a Republican operative familiar with the White House’s thinking. “This has blown a bit of a hole in MAGA, so reflexive defense mode, as we have often seen in the past, won’t always be the go-to. Part of the problem is that this issue has leaked into conservative media. In the past, they [White House] could expect certain interviewers to be friendly and stay on script; that’s not guaranteed with this one.”

Some Democrats see the issue as a perfect vehicle for painting Trump as an elite protecting the powerful at the expense of the masses, undercutting the image he has crafted for himself as a populist champion of the powerless.

“It’s the first time we’ve got his a– on something for real, and it’s just a clean, clean hit,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who is working with several potential 2028 candidates. “He can’t get off of it.”

Nellis said the Epstein imbroglio could be part of a winning midterm and 2028 presidential message because it threatens MAGA’s confidence in the GOP’s commitment to exposing corruption. He noted that Vice President JD Vance, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the 2028 Republican nomination, has mostly stopped talking about Epstein after having agreed in an interview with MAGA-friendly podcaster Theo Von last year that the documents should be made public. (Von last week posted a clip of the comment on X and wrote: “Yeah, what changed?”)

Vance’s first post amid the recent uproar came last week, after The Wall Street Journal published an article about a letter including a racy drawing that Trump is alleged to have sent Epstein for his birthday in 2003. He called the article “complete and utter bulls—.”

But other Democrats expressed reservations over getting too far in front of the Epstein files.

“I think it’s emblematic of the real lack of opportunities Dems have in this moment,” a national Democratic strategist said. “Trump sort of gifted this, and while it’s great to capitalize on it — and I’m glad people are — I’d caution Dems of thinking this is a hot ticket back to anything.”

For Republicans, there is acknowledgment that it’s going to be virtually impossible to turn the page on this story any time soon, particularly since it began with an internal MAGA rift.

“Short of a war or some life-changing news event,” a Trump ally said, “I’m not sure what does the trick.”

Republican leaders in Congress have, for the moment, largely evaded a bipartisan push to require the release of the Epstein files, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., adjourned his chamber early for its annual August recess as Democrats forced multiple difficult votes on the topic in committee.

They got one win Wednesday, when three Republicans joined with Democrats on a House Oversight subcommittee to vote to subpoena the Justice Department for Epstein files.

And with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, of California, threatening to force a House floor vote on the files with a rarely used procedural maneuver, a roll call may be unavoidable in the fall.

Kevin Olasanoye, a Democratic strategist and former executive director of the Georgia Democratic Party, said the White House’s considerable attempts to divert from the Epstein saga were evident. In addition to Trump’s accusing Obama of treason, the Trump administration has, in the past week, released files on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968, and asserted — in contradiction of past probes — that Russia didn’t try to interfere in the 2016 election.

“They’re throwing everything against the wall,” he said. “This is about pointing out the hypocrisy of what the Republicans have been doing. They are saying one thing, and they are quite literally out in the open doing another.”

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn upon arrival at the White House in Washinton DC, on Sunday. Allison Robbert/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump was examined for swelling in his legs and has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, the White House announced Thursday.

Trump, 79, underwent a “comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies” with the White House Medical Unit, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, reading from a note from the president’s physician, Capt. Sean Barbabella.

Barbabella’s note stated that “bilateral lower extremity venous doppler ultrasounds were performed and revealed chronic venous insufficiency, ICD-9, a common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70.”

The examination came after Trump had “noted mild swelling in his lower legs” over recent weeks, Leavitt said.

Reading Barbabella’s note, Leavitt said there was “no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease,” and that Trump’s lab testing was all “within normal limits.” Trump also underwent an echocardiogram, which found “no signs of heart failure, renal impairment, or systemic illness,” she said.

Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition in which valves inside certain veins don’t work the way they should, which can allow some of the blood to pool or collect in the veins. About 150,000 people are diagnosed with it each year, and the risk goes up with age. Symptoms can include swelling in the lower legs or ankles, aching or cramping in the legs, varicose veins, pain or skin changes. Treatment may involve medication or, in later stages, medical procedures.

The press secretary also addressed bruising that has appeared on the back of the president’s hand, which she attributed to his “frequent handshaking,” plus his use of aspirin.

Trump’s been on a win streak. The Epstein controversy could distract from it

toggle caption Eric Lee/Getty Images

President Trump and the Justice Department’s handling of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case is threatening to distract the public from his string of wins and take over his agenda, according to a Republican strategist Alex Conant.

“This is not what they want to be talking about,” said Conant, a partner at Firehouse Strategies and Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump hinted during the 2024 presidential campaign that the Epstein files — which were thought to include a “client list” used by the convicted sex offender to allegedly blackmail powerful people — would be released.

But this week, the president urged his supporters to move on from discussing the case after the Justice Department announced it found no evidence during its review of the case that such a list existed and that no more files about the case would be made public.

“You see their frustration starting to bubble over and the president’s tone and his lengthy tweets earlier this week where he was attacking his own supporters for fixating on this,” Conant said in an interview with Morning Edition.

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Epstein died by suicide in his prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death has fueled conspiracy theories even though Trump administration officials have confirmed his death was suicide.

Trump is now focused on convincing the MAGA base to move on at a time when he would rather be selling his wins, like the passage of his signature tax and spending bill, avoiding a wider conflict between Israel and Iran and Thursday’s Senate vote to claw back billions of dollars from public media and foreign aid.

Trump has gone as far as calling the Epstein situation a “hoax” and chastised supporters who have “bought into this bull****” in a recent Truth Social post.

“His supporters are fixated on this decade-old scandal that he can’t ever make them happy on and it’s deeply frustrating to him,” Conant said.

Speaking to NPR’s Michel Martin, Conant discussed why this moment is proving so difficult for the president and how he might maneuver it.

This interview is edited for length and clarity.

Michel Martin: So this whole thing about slamming his supporters, calling them stupid, saying they’re doing the Democrats dirty work for them. In one of those social media posts, he said he didn’t want their support anymore. It’s unusual to be slamming your supporters like this, but is this useful in any way in tamping this down?

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Alex Conant: It’s very unusual for Trump. One of the things that has really marked his political career is that he never allows any daylight between himself and his base. You think back to the first term, where he took so much heat over immigration enforcement at the border vis-à-vis families [separation] and then so much heat during the pandemic with masks and the way he treated Anthony Fauci — and he always ends up siding with his base. I can’t think of another time where he’s attacked his own base like this for disagreeing with him on something. And I think it’s just evidence that he is just so frustrated that they want to talk about something that’s not helpful politically. And he wants to talk about things that do help him politically with independents, with moderates heading into the midterms next year.

Martin: There are some people who are going to be listening to this and be saying, “what is this about even really?” Why do you think this issue resonates so much with Trump’s base?

Conant: I think there’s a lot of political opponents of his base that have been kind of wrapped up in the Epstein scandals over the years, just through their social connections or business connections with him. Obviously, the way that Epstein died was very suspicious in the minds of the base. And there’s become all this media built up around it. Books have been written, podcasts, TV shows about it, and people have just gotten really wrapped up in the scandal thinking that there’s a lot more to it.

Martin: Excuse me, but aren’t people in his own administration wrapped up in it? I mean, people in the sense of being part of making this a thing like his FBI director, Kash Patel, his deputy FBI director Dan Bongino.

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Conant: Absolutely. Now to be clear, they peddled a lot of conspiracies, this being one of them, but then they get put in charge of the FBI. And I think that the other issue here is that there’s just a real mismanagement of expectations with his base vis-à-vis what the administration is actually able to deliver, in part because he put in the FBI director and the deputy FBI director, in part because they promised to get to the bottom of the Epstein issues.

Martin: Elon Musk has been posting about this a lot this week. Obviously, I think most people know they had a falling out, but at one point [Musk] said if this is all a hoax, why Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, is in prison for sex trafficking? Is Musk a part of this or is he kind of an ancillary character because it already was a big thing?

Conant: I think he and lots of other people are piling on at this point. Anyone who has an ax to grind with the president views this as a scab that they can pick at because they know that Trump doesn’t have good answers at this point because in his mind, in the Justice Department’s mind, they have released everything on this that they are legally allowed to release and their hands are really tied moving forward. And yet it’s not enough for people like Musk and his opponents.

Martin: So before we let you go, does this have legs?

Conant: Well, we’ll see. I mean, nobody changes the topic better than Donald Trump. And he has a lot to talk about these days. That said, his base is not going to ever be satisfied on this unless they’re able to somehow provide more information.

Martin: Why not? Why can’t they be satisfied?

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Conant: People who are so invested in an idea, in a conspiracy — you can’t convince them that they’re wrong without evidence. And the administration is having trouble providing evidence that they’re wrong.

This digital story was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi. The radio version was produced by Arezou Rezvani, Kaity Kline and Nia Dumas.