\n<\/p>\n
Since his return to office,<\/span> President Donald Trump has missed few chances to flex the power he wields over the nation\u2019s most formidable institutions and its wealthiest people. So when the White House announced that Trump would host the latest in a series of dinners with top business executives, this time including JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon and the chief executive of Nasdaq, reporters in the White House press pool prepared to watch Trump show off.<\/p>\n Nope. Last night\u2019s dinner was closed to the press. No reporter was even given a glance. And later, when the White House held a signing ceremony for the president to officially end the longest federal-government shutdown in history, the reporters present were quickly whisked out of the Oval Office. Today, too, he didn\u2019t talk to the press after signing an executive order alongside the first lady in the East Room. The president, to be clear, had not suddenly become camera-shy. But he had indicated to aides that he didn\u2019t want to face reporters\u2019 questions, because every inquiry was going to be about the one subject that Trump, for all his power, simply can\u2019t make go away.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Epstein is dead. But the disgraced financier and sex offender continues to shadow Trump. The storyline\u2019s reemergence yesterday\u2014with the release of thousands of Epstein\u2019s emails, some of which highlight his relationship with Trump\u2014delivered another blow to a president already at the weakest moment of his second term. Trump\u2019s party got wiped out in last week\u2019s elections as voters assigned it the greater portion of blame for the shutdown. The Supreme Court seems set to unravel his signature tariffs. His poll numbers have dipped as Americans conclude that he cares too much about gilded ballrooms and is not focused nearly enough on bringing down high prices. And dread has crept into the West Wing now that Trump faces a rare rebuke from fellow Republicans, including some who have been among his most loyal MAGA foot soldiers.<\/p>\n Trump and a number of top Department of Justice officials this week tried to persuade a pair of normally close allies, Representatives Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, to withdraw their names from a discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing a trove of Epstein material. Their efforts failed, and it will go to the House floor next week. The president in the past two days has made a round of calls to longtime allies to rage against the Epstein matter, blaming Democrats and the media, one of the people who received a call told me. (A White House official later confirmed that the president was \u201cspeaking to trusted friends\u201d; both people spoke with me under the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.) In those calls, Trump mused about pressuring GOP senators to block the release of additional files when the matter could go to the upper chamber later this month.<\/p>\n The White House\u2019s push to keep more Epstein materials from being released came after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee leaked emails yesterday morning that suggested close ties between the sex offender and Trump. House Republicans, hoping to distract from the initial emails, released an additional 23,000 messages. (Some of those emails, including one in which Epstein offered to give the Russian government information on Trump, only raised more uncomfortable questions for the president.) All of this came after Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home for nearly eight weeks, in part so that he could delay swearing in the Democratic representative-elect whose vote provided the needed margin to authorize the release of the Epstein files. And although Trump has avoided reporters, his anger broke into the open on social media yesterday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again\u201d to distract from the shutdown, Trump posted. \u201cOnly a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.\u201d<\/p>\n All this, of course, raises the question: What exactly is Trump trying to prevent from being released? For months, White House aides have snapped at reporters who even mentioned the word Epstein<\/em>. But in private moments, members of the president\u2019s inner circle acknowledge that they don\u2019t know the true extent of Trump\u2019s relationship with Epstein. The men were close, to be sure, and clearly enjoyed chasing women decades ago in the party circles of Manhattan and Palm Beach. That\u2019s been known for years, and although that history is embarrassing, Trump has never been charged with any wrongdoing. Is he trying to protect himself? Or someone close to him? He doesn\u2019t talk about it, allies say, except to fume that it\u2019s still a story. But Trump\u2019s over-the-top response prompted the ally he called to urge Trump to change tactics because he\u2019s \u201cnot acting like someone who has nothing to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump was always an unlikely champion<\/span> for those on the right who believed in the Epstein conspiracy theories. The men were undeniably friends. There are plenty of photos of them together, including at Trump\u2019s private Mar-a-Lago Club. Trump flew on Epstein\u2019s private jets seven times in the mid-1990s, according to flight logs that emerged at an Epstein-related trial. And in a 2002 New York <\/em>magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he\u2019d known Epstein for 15 years and praised him as a \u201cterrific guy.\u201d The financier pleaded guilty in Florida state court in 2008 and was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He received a generous\u2014and controversial\u2014plea deal and served a short prison sentence before being released. He was arrested again in August 2019 and was accused of sex-trafficking minors. Epstein died a month later in jail, while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide, but many on the far right suspected that he had been killed to keep him from revealing what he knew about the rich and the powerful. The so-called Epstein files\u2014an accounting of who else in his orbit might have been involved\u2014became something of an obsession in the MAGA movement. Though Trump never quite championed that cause, he led many to believe that, were he to return to power, he\u2019d expose the truth and deliver justice.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not at all what has happened. Even after Attorney General Pam Bondi declared early this year that she had the Epstein files on her desk, only scattered documents were released to right-wing influencers. Trump then made clear that he wanted to move on, blasting those still obsessed with Epstein, who, in the president\u2019s words, has been \u201cdead for a long time. I don\u2019t understand what the interest or what the fascination is.\u201d He sued his on-again, off-again friend Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion after The Wall Street Journal <\/em>reported in July that Trump had sent Epstein a lewd birthday card in 2003.<\/p>\n But some in Trump\u2019s base felt betrayed, like he was trying to invalidate a core political belief of theirs. And some Republicans refused to abandon the issue. Four of them\u2014Mace, Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie\u2014defied Trump to vote with Democrats this week on the Epstein discharge position. Boebert and Greene did not respond to requests for comment, while a spokesperson for Massie said the representative was unavailable. A spokesperson for Mace responded by pointing to a social-media post in which the candidate for governor in South Carolina urged a focus on the women and underage girls whom Epstein trafficked. If the measure passes both houses of Congress, Trump would likely veto it\u2014and face even more scrutiny.<\/p>\n Indeed, Trump\u2019s own efforts to manage the story have only fed it. His account of why he and Epstein had a falling-out two decades ago has shifted multiple times. His aides have advised him to stop saying that he has the right to pardon Epstein\u2019s former partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking and related offenses. (Maxwell was transferred to a cushier prison in Texas over the summer after an unusual one-on-one meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer.) White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt raised eyebrows yesterday when she said that Trump was not considering a pardon for Maxwell \u201cat this moment in time.\u201d The White House did not respond to my request for comment.<\/p>\n Few people in the White House<\/span> believe that the Epstein matter will swing many votes next year. But it has the makings of an unrelenting distraction, a scandal that could bog down Trump\u2019s presidency. Further Republican rebellions could loosen Trump\u2019s grip on the GOP just as he is trying to preserve his party\u2019s Capitol Hill majorities. Should he lose one or both of the houses of Congress next year, he\u2019d face congressional investigations and be firmly relegated to lame-duck status.<\/p>\n Trump is set to depart Washington tomorrow for another weekend at Mar-a-Lago, according to the White House. At the lush Palm Beach club, where he once palled around with Epstein, the president will surely talk to allies, eager to change the subject from the one consuming his administration.<\/p>\n A travel press pool will also make the trip to Florida on Air Force One. At least for now, Trump is not scheduled to take questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since his return to office, President Donald Trump has missed few chances to flex the power he wields over the nation\u2019s most formidable institutions and its wealthiest people. So when the White House announced that Trump would host the latest in a series of dinners with top business executives, this time including JPMorgan Chase head<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3703,4157,2963,7128,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-33385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-epstein","9":"tag-jeffrey","10":"tag-scandal","11":"tag-shake","12":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}