Elon Musk stirs the Epstein pot: ‘Powerful people want that list suppressed’
Good evening from New York. I’m Chris Hayes. No one in my lifetime has been better than Donald Trump at changing the subject, dictating the news cycle, wiping things from our collective memory. Remember we bombed Iran like two weeks ago? Whatever else you can say about him, the man has always been extremely adept at getting the news coverage he wants or at least about the topics he wants.
That is not happening though right now. Right now, Donald Trump wants everybody to shut the hell up about his one-time close friend, associate, the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the guy you see there on your screen, hanging out with Trump. And yet, everything Trump is doing is making people talk about it more. In fact, just an hour or two ago, Donald Trump fired an Epstein prosecutor.
That would be Moren Comey, the daughter of former FBI director and Trump nemesis James Comey. Now, Trump could have a lot of reasons for disliking her, but as Politico noted today, Comey, who’d worked in the US attorney’s office for nearly a decade, prosecuted both Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Gileain Maxwell.
Okay. So, when Donald Trump’s trying to bury the story right now, out of nowhere, in an unprecedented move, presidents don’t fire career attorneys. He fired Jeffrey Epstein, Galileain Maxwell’s prosecutor. This is just one in a series of things Trump has done surrounding the Epstein story that have just been really weird.
And so now we are seeing a revolt among the MAGA faithful. People who cheered when Trump staffed the Department of Justice and FBI with loyalists who vowed to release the Epstein files to the public. They were devastated last week when Trump’s administration closed the case and told everybody, “Turns out nothing to see here.
None of it made sense because the administration had been hyping this release over and over. Attorney General Pam Bondi was telling anyone who had listened that she had tapes to review, she had a client list to review, that they gave out a binder that was phase one. And it even got weirder because when they announced the case was closed, they also released that raw video from Epstein’s prison block the night he killed himself.
And that footage, as people noted, appeared to be missing an entire minute. Well, guess it get this. According to a new wired investigation published yesterday, published yesterday, that video is actually missing approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds. So, the whole thing’s not going away. And Trump is so frustrated by the Epstein backlash from his own political reporters, he is now calling them stupid.
Mr. President, I know you want to move past all this intrigue over the Epstein files, but I do want to ask you to clarify something you said this morning. You said this was all a hoax. Has your attorney general told you this was a hoax? What evidence have you seen? It’s not the attorney general. No, I know it’s a hoax.
It’s started by Democrats. It’s all been a big hoax. It’s perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net. And so they try and do the Democrats work. They’re wasting their time with uh a guy who obviously had some very serious problems who died 3, four years ago. Uh, I’d rather talk about the success we have with the economy, the best we’ve ever had, and all of the things we’ve done, including in the Middle East.
I mean, you see it. Instead, they want to talk about the Epstein hooks. And the sad part is it’s people that are really doing the Democrats work. They’re stupid people. By the way, is there anything more typical of the Trump era than a foreign leader sitting there as Trump rambles about Jeffrey Epstein? So, that was Trump expanding on a wild social media post from early this morning claiming that Democrats new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.
And my past supporters have bought into the BS hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson and probably never will after being conned by the lunatic left for eight years. Donald Trump, the Republican president, calling Republicans stupid people and past supporters because they believe Trump’s campaign promise to release the Epstein files.
Surely he could mean that, but he clarified yes, he did. You mentioned past supporters when you were talking about the the Epstein issue. Does that mean that you’re effectively disowning any supporters who are now lost a lot of faith in certain people? Yeah, I lost because they got duped by the Democrats. What are telling people the case is closed isn’t working.
So, he’s defaulting to trying his old playbook where it’s all Russia, Russia, Russia, Comey, Obama hoax. Barack Obama created the Epstein files that he didn’t show you. So why would you even want to see them? What could be in them? They’re fabricated anyway and they don’t exist. What’s wrong with you? The thing is, it isn’t really working.
If you talk about this, I’m going to excommunicate you. Well, you’re not the Pope, bro. Millions of Americans are not satisfied with what we’ve been told, and we shouldn’t be because it’s been contradictory and insulting to our intelligence every step of the way. Trump should not be insulting and attacking the people who voted him in and supported him simply because they want answers on this notorious case of a high-profile individual.
Why’ they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible? Why’ they say that? I can’t reconcile this Donald Trump with the Trump that we’re seeing right now. The Trump that is gaslighting the public right now. The Trump that I voted for across multiple elections. The Epstein scandal is definitely terminal cancer to Trump’s MAGA movement.
These people believed in Trump, as you saw, and his war on the deep state, and now they’re wondering why Trump has changed his tune, including disgraced former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn. In a long post on social media today, Flynn practically begged Trump to change tactics and release more Epstein files.
Quote, “If there are elites inside of our country that committed crimes against children, shame on them, and they must be held accountable.” Even Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has at least rhetorically in his words, if not his actions, split from Trump on the Epstein case. I agree with the sentiment that we need to we need to put it out there.
And um and you know, Pam Bondi, I don’t know, when she originally made the statement, I think she was talking about documents as I understood it. They were on her desk. I don’t know that she was specific about a list or whatever, but she needs to come forward and explain that to everybody. That was just yesterday.
Though in the same day, Johnson and fellow Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal that would have forced DOJ to publish its Epstein files online. But again, Trump can’t stop talking about Epstein and posting about Epstein, even as he wishes everybody else would. As longtime political journalist Josh Marshall put it on social media, this stuff is seriously baffling.
It’s like someone went to Trump and said, “Dude, you have to convince everybody you are 100% guilty.” Again, Trump has always been able to move on from a bad news cycle before, often by creating some new bad news cycle, right? But now he really is losing control of his supporters. The only person on the right who seems really happy about it is Trump’s former mega donor and co-president, world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
All summer, Musk has openly wared with Trump, including teasing the creation of a new third party, saying in a now deleted post that Trump was in the Epstein files. Today, Musk spent much of his time on social media stirring the Epstein pot, posting that so many powerful people want that list suppressed, and we were all told the list was going to be released and that Trump should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax.
When the political betting site Poly Market posted its users believe there was a 100% chance Donald Trump was named in the Epstein files, Musk replied with a post of his own, quote, “That is a high level of confidence.
