A C-SPAN caller floated a theory that Jeffrey Epstein was alive and that President Donald Trump was jealous because the sex offender was "better looking."
During Saturday's edition of Washington Journal, a caller named Richard offered his thoughts on Trump's Epstein scandal.
"I'm talking about Epstein," Richard Said. "You remember that guy? I believe with his kind of money, he probably set this up and had somebody else burnt, and I think he's alive somewhere."
"Trump, I think he's a bit jealous of Epstein because Epstein was a better-looking guy," the caller added.
The attorney for Jennifer Araoz, who says Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted her at age 15, challenged President Trump on CNN Saturday, inviting him to meet with her “one on one” amid speculation he may pardon Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Jennifer would like to invite the president to meet with survivors like her so he can understand the pain they went through and why a pardon should not be granted under any circumstances,” said Eric Lerner, Araoz’s attorney, extending the invitation for the first time to CNN’s Fredricka Whitefield.
Trump has faced increased scrutiny over his Justice Department interviewing Maxwell last week, with speculation growing that the president may be considering pardoning the convicted sex offender, and in exchange for compromising information on Democratic figures like former President Bill Clinton, who, like Trump, has had a well-documented relationship with Epstein.
Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and is alleged to have operated a blackmail operation targeting powerful figures.
And on Friday, Trump sparked further outrage when Maxwell was quietly moved from a maximum-security prison in Florida to a minimum security prison camp in Texas, a move that required the Bureau of Prisons to bend the rules to facilitate.
Lerner said that Araoz and other victims of Epstein “can’t understand why a convicted sex trafficker like Maxwell would be transferred to the lowest-level security prison in our federal system,” noting that at Maxwell’s new prison, “prisoners can literally walk off the facility,” as most minimum security prisons have “limited or no perimeter fencing.”
Whitefield asked Lerner how he intends on delivering the invitation to meet with Araoz to Trump, to which Lerner suggested he would get it to the president one way or another.
“We hope to get the message out today, we hope that this will be reported on, and we hope that the president is watching; if it's not reported on, or the president isn't watching today, we're going to keep talking about it,” Lerner said.
“I think they could talk one on one and she could really explain to him, face to face, what she's been through and what the other survivors like her have been through. How, under no circumstances, should a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell be considered.”
Lerner also laid into Trump’s supposed reason for facilitating a meeting with Maxwell, which was to, as his DOJ Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche put it, “to ask: what do you know?” Instead, Lerner said, the Trump administration had ample tools at its disposal to find additional co-conspirators in Epstein’s crimes.
“The justice system clearly has Epstein's emails: Google has it and the justice system has it,” he said. “Those emails would reveal a lot of what is being looked for. The Justice Department confiscated over 70 computers, hard drives, iPads, cell phones, so release what they have, but getting names from Ghislaine is not worth giving her a pardon or an easier sentence.”
A rant by Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk on who is manly and who is not led to an explosion of laughter on CNN's "Table for Five " on Saturday morning.
As host Abby Philip pointed out before sharing the clip, "According to one MAGA star, it's a man's world and anyone who's not MAGA is just living in it."
In the clip, the frequently derided Donald Trump influencer exclaimed, "I do think that there is a direct correlation between someone's testosterone and their politics. I would love to have a study done on this on young men –– the lower their testosterone, the more likely they are to be democratic."
"Democrats are not going to be able to win over high testosterone men because they're too self-directed so differently," he suggested. "The lower your testosterone is, of course, the more likely you are going to be subservient and compliant, okay? Our republic needs alpha men."
In the middle of all the panel laughter, CNN's Harry Enten blurted "What the hell is he talking about? Oh my god! Does anyone here know?"
A laughing Phillip then said she would defer to the men at the table because she didn't want to touch it before joking, "Are you guys taking testosterone tests and then, like, registering to vote?"
Podcaster Touré offered, "I'm sure that he would love to see a correlation between testosterone and masculinity. There actually is social science on this, right? There are people who study this stuff; empathy is the core thing that divides the left from the right many times, so many of the right's policies are about this is good for me and so much of what the left is about is this is good for everybody in our view."
"So that really the point, not like 'I have more testosterone,' that's silly," he scoffed.
Former Donald Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin smiled and observed, "I've also just never heard a man I consider masculine spend time thinking about another man's testosterone levels. I think that's where you lost me."
Another former Trump official, attorney Jim Schultz, got off the unkindest cut by telling the panel, "I'm not so sure that Charlie Kirk hits the weights all that much either," to renewed laughter.
Former White House official under President Donald Trump Jim Schultz was scolded Saturday on CNN for defending the president’s firing Friday of Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following a jobs report that showed a significant slowdown in job growth.
“Do you feel liberated yet?” asked CNN host Abby Phillip on the network’s “Table for Five.”
“This firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is, I think, one of the more stunning things that Trump has done, not because people in Washington will be stunned, but because of the ripple effects it will have for the people who rely on it around the globe and on Wall Street.”
Among Phillip’s guests was Schultz, who immediately went to bat for Trump. He defended the president’s decision to fire McEntarfer as being “well within his purview,” and justified her termination due to the BLS’ revision of job numbers from May and June.
“Look, they had to make adjustments to the job numbers for the prior months, so when you look at it over time, it's within his purview to do it,” Schultz said. “If he doesn't have confidence in the person, he has a right to fire them.”
Phillip fired back at Schultz almost immediately.
“So in other words, if he doesn't like the results that the person is producing, he can fire them?” Phillip said.
“But remember, there was an adjustment in the results, the results weren't right!” Schultz fired back.
Revisions in job reports, Phillip noted, were frequent from the BLS, who went on to call Schultz’ argument as “nonsensical.”
“Revisions happen; they happen under every president, they happened when (Trump) was president the first time, they happened under Biden, so the idea that revisions are inherently a problem is nonsensical,” Phillip said.
In an apparent effort to downplay the severity of McEntarfer’s firing, a termination that another guest on the panel, Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House communications director for Trump, admitted “raises concerns,” Schultz argued that the controversy would be short-lived.
“The argument that this is going to have some tremendous ripple effect on the economy long term, it's really not, we're not going to be talking about this a week from now,” Schultz said.
The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed, among other things, that Black unemployment reached its highest level since January 2022, a revelation that CNN highlighted Saturday as yet another broken promise from President Donald Trump.
“Who’s taking the Black jobs now?” asked CNN’s Victor Blackwell, referencing Trump’s past claim that “migrants” were taking “African-American jobs.”
“On the 2024 campaign trail, he promised millions of new jobs to Black voters, and July was the second consecutive month that the unemployment rate for Black Americans climbed, and that's relevant to every worker.”
The latest jobs report left experts “stunned” given the relatively low new jobs created in July of 73,000 – far below the projected 115,000 – as well as the significant revisions to new jobs created in May and June, with June’s job numbers revised from 147,000 to just 14,000. And while unemployment ticked up by just 0.1%, for Black Americans, that figure climbed from 6% to 6.8%, the highest rate in nearly four years.
“These numbers matter, not just because it affects Black people; the reality is that Black Americans may feel it first, but all Americans could feel this next,” Blackwell said. “The pitch to America was economic, specifically to Black voters and Black men, more jobs, lower prices, and now we see these numbers.”
Blackwell was joined by Michael Harriot, author and columnist at The Grio, who also laid into Trump for his broken promise on Black employment, and warned that the spike in Black unemployment was a strong indicator for future economic turmoil.
“I wonder what happened to all those Black jobs? Remember, economists always say the economic recession hits Black Americans first, and you can almost predict since the last 50 years a recession by the number of Black jobs,” Harriot said.
“It historically has always been about double the white unemployment rate, but what we're seeing now is going to get worse. So it's going to get worse for Black folk before it gets worse for Americans, but it's going to get worse for Americans.”
An attempt by an MSNBC guest to pin blame for the growing public distrust with both parties on how Jeffrey Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell is being treated was swiftly shot down on Saturday morning.
During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Lindsey Williams Drath, CEO of Andrew Yang's Forward Party, was asked about the battle to get convicted human trafficker Maxwell to testify before members of Congress and she used the opportunity to bash both parties.
Drath was prompted by co-host Jonathan Capehart about the movement of Maxwell to a "Club Fed," as he asked, "How are the American people supposed to believe anything that's coming out of the administration, let alone the president's mouth?"
'Well, I think, Jonathan, this isn't just this administration," Drath, a former RNC official, replied. "This is government in general right now. Earlier in the year, you know, we saw polls saying that 70 percent of Americans believed that government was fundamentally corrupt and what happens here is that, when you see selective accountability, that's when trust erodes in the American people."
Going on to detail plans by both parties to depose Maxwell she made the point, "When you see when Congress does exactly what it's supposed to do on behalf of the American people, and there's ambiguity about the sequencing, that's when trust is eroding. That's why you're seeing 10,000 people every day leaving the Republican and Democratic parties. This isn't a partisan issue; this is a fundamental issue. This is a fundamental issue of trust in our institutions of government. and that's why at the Forward Party, we're calling for full transparency and accountability here."
Occasional MSNBC co-host Sam Stein, who grimaced while she talked, wasn't having it and pointed out the elephant in the room as far as voters are concerned.
"Yeah. Well, I mean, I think trump's acting incredibly shady around this stuff, to be honest with you," he shot back. "And I think that's part of the problem. So while I do take your point about trust in parties, the fact is this man ran on, you know, producing documents exposing these lies and now he's acting in a way that suggests that he has something to hide."
"I don't know how he gets out from under this without full transparency," he added.
President Donald Trump launched into an angry tirade about the Wall Street Journal during an interview with Rob Finnerty on the far-right Newsmax cable network Friday evening.
Trump is suing the Journal, a right-leaning publication under the umbrella of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, following the paper's reporting on a salacious birthday letter he allegedly sent to deceased financier and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Trump denies having written the letter, although his denials contradict some known facts.
"You've been very open about wanting an expedited deposition from Rupert Murdoch," said Finnerty. "This is somebody that you were close with ... do you think maybe the better question is, why do you think the Journal is attacking you like that?"
"Well, it's funny because the New York Post has been terrific," said Trump. "He's a really good man. Keith Poole runs it, and they've been great. The Wall Street Journal has been terrible. They've been so bad. It's like a gossip page. It's like it's not the Wall Street Journal, it's gossip."
"When they write things wrong, I feel I have to protect myself," said Trump. "I have to protect my voters. I have to protect MAGA. And if I don't do it, I wouldn't be here with you. I wouldn't be, frankly, I wouldn't be president. I wouldn't. Who knows what would have happened if I didn't fight back?"
"I mean, they were, it turned out to be a whole phony thing," he added. "The Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and many other hoaxes too. That was just an offshoot, but many other hoaxes. And so I feel I have to protect myself. Wall Street Journal I find to be very, very dishonest as it pertains to me."
Nobel Prize-winning economist turned political commentator Paul Krugman tore into President Donald Trump on MSNBC for firing the nation's chief labor statistics analyst for reporting weak jobs numbers — and told anchor Ari Melber this is the same blueprint that ends up driving authoritarian countries into economic collapse.
This comes at the same time Trump is ramping up threats and attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, an official he originally appointed, for not lowering interest rates because the administration's tariffs are undoing progress on inflation, sparking additional fears the president could derail independent monetary policy.
"We're not yet in recession territory, but we're definitely losing steam," Krugman, a frequent critic of Trump, said in response to the numbers. "And this is a not good picture. This is not what you want to see happening."
"[And] Trump sort of crashes out, shoots the messenger," replied Melber. "We don't have any modern precedent for that. It's reminiscent of bigger problems in controlled or autocratic countries and economies. Put that in context for us. And why would that affect — why would that be bad for, say, an average person in the economy?"
"Well, the thing to remember is that this agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is not a household phrase, but it is absolutely critical," said Krugman. "Basically, everything that we know about what's happening to the economy in the last couple of months comes from the BLS. They do the surveys that tell us how many people are unemployed. They do the surveys that tell us how many jobs companies are creating. They produce the inflation numbers. So all of that comes from them. And it's — first of all, it's critical for, you know, for all of us to understand what's happening, but also how the government itself makes decisions. It's how the Federal Reserve makes decisions."
"If you start to corrupt those numbers, if you start to report those numbers as being what makes the president look good instead of what's actually happening, then bad things start happening," Krugman continued. "How does someplace like Venezuela get to hyperinflation? ... someplace like Argentina get hyperinflation? And an important part of that is that they start ordering the statistical agencies to, you know, report nothing but puppies and rainbows. And so they go plunging ahead. And by the time they finally start, if they ever do, to admit that maybe, maybe we have a problem here, you're up at 80 percent inflation, right?"
"This is the playbook," he added. "We've seen it many, many times. And now I have to say, faster even than I expected, it's come to America."
CNN's Erin Burnett scorched President Donald Trump on Friday evening, saying he "fired the messenger" when he booted a top official responsible for releasing job numbers he didn't like.
Trump fired a Bureau of Labor Statistics official earlier in the day, ordering the dismissal of Erika McEntarfer, the agency's commissioner, after she released a July jobs report that showed much weaker-than-expected employment growth and large downward revisions to job numbers for May and June. Trump baselessly accused McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, of manipulating the data for political reasons.
Burnett tore into the president to open her show, "OutFront."
"It is a stunning and unprecedented move in the United States, coming just hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics — which is, around the world, the most trusted gold standard of jobs reporting — issued a report that revised job growth, showing that job growth in the United States had slowed to a near halt over the past three months," she said.
She played a clip of Trump saying he thought the job numbers were "wrong" and that the report was "rigged." Burnett noted that McEntarfer is a 20-year government veteran who was confirmed by the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support — including that of then-Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
"And to be clear, her termination tonight is for political reasons. There’s no evidence the jobs numbers were manipulated, as Trump is claiming. There is no one credible or serious who’s saying any such thing," she railed.
Burnett minced no words when describing the job's report.
"Today’s report was bad. It did show bad numbers. Not because the numbers were cooked, but because there was weakening in the economy in large part over that three-month period, with all the uncertainty and the constantly changing tariffs and threat of 160% tariffs at some point, because of the tariffs."
Burnett repeated that everything that's happened in the jobs report directly stems from "Trump's own doing."
"But of course, tonight, he’s firing the messenger," she said.
Burnett pointed to the administration cheering a "June boom" when it liked the numbers. She flagged former Press Secretary Sean Spicer's comments about jobs numbers that paint a flattering picture of Trump:
“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said, to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.'"
"Of course, everyone laughed then. Harder to laugh about things like that now," Burnett lamented. "The truth is: they weren’t phony before Trump took office the first time. They aren’t phony now. They weren’t phony when he was in office and casting doubt on the Bureau of Labor Statistics — which is relied upon in the United States and, frankly, around the world by government, private entities, businesses. All around the world. That kind of rhetoric can destroy trust in American institutions and in government statistics, which threatens the very core of what makes America the greatest, biggest, and most respected economy in the world."
The BLS, she added, is an independent agency with hundreds of workers involved in that data.
"You can’t rig and cook the books," she said, before scolding the president for casting doubt on them.
"He should be proud that the United States has the most respected numbers and statistics people believe in — unlike China, where they say, 'Oh, things are so great,' and nobody believes them. Because they know the numbers aren't real there."
A Wisconsin Republican was confronted Friday afternoon with shouts and boos from his own constituents, irate over Gaza and President Donald Trump's agenda.
Rep. Bryan Steil joined CNN's Phil Mattingly on "The Lead" to go over what happened Thursday. Mattingly played a clip of constituents shouting at Steil over Israel's handling of the Hamas war.
“Two million people in Gaza are starving!" a constituent shouts at the lawmaker. "What do you have to say about that?!"
The man raised his hands in the air in triumph as the crowd erupted into cheers.
“I'm of the view that Israel has a right to defend itself," Steil replied. "And the easiest and simplest way to end this horrific war is for Hamas to surrender and release their hostages. I appreciate everybody coming out tonight. Doesn’t mean that everyone fully agreed with me."
The crowd audibly jeered at his response.
Mattingly applauded Steil for holding a town hall, something Republicans were recently warned against doing.
"I understand that people who make a lot of noise aren't necessarily representative of everybody who was there," said Mattingly, who then launched into his question about Trump's remarks that he's concerned about humanitarian issues on the ground. "Do you have a sense of what exactly they're doing and whether or not there's any sign that it's been effective up to this point?"
Steil called it "positive" that the Trump administration sent the Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Ambassador Mike Huckabee to the region on a fact-finding mission.
"I don't think it's easy for anyone to look at the images coming out of Gaza, especially as it relates to children, and not recognize that something needs to change," he said.
He repeated his stance that Hamas should surrender and release its hostages.
"While that is not yet satisfied, making sure that we're on a fact-finding mission to provide relief, in particular to the children of Gaza, I think, is absolutely appropriate. And I commend the President for taking this action," he said.
"What's your sense when you go back home? You were faced with some questions, some frustration, over the legislative cornerstone of the Trump agenda that you guys enacted, including this," he said.
Mattingly then played another clip of a constituent concerned that Congress was ceding its power to Trump
“I was always under the impression that Congress was responsible for issuing the tariff," a man said. "I really feel that this is a terrible tax that's going to be placed upon the citizens of the United States."
Steil received a chorus of boos as he called it an "opportunity" to ensure other countries are "treating the United States fairly."
Mattingly noted trade is a "very significant issue" in Wisconsin.
"What is your sense of the ag community, of your constituents, of the state writ large with the trade war as it stands right now?" he asked.
Steil said his state's agriculture community is eager to know that it can export its goods worldwide.
"And for a long time, a lot of countries have not traded fairly with the United States. The president recognizes that," he insisted. "I would like to see us, with our ultimate goal, is striking these deals with our allies, opening up our markets across the globe so our farmers in Wisconsin can export corn and soybean, and other products from around the country, across the globe."
"Then, working with our allies and addressing the real culprit on the trade front, which is China. And so, the biggest challenge that we face is the abuses of trade agreements from China, and that’s occurred over multiple administrations," he added.
Steil called for lowering barriers with eyes and targeting the "real culprit" — China.
"It’s time that we stand up and are working on behalf of American workers and American farmers," he said.
After going off on two long rants about his poor job numbers, President Donald Trump took questions from the press on his way to the helicopter en route to his Bedminster, New Jersey, country club. Among the comments he made was in agreement that no one should trust his job numbers.
The first question that Trump got was about his claim that the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was "rigged."
"Oh, yeah, I think so," Trump said as the reporter continued to ask his question. "If you look at before the election, the same kind of thing happened, and I think you'll see some very interesting information come out, but you have to have honest reports, and when you look at those numbers and you look at the numbers just before the election, they corrected it by 800,000 or 900,000 jobs."
The count was 818,000 jobs that accounted for a miscount over the year.
Among the last questions Trump took was from a reporter asking if people should fear for their jobs if they present "information or data you don't like" and whether people should trust the jobs reports in the future.
"I've always had a problem with these numbers! You know, I was thinking about it this morning. Before the numbers that came out, I said, 'Who is the person that does these numbers?' And then they gave me stats about before the election. I had a similar problem. I mean, she gave out numbers that were so good for the Democrats. It was like, unbelievable. And then right after the election, she corrected those numbers, I think, with almost 900,000 correction."
"I think no one had ever seen anything like it. Well, today she did the same thing with the 253,000-whatever the number was. No, no. We need people we can trust. I mean, your question is a very good one. We need people we can trust," said Trump.
The new numbers showed glowing numbers for Trump for the first six months of his presidency, only being corrected in July.
Journalist Phil Mattingly commented earlier on Friday, "This displays an intentional ignorance toward the way economic data is collected, presented, revised, and the federal employees and appointees who do it. It's extraordinarily counterproductive and there's simply no net long game benefit to going down this path."
An economics expert warned that any forthcoming jobs numbers will leave many questioning their accuracy.
President Donald Trump raged after the Bureau of Labor Statistics published less-than-glowing jobs numbers for July and recalculated the May and June numbers to show meager reports. In response, Trump said he would fire the chair of the BLS and install someone "competent."
Speaking to MSNBC on Friday, Gene Sperling, former director of the National Economic Council, said that no one should underestimate how damaging this can be to assault economic institutions like the BLS.
"I know all this stuff may seem complicated to people, but it's really not. You've got four or five people you could lend money, or invest, to," proposed Sperling. "Four of them often lie, often fudge the numbers, often abuse the law. And one is always honest, independent with monetary policy, independent with the numbers they put out. Who are you going to trust? Who are you going to charge less to lend money?"
He called it the benefit of being a stable economic country.
"And it's not just in the dollar being the reserve currency, not just in our treasuries being the safe haven of investment, but in people believing that the U.S. was a place to make their future and invest," said Sperling.
This is piling on more and more "abuse and attack on the rule of law and economic integrity," he warned. It also comes as Trump extorts law firms, colleges and universities, he added.
Risk Reversal Advisors Principal Dan Nathan told substitute host Stephanie Ruhle that this was the "first time that investors truly began paying attention to some of the funny business that's been going on."
He explained that the job reports are part of a weakness caused by Trump's economic policy.
"If you think about the uncertainty in and around this trade war," he mentioned. "And make no mistake about it, if you start to put these sorts of levies right on some of these countries that you really expected to have deals by now. That sort of uncertainty is going to cause the C-level suite in America to start laying folks off to be a lot more cautious about how they are spending money."
Political analyst David Chalian practically spat fire Friday on CNN after President Donald Trump announced he was canning a labor official because he didn't like the job numbers she released Friday.
Trump posted to Truth Social that Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of Labor Statistics and a Biden appointee, published an "inaccurate" report revealing weaker-than-expected job numbers for May and June.
"There are two things here, just stepping back for a second, that I think are pretty clear," Chalian began. "One, Donald Trump's kind of giving away the fact that this is not a healthy, robust, growing economy at the moment. It's a weakening economy, and he's freaked out about it, right? I mean, just by the behavior."
Chalian continued, "So, I mean 106,000 jobs over the last three months added — that's not gangbusters. And he is concerned as he is selling his tariff policy that perhaps some of the predictions that a lot of economists made may come true here."
Chalian described Trump as "clearly rattled" by the report.
"Two, this is like...firing your pollster for telling you that you're way behind in the race! It's like, no, like these are just numbers and facts," Chalian said, noting that collecting the numbers isn't an exact science but is meant to "get the best usable information for the government" at the moment.
"And so to think that you're just going to fire — So, what does that mean?" Chalian sputtered. "He's going to put in an ally now and he's going to get different numbers? If this is the economy, if this is how many jobs are being added, he's going to have to accept bad information from an ally."
Earlier, CNN's Phil Mattingly posted to X in response to the news of McEntarfer's firing, "This displays an intentional ignorance toward the way economic data is collected, presented, revised and the federal employees and appointees who do it. It's extraordinarily counterproductive and there's simply no net long game benefit to going down this path."
