President Donald Trump denies writing the birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein published by the Wall Street Journal, but one of his former White House aides said he would have a hard time escaping the scandal engulfing him.
The newspaper published a bawdy letter allegedly written by Trump in 2003 to the disgraced financier, but Trump insists he doesn't type letters or "write pictures," as the Journal reported, and his former communications staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin told "CNN News Central" that the syntax used in the missive doesn't sound much like her former boss.
"Listen, this Wall Street Journal story just raises so many questions," Griffin said. "I can say it doesn't sound like Donald Trump of today, but this is reportedly from 2003. That's more than 20 years ago. If you watch old clips of Donald Trump, he sounded very different back then. He spoke differently, his vernacular was different, so I would say that is a little bit of pushback there."
Trump has faced more dissension from his MAGA base on the Epstein matter than possibly any other issue, and Griffin doubts they'll abandon him – but she said the president could likely lose support from some of his newer supporters.
"I think you're going to see a lot of the steady voices who have been with him since 2016, who have maybe been critical during this Epstein debacle, kind of start to gravitate back around him," she said. "They're probably going to believe him that this and other things are hoaxes. But here's what I would keep my eyes on, is even if this disappears from prime time at Fox News, even if a lot of his closest allies who've been with him for years side with him, you know who I don't think is going to is this manosphere of podcasters, the Joe Rogans, the Theo Von, the Andrew Schultz people who helped get him elected and helped win him the popular vote, who have also built huge audiences on saying, 'We are going to get the truth about Jeffrey Epstein.'"
"Those guys aren't beholden to him in the same way," Griffin added. "They're not beholden to the RNC or to Republican politics, and I would be shocked if they would sort of sacrifice their own independence and credibility with their audience to basically take the White House's talking points on this. So I think he's got a huge uphill battle to make this story go away with the people who are most influential with his audience."