The latest debacle to hit Donald Trump was sparked by members of his own team — who then fanned the flames until it was fully out of control, an analyst wrote Tuesday.
MSNBC's Steve Benen claimed the Jeffrey Epstein mess that has the president's MAGA base in uproar was completely avoidable.
But Trump's team has been amplifying it for so long that an apparent backdown this week plunged it into a crisis of its own making.
“At the center of the controversy is an unavoidable, albeit inconvenient, detail: It was members of Team Trump who helped light the match and fan the flames, starting a political fire that they’ve clearly lost control over,” Benen wrote.
Indeed, several of Trump’s cabinet picks accused the previous administration of covering up the case surrounding Epstein, suggesting it was to protect powerful figures who might be implicated.
This week's Department of Justice announcement that there was no Epstein client list was seen as a major backdown — one that many saw as a cover-up, Benen wrote.
Both FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had aggressively promoted theories around Epstein running a blackmail operation during President Joe Biden’s tenure. In 2023, FBI Director Kash Patel said “Trump should roll out the (client list) on day one,” and in February, FBI Director Dan Bongino said, regarding the Epstein case, “I’m not ever gonna let this story go.”
Perhaps the most notable backpeddling among Trump cabinet members came from Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose DOJ signed off on the memo claiming Epstein did not have a client list, despite having said a client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review” back in February.
“As this mess gets messier, the detail to remember is that this is a fiasco of Team Trump’s own making,” Benen wrote. “When asked about the ‘client list,’ Bondi said it was on her desk. Kash Patel and Don Bongino, before they became the FBI’s leaders, insisted that conspiracy theories related to Epstein were real and worth taking seriously.”
Benen goes on to note how Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, pledged in February that more information on Epstein would be released, and that Trump’s own vice president, JD Vance, condemned the silence surrounding Epstein, “a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring” in a 2021 social media post.
“If members of Team Trump want to know who to blame for this debacle, they need only look in a mirror,” Benen wrote.
