"Daily Blast" podcaster Greg Sargent said President Donald Trump’s “propagandists are getting more frantic in their efforts to spin away the scandal around the Jeffrey Epstein files”, particularly now that the convicted sex trafficker is making hard dents in Trump’s poll numbers.
Sargent said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated the Trump administration is clearly eager to devour its own in its struggle to avoid damage, even if it means targeting its own loyal employees. At a recent press conference, a reporter asked Leavitt why Trump has not “ordered the FBI to release the full Epstein files and get it all out there.”
“The President has said if the Department of Justice and the FBI want to move forward with releasing any further credible evidence, they should do so,” Leavitt answered. “As to why they have or have not, or will—you should ask the FBI about that.”
The answer incriminates FBI leader Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and former Epstein controversy monger who spent years pressing the Biden administration for transparency on Epstein’s so-called “client list” as well as Epstein’s death in prison during Trump’s first term.
Sargent also replayed Leavitt’s recent response to a reporter’s inquiry on whether FBI agents going through Epstein's files were told to flag any mention of "Trump."
“I don’t believe that’s something the White House was aware of. You’d have to ask the FBI,” Leavitt answered, essentially “fobbing it off on the FBI as if Trump couldn’t order the FBI to release the files,” Sargent said.
“That’s just preposterous,” Sargent added. “The second that [article] came out … last Friday, Karoline Leavitt and the White House would have been on the phone with Pam Bondi, the attorney general, in about three seconds, finding out exactly what the deal was with whether there was a directive to FBI agents to flag mentions of Trump. And they would have gotten an answer. So, I think it’s pretty damn telling that they’re not saying,‘No, it’s not true.’ They’re saying, ‘Go to the FBI,’ again.
“That’s classic obfuscation by the press secretary,” said "Daily Blast" guest speaker and data analyst G. Elliott Morris. “If they could say ‘no’, then they would say ‘no’. They say ‘no’ all the time when they don’t have information on their side. … [T]hey could be stretching the truth further here if they want, but instead you get the redirection to the FBI. I think that’s pretty telling of what’s going on behind the scenes here.”
Sargent added that Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino “were among the leading promoters of the idea that the Epstein files contained this explosive set of revelations back when they were big MAGA influencers.”
“They were put into the deep state partly to blow the lid off the deep state and show everybody that that scandal that had been festering for many years was actually there. So, it’s this weird poetic justice for them to be getting thrown under the bus here. But again, the desperation to appear pro-transparency is palpable.”
Morris said the polling numbers show the increasingly frantic panic that may be driving Trump to throw his own loyal employees under a bus. “It seems unlikely to me, given everything else Trump is able to do with a snap of his finger, that if he wanted full transparency, he wouldn’t get it from his own FBI. … And in terms of public opinion, the public agrees with that.”
A July Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed 70 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “The government is hiding Epstein’s alleged client list,” as well as information on Epstein’s death.
“I think that’s the explanation for Karoline Leavitt’s comments,” said Morris, adding that the Epstein name is leading the U.S. news cycle. Morris’ own ‘Strength in Numbers' and Verasight Tuesday poll reveals about 10 percent of people saying they’ve heard something in the news about the scandal.
“In an average of polls that I calculated last Friday … 17 percent of people said they approve of the way Trump’s handling the Jeffrey Epstein files, and 59 percent of people disapprove. That’s a minus-42 net rating,” said Morris. “… People feel about twice as bad (toward Trump’s handling of the Epstein files) as they feel about inflation—something that sank the last presidency.”
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