Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta slammed President Donald Trump on Tuesday for attempting to retreat from the Jeffrey Epstein files story that caused fury within the MAGA world.
On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration would not release new information about the Epstein case after promising for months to do just that. This happened after the White House held a MAGA influencer event in February where it distributed binders of documents allegedly related to the Epstein case.
There were two aspects of the announcement that MAGA world took issue with. First is the conclusion that Epstein did not have a client list, which the MAGA faithful had talked about for years before Bondi's announcement. The other aspect MAGA took issue with is the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell.
Acosta said on his eponymous show on Substack that the events reminded him of a saying his grandmother used to tell him: "You make your bed, you lie in it."
"Just about every goofball on the far-right with an X account for the last several years had been popping off on Jeffrey Epstein," Acosta said. "I don't know if we're at a sort of MAGA inception moment, but part of the thing that is going on on the far-right is that they were so creeped out by all that video and all those photos of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, that they just wanted to go out there and both-sides this."
One of the most prominent conspiracy theories related to the Epstein case is that there are a lot of Democratic lawmakers who appear on Epstein's client list. Acosta said this theory only goes to show that there was a concerted effort to hide Trump's involvement with the disgraced financier.
"Perhaps it was to paper over whatever Trump was up to in all of this," Acosta said.
You can listen to the entire episode with Charlie Sykes here.