President Donald Trump spent the weekend hurling accusations against Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and the Rev. Al Sharpton — and panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" noticed a common thread.
The president remains dogged by his relationship to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and has seemingly returned to a familiar playbook as he seeks to change the topic.
"Donald Trump is in very serious problems around this whole question of Epstein," Sharpton said. "So last week, he was trying to flood the zone to take any pressure off of him and try to put his MAGA base back together again.
"The fact is, he started by saying he's going to fire the Fed chief – that didn't work. Then he went on to something about tariffs – that didn't work. Then he decided to do what he started his political career on, start race baiting, which was he started with birtherism, that Obama wasn't born here. Then he went and released the files, last week, of Martin Luther King Jr., some of which are very questionable, and the family was opposed to him doing it – that didn't work. The next day he goes after Barack Obama saying he ought to be prosecuted – that didn't work."
Trump repeated false claims over the weekend that Beyoncé was paid $11 million to endorse Harris last year, and he accused his Democratic rival of paying for support from Oprah Winfrey and Sharpton, saying they should all be prosecuted.
"The thread here is race, and that's what he's trying to do," Sharpton said. "They're swapping money, they're doing things like Obama was holding back with Russia. It's all about trying to get past Epstein. We have shown in National Action Network and other groups what we did and didn't do in the campaign. Even when I spoke at the convention, I said we don't endorse candidates. We have come with our files. Release the Epstein files, Mr. Trump. Do what we did or be quiet."
Co-host Jonathan Lemire agreed the trend was unmistakable.
"The four names in that post – the vice president, Oprah, Beyoncé, yourself – very clear what they have in common," Lemire said. "Just this idea, this seems to be to rev's point, Trump playing the greatest hits, falling back on some of his, you know, lesser impulses, perhaps playing with birtherism and the like, but also just shows a still this frantic nature of trying to throw things against the wall to distract from an Epstein story that's simply not going away."
Trump has usually been able to change the subject from harmful narratives throughout his political career, but those tactics haven't worked in this case.
"It's the last part of that that matters, I think, which is, I understand, why they're frantic, because he's thrown a lot of stuff against the wall, and none of it has done what it normally has done for him, which is to move people along, get people distracted, and usually you have the people who are most easily distracted are those in his base," said senior political analyst John Heilemann.
"He's been able to count on that. You think about the range now of what the distractions have been, you've got on one hand, all due respect to reverend, but it's like on one hand you're like, 'Hey, those guys, Kamala Harris, who I beat, right, who's no longer a political threat to me whatsoever, who I beat in the election, fair and square, paid endorsers' – who cares? On the other end of the scale, [he's saying] Barack Obama has committed treason and should, according to the law, if you're guilty of treason, should be put to death."
"No one cares about that either, because it's self-evident that all of these things are what we've just said," Heilemann added. "They're all distractions, and the one persistent reality is that the Jeffrey Epstein thing is not going away, because for the first time, Donald Trump is faced with a thing, a controversy where he is at odds with the people who have supported him, believed in him, trusted him the most, and they are all they are looking at him going, 'Wait a minute, you're full of crap.'"
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