U.S President Donald Trump looks on on the day he signs the HALT Fentanyl Act, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 16, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Former Republican strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson couldn't help but notice that President Donald Trump is acting differently lately, and he thinks he knows why.
Speaking with a panel of political analysts on Tuesday, MSNBC host Katy Tur remarked that she was trying to understand Trump's motivation around the Jeffrey Epstein files scandal.
"Donald Trump, I think rightfully so, has operated under this idea that he is Teflon, that nothing ultimately hurts him," Tur said. "And he's been proven right multiple times. But this one, he's acting differently. Why is he not continuing to feed the fever of Epstein? Why is he trying to pull back on that? Why, suddenly, on Epstein, is he more moderated? Is he leaning toward the idea that, you know, maybe it's not a good idea for the DOJ to release everything?"
Wilson called it a "profound tell" from Trump that he's legitimately afraid of what might be in the files about him.
"This is a real understanding of what scares him. Donald Trump is not a brilliant man, but he has a certain degree of feral cunning about things that endanger him personally or legally or politically," Wilson surmised. "He has a keen sense of those things. He senses that the Epstein matter is so devastating that if it fully comes to light, you know, it was so devastating that he sent a thousand FBI agents to scrape through every single piece of information that the DOJ had to ensure his name — that they knew everything that was there."
The comment was a reference to a report from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) stating that approximately 1,000 FBI agents were tasked with reviewing all the millions of pages of documents from the investigation to identify mentions of Trump's name.
Wilson said that Trump "acts guilty" while he "sounds guilty" and "looks" and "smells guilty" too.
Meanwhile, he's trying to change the story on the Russia investigation by making treason accusations against former President Barack Obama, when "all these things have nothing to do with Russia. It's to do with Jeffrey Epstein. This is all Epstein."
Wilson said that it appears the matter has consumed his brain and is "wearing him down." He agreed with Tur that Trump sounds much different about this than he does about other matters.
"It's not swagger. It's not good-different. It is scared. This guy is terrified of what's in those — the knowledge that could be in this stuff," Wilson said.
He confessed he has no idea what information there is about "Trump and underage girls or whatever it is." Then again, he said, Trump also "wished Ghislaine Maxwell well when she got sentenced. Who says that about a notorious sex trafficker?"
Tur also walked through the full list of things Trump has tried to use to distract from the matter over the past several days.
See the discussion below or at the link here.