President Donald Trump's former communications director said on Thursday that she can't fathom how he "botched" the public relations around his latest scandal.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that he was included in the documents around the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Meanwhile, ABC News released a video of an Epstein deposition in which he confirms he "socialized" with Trump.
When asked whether he "socialized with Trump in the presence of minors," Epstein pleaded his Fifth Amendment privileges against self-incrimination.
Speaking of the scandal, "The View's" Alyssa Farah Griffin said, "Two big things: how did Trump botch the PR of this so much? We know he likes to resort to deny, deny, deny, but on May 5th, he knew he was in the Epstein files. If he came out and said my name appears in them. It is widely known that we were friends and associates for years. There's no indication of wrongdoing. If there is something else we can release in the future, we will. I don't know, it would have been a month-long story."
His problem, she said, continues to be a "drip, drip, drip" of information while he searches for someone else to blame.
"Blaming [James] Comey and [Barack] Obama after he already was briefed he's in it? Making up a new conspiracy theory saying he's not in it?" she questioned.
Co-host Joy Behar said that it speaks "of the certain desperation on his part."
Sara Haines said that the reason Trump resorted to denial is that it has always worked in the past.
"Whether January 6th and people saying it was a tour or the election denialism, over time, he actually convinced more and more people by just repeating everything that maybe it was rigged," said Haines. "That's what he was convincing people of. I think that the problem here is as things drip out, like this Wall Street Journal that he actually — he was told and he's denying is going to be just the drip that drowns him."
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