President Donald Trump's vehement denial of the Wall Street Journal's explosive new report about a salacious birthday letter he sent to deceased financier and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein simply isn't credible in light of all the behavioral patterns he's shown, Media Matters chief Angelo Carusone told MSNBC's Michael Steele on Thursday.
"How does this now play into the ongoing narrative that we started this show talking about tonight?" asked Steele, himself a former chair of the Republican Party. "This now drops on the heels of what has been a bruising day for the president with his base."
"I mean, part of this, you know, at the center of all of this, you know, these conspiracies, this story, the thing that keeps it turning is that you have a bunch of people that sort of gamify it," said Carusone. "They like to find threads and then pull them as much as you can. So when you put anything into there, they pull that thread."
First of all, he said, "Let's assume for a second [the reporting is] accurate. The sentence is kind of creepy. 'May every day be a wonderful secret.' I mean, think of what we're talking about here, that people are going to be like, that's weird. I want to hear some answers. Even if it's a joke. You got to give us something."
And second of all, he continued, the denial makes no sense.
"In his denial, he says, 'I don't do drawings like that.' Well, actually, I can think of three off the top of my head that were auctioned, one of him doing a skyline of New York City that sold for 30 grand back in 2017. I can think of another where he did a skyscraper in black Sharpie and then made the sidewalk his name. There was another where he drew a money tree, and then somewhere in the roots was Donald. These are things that are easily able to be found ... so this denial that I don't even do these kinds of drawings, there's going to be plenty of proof points to undermine that."
Ultimately, Carusone said, "it's just going to give these people something to pull, which is like fresh fuel. And then as it works its way up the chain, it's going to mean more demands for transparency. And then also then even the political supporters like Senator Thune, who was out there saying, 'well, yeah, I'm always in favor of more transparency, I trust the president to do the right thing.' That was going to get asked about again. And the answer that he's landed on is no longer going to be sufficient. He's going to have to say something new in light of this. And that's the thing. You never know what's next."
"I think that's part of why, you know, they can't just fabricate something and just throw it out there," he added. "Because they don't know what's out there. And there's obviously a lot of material or potential material that they're trying to account for. But this is fresh fuel for the story. That's just what it is."
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