Donald Trump has been no stranger to denying accusations levied against him, with the president having popularized the term "fake news" to dismiss negative press coverage, but his latest attempts to deflect on his past ties with Jeffrey Epstein have reached a new low “even by his standards,” a columnist noted Tuesday.
“Trump’s efforts to make the Jeffrey Epstein controversy go away have been ham-fisted and inept, even by his standards,” wrote Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte for her biweekly newsletter “Standing Room Only.”
The late financier and convicted child sex offender allegedly ran a blackmail operation targeting powerful figures, and he had a storied history with Trump, new details of which were revealed Monday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
Among the most notable documents released by the House committee was a copy of a letter Trump had allegedly sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, in which Trump wrote “may every day be another wonderful secret” against a backdrop of a crudely-drawn woman’s torso, presumed to also be drawn by Trump. The president denied having written the letter, which was first reported on by the Wall Street Journal back in July and was released by a House committee Tuesday.
There’s one detail in the letter, however, that Marcotte zeroed in on as particularly disturbing, given that the Journal’s initial reporting did not include an image of the letter, only describing it with words.
“Somehow, it’s even worse than I pictured it,” Marcotte wrote. “I was assuming a cartoonish Playboy-bunny model, because that fits more with the image of himself Trump likes to project. The drawing, however, looks more like a stylized teenage girl."
Trump has called the letter a hoax, and even implied that his signature had been forged, a denial repeated by White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. His ability to move past a scandal with outright denials, however, has appeared to reach a breaking point, with many in the MAGA ecosystem not happy with the president’s handling of the matter, and some experts even warning that the Epstein scandal could tank the GOP in the 2026 midterm elections.
