TRUMP'S "EPSTEIN PANIC"

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Why is Donald Trump so nervous about what the Epstein files might reveal?

Following adjudicated rapist Donald Trump's June 2 interview on Fox and Friends, The Daily Show's Ronny Chieng didn't hold back in roasting Trump's "suspicious" reaction to one, seemingly softball, question.

Trump's reaction, as Philip Bump noted in The Washington Post on June 3, was so filled with "awkwardness" that it was actually edited out of the interview as aired on Fox News. The only place to find it was on YouTube.

Here's what regular Fox News viewers didn't see
Trump was asked by host Rachel Campos-Duffy if he would, if re-elected, declassify the 9/11 and the JFK files.

To those questions, Trump had no problem answering “yes.”

The next question wasn't so easy.

"Would you declassify the Epstein files?" asked Campos-Duffy.

“Yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so..." said Trump.

By that point, according to Chieng, you could see the panic in Trump's eyes. "I’ve seen more relaxed people in the exit row of a Boeing flight," he joked.

The comedian told The Daily Show viewers that, in the interests of fairness, they should hear Trump out. But as the clip played on, Trump only dug himself deeper:

I guess I would. I think that less so... because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.
Chieng rightly ridiculed Trump's contention that he cared about anybody's reputation but his own:

I mean, this is the same guy who said Obama was born in Kenya and Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK. Now all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Look, if you put inaccurate information out there, it can really destroy someone’s reputation.’
You can watch that whole Daily Show segment here.

Others also noted Trump's discomfort when asked about the Epstein files. Here's how Jimmy Kimmel handled it.

And that might have been the end of the story, but...
On June 9, Semafor's Max Tani revisited the issue in an article noting that the network, whose hosts "have a habit of trying to lead Trump to certain answers during interviews," had "massaged" the broadcast version of the interview to allow "the former president to continue to cater to conspiracy theorists."

The truth of Tani's take was made clear when Donald Trump, Jr., the Trump Crime Family's Chief Conspiracy Officer took the stage at a Turning Point USA event on 15 June.

Donald Trump "wasn’t just on Epstein’s plane," joked Seth Meyers. "He had platinum status."
Speaking to an audience of impressionable youth at an organization with its own history of employing "groomers" and "pedophiles," Trump, Jr. projected the sins of his father (and his event hosts) onto fictional others, saying in part:

If you're in this room right now, you're probably on the FBI list... You're in with me, my father, my family, so you're in good company. I am on every list except the Epstein list.