Trump’s BIGGEST Epstein sin is not what everyone thinks… it’s coming to haunt him: MARK HALPERIN
President Donald Trump’s squirrelly behavior in the Jeffrey Epstein matter is less an obvious series of lies than it is a violation of the first rule of public relations.
That rule, dear reader, is the same as the first rule of dealing with a seriously upset stomach: If you must vomit, do it all at once.
Don’t dry heave your way through half-truths. Don’t burp out one awkward fact at a time. Just… heave. Elegantly, if possible. But fully.
The Trump approach, however, has been to swallow hard, grin wide, and pretend that everything’s fine — while behind him, the White House cleaning staff is laying down sawdust.
Just ask Richard Nixon, that most Shakespearean of sweaty presidents: it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
In Trump’s case, it’s at times not either. It’s more like the ‘confuse-up.’
Trump doesn’t lie so much as he performs falsehood. It’s vaudeville deceit. A kind of P.T. Barnum approach to credibility.
He turns to the crowd and winks — ‘Folks, the elephants are real, I swear’ — as a papier-mâché trunk collapses behind him.
The Trump approach, however, has been to swallow hard, grin wide, and pretend that everything’s fine—while behind him, the White House cleaning staff is laying down sawdust
Today’s incremental development in the Epstein epic goes like this: Mr. Trump, when asked point-blank if Attorney General Pam Bondi had told him if his name was in that amorphous blob known as the Epstein Files – he did not say no.
But he didn’t say yes, either.
Instead, he did a little soft-shoe shuffle, tapped out a vague answer, and moved on — like a man trying to sidestep a puddle only to trip into a pothole.
Now, it’s been reported by The Wall Street Journal that Trump’s name does, in fact, appear in the documents and that the attorney general informed him of that in May.
That’s not a smoking gun. It’s not even a lukewarm musket. But it is a sign that the president’s recent evasions were… well… not exactly profiles in transparency.
This has raised the eyebrows of even Trump’s staunchest allies. They know the pattern. Trump wants the story to go away. But by half-answering, dodging, and denying, he’s turned a would-be one-day news event into an ongoing saga. Again.
The Trump administration’s handling of this scandal is reminiscent of a teenager caught with a Playboy under his mattress, who insists, red-faced, ‘I don’t even like girls.’
There’s a kind of reverse logic at work.
If Trump had just admitted upfront that yes, his name was on the list, but no, he did nothing wrong — and even better, if he called for full transparency in the release of all Epstein documents — he might have defused the issue altogether.
Instead, the hush and the hedging keep the media embers glowing. And at least some of the public suspicions alive.
President Bill Clinton’s old spokesman Mike McCurry, a spinner of considerable dexterity, once admitted to ‘telling the truth slowly’ during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
President Donald Trump ‘s squirrelly behavior in the Jeffrey Epstein matter is less an obvious series of lies than it is a violation of the first rule of public relations
It was the political version of easing into a cold pool one toe at a time. Though even McCurry understood that eventually, the whole truth had to come out.
Trump, by contrast, seems determined to hang halfway off the diving board, shouting that the water doesn’t exist.
Truth, to Trump, has always been more of a decorative item than a foundational principle. Think of him as a historical descendant of those Gilded Age barkers who promised elixirs to cure baldness, gout, and loneliness.
His relationship with facts has the consistency of tapioca: vaguely shaped, not unpleasant, but wholly ungraspable.
Whether it was the crowd size at his inauguration, the ‘perfect’ phone call to Ukraine, or whether he knew who David Duke was — there’s always a moment where the truth seems to disappear behind a curtain of flamboyant confidence.
Let’s be fair: It’s entirely possible that Trump has nothing nefarious to hide when it comes to Epstein. But in that case, even a slice of clarity would go a long way.
Instead, we’re left with something closer to that now clichéd Groucho Marx routine. Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
Somewhere in the West Wing, a staffer is surely saying: ‘Sir, we really should just release everything and be done with it.’ And Trump, perhaps swirling a Diet Coke and scanning Truth Social, is responding with something like: ‘That’s loser talk. We bury the story.’
But the story, like an old Nixonian ghost, won’t stay buried. It’s haunting him now, floating through the halls of the West Wing and Bedminster in the form of whispers, leaks and late-night cable chatter.
In the end, the Epstein affair is unlikely to be Trump’s undoing. He’s wriggled out of tighter political straitjackets than this. But his refusal to follow the most basic rule of crisis management — get it out, get it all out — may yet turn a manageable mess into an unflushable embarrassment.
