Trump In Complete Crisis Over Epstein Email: Wolff | Inside Trump's Head

You have to have a certain kind of finesse and patience to be able to hold two contradictory truths in your head at the same time, which is to say that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster, but he had important things to say.

Would you do it all the same again? Do you have any regrets about this?

I have no regrets at all. I would do it exactly the same. This is the way it is done. And once more, I am the only one who has been shouting from the rooftops that the central issue here is Donald Trump's relationship to this monster.

Michael, Joanna, this Epstein, Epstein, Epstein story will not go away. It's just drenching everything. The entire country feels like it's come to a standstill.

Well, and I just just let me say Russian Russian to say, finally, finally, finally, finally, I mean, this is a story that has been ready to go on the front burner for months and months and months, if not, if not years, it is a story that I have been pressing again and again and again and again. In fact, you and I, the first, before the election, together, the Daily Beast and I released tape of Jeffrey Epstein very explicitly talking about his relationship with Donald Trump. What did we get out of that? But we got a lot of internet action out of that.

The broader media crickets. So again, just let me say, finally, it is here. This is it. Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, as I have said over and over and over again, are the same

person. And finally... And you've been at the center of this and I want to come on to lots of the comments that we got. Our last podcast we talked about your methodology and the amount of time that you had spent with Epstein, your

friendship with Epstein. Well I wouldn't say my friendship with with with Epstein, your friendship with Epstein? Well, I wouldn't say my friendship with Epstein. I mean, I was certainly acquainted with Epstein. We had a relationship. He was not my friend like you are my friend.

Okay. Well, that's a relief. But I want to come on to it because you've been at the center of an enormous amount of criticism from traditional media, from legacy media, from people saying that you just spent too much time with him, you got too close to him. We'll come back to that later.

And again, let me, because this is obviously extremely frustrating to hear from people who did not get the story. And I've been here before, over and over again. When I went into the White House in the first Trump administration, came out with a book that described what was going on there, I got the same thing. Who was, was I too close, was I this, that, the other thing,

from people who did not get the story. So, let's be very clear about this. The traditional media, particularly, has abdicated their responsibility on this story, or decided and again. So I, you know, I'm like, you know, Jesus Christ, you know, please do some work. Get out of the office. Well, ick is

the right word and I can't help thinking what on earth is it like for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein to have to sit through this thing yet again, to listen to a president saying this is a democratic hoax.

But that's irrelevant.

Michael, it's not irrelevant for the victims to hear the president say this is a democratic hoax. That's not irrelevant. That was my point. That was my point, that you wake up every morning and listen to this stuff.

Yes, but in terms of understanding the president, pinning this on the President, holding the President accountable, this has to be discussed and should be discussed. And, you know, I suppose the victims have to relive this. That's unpleasant. Although I would think at the same time, they would also say, as I am saying, finally.

Finally. So as you have frequently pointed out, Donald Trump is never silent. He is always talking. He's always talking to somebody. Since the Epstein emails have been released, he has gone uncharacteristically silent. What is going on in his head, a place we have spent so much time and it's getting darker

and darker? What is—how is he thinking about how he rides this out? I mean, we heard Lauren Bobert being put under pressure. She was taken into the Situation Room, a congressperson taken into the Situation Room and clearly told that they didn't want her to vote with Thomas Massey and Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ro Khanna and all the Democrats to release the Epstein files. He said it's a democratic

hoax. He and the First Lady scurried away yesterday deliberately taking no

questions. What is going on in his head over this whole Epstein situation. This has been enormously, enormously frustrating to him for a very long time. The fact that this is now all coming home to roost, I think is completely freaking him out. This is, he doesn't, we're at a moment in time he doesn't know what to do. He's misplayed this every step of the way. He is, I think he has no strategy. I think he has no point of view. I think he feels cornered on this right

now. You think he feels cornered? My sense of the people in the White House is that they are kind of frantic. I mean, they don't know what is true. So remember, the people in the White House are dealing with, with a situation in which, in which they understand the political perils of this. He is telling them nothing. I don't I you know nothing nothing. You know barely knew the guy still on that. He's still taking that narrative which is what he always does.

Right denial right and the people in the in in the White House genuinely don't know what happened between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump from the late 80s through to the early 2000s. They don't know because that has been whitewashed

out of the Donald Trump political narrative. So Michael, who has been set aside do you think at the White House to go through all these emails? And do they have a team of people going through them? Is Kash Patel going through them? Who is looking at this stuff?

I mean, theoretically, but my in my experience, when you think that the government in the United States and the and the and the White House itself are have have unlimited resources to marshal. In reality, it's all chicken with their heads cut off. They they don't know. They don't know whose responsibility it is. Also, people don't want to take the responsibility

because you put yourself in the line of fire. You're going to get blamed. So, I don't know if they have finally put a process in place. I suspect that they don't. I remember other crises in the White House, in Trump's White House in which everything rather than coming together to deal with it everything in fact fell apart and that the first time around that led to the Mueller investigation. So I think it's perfectly likely

that nobody is doing anything. So let me ask you something because we've been going through them obviously like every other journalistic enterprise we've been going through them. I wanted to ask you about one of them which is sent to you from Jeffrey Epstein at the end of January in 2019 and it's got a redacted name which we now know because the Republicans have released her name, that it's Virginia Giuffre.

And he goes, I think, Virginia Giuffre, Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he asked me to resign. Never a member ever. Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop. Now, I think most people have read that and assumed that he was asking Gilen to stop hiring girls from the spa at Mar-a-Lago. But you think he had actually a different meaning.

Well, you know, it just occurred to me yesterday and actually I was doing a podcast with Sidney Blumenthal in the middle of the podcast I thought oh my god Yes, I know what was going on here. What was going on here is it was a moment in time Ghislaine Maxwell had sued Virginia I think her name was then Roberts

for defamation. Then Virginia,

Roberts, Jouffre, then countersued. And this had gone on for quite a number of years. And

it had finally come down to both of them having to testify to give depositions.

So both of them would be under oath and being asked about what had happened there.

Now, in fact, in fact, the suit was settled at that point. So there was no public testimony about this. But I would believe that that is the reference. It comes at exactly exactly the right point there. And and and clearly Donald Trump would not have wanted Ghislaine Maxwell to testify about well, anything. And And again, the suit was closed, they closed it down, they settled that suit.

Okay, so I want to ask you about another email that was sent from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell. And this email has received quite a lot of attention. It says, I want you to read, this is from Epstein to Ghislaine, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump again name redacted but the Republicans gave the name that it was Virginia

Jufri. So Virginia Jufri spent hours at my house with him. He has never once been mentioned police chief etc. I'm 75 percent there.

Well I just let me let me note that there is a famous Sherlock Holmes story called

The Dog That Didn't Bark. Well, do you want to? But what is the analogy he's making there? Well,

I think that that that that may be that there is similar. I mean, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein wasn't the greatest reader of all time, to say the least. But well, he would say he was a math guy, right? I think he's saying that that was a telling thing that that at that point, at that point, there there had been a lot of Virginia, then Roberts had begun to accuse a variety of people. There had been a Daily Mail story in which she had come. I mean, I think that that was the first story the first her first expose of of The experience that she had that she had had with Jeffrey Epstein

so the fact that she wasn't that And with this email was sent in

2011 And this email was sent in 2011. 2011. And Guillen writes back, I have been thinking about that, which would somewhat undercut what she said to Todd Blanche when he went down to visit her in the Tallahassee jail.

I think that it is likely that Virginia Jouffre, Roberts Jouufresne would have known what was going on at in Jeffrey Epstein's house during that period and she would have seen Donald Trump there on many, many occasions.

So what about the Republicans point that she never mentions him in her book, Nobody's Girl?

Well, you know, I think that the interesting thing about that book, remember Virginia Roberts Dufresne is dead.

Well, she died by suicide. I mean, a tragic life.

Yes, right. But anyway, she wasn't there. She wasn't there to... It's hard to hold a dead person accountable for a book that was published after her death.

But it was written while she was alive.

Yeah, but we all know the process of books and the changes that might have occurred. We already know that there were changes, a complicated thing, what she might have said to about her husband which she wanted to change or her co-author.

Amy Wallace.

Or ghost writer decided to change. I don't know. I have no idea what happened there. But there is also a publisher in this in this case and a publisher We know that everyone is afraid of Donald Trump suing We also know that there are other people in this book who she has been very careful about

You know, she refers to a prime minister Many people have assumed who that prime minister is, but she doesn't say. So I have no idea here. I'm just trying to provide a context for why Donald Trump's name might not be mentioned.

OK, so let's pull back to the wider picture. You're saying he's panicking. He's kind of freaked out about this. He has no strategy to deal with it. I noticed yesterday J.D. Vance, who'd been accused, and we wrote about this in The Beast, had been accused of saying nothing, then cropped up and did an interview with Hannity, during

which he did not mention the word Epstein once. So, what do you think is going on there? Is this a moment for J.D. Vance? Are J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio thinking, hmm, he may be fallible, this guy?

I don't understand the question. J.D. Vance may be fallible or Donald Trump may be fallible?

No. Are J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, as the pretenders to the throne, sitting there thinking, I'm not going to say anything here, because let him get on with it.

Well, you know, I think in the first days, there are only X number of hours. What do we have at, you know, 48 hours, slightly more than 48 hours on this, and there is probably no strategy. I'm sure that there will shortly be a. But but this has caught everybody off guard. Also, I think that there is a lot of internecine Republican by play here.

I mean, the Republicans have been the ones who have now released most of these emails. So who is that? Who is at fault? And as for as for J.D. Vance, you know, I think he's he's looking at his own situation. I don't I'm not necessarily thinking that that he thinks Donald Trump is vulnerable, but we have the you know, we have the right wing of the party who is, who is, you know, has put up a steady drumbeat for for Epstein material.

And and I mean, they they are voting with the Democrats to release have voted with the Democrats to release these these files that puts Vance in a very awkward position.

Well, I was going to ask you about that because for people who aren't following MAGA and the MAGA various fault lines that are going on now, where is MAGA on the release of all these?

MAGA is ferociously in favor of releasing all of this material. Transparency come clean. Yes, the contradiction there is that this may hang Trump. And I think that's been confusing to a lot of people on the right and the right wing press has been pretty, I mean, the last 48 hours has been not necessarily quiet on this, but their focus has been on trying to find a way to say that this does not incriminate Donald Trump. At the same time, wanting to know everything about Jeffrey Epstein. So that's going to become increasingly problematic for them, I would assume.

Okay.

I want to come on to you in a minute, but I want to ask you, if you're inside Ghislaine Maxwell's head right now, she's been moved to a jail, we've talked about this before, she's getting preferential treatment, she's getting private workout classes, she's got a puppy, she's getting her food delivered to her cell, she's in a camp that normally someone who'd been been sentenced for 20 years for sex trafficking would not be in. What is she

thinking right now? Well she's worried, she thought she had this figured out I would assume. She meets with Todd Blanche, She is then moved to a dramatically upgraded prison with, and I think we understand that she was now filing the papers for a commutation or a pardon or going through those motions, but I think it's reasonable to assume that that deal has already been struck specifically or softly. And so, she was in a good place.

Now, she probably is thinking she is losing her good place. And I suspect that's true. I don't know how Donald Trump pardons Ghislaine Maxwell, although I might have said that about many of Donald Trump's pardons, so who knows. But nevertheless, what does she do if they start to renege?

And what has she got? I mean, you have talked about this repeatedly, that it was, you think, coming from the Maxwell family when their birthday letter that Donald Trump drew and the strange poem he wrote for Jeffrey Epstein were suddenly released in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. So do you think if her family think, well, she may not now get a pardon, we have more

information to put out there?

Of course. I mean, you know, I think that they have I mean, I mean, this is a complicated thing now to thread this, this needle. She has now exonerated Donald Trump. I never saw him. Anytime I did see him, he was a figure of enormous rectitude and, and on top of that, he's a great guy. Whatever she said in that deposition, which was basically it.

I think she said congratulations on being elected to president.

So she cannot now come out and say, in fact, he's a big slime ball. But what can happen is that there can be more leaks, and the White House will understand that those leaks come from the Maxwell side and that the way they will have to stem those leaks put the stopper there is to go through with their deal I would say that's how that

will work okay so let's get back to you. We did a podcast on Thursday where we got thousands of comments and we talked about your methodology. I would say the comments we got were split roughly around 50 percent saying you've got to do what you've got to do, 25 percent being horrified at how you got so close to Epstein and were advising Epstein.

Well, let's address that again.

Can I add one more thing? And then the other thing is you've absolutely been central to a lot of the media. So we have the New York Times saying Michael Wolff, chronicler of elites, provided Epstein with advice on Trump's. The Guardian blurred lines how Michael Wolff aspired to be part of elite circles he wrote

about.

Right. And again, you know, I have heard this all the way throughout my career. And that is partly because I'm the person who has managed to get close to some very difficult stories. You know, journalism is more often than not outsiders looking at insiders. I have managed to get in with the insiders and I have returned again and again accounts that no one else has been able to get. And that doesn't mean that the way I do this

precludes other people, the New York Times particular approach, or any journalist particular approach. But I have repeatedly managed to offer a different window into major stories than other people. Without me doing it the way I do it, we would be absent key parts of key information about key stories. And let me say the other point which I've also tried over the years to make again and again and again, is that is that there are journals and journalists do their job.

I am a writer and my job, the way I see my job is to get inside a situation and to be able to write, to show, to show people or let people into an experience that they would not otherwise have. And this is not new. I'm not the only journalist who has done this. I mean, I may sometimes feel I am the only remaining journalist that has done this. But again and again, you know, whether it's whether it's Tom Wolf, whether it's

Truman Capote, you know, whether it's Hunter Thompson, you know, there is there are writers who seek to be as close to the experience as possible. And if that means and let me say, because I think it's important that you have to have a certain kind of finesse and patience, or, and to be able to hold two contradictory truths in your head at the same time, which is to say that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster,

but he had important things to say.

You said earlier that you mentioned the word ick. Would you do it all the same again? Do you have any regrets about this?

I have no regrets at all. I would do it exactly the same. This is the way it is done. And once more, I am the only one who has been shouting from the rooftops that the central issue here has is Donald Trump's relationship to this monster.

Do you think there's a silver bullet in these emails in the in the Epstein files?

Well I don't know. I mean, yeah, you know, the nature of silver bullets is usually when we think that there is one, but it is usually the the the accretion of many lead bullets.

Well, it's always good to work with a colleague who likens himself to Tom Wolf or Hunter S. Thompson or Truman Capote.

But even that, Joanna, that's that's that's annoying because you're being dismissive there and condescending. No, I'm not trying to do that. I have returned again and again and again books that are at a level and at an insight that frankly no other journalist is delivering at this point.

So how do you think this progresses over the next couple of weeks for Trump? And do you think that the do you think Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey do you think that their vote will get passed by the Senate so we actually finally get the release of the Epstein files?

I don't know. I mean, I think that there is the, I think this is one of the things that the White House is working on now. They do not want that to happen. So, so it may not. And certainly, the basic Trump strategy is always delay, delay, delay and push this out because other things will happen.

Other events will supersede this one. And that's certainly what they are counting on. Now, the thing about the Epstein story is that other events do supersede it, but it comes back again and again. Does he have the power to create an event that would wipe this off the front page? He certainly does. Will he do that? Well, he will certainly try. So I don't know how this plays out in the short term. I would suspect, however, that it will not go away, that at every opportunity it will

come back.

Okay, so I want to ask you one point that a lot of people made on our comments, and we got nearly 10,000 comments so I haven't read all of them and I won't pretend to and I've responded to as many as I had energy to but I was very impressed by how engaged people were and how interested they were in your process. I think one of the lines that people are interested to get your response to is this sense that he was a pedophile. What even is it like hanging out with someone who has been accused of such egregious things,

who spent time in jail for such egregious things? And is there a sort of, is there a kind of criminal that actually you're hanging out with, that just, there is a line there, actually. I mean, you mentioned the word ick.

I don't know if there's a line there. And and I don't understand what line you're talking about. And and and I would assume that if you got the opportunity, you would have been there, too, as would most other journalists, because you're seeing something that we otherwise don't see.

Now, as for this, and as for what it felt like, you know, it was always a kind of, you know, balance between how creepy is this and how significant is this, how informative is this. I mean, as I said before, hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. He is a monster. He has important things to say.

And so you're juggling that at all occasions. You know, you're inside a story. You're to some degree inside a crime story. And that's where where, you know, in cold blood becomes an interesting, in interesting context in which in which to in which to see this. That's what I mean. There are other people there at Epstein's table who are trying to get money from him,

who are in business relationships with them, who want a whatever leg up he can give them, who want, maybe who want girls, I don't know. But let's draw a distinction. I was there to see this story and to write this story.

I don't want to over egg this, but you raised a really interesting point that you're inside a criminal story. Is there a point where you are abetting the criminal?

Absolutely not. You know, I am doing I mean, literally nothing to I mean, I don't even want to go want to

go there

I mean what I did was sit at a table and Put on the tape recorder and with every intention of telling this story as I have told Numerous other stories, but there are people listening to this that would say there is no crime There is no there is no crime going on there. Remember, I mean, he has he has been convicted of a crime. He has gone. He has gone to prison. That is theoretically something that is that is that has been accounted for by the American justice system. Now he is, well for me he had become a source, an enormously insightful source about his friend Donald Trump. I guess people listening to

this would say, well wait a minute you did more than just put your tape

recorder on, actually you were giving him media advice. You enter into a relationship with people. You say what they might want to hear. You are finessing a relationship. If you are anything other than an opinion journalist, most journalists seem to be these days,

you have to make a relationship with your subject. And giving media advice, I'm not giving him legal advice or advice about his crimes. I'm, you know, offering some kind of, you know, I don't even know what media, you know, it seems like, you know, in fact when I reviewed these emails some time ago, because I thought these will probably come out, I thought, well, okay, this is just, you know, the usual kind of, and there's nothing that would be of any interest to

anyone here. Well it turns out that everything about the Epstein story is of enormous interest to everybody and of course, not least the White House. It's just so unusual to see Trump refusing to answer questions. It's normally the thing he most enjoys doing. And he must be figuring out how on earth to deal with this. So, let's come back on Tuesday with what you're hearing from inside the White House. But right now, he's panicking, he's freaking out.

There's no strategy. And as you've always said, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, this story just will not go away. It's astonishing to think he's been on his Asia trip, he's been bombing boats in Venezuela. There's been so much going on. There might be a war now going on in Nigeria. He appears to be doing everything he can to distract from this story, and it will not

let up. And his own congresspeople won't let it up. I mean, I think it's extraordinary that Lauren Boebert was taken into the Situation Room and put under pressure. And I think the three women who've clearly gone against, you know, what Mike Johnson wants them to do are actually pretty brave on this one.

I mean, it's hard—you know, I don't particularly want to give credit to Marjorie Taylor Greene, but she's been—she stood with the victims on this. She stood, you know, clasping Ro Khanna on this. It's really something which has managed to unite people. And it's certainly going to give room for Trump's enemies. Well, let's come back on Tuesday and tell us what more you know from inside the White

House.

Could be a new world by then.

Have a great weekend and switch off your phone. Well, there's clearly more to come on this Epstein story. It's just such a depressing story, the idea of this so-called powerful man with a network of a thousand girls and his female accomplice sitting in a prison camp in Texas. The whole thing is sickening. If you have been, thank you for joining us.

Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. We are Independent Media. And we have been talking about this story for a long time. It's suddenly hit the headlines with an enormous wave of interest and energy. Please leave us your comments. I know some of you felt I was much harder on Michael

than I should have been on our podcast, which we released on Thursday. And some of you felt that I wasn't hard enough. So keep the comments going. It's a very interesting conversation to have. I'm sure our first lady isn't having a great time

over these Epstein emails either, but she would have a say. Be beast. And thank you to our Be Beast tier of members, Herbie, Andrew Meller, Fulvia Orlando, Laz Conde, Sandra Clark, Bonzo, Val Love Francisco, Bocock DC, someone wrote in pointing out that Michael had said Bobcock and

in fact it's Bocock DC so I'm pronouncing it correctly, Karen White, Heidi Riley, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley and Andrea Hodel. Rutherford, Sharon Shipley and Andrea Hodel. And thank you of course to our production team Devon Rogerino, Anna von Ersson and Jesse Millward.