Saturday Night Live‘s Donald Trump tried any which way he could to come up with a satisfactory explanation for his reluctance to release more files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
In a White House press briefing, the president (James Austin Johnson) was asked about this week’s trove of emails that lawmakers released, many of which have led to even more questions about Trump’s relationship with the dead sex offender. But Epstein’s former friend struggled to form a coherent defense of his actions.
“I am hiding almost nothing—just enough to make it extremely suspicious,” Trump responded to one reporter asking what he is concealing from the public. “But let me ask you a question: if there was something incriminating about me in the files, then why would I cover them up?”
The reporter (Kenan Thompson) replied quizzically: “Wait, isn’t that exactly why you would cover them up?”
“Okay, let me go again,” the president said, only to bolster critics’ arguments once more.
“If I were innocent, wouldn’t I just release all the files?” he said, looking around the room confidently.
White House press briefing with Karoline Leavitt and Trump pic.twitter.com/tgVarzhDrl
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“Yes!” the reporter noted. “Again, I think you’re just agreeing with what everyone is saying.”
After two consecutive whiffs, Trump tried again—but was no less convincing.
“Jeffrey Epstein—I barely knew the guy, as evidenced by the thousands of pictures of us together, dancing and grinding our teeth at various parties, always leering at something just off camera. Probably a book we’re excited to read,” he said.
Trump, after praising former Fox News host Megyn Kelly for effectively splitting hairs about what constitutes an “actual pedophile,” was confronted by how Epstein claimed in an email that he was never a member of Mar-a-Lago, even as Trump has said he kicked him out of the club.
“It’s kind of hard to square that circle until you realize that Trump exists across many timelines,” he said. “It’s the ‘Trump multiverse theory.’ We just happen to be living in the worst one.”
Trump then figured his way out of the Epstein scandal was to do something true to form: start selling something, fast. And in this case, the product would be individual Epstein files—”on sale for the low, low price of $800.”
“A beautiful, one-of-a-kind screenshot,” he boasted of one gold-framed email—”in very low-res.”
From Rolling Stone US
