There is a New York Times exclusive article which seems pretty damning for the Trump administration regarding the Epstein controversy. Despite all of his bullying and dismissal, trying to make the Epstein story just go away and disappear, nobody seems to be forgetting. And the questions and concerns clearly persist. In fact, Trump's seeming rush to try and make this story disappear have justifiably raised still more concerns about his role regarding the Epstein controversy.
Trump made a lot of promises in both the 2016 and 2024 campaigns which he broke once in office. We all remember that during the first term, he never fulfilled some of the major campaign promises. He did not build the wall, much less get Mexico to pay for it. He did not build a national healthcare system that would be affordable and would cover everyone. He was not the greatest jobs creating president in history (far from it, in fact). He did not make progress in paying off the national debt in eight years, instead increasing it by over 25% in his first four years, and he has added still trillions more so far during his second term, with tax cuts and incentives for the wealthiest and most privileged Americans in the "Big Beautiful Bill, and now the war with Iran). It was debatable whether or not the rest of the world was laughing at us as he claimed, but they certainly were laughing at him, and at the United States by extension, when he mistook the U.N. General Assembly for a Trump rally, as well as praising the healthcare system of a non-existent African country before assembled leaders of Africa, as well as other gaffes.
Then we get to the second term. He neither lowered the price of gas or groceries. He did not stop the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, or at all, in fact. He broke his promise to keep the United States out of new foreign wars, especially in the Middle East. And he never released the Epstein Files, which he also promised to do, and which was a major theme for many members of MAGA.
Many members of MAGA, apparently not paying attention to Trump's well-established tendency to lie and mislead, really thought that Trump would quickly release the Epstein Files as promised.
Except that it never happened.
In fact, Trump's seeming urgency to try and sweep the story under the rug began to raise suspicions regarding his own role in the Epstein Case. Suddenly, MAGA began to realize that the video footage of Trump partying with Epstein and all of the other evidence, such as an interview in a major magazine in 2002 in which Trump praised Epstein and seemed to know that Epstein tended to like very attractive and very young women, which hardly encouraged the notion that Trump was innocent of any knowledge that Epstein liked them young, as Trump himself insinuated in the interview.
So the pressure on the Trump administration began to build. Publicly, they tried to remain calm and sound dismissive, much like the president himself. However, according to the Times article (see link below):
But behind the scenes, the Epstein crisis was paralyzing the Trump administration to a far greater extent than the public knew. In their public statements, Trump’s advisers were full of bravado, dismissing the crisis. In reality, it was consuming the highest ranks of the administration as no issue had for the president’s team since the Russia investigation in his first term. His aides were determined to keep their rising sense of panic out of public view.
The Trump administration seems to have fumbled their response to the Epstein Files. Their bullying and dismissals and general arrogance when it comes to this disturbing story seems to actually be adding fuel to the fire. Frankly, one wonders how they did not figure this out beforehand, given how their own base responded, and then how Trump's response seemed to get the attention of his detractors and political opponents.
Again, a bit from the article:
The Wall Street Journal was preparing a damaging article about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The president’s desperate attempts to kill the story had failed. His team now had to get everyone onto the same page about how to counter the growing swarm of attention. They needed a gesture of transparency to appease an increasingly angry base, but also a way to convey the message that the president was sympathetic to his supporters’ concerns. Which itself was a problem, because he clearly wasn’t.
Not a surprise, frankly. The only people who still seem even remotely surprised by Trump's transparent indifference to the concerns of ordinary Americans - his base included - are his most loyal supporters. For everyone else, this began to feel like a rerun a long, long time ago. For many of us, frankly, this was a disturbing trend regarding Trump's overall attitude well before he won the 2016 election.
Far from helping people forget the story, Trump's own response simply added still more fuel to the fire. It began to tear MAGA apart, the only thing seemingly that could. That is one point which was also made clearly in this article:
Some of that complexity was self-inflicted. In the engine room of the MAGA movement, the Epstein files were potent fuel. Elon Musk had used his social media platform to repeatedly question why a client list had not been released. Donald Trump Jr. and JD Vance had invoked the Epstein files as a broader campaign message to argue that “powerful people” were hiding the truth from Americans. Tucker Carlson and the young conservative leader Charlie Kirk had each insisted that the government should release the documents and each floated the idea that there was an expansive cover-up in progress.
Finally, MAGA had an actual conspiracy to work with. While many, if not most, Trump supporters still support the president, many MAGA members began to see something very sinister afoot.
Yet, Trump remained tone deaf. He kept insisting that this story should go away, and seemed to think that he could simply will it to do so, perhaps with a little bit of his trademark bullying to go along with it. Once again, a snippet from this article:
On July 12, the president took to Truth Social to defend Bondi against criticism and to urge his “boys” and “gals” to stop wasting “Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.” Trump told aides he was very unhappy with some of his most influential supporters, including Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, all of whom were publicly urging the administration to come clean. Kirk had held a Turning Point USA event the previous day that turned into an Epstein grievance fest, with one speaker after another bashing Bondi over her handling of the situation. Trump had called Kirk and scolded him.
Nobody in Trump’s orbit had a better feel for the younger part of the MAGA base than Kirk, who saw that the Epstein cover-up, as it was now viewed, was capturing attention to an alarming extent. Donald Trump Jr. and JD Vance — both of whom spent considerable time on X and were tapped into the same younger and hyper-online portion of the base — were also worried. They urged the White House to change course and force the Justice Department to release more of the files.
Still, many were insisting on the full release of the files.
Only one problem: the more they insisted, the more Trump insisted on this story going away, claiming only stupid people were still interested in Epstein. Again, a part of the article:
But there was one major obstacle in the path of a solution: The president himself still had no interest in transparency. He wanted the whole Epstein issue buried, and he was snapping at anyone who mentioned it. His staff largely avoided the subject in their conversations with him, forced to worry among themselves.
Finally, on July 16, in an exasperated Truth Social post, seemingly desperate to make his case in language that might resonate with his base, Trump somewhat nonsensically called the Epstein case a “hoax” by Democrats and then proceeded to heap abuse on members of his party and his base, disavowing their support, calling them “PAST supporters” and “weaklings” who had “bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.”
Whether or not this is finally the controversy that Trump, truly the Teflon President of all Teflon Presidents, could not get away with remains to be seen. However, it likely will define Trump and his administration for a very long time to come. And it has proven to be the one thing that Trump cannot set the tone for. Again, a bit from the article:
The Epstein crisis had exposed something that some of Trump’s closest advisers spent months refusing to see. The president could break institutions, redirect the federal government against his enemies and bring the world’s richest men into the Oval Office bearing tribute. But he could not, it turned out, make Jeffrey Epstein disappear.
One thing is clear: this story is not going away.
Could this finally be the scandal which catches up with Trump, the one thing that Trump finally does not get away with, as he has gotten away with everything to this point? Some are comparing this to Watergate, but I think it is far worse than Watergate.
It should be interesting to see how this unfolds.
What a story by the New York Times.
Below is the link to the article which I wrote about in this entry, and from which I obtained all of the quotes and snippets of the article used above:
Times Exclusive Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, White House reporters for The Times, are the authors of the forthcoming “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” This article is drawn from reporting done for that book. June 10, 2026:
The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/magazine/trump-epstein-files-white-house-vance-doj.html
Inside Trump’s White House, the Epstein Files Caused a Freakout - The New York Times
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