The Daily - How Trump Lost Control of the Epstein Narrative

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

For the past two weeks, President Trump has been trying and failing to get his supporters to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein.David Enrich, a deputy investigations editor for The New York Times, and Shawn McCreesh, a Times White House correspondent, explain why MAGA won’t let go of this scandal, how the president misread his own base — and what all this shows about the limits of Mr. Trump’s power. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kicheroff. This is The Daily. For the past two weeks, President Trump has been trying and failing to get his base to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Today, my colleagues David Enrich and Sean McCrch explain why MAGA won't let go of this scandal, how the president misread his own base, and what all this shows about the limits of Trump's power. It's Monday, July 21st. David, we're in the middle of a crisis that the White House has so far been unable to control, which is this growing anger over the administration's refusal to release the

complete files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. You're an investigative editor at The Times, and you've been involved in some of the biggest investigations that The Times has done surrounding Epstein. So we've come to you to understand why won't this go away? This won't go away because it involves a collection of some of the world's richest and most powerful people and institutions and a whole slew of unanswered questions. So to just step back for a sec, let's just start with the story that most of us know

about Jeffrey Epstein. He was a self-styled financier living in New York and in Florida and on a private island. He was associated with some really rich and famous people, most notably for our purposes probably Donald Trump, with whom he spent a lot of time in the 90s and early 2000s hanging out flying on planes together. And Trump at times remarked on their shared interest in women.

And the other really important thing about Epstein is that in 2008, he pleaded guilty to sex crimes down in Florida, spent a brief period in jail. And then in 2019, he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges. And about a month after his arrest, he was found hanging in his jail cell in Manhattan. And since then, there has just been a never-ending flood of conspiracy theories about what else remains out there about Jeffrey Epstein. And it is really easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as baseless and not warranting further inquiry.

And I think a lot of times that's true. And in this case, I don't think it's true. I think there are a tremendous number of unanswered questions that involve the finances and reputations of really powerful, wealthy people. And that is really the root of this. There are so many things that we do not know. Okay. That's why we're here.

We want to get into those unanswered questions. Be our guide. Where should we start? Well, I think the place to start is in Florida in the mid 2000s, when Jeffrey Epstein first attracts the notice of state and federal authorities who begin investigating allegations that he sexually abused young women and girls.

And this investigation went on for a while. And instead of charging him on that, they charged him on these two kind of watered down prostitution charges and agreed to a plea deal that would result in Epstein serving very little time in a minimum security jail with a very lenient work release program. SONIA DARA, D of people in Epstein's orbit, who he was friends with and who were providing him with money and resources and prestige, looked the other way. And it really did not come back into the public view until journalists at the Miami Herald started digging into this and trying to figure out what exactly had happened.

And they produced a series of stories in 2018. And what they learned was that local authorities, police and prosecutors in Palm Beach County had amassed a really large pile of very serious allegations about sex crimes that Epstein had repeatedly committed. And that those as part of this federal plea deal that Epstein later struck had essentially been swept under the rug. With the direct result being that not only did Epstein get a really light jail sentence, but also that the result of that was that tons of evidence never saw the light of day. And the public remained really in the dark, therefore, about the extent of Epstein's alleged wrongdoing. So I think that the story begins there because it remains a mystery today

why exactly the federal government intervened in a way that ended up basically protecting Epstein and keeping a lot of the allegations that authorities had been investigating, keeping them secret from victims and from the public at large. Okay, so that's one of these unanswered questions. How is Epstein able to get this sweetheart plea deal?

What are the other holes in this case? To me, the biggest outstanding mystery surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is how he got so much money. Every time you read about Epstein and the media in a context other than his crimes was this is a guy who was living a life of absolute luxury. He had properties all over the place. He owned an island. He had a private jet. He was certainly very wealthy and he certainly had gained the confidence of some very rich

and powerful men. But he liked to style himself as a hedge fund manager or a financier. And that's just not true. This was not a guy who by any accounts was a real financial genius or whiz or had risen to the top of Wall Street. This is someone who had a very kind of shallow short track record. So how did Jeffrey Epstein amass this enormous fortune? And there are a bunch of different conflicting, overlapping, unsatisfying answers. So even though some of us may remember or think of Epstein as this wealthy, as you said,

financier, like this guy is not actually in reality to the Wall Street type seen as, you know, an expert that you would entrust all your money to? No, absolutely not. And my New York Times colleague, Matt Goldstein, has just done an enormous amount of digging on this topic. Probably the place to start is with a guy named Leon Black, who ran the giant private equity firm Apollo.

And Black, one of the richest, most powerful people in the world, certainly on Wall Street, has the ability to access anyone in the world that he wants to help get advice on how to deal with taxes, how to plan for his estate, things like that. Who does he turn to? Jeffrey Epstein. Black paid Epstein something like $170 million over the years for tax and estate

planning services. And it's important to note that Black has denied any involvement in Epstein's crimes, but the extent of the financial relationship between these two has left a lot of people feeling suspicious. And Black is by no means alone here. There were a lot of people in Epstein's orbit professionally, personally, and we do not know the full extent of what was going on there. There's been a tremendous amount of speculation and reporting into questions as to like, did he have something on them? Was there something else going on here? And we don't know is the bottom line. And just a quick gut check here. How normal is that? Do we generally know exactly how the mega rich are paying their financial consultants or what they're using them for?

No, unfortunately, we don't. But this is still I think this is a kind of abnormal situation, in part because very few rich and powerful people are publicly accused of and convicted of sex crimes and then die by hanging themselves in a prison cell and so Jeffrey Epstein and his relationships and his money are getting a lot more scrutiny than a normal wealthy Wall Street person's life would be and I think that if you had hordes of journalists spending years digging into the affairs of most people on Wall Street, my hunch is that it would be a lot easier to ascertain the truth than it is proven in the case of Epstein.

Okay, so you've mentioned his hanging. I want to talk about Epstein's death, actually. This is the thing that we've heard the most about in terms of questions, in terms of people really not believing that this was a suicide. What's the story here? Well, to recap what happened, Epstein was arrested in July 2019, and he was sent to the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in Manhattan. And he, about a week or two after he had been arrested and housed there, he tore up some bedsheets, used it as a noose, and hung himself.

And he was found unconscious, but alive. And from that point forward, he was put on suicide watch. He was supposed to have another inmate in a cell with him at all times. They're supposed to be guards checking on him basically at all times. And instead, one night in August, he was left in a cell by himself and the guards decided not to check on him for some reason. And he was found the following morning hanging from a bed sheet and this time he was dead. And this obviously set off even more conspiracy theories and led to even more questions about how on earth this possibly could have happened.

Right. The idea is this guy is the keeper of so many powerful people's secrets and he ends up dead in a jail cell where they were supposed to be watching him. That's exactly right. And what's more is that, you know, on top of all of that, there is no video footage that actually gives us insight into what was going on in that cell or even in the immediate area surrounding it. Just to be clear, I understand there are gaps in the evidence, but what we do know does confirm that Epstein died by suicide. Yes, that is the clear consensus among people who have studied the evidence and know what they're talking about. And by the way, the reason that we know a lot of those details is because the New York Times spent years and ultimately went to court to get these

records from the Department of Corrections. We won the lawsuit, the records were revealed, and we therefore learned a lot about the circumstances of his death that night in the Manhattan jail. But there was still a ton of unanswered questions. Obviously, we know though that jails can be very chaotic places, violent places, places that are often mismanaged. And I mean, I sort of wonder how much of this you could just chalk up to that. I mean, just standard, typical mismanagement, failures at a jail. Yeah, and that's a very valid question to be asking.

And there might not have been something nefarious that happened here. And I think that applies to a whole broad range of what we've been talking about here with Epstein and these unanswered questions about him. Because the government, dating back to when he was first had this sweetheart deal down in Florida in the mid-2000s, the government has been fighting tooth and nail to keep information about Epstein's secret. And obviously Epstein and many of his associates have been doing the same. And so the reality is there might be innocent logical explanations to a lot of this stuff.

We just don't know. And it remains unclear to me when, if ever, we are going to get the materials and the evidence we need to be able to fully and satisfactorily answer those questions. And in the meantime, the conspiracy theories will continue to fester. David, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. After the break, my colleague Sean McCreech explains why these festering conspiracy theories have taken such a hold of MAGA. We'll be right back. Sean, we just spoke with our colleague David Enrich about why this Epstein story has been

so resonant for so many years. And now we want to talk about the moment that we're in today as the suspicions around the Epstein case are crashing around Trump in what seems like a pretty unprecedented way. And we wanted to turn to you to talk about that because you've spent years getting inside the MAGA movement. Help us understand the reaction within the base to this moment. Yeah, I have to say this is one of the most fascinating things we have seen in the 10 years that Donald Trump has been on the scene and forging this connection with his base. I think he is having this breakdown with the people who are most loyal to him and we don't know where it's going to go. There are signs that Trump has started perhaps to turn the page.

It's still too soon to say. to turn the page. It's still too soon to say. And yet, no matter what, this has been a fascinating, rich case study in how Trump connects with his base, what some of his political vulnerabilities are, the playbook he runs to anytime he's in trouble, and the White House's misunderstanding and mishandling of a five alarm fire with their own base. Okay, let's talk about the mishandling of the five alarm fire with their own base. Okay, let's talk about the mishandling of the five alarm fire. Walk us through how that happened. This cycle really began when the Department of Justice

put out this two-page memo, essentially closing the Epstein investigation, telling everybody, yeah, not much to see here, time to move on. And how many of you raise your hand, think this is a big deal, the Epstein thing? Would you raise your hand? So, I mean, every hand has gone up. And so, you know, people are saying it's a big deal, Steve. Very soon you started seeing a chorus of angry voices and they were not the usual suspects here. You saw people like Charlie Kirk. We

want answers at some point. Yeah, answer the questions. That's it. Megan Kelly. It's about transparency. One of the main reasons that we voted Trump in was because we wanted real answers on real stories and we didn't want to be BSed anymore. The fact that the US government, the one that I voted for, refused. You saw Tucker Carlson.

To take my question seriously and instead said, case closed, shut up, conspiracy theorist, was too much for me. Suddenly they were all sort of singing the same song and it was not the song that the White House was singing. And then Trump starts making it worse. Posting online this morning, he writes,

my past supporters have bought into this, he used the word bullshit, hook line and sinker. He goes on to say, let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work. He finally decides to say, let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work. He finally decides to weigh in and when he does so, he does it in this dismissive, condescending, high-handed way. It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net.

And anybody who cares about this, you know, is wasting their time. Total disaster the way Trump handled all this. Comments like those just made everything worse. I feel really betrayed and I feel really, really angry. The young men and the Gen Z audience that I represent, they are flaming mad right now about this stuff. We are, in fact, not stupid. I really think that nothing should commit us further

to wanting to unpack the Epstein story than the amount of gaslighting that is currently taking place. These people who normally are just so in lockstep with everything and they can find ways to twist themselves, always to deflect blame from Trump. This was kind of one of the first times where a lot of them looked past any sort of fall guy

and said, no, no, no, he's being really weird about this. Why is he doing this? His answers are shocking me. And that felt different. What do you think that's about, Sean? Like, why is this the thing that's making them for the first time, maybe ever, start to really question this guy

that has seemed so invulnerable with this core group for so long. Trump's inexplicable behavior around this subject shatters an entire worldview that if you are a hardcore MAGA person and you've been marinating in these concepts and these storylines for a decade now, the way he's behaving around this conspiracy and this case and this subject, it just does not comport with the shared reality

that you've lived in with other Trump supporters. And I think to understand that, you have to go way back to the beginning of Donald Trump as a political phenomenon. He springs to power at this time of just total distrust, cynicism, and even nihilism in the country following two failed wars, one of which was premised on false intelligence, a financial crisis in which all the rich people who perpetrated it paid no price and normal people got screwed

over. And Trump comes along and he says, everything you think is happening behind the curtain is happening. Trust me, I know I've seen it. I know how politicians are. The people that have sold this country down the river, they play by a different set of rules. They never get in trouble. I am a truth-teller. I'm gonna rip the face off of this thing, and you can trust me, so come along for the ride.

And every bad thing that happens to Trump following that point only reinforces the narrative. So every investigation against him, thing that happens to Trump following that point only reinforces the narrative. So every investigation against him, every scandal, every attempt by the Washington insider class to throttle him, it all fits into the worldview that the establishment is out to get him because he's telling these difficult truths about what's really happening. This is the mind frame inside the MAGA movement. And the Epstein case, which is murky and shadowy

and sort of all encompassing, and still there are major unanswered questions there, legitimate questions, but it just fits into these themes so well because it's about, you know, at its core, rich people getting away with horrible things. And that just slots so well into the worldview that he's seated. Right. It's like you're saying this is actually the exact thing that Trump promised to reveal

to the public, to fight against, like in an us versus them. the us was the people and the them was elites like Epstein, right? And the people he surrounded himself with. And in this case, it sounds like Trump is making it seem like he's siding with the elites. Yeah, it does seem like that. And so there's a little bit of suspicion creeping in now, where for the first time, if you are not poised to defend his every word and deed, and you actually stop and look at some of it,

as some of his supporters are now doing for the first time ever, things start to fall apart, and it's a worldview that falls apart. Is this just MAGA influencers, or do you sense that the frustration runs deeper and more broadly than that? That's a great question. It's something we think about all the time as Washington reporters, right? Do these storylines that we're fixating on actually resonate? And I would say this one absolutely does.

This is a real thing out there in the country. I'm from a lower middle-class town in Pennsylvania, and I've got Trump voting friends who, one of them reached out to me the other day and was like, we are so disgusted with this Epstein thing. We don't understand why he's being like this. And I've got sources who are Mar-a-Lago members that are diehard Donald Trump supporters, rich people who I'm asking, what do you think of all this?

And they're sort of just saying, yeah, it's really unfortunate. It's strange, like we need more answers. And so it's everybody from the Mar-a-Lago Club members to, you know, my welder buddies in Pennsylvania. It's kind of fascinating to me that you're saying a lot of this is like an own goal by Trump. You know, this comes from his own mistakes in addressing his base.

That's something he's normally so good at, reading his base, telling them exactly what they want to hear. Why do you think he misread the situation this time? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's what makes this so fascinating. He's so in touch with that base. I traveled around the country, I've been to a million Trump rallies.

He listens to the roar of the crowd and goes where it tells him to go. He knows what they want. And so it's this interesting moment where Trump is at the zenith of his political power. But I think there are many people in the movement who are starting to wonder, can he still hear them? Is he still attuned to the roar

that put him in there in the first place? If he can't hear them and he doesn't know what they want, it brings us to this really interesting moment where, and this is sort of the oldest tale to tell about Washington, which is that if you don't watch out, you end up becoming the thing you started off scorning. And what does it mean to a Trump voter if Trump is now the deep state?

And that is the question that this entire thing has raised. You said at the start of our conversation that it seems like Trump may be finally turning the page on some of this. What makes you think that? Well, it's unclear yet where that will go, but something interesting happened a couple days ago, which is that the Wall Street Journal

published this big story that described a birthday scrapbook that had been given to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. And the journal alleged that Trump had written a note in the scrapbook and he'd done a drawing of a naked woman in there. And Trump's note to Epstein, according to the journal, ended by saying, Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret. Last night after that story was published, Trump slammed the piece in a Truth Social post calling it false. Trump denied the story and the White House tried to kill it. He wrote in Truth Social that he filed a powerhouse lawsuit against anyone

involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, fake news article in the useless rag that is the Wall Street Journal. Nonetheless, when the story came out, I think for a large portion of Trump's base, the muscle memory kicked in, which is that the base runs to defend him. As soon as I read the story, I said, this is the dumbest, obviously fakest thing. I don't believe it. This is a nothing burger. It's an absolute nothing burger. I laughed when I saw it.

The Murdochs concocted something last night and thought it'd be a kill shot on President Trump. And lo and behold, it's the exact opposite. Nothing unites MAGA like fake news. And so here, Trump finally starts to find his wartime footing. Finally he had kind of a weapon and he knew how to use it and the weapon was what he claimed was this fake story and look at me and look they're coming after me and it's a hoax and you can't trust them and I'm going to sue Rupert Murdoch and so now he's on the attack and he's always good when

he's on the attack, right? Will this work though? I mean, these are people who have really seemed to have a very real and frankly understandable desire for more clarity and transparency around the Epstein investigation. Do you think they're just going to suddenly abandon that in favor of lining up behind Trump? It seems hard to believe. I think one of the things that they were disgusted about

was Trump's tone when talking about this sort of just this boring story and, you know, only idiots would care about this. This is what was really incensing them as well. And that goes to the reality that they care really deeply about this because it's a really awful story that should be cared about. And so I just don't see how you can drop that.

I mean, it's, you know, we keep using words that conspiracies and we are talking about some conspiracy theories here, but they are connected to very real crimes. And there's a reason why this case gripped the public imagination. It was much bigger than politics. I mean, everybody knows about this and follows this.

And yet I feel that the theme of Trump's political moment is that he kind of always comes back. I mean, it's also hard to see this being the thing that leads to like a break long term. It's true. He always finds a way to keep his people on side. He's also a master at creating his own reality to suit his needs and it's always been true of Trump that he's most wily when he's in a foxhole and he's certainly in one now and Yet it's also true that this is not quite over there some big looming questions that we don't know the answers to yet. Will the Trump administration ever really be able to give enough information to satisfy its base about the Epstein saga?

Is it ever gonna be enough? And what's gonna happen now with this lawsuit that he's waging against Rupert Murdoch? And will the White House be able to turn the page and get the message onto the next story they want it to be? It could take some time before we learn how it's all going to play out. Sean, thanks so much.

Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. A former Jeffrey Epstein employee told Times reporters that she spoke with the FBI in 1996 and again in 2006 about a troubling encounter with Trump in Epstein's office, where she said Trump hovered over her and stared at her bare legs, making her feel scared. She was in her mid-20s at the time. The White House contested the account, saying Trump was never in Epstein's office. The story shows how the investigative files on Epstein could contain embarrassing material for Trump even if it's largely unrelated to Epstein could contain embarrassing material for Trump, even if it's

largely unrelated to Epstein's crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated. And Israeli forces killed more than 60 Palestinians on Sunday in northern Gaza after crowds gathered near a crossing from Israel to try to seize aid from United Nations trucks, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and health workers. The Israeli military disputed the number of fatalities, but didn't offer an alternative number and said soldiers had opened fire to remove an immediate threat,

but didn't specify what that threat was. It was the latest violence connected to a new food distribution system that was introduced by Israel nearly two months ago. The UN said last week that more than 670 Palestinians had been killed in attacks near sites built under the new system. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Caitlin O'Keefe, with help from Mary Wilson. It was edited by Devon Taylor,

contains original music by Dan Powell, Rowan Niemesto, Diane Wong, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Natalie Kitroweth. See you tomorrow.