It is Saturday, July 19th.

Donald Trump once said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose support from his voters.

And over the past decade, he's managed to survive numerous scandals that would have ended other politicians' careers.

But the ongoing fallout from his

administration's handling of the Epstein files is the rare story that Trump has not been able to

control. Right-wing media figures who are usually pretty Trump-friendly have rejected his talking

points, and so of many of his supporters. The scandal has dragged on for weeks now, and Trump's

incoherent

and inconsistent responses have inspired a revolt among his base that threatens to weaken

his grip on the Republican Party and to unravel his coalition. Last night, Donald Trump

filed a lawsuit against the publishers of the Wall Street Journal, including the media

mogul Rupert Murdoch and two of the papers reporters.

The president is accusing them of libel and seeking $10 billion in damages.

That's the latest in his assault on journalistic institutions that publish unfavorable stories about him.

The lawsuit was filed less than 24 hours after the journal reported that it had reviewed documents that included

what it called a body letter that Donald Trump had allegedly written to Jeffrey Epstein,

the late financier and convicted sex offender who was once friends with the president.

NBC News has not independently reviewed these documents, but Trump denies that he wrote the letter.

In a statement, he called it, quote, a fake thing. And he referred to the article as, quote,

a fake Wall Street Journal story. But the public pressure to disclose more files related to the

Epstein investigation appears to be forcing Trump's hand, because last night, the Justice Department filed a motion

to unseal the grand jury transcripts in Epstein's case in New York. That came one day after Trump

...