Velshi starts now.

Good morning. It's Saturday, July 19th. Donald Trump once said that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose support from his supporters.

And it sounds like that may not be true. We might have actually found the Achilles

Hill, the thing that Donald Trump is actually finding to be a weak spot. Over the past decade,

he's done a whole lot of things that have not caused his base to separate from him at all. But his

handling of the Epstein file seems to be the rare story that

Donald Trump has not been able to control. Right-wing media figures who are usually Trump-friendly

have rejected his talking points, so of many of his supporters. The scandal's been dragging on

for weeks now, and Donald Trump's incoherent and inconsistent responses have inspired a revolt among his base that threatens to weaken his grip on the Republican Party and possibly 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 newspapers reporters.

The president is accusing them of libel and seeking $10 billion in damages, billion with a

B, 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 the

documents, but Donald Trump denies that he wrote the letter in a statement. He called it, quote,

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

Epstein investigation appears to be forcing Donald Trump's hands,

because also last night, the Justice Department filed a motion to unseal the grand jury

transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein's case in New York. That came one day after Trump directed

Attorney General Pam Bondi to, quote, produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony subject to

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