Michael Wolff on MAGA’s Revolt over Jeffrey Epstein

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

The sense that the White House is covering something up about Jeffrey Epstein has led to backlash from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Even after the financier was convicted for hiring an underage prostitute, for which he served a brief and extraordinarily lenient sentence, Epstein remained a playboy, a top political donor, and a very good friend of the very powerful—“a sybarite,” in the words of the journalist Michael Wolff, “in that old -fashioned sense [that] ‘my identity comes from breaking all norms.’ ” Wolff got to know Epstein and recorded, he estimates, a hundred hours of interviews with him. After Epstein was arrested again, in 2019, and was later found dead in his jail cell in what was ruled a suicide, it has been an article of faith within MAGA that his death was a conspiracy or a coverup, and the Trump campaign promised a reveal. Attorney General Pam Bondi initially asserted that she had Epstein’s so-called “client list” on her desk and was reviewing it, but now claims that there is nothing to share. Do the Epstein files have something incriminating about the President? “The central point from which this grew is the [Bill] Clinton relationship with Epstein,” Wolff tells David Remnick. But the MAGA believers “seem to have overlooked the Trump relationship [with Epstein], which was deeper and longer.” The men were “probably the closest friend either of them ever had,” until they reportedly fell out over real estate in 2004. Now Trump is frantically trying to control the narrative, pretending that he barely knew Epstein. This, Wolff thinks, “may be the beginning of Donald Trump’s lame-duck years.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	you're listening to the political scene i'm david remnick early each week we bring you a conversation from our
0:11.2	episode of the new yorker radio hour this is the new yorker radio hour a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:24.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:28.0	Jeffrey Epstein's death in prison and the sense that the White House is somehow covering something up
0:33.6	is causing a backlash from some of Trump's most ardent supporters. It may be a bigger backlash
0:40.3	than even the tariff crisis or the bombing of Iran or the astronomical deficits were in for
0:46.3	with the new budget. It is an article of faith in Maga circles that Epstein's suicide was suspicious,
0:56.6	and perhaps a murder plotted by Democrats because he knew too much about something. That's the theory of it. In February, Pam Bondi,
1:03.4	the Attorney General, said that she had the so-called client list on her desk and was reviewing it.
1:09.9	But this month, the Department of Justice says
1:11.9	there is no such list. The FBI released surveillance footage from a camera outside of Epstein's
1:17.8	prison cell when he died, but a few minutes of footage seems to be missing. The president is now
1:23.7	yelling at his followers on social media, shut up and move on or else. Epstein, he said,
1:30.1	is, quote, somebody that nobody cares about. Michael Wolf is the author of four books about Trump,
1:36.7	all bitterly disputed by Donald Trump, we should note, and Wolf says that he interviewed Jeffrey
1:41.6	Epstein repeatedly in the years before his arrest and his death in
1:46.2	2019. I sat down to talk with Michael Wolf last week.
1:52.8	Michael, as we're speaking, MAGA seems to be blowing up. There seems to be a huge divide among Trump's followers about Epstein and what to do
2:08.6	about information about him. And is there a file? Is there not a file? And at the same time,
2:16.5	suddenly, the president of the United States is saying, I'm
2:19.6	sick of hearing about it. Let's move on. He's trying to run as quickly as possible away from the
2:27.9	subject. So fill us in a little bit on the background of where we are now with Jeffrey Epstein,
	...

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