Trump Press Sec Seethes as Epstein Spin Falls Apart in Briefing Fiasco

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

House Democrats have released Jeffrey Epstein’s “Birthday Book,” and it’s brutal for President Trump. His note to Epstein is real and it appears to bear his distinctive signature. There’s also an image of Epstein holding a big check that discusses selling a “fully depreciated” woman to Trump. On Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, visibly irritated, offered some truly absurd spin about Trump’s signature on the note to Epstein, throwing in obsequious praise to boot. She dodged a question about the check with rank misdirection while curtly brushing off further queries. The upshot: White House spin looked comically awful throughout. Leavitt flashed anger at other points, accusing reporters of ignoring serious crimes and of being dishonest about Trump’s militarization of Washington, DC. We talked to MSNBC’s Steve Benen, author of Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past. We discuss why MAGA deceptions on Epstein are worse than usual, what that says about the evolution of the right-wing disinformation machine, and where this scandal is going next. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:31.1	House Democrats have now released Jeffrey Epstein's so-called birthday book,
0:37.6	and it absolutely wrecks the spin that Donald Trump and the White House have been offering up about this whole sordid affair.
0:42.5	The much-discussed note Trump wrote to Epstein appears to be very real,
0:48.5	and there's even an image of a big check that discusses selling a fully depreciated woman to Trump for over $20,000.
0:51.7	At the White House briefing Tuesday, press secretary Caroline Levitt struggled to
0:56.5	spin away all this damning new information. She seemed pretty ticked, angrily snapping at the media
1:02.0	on all kinds of other things. Meanwhile, House Republicans went into full ostrich mode, and MAGA media
1:08.5	personalities furiously denounced all of it as a hoax.
1:12.6	It's all an unnerving window into the force of the MAGA disinformation machine when it goes
1:17.9	into hyperdrive for Trump.
1:20.7	Today we're talking to MSNBC's Steve Benin, who has a good piece looking at the more
1:25.4	preposterous things Republicans are doing to make this all go away.
1:29.4	Hey, Steve, good to see you, man.
1:31.1	Greg, it's great to be back.
1:33.0	So after MAGA spent years hyping the materials gathered in the criminal investigation into Epstein,
1:39.6	Trump took power and his people looked at the files and then they went right into cover-up mode.
1:44.6	Now we've seen the book Epstein's friends dedicated to him on his 50th birthday and the lewd
1:50.3	drawing with all the cryptic suggestive lines from Trump about their shared tendencies is
1:55.9	indeed in there and it sure looks like it was signed by one Donald J. Trump. Steve, can you sum up what we just learned here?
2:03.3	Well, I can try.
	...

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