E (2:01)

Good afternoon. The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.

D (2:10)

So she uses this speech. It seems like she's trying to front run some kind of article. She's saying, you know, there's a lot of fake images floating on There, out there online. So who knows? I mean, it's almost hard for us to, like, comment on because it's such a strange statement that it's hard to know what exactly is going on. But it seems as though they're trying to lay the groundwork to have people disbelieve some bit of news or maybe a new file, something that's going to come out about Melania's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.

B (2:38)

Yeah, so let's just. Let's just pause here for a second

C (2:40)

and just hit a couple of these clips.

B (2:43)

They're just strange.

C (2:44)

I mean, you almost have to, like, see them to. To believe them. First of all, it was billed as a press conference. She did not actually take any press questions. She just got out there, she talked for five minutes, and then she. She split.

E (2:52)

I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband by chance at the New York city party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in detail in my book.

C (3:14)

Milan, get in the book plug.

E (3:16)

Gotta believe the first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000 at an event Donald and I attended together.

C (3:26)

Let's just hit them both.

B (3:27)

Let's do one more.

C (3:28)

Here's her talking about why it would have happened that she would have ever crossed paths socially with Jeffrey Epstein.

E (3:33)

I never been friends with Epstein. Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm

C (3:52)

beach like the shade.

E (3:56)

I never had a relationship with Epstein shining some light on or his accomplice, Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence. My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything more than a tribal note.

C (4:23)

Yeah, I think trivial.

D (4:25)

Yeah, that's been a tribal note. Yeah. Right. I mean, I know our colleague Tim has been, you know, kind of on the. On the warpath about Melania's English today. Yeah. So what do you make of all this?

B (4:35)

Well, I was going to ask you because, I mean, here's the thing that

C (4:38)

confuses me about this whole thing is

B (4:40)

that this feels like a press conference

C (4:41)

that's like totally unstuck in time. Right.

B (4:44)

I mean, in theory, she seems to

C (4:46)

be, or at least people are speculating that she must be trying to get out ahead of some story, because otherwise, why do it at all?

B (4:52)

But at the same time, many of the things that she's talking about here

C (4:55)

are things that have been known for A while. I mean, the. The emails that she's. She's talking about between herself and, and Epstein, presumably, are these ones that have been released, you know, a few months ago, back when all those documents were coming out. There's a particular email she had sent Ghislaine Maxwell in 2002, basically just saying, saw the profile of Jeffrey in New York Magazine. Looks great. How you doing? You know, just like social pleas. Pleasantries. Right. There's that.

B (5:18)

Then at another point, she was talking

C (5:21)

about this particular account of how Epstein supposedly introduced her to Trump, which was like a little kerfuffle back last year. Right. And I think that, that, you know, the Daily Beast and Harper Collins and a couple of these other people had to apologize to Melania for, like, insinuating that. That when it wasn't true. But again, these are like, old allegations. So it's not clear, like, why she would be coming to a White House press podium today of all days to, like, get this story back in the public eye.

B (5:48)

I mean, I don't know, what do you.

C (5:49)

What do you make of.

B (5:49)

I just hard.

C (5:51)

I can hardly wrap my mind around any of the, like, kind of motivations here.

D (5:55)

Yeah, I mean, let's focus on that. That backstory that you kind of just started in. I mean, in the speech, she also says, I will zealously defend my reputation, essentially through legal action. And I've already gotten these retractions from places like the Daily Beast, from Harper Collins.

E (6:07)

Several individuals and companies have been legally obligated to publicly apologize and retract their lies about me, such as Daily Beast, James Carville and Harper Collins uk.

D (6:25)

The backstory there is that Michael Wolf and a couple other people have been very, you know, assertive about these kind of various claims. Either that Melania was, like, somehow in Epstein's sort of stable of women or like, of. Of, you know, of age, women, and somehow he introduced Trump to Melania. Or I think there have been some claims that maybe Epstein dated Melania at some point. You know, again, these are things that I don't think have really been proven. But this is what Michael Wolf has been putting out. This Harper Collins book was by another writer in the uk and they were able to get, I think, that pulled from the shelves because it included that line, michael Wolf is himself suing Melania, basically saying, look, you've been circling around me and my, you know, claims about you and Epstein, so now I'm going to sue you and just get this over with. So that's kind of what this world we're Entering here what she's referring to. But it does. I mean, the whole thing has the feeling of a big New York Times or a big Wall Street Journal story or who knows where someone has something new. It feels almost like when the Trump's birthday letter to Epstein came out, like there's something new that's going to move this story forward about Melania's relationship with Epstein. And maybe it's not, but, I mean, what is. What is the other explanation possible? I think it definitely feels like she's saying, you know, okay, there's this thing that's going to come out. Don't believe it.

C (7:41)

Yeah. And I mean, on that note, I

B (7:43)

mean, again, just some of the stuff she.

C (7:45)

She's specifically getting into in terms of her claims in this press conference is a lot of, like, my. My not involved in going to Epstein's island T shirt is causing people to ask a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. You know, that sort of. That sort of thing.

B (7:58)

Let's play just one more clip here,

C (8:00)

which is just Melania sort of rattling off a bunch of denials that maybe other people were already accusing her of. But I, for one, had not even realized, you know, there were scurrilous rumors flying around Melania. So let's play that one real quick here.

E (8:14)

I'm not a witness or a name witness in connection with any of Epstein's crimes. My name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI in interviews surrounding the Epstein matter. I have never had any knowledge of Epstein abuse of his victims. I was never involved in any capacity. I was not a participant, was never on Epstein's plane, and never visited his private island.

D (8:55)

I never went to the island in case anyone's asking, you know, calling a press conference to say that. It's weird. I mean, just to underline. I mean, this is a really weird situation, this idea that, you know, the first lady of our country would come out and say, look, I didn't know the sex trafficker. You know, yeah, maybe I exchanged some emails with his crony. But, like, don't worry about it.

B (9:16)

You can hardly even overstate the degree

C (9:19)

to which this is all just so

B (9:20)

out of step with what has seemed to be the White House's line on

C (9:24)

all of this stuff up until now, which is just never talk about Epstein. Every time it comes up, like, roll your eyes that anybody's talking about it at all, just pivot away. Pivot away. Epstein's an old story. It's over and done with. I mean, like, so much so that like, there has been this narrative that has sort of developed that like basically anything else that happens in the world is like Donald Trump trying to distract people from Epstein. I mean, there are people out there who, who, you know, you'll write about his, his threats of genocide against the Iranian people or something like that, and they'll be like, there he goes again,

B (9:56)

trying to change the subject away from the Epstein stuff. And I think a lot of that is over torqued. But like at the same time, that

C (10:02)

has 100% been their posture. It's like never to talk about this stuff.

B (10:05)

And again, I mean, I genuinely don't know.

C (10:07)

Like, again, we don't have this story whatever may or may not be coming, it's hard to tell and we don't want to get over our skis about it.

B (10:12)

But it is so difficult to summon

C (10:14)

up any other explanation for why it would be that they would so swerve off of that to say, all right, you know, we're not going to, not only are we going to be the first people to say Jeffrey Epstein's name today, but we're going to get the first lady up there to do a press conference about this.

B (10:28)

I mean, the other, the one other

C (10:29)

weird angle is that there's this sort of legal fight happening right now around whether or not Congress is going to make Pam Bondi testify about, about Epstein now that she's, you know, on the way out, she was supposed to testify about her handling of this whole investigation as Attorney General. And, and you know, now that she is, is gone, Democrats in Congress are saying, well, she says she, she has still been issued that subpoena. She should still come and testify. Republicans are saying, ah, she's not the Attorney General anymore. Like why, why belabor it?

B (10:57)

I mean, do you see any connection between these two things at all?

C (11:00)

Or is this just like more weird stuff that's going on right now?

D (11:04)

It's hard to know. I mean, I feel like the Epstein situation is so, like there's, there's so many, just different factions and personalities. Whether it's, I don't know, who knows, maybe Pam Bondi had something, I mean, that somehow like something could get shaken loose. One would imagine whether it's, you know, Melania saying, you know, it was really interesting to me again that she was saying just like, you know, there's a lot of fake images out there, you know, don't believe your lion eyes. So who knows what, how, what brought this about? I mean, one thing that was striking to me, you know, we commented in the video there on how you can see the shade rising up behind her. Presumably not symbolically as an accident. I mean, I think that suggests that this was kind of a half cocked effort that was like, Melania was like, I just gotta get out there. And then meanwhile the people in the next room are like, all right, time for the 2pm Shade lifting. And they're like, no, you do this, it's a press conference. So you're right on to say that traditionally Trump has said, you know, I don't care, I don't know why you guys care so much about this. You know, this is all old news. I guess you can get the files if you really make me do it. But meanwhile Melania is acting like, oh my gosh, this is like radioactive. I cannot be anywhere near this.

B (12:05)

Yeah, I, I don't know how much more we can say about this.

C (12:08)

You know, I, I, I am sure if and when this story does drop, we'll be right back on here to break it down again. It's, it's so weird because like there's, there's this Melania Epstein scoop shaped hole that this entire press conference seems to be sort of like draped around, but you can only sort of see it in outline.

D (12:27)

The, and is that outline shaped like Michael Wolfe?

B (12:31)

Right, right. That's the question.

C (12:32)

You know, the, the existence of Melania Epstein gate seems to be implied by the existence of this very strange press conference. But we don't know. We haven't seen it yet and who knows if we will see it at all. I don't know.

B (12:44)

Do you have any other thoughts on any of this before we, before we split, Will?

D (12:47)

No, I mean, I'm interested to see what prompted this and hopefully we'll get an answer to it. It's telling, I think that in the past with this idea, these claims that, you know, Melania was Epstein's girlfriend or that she was kind of part of his coterie or whatever, she didn't do a press conference for that. So I think it suggests that this story is gonna, is, is getting advanced.

C (13:04)

One more thing, as producer Matt just prompted me, we should, we should listen to one more clip from this because this was like Melania's one sort of call to action of the press conference, which was she thinks we should now have testimony, public congressional testimony from Epstein's victims to sort of name names in a way that we have not yet had before. So let's listen to her saying that

E (13:24)

now is the time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone. Several prominent mill executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized. Of course, this doesn't amount to guilt, but we still must work openly and transparently to uncover the truth. I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors. Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony.

B (14:14)

I mean, that sounds like something you would have heard Thomas Massie or Ro

C (14:18)

Khanna saying six months ago, right, when they were, like, locked in combat with Donald Trump.

D (14:24)

No, I'm glad you played that clip, because again, I mean, Trump's approach to this has over and over been like, this is old news. Who cares? Look, I mean, we saw the Department of Justice kick this whole thing off by saying, basically, Epstein acted alone with. With the help of Glenn Maxwell, but no one else. And then, meanwhile, Melania is like, we really got to get to get to the bottom of this. You know, I've been listening to a bunch of podcasts, and I'm fired up, and we're going to find out what's going on. So it's interesting, too, that, that she seems to be like, the attention's over there. Don't look at me. But we got to get it, get at what the real case is.

C (14:55)

Well, I guess we're going to find out. So, you know, stay tuned, keep your

B (14:58)

eyes on this space, because I guarantee

C (15:00)

you, you know, if I know anything, I know that, that, that if and when a brand new Melania Epstein scoop

B (15:06)

drops, that we'll be here on the

C (15:08)

Bulwark YouTube channel talking about it. So.

B (15:10)

So thanks to everybody for listening and watching. Thanks, Will, for coming on to ponder this over this very strange press conference with me. We'll be back. Hope you all will go ahead and subscribe to the feed. How will you be back to see us talk about the real thing if

C (15:25)

you don't subscribe after watching this video of us speculating about what the real thing might be?

B (15:30)

Anyway, thanks a lot, everybody, and we'll

C (15:32)

see you all next time.