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- [00:00]
Bubba Wallace
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- [00:25]
Andrew Egger
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- [00:30]
Sam Stein
Hey guys. Me. Sam Stein, managing editor at the Borg. I'm joined by Andrew Egger, author, Morning Shots, and we are here to discuss the latest truly head scratching comments from Donald Trump with regard to the Jeffrey Epstein saga controversy, whatever you want to call it, before we do subscribe to the feed. This one is a particularly weird video. I mean, I've been thinking about why he said this and I'm having trouble sort of understanding it except in the worst possible explanations. But Trump, apparently on Air Force One, I believe, coming back from overseas, was asked about his following out with Jeffrey Epstein. And he had said something like this yesterday about how it was nothing to do with Epstein's character but the fact that Epstein stole personnel from Trump when Trump was at Mar A Lago and Epstein was around that area. But then he expanded upon it today and this is what he had to say.
- [01:26]
Donald Trump
Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously. Just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women? Were some of them young women? Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken. And it was the concept of taking people that work for me as men. But that story's been pretty well out there. And the answer is yes, they were. Yes, they were young women. What did they do in the spa? Yeah, people work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world in Mar a Lago. And people were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people. Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want them taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, out of here.
- [02:30]
Andrew Egger
Mr. President, did one of those stolen, you know, persons that include Virginia?
- [02:38]
Donald Trump
I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.
- [02:57]
Sam Stein
Okay, Okay. I don't know where to begin. I mean, for me, it's. He stole her. Like. Like she's a piece of his property. But also the absurdity that this was what tipped Trump over the edge with Epstein, which we'll get to in a little bit, just doesn't seem supported by the timeline. But, Andrew, what are your thoughts here?
- [03:15]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I don't know how there's so much to break down in this. I guess maybe the. The first thing to do is just to talk a little bit about the story of. Of Virginia Dupre, who. Who has. Has for a long time been one of the. One of the people who sort of links Trump to Epstein in some respects. She's obviously been one of the most significant of. Of Epstein's accusers, you know, back to the very beginning of his. Of his controversy and scandal, back when all this stuff was coming to light just a few years ago. And just like an unbelievably sad and tragic story for her. I mean, like, she. She was a person who was hired as a teenager at Mar? A Lago, and that was, you know, how she came into Epstein's, you know, orbit in the first place, that he, like Trump narrates there, kind of hired her away from there. And that was kind of how she came to be in his orbit, where then she accused both him and Ghislaine Maxwell of abusing her in all kinds of ways. And it's just. I mean, I don't know, I don't want to jump all over the place on this, but just to hear Trump talk about it in those terms where, like, it's often the case that, like, it's just plain that he is marching to the beat of his own drummer in. In. When he's bumping into any of these stories like, that normal human beings react to in one way, he reacts to a different way. But like, twice now, I mean, just. Just to hear him talk about it as though this was like a big professional headache for him because he had such a great spa, you know, like one of the. Everyone will tell you Mar A Lago has one of the best spas there is, but Epstein kept coming in and taking away personnel, and that was a big problem. And like, he. What was especially notable about today, I mean, he had not specifically mentioned that any of the people that Epstein had taken were people who were, you know, later sex trafficked by Epstein. And for him to be like, yeah, I think she was one of those people now. I mean, like, it's just so explicit and so strange and surreal to hear him talking in those ways.
- [05:10]
Sam Stein
Well, the absence of any sort of empathy, anger, any other emotion about what happened to. For Gina Giuffre, it's just she was an asset of Trump's, and Jeffrey Epstein took her away, and that's it. I mean, it's just cold and cynical and gross. The history here is.
- [05:28]
Andrew Egger
And the quick aside. And by the way, she had no complaints about, like, that's the one thing he allows her, like, to come into it as a human being over, rather than just as, like, an employee is like, oh, and did you hear that? She never accused me of any.
- [05:41]
Sam Stein
Of any sexuality, just to be clear. Yeah. So the story here is Virginia's father was a maintenance worker at Mar a Lago, got her a job in the spa. It was in middle of 2000, the year 2000, that Ghislaine Maxwell encountered her at the spa. I believe she was reading a book about massages. Truffet was, at the time, Virginia, and recruited her to come be a masseuse for Epstein. And she went and became a masseuse for Epstein, and then, of course, was abducted into this horrific life where she was essentially, you know, turned into, like, you know, a sex slave for wealthy people. She actually left the Epstein orbit, married a man in Australia, and then when the first accuser came to light in the Palm beach area around Epstein, authorities went to Virginia Giuffre at that point in time and asked her to corroborate or to help figure out what was actually going on with the Epstein circle. And she became perhaps the most important witness in this whole entire saga. Tragically, she died this year, and of course, that sparked this whole nother set of conspiracies and theories and controversies. So her life is tragic, like you said, and Trump just sort of. Kind of casually sort of talking about it as if she was just a piece of property is really gross. Here's the thing, though. The timeline doesn't make sense. Our friend Ryan Goodman at Just Security, he. He tweeted out the following. The meeting between Maxwell and Virginia Giuffre took place at Marlowe, as we said, in 2000, the year 2000. It was a couple years later that Trump was quoted in New York magazine saying to Epstein was terrific and that he liked women perhaps a little bit younger than he liked women. And it was a year after that, or maybe two years after that, that the actual rupture happened with Epstein. So this doesn't make sense like at all. Four years, four years passed or three and a half years passed between this and Trump's decision to end the relationship. So I don't know, I think the.
- [07:49]
Andrew Egger
One way you can kind of square it with what he's saying there is that he, he describes in that clip Epstein as sort of like a serial offender in terms of employees. But that's what's particularly strange is like, right, like he, so, so, so if you, if you line it up that way, perhaps Virginia Giuffre is one of the first people that Epstein kind of scalps from Mar. And so Trump knows that has happened. That word of that gets to Trump. Trump is obviously irritated by that. But, but, but this is all happening right alongside their ongoing friendship. His ongoing comments again? Yeah, about like liking women on the younger side. One thing that, that Ryan doesn't even mention in that timeline is what the Wall Street Journal reported just a week or so ago, that, that one year after those comments in 2003 is when that birthday letter that, that, you know, describes the signed by Trump appears in, in that, in that book that Ghislaine Maxwell's collecting for Epstein's birthday. And that's again even one year before the rupture. So, so it's just like, like any way you look at this, it's so alarming and gross and just, I mean again, like, like there's, it's all more smoke than fire here in terms of like what's potentially being alleged about Trump. And like all of this stuff is to a certain extent speculation. The one thing that is not speculation is like you were saying, just the unbelievably cold and, and weird and managerial way that he's talking about these, these young women, these girls that, that Epstein was lifting from, from his, from, from Mar a Lago that again, he, he apparently the primarily registered to Trump as like a business issue.
- [09:31]
Sam Stein
And the other thing that's interesting here is this is all taking place as Donald Trump is kind of rehabilitating Ghislaine Maxwell's reputation and Republicans are, or some Republicans I should say, are going along with it. So Maxwell obviously was convicted. She got a 20 year sentence. But you know, Virginia Giuffre, I think in and around the time that she was, you know, arrested, called Maxwell worse than, than Epstein. Andrew, you have the quote, right?
- [10:00]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. This was in an interview just a couple of weeks after, after Ghislaine Maxwell was, was finally arrested. There was all kinds of weird Stuff, if you remember, like right around then, like, she kind of van. She was unable to be served with papers for months. But she finally was arrested in July of 2020. And a couple weeks later, Virginia Giuffre talked to Gayle King, gave her this interview where she really unloaded on Maxwell in particular. I mean, I have just a couple of the quotes here. She's a monster. She's worse than Epstein. She did things even worse than Epstein did. She was vicious, she was evil, and she's a woman. She was pulling the strings. She had his money, he had her contacts. But Ghislaine was much more conniving and smart than Epstein ever was. So, I mean, there's very, very strik. And again, right at this moment today, Ghislaine Maxwell is petitioning the Supreme Court basically to overturn her sentence on one procedural technicality, while also sort of trying to portray herself as a victim, her own self of Epstein and kind of a scapegoat for his crimes. And that is certainly not the picture that Virginia Giuffre painted.
- [11:04]
Sam Stein
Right. So it's creating this incredible and sad dichotomy where Maxwell is getting rehabilitated to a degree. Giuffre obviously has passed, but her name is being dragged through the mud yet again. And this morning, or I should say this afternoon, Maxwell's attorney made news when he said that she would be willing to testify to Congress if lawmakers offer her immunity and provide her with the questions in advance. This is according to the Washington Post. The letter was to James Comer, who is the chair of the House Oversight Committee. Comer, according to this piece, police Comer, we should say, subpoena Maxwell to give a deposition to his investigators or he wants it on August 11. But he said through committee spokesperson that he's preparing a formal response to the letter from Maxwell's attorney, but that at least one of Maxwell's conditions was off the table. And that would be the committee will not grant congressional immunity for her testimony. So we'll see where that goes. But it's clear that Maxwell is getting some sort of re like quasi rehabilitation here as maga world sort of, you know, you see like people on Newsmax being like, well, maybe she was like wrongly accused. It was me too. And who knows what was going on here? And so all that is incredibly sad. Quota to this story here.
- [12:20]
Andrew Egger
One other thing on that, there are some burblings of that, right. I think the main thing that you're hearing from Trump and from the people around. Well, specifically from people like around Trump like people like Comer is, they're trying to create this new dichotomy as far as the Epstein story is concerned, where they're trying to minimize the importance of the Epstein files. They're trying to minimize the importance of the stuff that DOJ could, in theory, release, because that was what got Trump into all this trouble in the first place, that he said he'd released them and then went back on that, Bondi said she'd release it, and then went back on that. And they're trying to redirect to this other thing. They're trying to make Ghislaine Maxwell's potential testimony like the centerpiece of this. I mean, there's all kinds of different reasons why that is. Talked about that with Mona on a podcast this morning, wrote about that this morning in morning Shots. But Comer here is also kind of an interesting guy because his committee voted last week to subpoena the Epstein files. Right. And yet he has been kind of slow walking that he's. He's bound by House rules to do that now to actually issue a subpoena to the White House to get those files. But it's interesting that he himself is kind of participating in this move of like, oh, but well, maybe those files aren't actually all that important because maybe Joe Biden tainted them and planted stuff in there. But maybe the real way to get to the truth is by talking to Ghislaine Maxwell and she. I mean, just like, obviously we can't speak with personal knowledge to what she did to Virginia, Jeffrey, but we know, I mean, it is open, shut from the stuff that was presented at her trial that, that she participated in all kinds of horrible stuff that she was, she was not a victim of Epstein. She was a co conspirator. His, his top co conspirator in a lot of this stuff. She's a person whose life and reputation are ruined forever. Right. And so she's, she's like playing this like a person who really has nothing to lose, who has no shame, who, who. There's only upside to her for her here, right? It's like if she, she feels like if she plays her cards right, she could in theory come out of this with a presidential pardon or with some kind of, you know, reduce sentence or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And, and so just, it's remarkable to watch this all play out in real time where, where she and her team are openly angling for that and, and Trump is, is again, not, not ruling out potentially pardoning her. He has said that A couple times in the past couple of days. And again, I, Republicans are not totally stupid on this stuff. Right. I mean, they know the optics of, of Mike Johnson too associated with her.
- [14:42]
Sam Stein
Mike Johnson notably not was like, I would not pardon her. He might go along with it if Trump does it. But he was very straight on the Sunday shows.
- [14:51]
Andrew Egger
He's like pressed, Wayne pressed. I mean, even his initial reaction was to say, you know, well, you know, that's in, that's Trump's decision. And I'm not going to get ahead of the President on that. But I mean, and that's the tension right there. It's like they all, they all know. We don't really know what the President's going to do. We don't know why he's gesturing. Exactly. They kind of do for these strategic reasons I've talked about. They know it's a possibility, but they also see like the immense dangers for the obvious reasons. Yeah.
- [15:16]
Sam Stein
Well, I guess the story stays in the storyline because Trump keeps talking about in odd, really odd ways. All right, Andrew, thank you, buddy. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching this. We're going to be obviously on top of this. It continues to take really crazy twists and turns and we'll be covering it both on our sub stack. You should subscribe there, honestly. It's great stuff. And on our YouTube feed, subscribe here. It's great stuff as well. We'll talk to you soon.
- [15:39]
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- [16:04]
Andrew Egger
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