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This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 3 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and survivors made it clear that, despite Donald Trump’s demands to the contrary, the Jeffrey Epstein story isn’t going anywhere. In a truly remarkable scene on Capitol Hill, a group of survivors rallied with members of Congress to support a bipartisan discharge petition, led by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, that would ensure the release of all Epstein-related documents.
As these survivors were sharing their powerful stories with the world, Trump was in the Oval Office calling it all fake news. The president once again referred to the scandal as a “Democrat hoax that never ends.”
Trump is just so obviously desperate for all of this to go away. He’s suing The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over its reporting of a lewd, innuendo-filled birthday note that the paper reported Trump sent to Epstein.
In Congress, his sycophants, including the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, held a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol to try and whip votes against the bipartisan petition to release all the files — files, I should note, that have already been vetted by Trump’s Justice Department and, according to The New York Times, contained the president’s name. Something he reportedly was made aware of.
Trump is just so obviously desperate for all of this to go away.
So, in some ways, it was always fated to come to this. Because there is no position more preposterous on its face than that Trump — the guy seen in a video leering at women with Epstein, the guy who went on the record more than 20 years ago about how much Epstein likes young women — was going to be the one to release all of the details about the millionaire, his associates and his crimes and misdeeds.
As one survivor pointed out today, the two did not hide their friendship. “Jeffrey and Ghislaine were always very boastful about their friends, their famous or powerful friends,” Chauntae Davies said. “And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump. He had an 8-by-10 framed picture of him on his desk with the two of them — like they were very close.”
But the White House has still tried to argue that Trump, of all people, would be the sword of justice against the country’s most notorious pedophile and his accomplices.
There’s also the president’s base, that absolutely believed he would follow through. But when his administration didn’t, some of those folks who fell for it turned on him. That includes the podcast bros, who were mostly just Trump-friendly, but also the real, dyed-in-the-wool MAGA loyalists.
The discharge petition is bipartisan in large part because it’s been signed onto by people like Reps. Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Say what you will about them (and there is a lot to say), but in this one narrow instance, it seems as though they hold enough genuine conviction to buck their dear leader.
Trump is going to try to bring the MAGA hammer down on the dissenters. But if Wednesday’s news conference is any indication, this story is not going anywhere, no matter how badly Trump may want it to.