Trump and his MAGA allies are pushing an outlandish theory to explain his Epstein letter

This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 9 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

One of the things Donald Trump is supposed to be good at is lying. If Trump doesn’t like something, whether it’s a news story, a statistic or an immutable law of physics, he can just say it’s fake, over and over again and eventually — at least in MAGA world — the issue will go away.

Now, I would not necessarily have predicted that the Jeffrey Epstein files would be the issue that caught Trump up in his own blatant lies, but eight months into the president’s second term, it appears he is having a very hard time explaining himself.

On Monday, we finally got a look at the highly anticipated Epstein “birthday book,” the one that was first reported on by The Wall Street Journal in July that was said to include a bawdy letter from Trump to Epstein. Trump was so furious about that reporting that he immediately sued The Wall Street Journal and its parent company for defamation, declaring in open court that the birthday letter did not exist.

Well, it turns out that letter definitely does exist — as do a whole bunch of other creepy letters to Epstein that were compiled in that birthday book. Throughout the 200-plus page book, Epstein’s friends allude to his lifestyle with lewd references, suggestive images and crude jokes.

For example, one contributor expresses “Birthday Greetings to Degenerate One,” writing, “so many girls, so little time.” Another contributor wrote a poem, noting that, despite being an outrage to public decency, Epstein had “avoided the penitentiary.” One page seems to reference his lifestyle through clip art, depicting his plane and women in swimwear.

There’s also a particularly creepy illustration, appearing to show Epstein giving candy and balloons to young girls in 1983 and then receiving massages, apparently from those same girls, 20 years later.

Taken together, this book suggests that Epstein’s behavior was a very open secret.

It was among those horrifying pages that we saw that birthday message, appearing exactly as it was first described by The Wall Street Journal and bearing what appears to be the president’s very distinctive signature.

Following the release of those pages, Trump, who confidently told the world that this drawing did not exist, changed his tune. Immediately, the White House and its allies started pushing a new claim: Now they say that it’s not the letter that is fake, but Trump’s signature on the letter that is fake.

Never mind that there are multiple, nearly identical examples of Trump’s signature on letters he has signed throughout the years, including ones he himself published in a book called “Letters to Trump.”

Trump’s claim that his signature was fake was so obviously far-fetched that the president himself appeared to have briefly given up selling that story. When reached by NBC News for a comment Tuesday, Trump did something he seldom does: not comment.

“I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue,” Trump said.

But clearly the issue is still very much alive because, just hours later, Trump was back to denying he had anything to do with it. “It’s not my signature and it’s not the way I speak,” the president told reporters. “And anybody that’s covered me for a long time knows that’s not my language. It’s nonsense. And frankly, you’re wasting your time.”

And now, as implausible as it may be, that “fake signature theory” has become the official party line. Trump allies such as Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Rep. James Comer of Kentucky have all insisted the signature is a forgery. Comer said he takes the president “at his word.”

But let's just game this out for a second: According to the president and his allies, 22 years ago, when Trump was still a Democrat sending checks to Hillary Clinton; when Trump and Epstein were still friends who partied openly together at Mar-a-Lago, and before the millionaire pedophile’s crimes became known to the public, someone out there had the foresight to fake Trump’s signature and then include it in a book to his close friend, in the hopes that it would damage his reputation when he was miraculously sitting in the Oval Office 22 years later?