Trump: The One Elite Who Stood Up to Epstein and Helped His Victims
The Truth about the Trump-Epstein Relationship
One of the issues that routinely comes up when researching those who were somewhere in the orbit of Epstein, such as Bill Barr1, Bill Clinton,2 and James Biden3, is the MSM’s instance that Trump and Epstein were close friends.
“Sure,” they claim, “Bill Clinton visited Epstein dozens upon dozens of times and flew on the Lolita Express 26 different times.4 That’s not great. BUT, Trump knew Epstein too, so you can’t use Epstein to attack the regime as illegitimate!”
That argument is not only nonsensical (why would one man’s poor character mean the worse character of others can’t be criticized?) but is also a malevolent and malicious claim that obscures Trump’s role in stopping Epstein. This article will show the true nature of Trump’s relationship with Epstein and explain how Trump helped try to hold Epstein accountable in 2009, an effort stymied by the law firm at which Bill Barr was working at the time.5
Previously in the Epstein series: James Biden’s Island, Bill Barr and Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Child Sacrifice
What Regime Media Claims
The central claim of the regime is that Trump and Epstein were close friends, at least before Epstein’s 2008 arrest. To connect Trump to Epstein, they mainly use a steaming witches’ brew of nonsense, namely baseless accusations from since-discredited “witnesses,” with a few unfortunate facts and comments sprinkled into it to make the tale believable to the gullible.
The few facts they have at their disposal are that Trump once flew on Epstein’s plane,6 that Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago for a time,7 and that Trump made a few off-the-cuff, positive comments about Epstein, such as when he said in 2002 that Epstein was a "terrific guy” and “He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."8 Those all break down once given the slightest bit of scrutiny, but we’ll get back to that in a bit.
First, it’s important to understand what the left and MSM uses those three main things to then “prove.” Noting that Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago, for example, they’ll then go on to argue that when he is sued by a woman who claims he sexually abused her as a young girl. Never mind that that suit was brought, dropped, brought again, and dropped again9; it’s still used to attack Trump. So, comment or Mar-a-Lago membership list in hand, they use some woman’s obviously untrue allegations to smear him.
As one example of the media’s slander, the Daily Beast ran an article in 2020 titled, “Epstein Victim Claims He Showed Her Off to Trump When She Was 14.” The article, of course, mentions Mar-a-Lago in the drophead. “Horrible,” you might think, “is what I think to be true about Trump really a lie, is he a bad guy?” Nope. A few paragraphs in, after framing Trump as a monster, it quietly notes, “Doe’s lawsuit does not accuse Trump of any sexual misconduct.”10
And on and on it goes. A screaming headline declares that Trump is accused of doing the unspeakable to a young girl, only for the paragraph “below the fold” to not that Trump either isn’t accused of anything other than an awkward smile, cringe-inducing comment, or that the lawsuit was tossed for being complete nonsense. That nonsense is easy to discern with a few paragraphs’ worth of reading, as the papers and outlets have to admit it to avoid liability. The other lies and misinformation can also be discerned, albeit with a bit more work. That’s what will be discussed below.
Mar-a-Lago, The Plane, and Trump’s Record of Defending Victims of Child Predators
Epstein: Mar-a-Lago’s Kicked Out Member
The attempts to connect Trump to Epstein’s dark and perverse predilections via Epstein’s membership at Mar-a-Lago are the most ridiculous of the bunch. Yes, Epstein was a member. That’s true. He probably even recruited Virginia Giuffre11, a locker room towel girl when she met Epstein when she worked at Mar-a-Lago.
However, there’s no evidence that Trump knew what Epstein was up to before he was kicked out. Giuffre, for example, notes that she was hired as a masseuse, saying, “Just outside the locker room, sitting where the other girl who works there usually sits. I was reading a book on massage therapy. … She noticed I was reading the massage book. And I started to have chitchat with her just about, you know, the body and the anatomy and how I was interested in it. And she told me that she knew somebody that was looking for a traveling masseuse. ... If the guy likes you then, you know, it will work out for you. You’ll travel. You’ll make good money.”12
So, Trump, in the course of employing somewhere in the range of 150 people,13 had one who was recruited as a masseuse for a supposed financier, the sort of person who, on the face of it, is who joined the club. Weird, perhaps, but hardly justifying POLITICO’s breathless headline on the subject, “Unsealed documents detail alleged Epstein victim’s recruitment at Mar-a-Lago.”14
Still less is the breathlessness surrounding Epstein’s membership at Mar-a-Lago justified when the fact of how he responded when he found out what Epstein was up to at the club is realized. According to a New York Times article from July of 2019, Trump had banned Epstein from his club because Epstein "had tried to recruit a woman" employed by the club. Here’s what that article claimed15:
Sam Nunberg, a former campaign aide to Mr. Trump, said he raised concerns about the candidate’s involvement with Mr. Epstein before Mr. Trump officially began his presidential campaign. But Mr. Trump assured Mr. Nunberg that he had barred Mr. Epstein from entering his clubs after Mr. Epstein had tried to recruit a woman who worked at Mar-a-Lago.
“Trump said, ‘I kicked him out of the clubs when this stuff became public, and I made sure NBC knew,’” Mr. Nunberg recalled.
That was corroborated by court papers, which provided that, “Trump allegedly banned Epstein from his Maralago Club in West Palm Beach because Epstein sexually assaulted a girl at the club.”16
So, Trump had let Epstein be a member as the club but then kicked him out when he found out that the supposed financier was acting inappropriately with a young girl at the club. Is that damning? Hardly. Rather, it indicates that Trump wanted no part in Epstein’s perversion.
The Trump Flight on Epstein’s Plane
Unlike former President Bill Clinton, who flew on the “Lolita Express,” so-named by guests because of the paedophilic novel “Lolita,” 26 times17, often to Pedo Island, Trump didn’t do that.
Rather, Trump took one flight with Epstein. It was in 1997, before Epstein was charged with anything or widely known as having sick proclivities, and went from Palm Beach (where Mar-a-Lago is) to New York City.18 Though the media claims, based on testimony from Epstein’s pilot, that Trump took multiple flights on the plane, the flight log tells a different story; it says Trump was only on the one flight.19 Trump does appear to have flown on another one of Epstein’s planes at other times in the 90s, before the ‘97 flight, which appears to have been his last.20 The pilot testified that he saw nothing untoward on the plane with Trump.
So, while it’s not great that Trump was on Epstein’s plane, it’s not necessarily indicative of anything. Rather than flying to one of Epstein’s properties, such as the Pedo Island to which Clinton flew, Trump flew from his private club to New York, where he lived, with a member of the club who he believed to be a wealthy financier.
Adding to evidence of Trump’s likely innocence in the matter is that he traveled with his family members, such as his son Eric,21 daughter Tiffany,22 and wife Marla Maples.23 Further, he returned the favor and let Epstein hitch a ride on his jet,24 so it simply appears like the two gave each flights between their New York and Palm Beach residences when needed, rather than that anything untoward was happening.
So, far from looking like Trump was acting in a perverted way when flying with Epstein, as it looks like with Bill Gates and Clinton, it looks like he was just taking a private jet trip with his family from their home in Florida to home in New York.
Trump: The One Guy Who Helped Epstein’s Victims
Finally, and the perhaps most important aspect of the available evidence is that Trump is the one guy who helped Epstein’s victims try to hold him accountable when he found out that Epstein had been accused of horrific wrongdoing in the 2000s.
That occurred in 2009, after Epstein had been given the boot from Mar-a-Lago and when some of his victims were going after him. The lawyer for those victims, Brad Edwards, said that Trump was the only person to pick up the phone and try to help hold Epstein accountable.
Speaking about the situation,25 Edwards said that Trump was "the only person who picked up the phone and said, 'Let’s just talk. I’ll give you as much time as you want. I'll tell you what you need to know.'"
Further, Edwards added that Trump "was very helpful in the information that he gave and gave no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything untoward whatsoever." Continuing, he said that Trump offered "good information that checked out and that helped us."
What Was Really Going On: A Casual Acquaintanceship Cut Off When Evidence of Wrongdoing Surfaced
So, Trump knew Epstein and spent more time with him than anyone would like. That is, unfortunately, true. But Trump’s case is different than the connections many of the elites had to Epstein. That’s because there’s no real evidence of him doing anything wrong, other than knowing and being acquainted with Epstein; unlike the others, he cut off contact when he found out Epstein was a pervert instead of a playboy, tried to help Epstein’s victims by working voluntarily with their lawyer, and he was a constant enemy of child traffickers while president.26
Beyond what Trump did after Epstein was caught, his relationship wasn’t particularly condemnable. For one, there’s no evidence it was more than a casual acquaintanceship based on their living in New York and Palm Beach, hence the reason for their occasional travel together. They did occasionally travel from Palm Beach to New York together, but those with whom Trump traveled and his returning the favor indicate that it was just letting each other hop on a plane ride between homes, rather than anything untoward. Similarly, Trump never traveled to Epstein Island and never visited Epstein’s Arizona ranch of horrors.
Further evidence that Trump, unlike many of Epstein’s other acquaintances, did nothing wrong. Further evidence for that comes from the fact that the main accusation against him on the subject has been voluntarily dropped twice and is doubted even by regime journalists,27 and that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago and helped those prosecuting him when it became obvious what Epstein was really up to.
Far from being some covered-up conspiracy, as Trump’s enemies would use twisted headlines based on out-of-date information to make you believe, it looks like Trump’s relationship with the Palm Beach financier was exactly what Trump said: “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan.” Epstein was a wealthy financier, and so a “fixture” of Palm Beach. Trump knew him through the club, traveled with him to New York a handful of times, and then shut down the relationship and turned on his acquaintance when he found out what Epstein was up to.
So is the media line of attack on Trump, the insinuation that because he knew Epstein he’s just as guilty as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and the rest of them, true? Of course not. It’s a campaign of whispered slanders based on lies or half-truths and spread by those who hate him for the benefit of oligarchs who spent an obscene amount of time doing unspeakable things on Pedo Island.