Every Day, Another Grotesque SecretTrump’s letter to Epstein is undeniable. The White House spin is literally unbelievable. The MAGA base has been training all decade for this.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt heads to the press briefing room at 1 p.m. today. She should have a lot to talk about. Happy Tuesday.
The Letter Dropsby Andrew Egger It’s a strange thing, psychologically speaking. When the Wall Street Journal reported this summer on Donald Trump’s leering “we have certain things in common” birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, it was painfully obvious that the White House response—it’s a forgery! A hoax! We’re suing everyone involved!—was a series of desperate lies and distractions. There was never any legitimate reason to doubt the letter’s authenticity. Still, there’s knowing something is true intellectually, and then there’s knowing something is true beyond the shadow of a doubt. Yesterday, congressional Democrats released the full birthday book, compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell decades ago and handed over by Epstein’s estate. And there the letter sat, just as the Journal had described it, nestled grotesquely amid the “we’re so proud of you”s from his parents, the “you’ve made good, Jeff” letters from former Jewish-school teachers, and the ribald reminiscences of teenage exploits from lifelong friends. “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret,” it read, signed by Trump’s own hand. Incredibly, it turns out that the card wasn’t even the book’s only alarming suggestion of Trump’s knowledge of or participation in Epstein’s sordid affairs. A letter from longtime Mar-a-Lago member Joel Pashcow showed a picture of Epstein standing behind a giant novelty check, supposedly from Trump. “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women!”, the letter reads. “Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [name redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.” A joke, obviously—but a joke referencing what, exactly? The “fully depreciated” woman, the Journal reports, was then in her 20s. This is exactly the sort of juice Epstein truthers have been convinced for years was still locked away in Justice Department filing cabinets. It is the whole reason for all these years of RELEASE THE FILES rabble-rousing. The biggest unanswered question about Epstein to date is how distinct he kept the two halves of his life: his elbow-rubbing with elites and his despicable sexual appetites. Trump’s letter makes it unbelievably obvious that he at the very least knew about Epstein’s perversions, to say nothing of him claiming in the letter to share them. Pashcow’s letter suggests that everyone basically knew about it, and that Trump was himself part of the joke they told themselves about it.¹ The White House’s explanations for all this, even by their standards, have been pathetic—shockingly, hilariously lame. “As I have said all along,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X, “it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.” Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich posted pictures of Trump’s signature today—which indeed looks a little different than it did in the early 2000s—as a supposed proof: “It’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” This despite the fact that Trump has been in public life for decades and has been signing every piece of paper within his reach for that entire span. The Journal compared the Epstein-letter signature with several other letters from Trump signed around that time. I mean, you be the judge:
What the White House is doing here isn’t persuasion or argumentation. It’s pure noise—an attempt to drown out a seemingly unspinnable story and get its people to change the channel to something else. As usual, JD Vance has the more puerile and purest form of the message: “The Democrats don’t care about Epstein. They don’t even care about his victims. That’s why they were silent about it for years. The only thing they care about is concocting another fake scandal like Russiagate to smear President Trump with lies. No one is falling for this BS.” In a way, Donald Trump and his allies have spent their entire political lives preparing for this moment. The whole miserable decade of “alternative facts,” of witch hunts, of flooding the zone with shit—it all amounted to a long, powerful education for his base. It’s a training in a certain kind of zen meditation, in which stories damaging to Trump pass from the eyes and ears directly out of the body without ever intersecting the brain. By now, the base has gotten in their 10,000 hours. They’ve become masters of the craft. They can perform all sorts of remarkable feats—the media-cope equivalent of lying on beds of nails while cinderblocks are smashed on their chests. These cinderblocks, they whisper serenely, are just a liberal plot. If I pay attention, the Democrats win. This Epstein story might as well be their final test. They’ve clamored for years for more information about Epstein’s sexual-deviant associates—and here Trump is, wallowing in that muck of perversity, clear as day. Trump plainly thinks he’s got them well trained enough that he doesn’t even need to find a good cover story. They’re ready to excuse him all on their own. What Dems Can Doby William Kristol Just a couple of additional observations, for now, on the Epstein matter: For me, an early sign that the Epstein files could be a major problem for Donald Trump—and that Donald Trump knew this could be a major problem—was his response to a question at a Cabinet meeting on July 8. The question was not directed to Trump but to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had just released the memo concluding “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” in the investigation. An angry President Trump interrupted to challenge the reporter:
The president could easily have let Bondi take the question and blandly reiterate her conclusion from the memo. But he couldn’t resist lecturing the reporter—and the rest of us—that we shouldn’t talk about Epstein. It was a classic doth protest too much moment. And of course it’s not the innocent who protest too much. It was clear then that Trump was scared of further Epstein inquiries. He was scared of what might come out. It turns out, he was right to be. And when the Wall Street Journal, later that month, first reported on the birthday card he wrote to Epstein, Trump’s response was also a kind of admission of guilt. He denied that he wrote the card, denied that he had ever seen the card, and announced he was suing Rupert Murdoch and the Journal. That’s still his position, even after the Journal last night published the actual letter. It’s ludicrous. But it fits a pattern of guilt. If you are terrified of more discussion of the implications of what you’ve written, of inquiries as to what other documents might exist, you stonewall and hope the questions exhaust themselves rather than try to explain and thus invite follow-on inquiries. Trump’s stonewall hasn’t worked, as we can see from today’s headlines. But what produced those headlines? The release of the original Epstein birthday book by the House Oversight committee. In late July, some Democrats on that committee ignored the conventional wisdom that there was nothing they could do beyond complain. They forced a vote on a surprise motion to subpoena the Trump Justice Department for all records related to the Epstein investigation. The motion passed, 8–2, with three of the panel’s Republicans joining with the Democrats. It was an important victory, and an instructive one. It turns out aggressive backbenchers can make a difference. And it suggests that, in general, Democrats should spend less time telling themselves and everyone else that their minority status prevents them from accomplishing anything in Congress, and more time trying to accomplish some things, even against the odds. So, a lesson for the media, for Democrats, and for all of us: Keep on insisting, keep on pushing, keep on fighting for the truth about Epstein—and Trump. AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick HitsIT’S THE CORRUPTION, STUPID: Ten years after Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, Democrats still have trouble unifying around a message to combat him. But as the 2026 midterms come into focus, two seasoned party operatives are urging the party to dust off an old script. In a memo sent to party leadership and other members, Nancy Pelosi alums Jesse Lee and Ashley Etienne make the case for Democrats to more aggressively lean into the “culture of corruption” charge against Trump. The memo notes the historical potency of the line, which was used to great effect in the 2006 cycle. But the crux of the memo is this: the “culture of corruption” message is one of the few effective catch-alls for Trump-related controversies.
“The shocking Epstein cover-up, along with the GOP’s disastrous budget bill and the President’s hostile takeover of the District of Columbia, present a perfect new opportunity for a proven strategy,” reads the memo, which was obtained by The Bulwark. “The ‘culture of corruption’ message works because it taps into something broad and deeply felt: the public’s belief that the system is rigged and no one is held accountable.” Messaging memos are the carbohydrates of politics; abundant, useful, but not worth overloading on. The Lee-Etienne one is distinct, however, because of the proactive advice it offers. For starters, it encourages Democrats to fit their currently preferred anti-Trump messaging—centered on cost-of-living—into a culture-of-corruption frame, specifically on the GOP’s tax-cut heavy budget bill. They offer similar advice for framing Trump’s authoritarianism and his handling of the Epstein affair. “Trump’s lawlessness,” they write, is “about redefining the rules entirely to serve his personal and political interests.” More notable, perhaps, is that Lee and Etienne call on the party to put together a prospective legislative proposal to rein in Trump’s corruption, and they envision such a proposal would serve as a campaign platform. As for examples of what could be in it, they offer three: End stock trading in “both Congress and the White House”; end partisan redistricting; and apply “binding ethics rules to the White House.” “It’s imperative that the Party run on working to fix the broken system,” they conclude, “and positioning itself on the right side of addressing corruption.” – Sam Stein BUILD FACTORIES HERE—BUT NOT LIKE THAT: It’s been a pillar of Trump’s trade-war messaging: If you don’t want to pay tariffs, build your factories here in America. And it’s been a non-negotiable ask in his trade negotiations with other countries: Pledge to invest in America, or we’re really going to sock you. But companies and countries trying to comply with this advice can face their own complications. For instance, ICE might suddenly show up to arrest everybody you’ve got building the factory. The Washington Post reports:
From the point of view of the South Koreans, the entire story is Kafkaesque. They’re trying to build one of their factories in America, like Trump supposedly wants. To build it, they need a number of skilled supervisors on the floor who have experience at their preexisting factories—which means they need South Koreans. But the U.S. work-visa process is already complicated enough that it’s difficult getting the people they need over here. Some Koreans are able to get the H-1B work visas they need, while others are here on “gray zone” authorizations like a B-1 business visa. But instead of working with them to make this system easier to navigate, the White House turns around and rounds their engineers up. The icing on the cake is why the raid reportedly happened in the first place. Tori Branum, a Georgia Republican currently running for Congress, claims to have called in a tip to ICE against the plant. Just what the people of Georgia need: a politician who’s willing to do the hard thing and sabotage the construction of a new factory in the state in order to score immigration brownie points with the base. Cheap Shots
1 And, of course, that’s to say nothing of Trump’s many other comments around this time suggesting much the same thing, like his 2005 narration to Howard Stern about his habits at his Miss Teen USA pageants: “I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it. You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.” You’re a free subscriber to The Bulwark—the largest pro-democracy news and analysis bundle on Substack. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and to access ad-free and member-only shows, become a paying subscriber.We’re going to send you a lot of content—newsletters and alerts for shows so you can read and watch on your schedule. Don’t care for so much email? You can update your personal email preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here. Having trouble with something related to your account? Check out our constantly-updated FAQ, which likely has an answer for you.
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