It’s amazing how the Republicans have changed in the past quarter century. When Bill Clinton’s Oval Office dalliance was reported in the last century, the GOP was aghast. I mean agahst. They were mortified, they were horrified, they just could not overstate how simply horrible Clinton’s actions were. I’m not saying Clinton was right then, he was not. He was careless and irresponsible. But at least we were talking about consenting adults and that’s not the story that you’re about to hear. This is just a sampling.
Please stop talking about him…. pic.twitter.com/hqGdJ1Npmv
— No Kings Here (@Stop_Project25) July 13, 2025
Wolff goes on to say that a number of publishers consider these tapes to be “too hot to handle.”
The author Michael Wolff is “still waiting for the right context to tell” the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s long friendship with Donald Trump, because the “hours and hours and hours and hours and hours” of tapes Wolff has of the late sex offender discussing the current president have proved “too hot to handle” for a series of publishers.
“I have had discussion after discussion after discussion with media outlets about these tapes,” Wolff said, “and it always comes to, you know, ‘Life is too short and this is too hot to handle.’ And these are … a list of major media organizations.”
Wolff was talking to Clinton aide turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on their podcast, The Court of History, as the scandal over Trump’s links with Epstein continued to build.
This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi enraged Trump supporters when she said there was no Epstein “client list” of famous men connected to Epstein’s exploitation of young girls, and that the disgraced financier killed himself in a New York jail in 2019, rather than having been murdered. Bondi previously said the list was on her desk, being readied for release.
Trump supporters — prominently including Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, now director and deputy director of the FBI — have long advanced Epstein conspiracy theories and campaigned for files to be released, claiming to do so will expose top Democrats and other establishment figures.
Trump’s extensively documented friendship with Epstein makes this dangerous territory for the president and his administration.
On Saturday, Trump raged: “I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.
“For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 ‘Intelligence’ Agents, ‘THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,’ and more?”
Critics said Trump’s claim that the Epstein files were concocted by his enemies, as he claims various first-term scandals were, appeared to indicate worry that his name is in the files, whatever form they take.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a former Trump aide, has said Trump’s name is in the Epstein files.
Elsewhere on Saturday, a former Florida State Attorney for Palm Beach County told MSNBC some sort of files existed.
“In 2019, there was a raid of Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion, and there was a safe, and they had to use a saw to get in the safe,” Dave Aronberg said. “And there were hard drives or thumb drives in there.
“What’s on the thumb drives? We really still don’t know. So I think there’s a lot of images. I think there are ties to individuals. And perhaps the DOJ thinks there’s not enough evidence to file a lawsuit.”
On The Court of History, Wolff repeated previous descriptions of compromising photos of Trump with Epstein and young girls, which he said he had seen and presumed were in Epstein’s safe and thus now with the FBI.
Wolff said he made his tapes with Epstein while using him as a source, including for bestselling books about Trump.
He did not discuss how last year, shortly before the presidential election, he shared a taped conversation with The Daily Beast. Its headline read: “Listen To The Jeffrey Epstein Tapes: ‘I Was Donald Trump’s Closest Friend’.”
“Epstein painted a complicated portrait of Trump,” the Beast reported. “He called him ‘charming,’ and ‘always fun,’ capable of extraordinary salesmanship … but he alleged Trump was a serial cheat in his marriages and loved to ‘f— the wives of his best friends.’
“He also claimed that while Trump has friends, he was at heart a friendless man incapable of kindness.
“… Asked by Wolff, ‘How do you know all this?’ Epstein replied, ‘I was Donald’s closest friend.”
Epstein probably was Donald’s closest friend. Or what passed for friendship. Roy Cohn was also a friend and mentor. He said, “Donald pisses ice water.” Coming from a reptile like Cohn that’s quite an indictment.
Wolff added: “There was one moment where Epstein says, ‘Donald Trump has no scruples.’ So I just went to that, that the man who represents, you know, evil incarnate, can stand back and say, ‘Donald Trump has … no scruples.”
Saying Epstein had “a very comprehensive deep-dive view of Trump, of what he could do, what he couldn’t do,” Wolff said the financier “always pointed out … that Trump was innumerate. He couldn’t read a balance sheet … [and] in terms of a larger sense of administration and management and executive function, … was utterly hopeless.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is who is running a government involving 330 million people. Some guy who can’t understand a balance sheet. In any event, you can well understand why Trump wants MAGA to forget about Epstein. And it’s not going to happen.
I hope Wolff has his tapes in a vault in Switzerland, because trump would do everything in his power to destroy them were they within reach. The question that arises is does Putin have kompromat on trump that stems from his Epstein days? If the Russians were involved in financing and wiring Epstein Island as a honey trap for America’s captains of industry, that could explain the peculiar hold they have over him. Epstein may be dead, but his legacy is a ticking time bomb that could go off and take out more than a few billionaire tech bros, not to mention a prime minister or two and a couple of ex-presidents.
“Some guy who can’t understand a balance sheet.”
should read,
“Some pedophile who can’t understand a balance sheet.”