Trump and Epstein: Will the president’s New York party days bring him down?
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Tina Brown, former editor of The Daily Beast and responsible for some of the earliest investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, tells The News Agents about her encounters with the pedophile financier, and why Trump is struggling to shake the story off.
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Read time: 5 mins
In brief
- Tina Brown, founding editor in chief at The Daily Beast in the ‘00s tells The News Agents about her personal experience with Jeffrey Epstein, and his threats against reporters investigating his crimes.
- Brown says Trump’s name is “clearly” in the Epstein files, and believes he has underestimated his MAGA supporters by promising transparency for long, and now trying to claim they don’t exist.
- She believes Trump considers his supporters “stupid”, but says despite their tight bond with the president, his links to Epstein have shown voters a side of the president they don’t like.
What’s the story?
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were firm fixtures of the New York social scene during the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Before becoming president, the real estate businessman partied with the financier, surrounded by young female models, and were firm friends.
Decades later, the president is now trying to convince America – and the world – that he is not named in files relating to Epstein, who died in 2019 after being convicted on sex trafficking and child sex offences.
His administration has said ‘the Epstein files’, which he previously promised to make public if he became president for a second time, don’t exist.
Many people don’t believe Trump, including Republican members of congress, key MAGA activists and big names in the journalism industry – with the president currently waging a legal battle against Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.
But these names also include journalism titan Tina Brown – former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker – who knows a thing or two about both Trump, and Epstein, from personal experience.
Inside the Jeffrey Epstein case
Inside Epstein’s life
When Brown was editor in chief at The Daily Beast, she led one of the first news organisations to ever look into Epstein’s activities.
The Daily Beast exposed the ‘sweetheart deal’ Epstein struck in 2008, resulting in his early detected crimes being reduced to solicitation and prostitution.
Brown tells The News Agents she once returned from a lunch to find Epstein sitting at her desk, threatening her with “consequences” if reporters at the publication didn’t stop investigating him.
“He looked at me with these kind of cold, sneaky eyes. It was just ice,” she recalls.
At the time, stories about high-powered businessmen and underage girls didn’t make headlines in the way it does today, and Brown says Epstein flooded the US press with stories of his generous philanthropy after details of his illicit activities were exposed, and he was prosecuted.
Most oddly, around this time Brown was even invited to a dinner, which she refers to as “the predator’s ball” with Epstein, Prince Andrew and Woody Allen – among the names on the guestlist.
She didn’t attend.
“That dinner party became a sort of night of shame in Manhattan in subsequent accounts. So I was very glad that I wasn't at it, although I have to say, in some ways, I'm really sad I wasn’t,” Brown says.
“This was like the cartoon of the story.
“It also shows that after his case where he'd been accused of being a pedophile, it was all still going on.”
Trump, the party scene, and his Epstein predicament
There was, of course, another big name on the Manhattan party circuit at the time – Donald Trump. Brown describes him at the time as an “ogler” and a "braggart about sex".
Today however, that former life in New York's society circles is proving the biggest headache of Trump's political career.
"I think he must be in a panic, because it's almost not a mystery," Brown says.
"He clearly is all over these files, and I'm not quite sure why he didn't think more clearly about that, about what was going to happen if these files were ever released.
"He and his supporters and his podcast army have spent years building up this notion of a rampant network of global liberal pedophiles, which seems to be kind of a core belief system."
She says Trump's MAGA supporters are "obsessed" with the idea of the global elite and pedophiles.
"He's let that rampage on because it suited him so well," she adds.
"But now unfortunately, he's appointed the crazy podcasters to the Justice Department."
Brown is referring to Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI – who previously hosted a right-wing podcast, once claiming his entire life is dedicated to "owning the libs."
"The whole scam of Trump-land is based on the fact that he thinks his base is stupid," Brown adds.
"He said so. He said, 'I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and they would still follow me' – it's all been based on that.
"They're just supposed to believe whatever garbage he siphons out of his rectum."
What next for Trump and his MAGA loyalists?
Brown says Trump now finds himself caught in a moment where he needs to decide whether he owns MAGA, or whether MAGA owns him.
Whichever way that relationship runs, it seems secure for now, as polls suggest his supporters still believe he is doing a good job as president, even if his approval ratings have dipped due to the ongoing Epstein allegations.
"The interesting thing about MAGA is they really believe that Trump speaks to them," says Brown.
"I wouldn't go as far as to say this will turn his base off, but there's this chink in the armour now, this suspicion that Trump has committed bad faith."
But, she believes, what Trump has given the MAGA voters, has resulted in a bond tight enough to survive this storm.
“Trump gave them the sense that they were special, that they were finally understood, valued and validated by a politician, whereas all the liberals had always discarded them, looked down and condescended to them.”
Will this be the end of Trump?
Brown is hesitant to suggest that links to Jeffrey Epstein could be what brings down the president – having previously survived incidents such as his "grab them by the p***y" comment and publicly doubting John McCain's military credentials.
“Every time he says one of these things, people go: ‘Well, that's the end of Trump. He's never going to survive this’, he’s found a way,” she says.
“So I would be loath to say this is the thing you know that's going to do him in because he always does seem to find a way to get through it, doesn't he?”
Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.
