Trump worked to kill a story about his friendship with Epstein. Now we know why |
For days before the Wall Street Journal published its story about Donald Trump’s salacious friendship with Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, the president was frantically working the phones.
He reportedly put pressure on the paper’s top editor, Emma Tucker, and even Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper’s business side, claiming that the alleged facts behind the story were nothing but a hoax, and threatening to sue the paper if it forged ahead. (Following publication of this article, Trump filed a suit against the paper and Murdoch.)
How worked up was he? “On a fucking warpath,” one administration official told Rolling Stone magazine.
Now that the story has been published – appearing on the Journal’s print-edition front page, no less – and picked up everywhere, it’s easy to see what Trump was so upset about. And equally easy to see why trying snuff it out in advance became such a high priority.
It’s not just that the 50th birthday card he reportedly penned for the future convicted child-sex offender is so damning in itself, with its bawdy sketch and references to shared........