Asked about Epstein, Trump turned to a long list of grievancespublished at 17:33 British Summer Time
Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House
Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesReporters have now been escorted out of the Oval Office.
During their unusually brief time there, roughly 45 minutes, they asked Trump about Epstein.
In response, he delivered an extended monologue. But little of it dealt with disputes about releasing federal records on the deceased sex offender, which have become a political maelstrom for Trump in recent weeks.
Instead, the president circled back to a long list of greivances from nearly a decade.
This included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s suggestion, last week, that intelligence was “manufactured and politicised” by then-President Obama and others to try to show that Russia colluded with Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Trump alleged his predecessor was attempting to “rig” the 2016 election.
Trump’s attacks on the “fake news” media are frequent, and almost expected – but the Obama allegations seem to have made him particularly animated.
He then moved swiftly to his oft-repeated – but baseless – claims that the 2020 election, which he lost, was also rigged and that former President Biden used an auto-pen to sign documents he knew “nothing about”.
Trump took aim again at what he refers to as the “unselect committee” that looked into the 6 January 2021 riot, as well as Biden’s granting of pardons to several prominent figures in his administration, as well.
With the exception of the most recent Obama claims, these are all talking points that he used – repeatedly – during the campaign trail.
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