MAGA Rep Gives Scummiest Defense of Trump’s Friendship With Epstein

There’s nothing wrong with being friends with child sex traffickers, according to Representative Tim Burchett.

Speaking with Fox News on Thursday, the Tennessee Republican tried to brush off Donald Trump’s reportedly cozy relationship with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein by offering his own slimy admission.

“They knew each other, they ran in the same circles,” Burchett told the network. “It’s just like me, I know a lot of dirtbags myself.”

Trump’s allies have been working overtime to explain away the MAGA leader’s various ties to Epstein, as pressure mounts within his base to make public the records pertaining to the government investigation into Epstein and his sex-trafficking empire.

Trump has a well-documented history with the New York financier. Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times, Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday, the real estate mogul reportedly flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times, and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he knew Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

Earlier this month, Burchett offered more convenient cover for the Trump administration after the Justice Department directly contradicted its leader, Attorney General Pam Bondi, on the existence of Epstein’s supposed “client list.” Speaking with NewsNation, Burchett said that he believed the client list was “destroyed” by the Biden administration and no longer existed.

When pressed why Bondi would not have said so if that was the case, Burchett responded that it was because “she doesn’t have any proof of it.”

Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin just admitted that congressional Republicans are voting against efforts to release the Epstein files in full because they’re trying to give President Trump “cover.”

On Thursday, Mullin and Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego each put forth a resolution on the Epstein files that they claimed was transparent. While Gallego called for the DOJ to release all files in full without caveat, Mullin called on the department to release “all credible information” related specifically to Epstein’s sealed legal proceedings. 

“I’m sure this would be handled just like any other thing [the Democrats] have tried to go after like the baseless impeachments. Or the bases—baseless special counsels. Or the unbelievable amount of charges they tried to file against the president,” Mullin said while objecting to Gallego’s resolution. “I’m sure this would be handled the exact same way. What we’re simply wanting to do here, is give [Trump] cover.”

What exactly do Trump and his administration need cover for? And what is the current GOP obsession with disqualifying Democrats’ calls for an investigation into Epstein on the grounds that former President Biden didn’t do it? That is a weak, lazy argument. Trump was also a former president, and Epstein killed himself during his first term.  

Mullin dismissed Gallego’s resolution on the basis of it being political theater. But it remains unclear just what about it is so theatrical. Gallego’s resolution attempted to get answers on a case that the Republican Party has absolutely bungled. Trump and his Cabinet broke a massive promise on these files, and it’s no wonder his base is angry. But Mullin is using technicalities and old excuses to prolong the process and provide cover for his dear leader. 

“All of us want transparency. We want to know actually what happened, the American people want to know what’s happened, but what [Senator Gallego’s] resolution does, is it actually is a blurred line between the separation of powers,” Mullin said. “When we start dictating to the Department of Justice what they can and can’t do, there’s a clear separation of power. We’re the legislative branch. That’s what we do. We make laws. We can’t dictate other branches on what they must and how they must do their job.…  A.G. Bondi, and the president has both already called on the judges to release this information. 

“What my resolution is simply saying, is we agree with the president, we agree with A.G. Bondi, on the judges and calling upon the judges to release it,” Mullins concluded. 

Gallego responded. 

“Let me explain to the American people what just happened. My colleague from Oklahoma refused to join me in calling on the DOJ to release all the Epstein files. Instead he offered his own resolution calling on the courts to unseal the records. When I asked if we did both, which I am asking to do both—I wanna call for transparency, and of course we could ask the Justice Department and the courts—he’s also gonna object.” 

This same conflict occurred a week ago, when Mullin also chalked Gallego’s efforts up to theater. 

In an apparent effort to get out ahead of Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony, Donald Trump’s media allies have decided to saddle up beside the prolific sex trafficker.

The Justice Department is reportedly meeting with Maxwell on Thursday and Friday, ahead of her scheduled deposition with the House Oversight Committee on August 11. The interviews follow weeks of mounting pressure on Trump from his base, who have clamored for more transparency regarding the Epstein files after the Justice Department contradicted prior statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi on the existence of Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed client list.

Offering Maxwell as fodder to Trump’s hungry followers is a fascinating carrot-and-stick option to alleviate some of that tension, but convincing her to talk would almost certainly require some kind of deal—an option that pro-Trump conservative media networks started to imagine this week.

On Monday, Newsmax host Greg Kelly had already started to dabble in the new media line, suggesting on air that Maxwell didn’t deserve her 20-year prison sentence and openly embracing the idea that the Epstein associate could be wrongly convicted.

“And then he’s got that girlfriend, Ghislaine—Ghislaine Maxwell,” Kelly said. “Right? She’s in jail right now for, like, 40 years or something crazy.” Maxwell is eligible for release in July 2037.

“And maybe she deserves it. Maybe she doesn’t. Again, not a very popular thing, but we’ll take a look,” Kelly told his viewers, even questioning if the child sex abuser had been legally tried in court. (She was.)

“She just might be a victim. She just might be,” Kelly said.

“How do you defend yourself?” he continued. “This is in the height of #MeToo. Does that sound right? Does that sound—maybe it’s legal.”

The 56-year-old former Fox & Friends co-host, who was investigated in 2012 on his own rape charges, also aired a clip of former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, who claimed that Maxwell “shouldn’t be” behind bars.

“She is really serving Jeffrey Epstein’s sentence after he committed suicide,” Dershowitz said. “There was no one else to prosecute … so they went after her, and they sentenced her to a sentence that would have been appropriate for Epstein but not at all appropriate for her.”

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse as Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and associate.

“She deserves to be out,” Dershowitz said, which Kelly repeated to his viewers.

But Kelly wasn’t the only conservative personality who had bought into the unsavory angle. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk—who capitulated to Trump last week when the MAGA leader ordered Kirk to stop discussing the matter as it riled his base—claimed that deposing Maxwell was “definitely” something that is “worthy of praise” and “encouragement.”

“Maybe she wants immunity, maybe she wants some sort of protection, I don’t know,” Charlie Kirk said on his show Tuesday. “We just want the truth.… Some people say, ‘Can we trust Ghislaine Maxwell?’ Probably, but also probably not.”

But not everyone on the right has bought in. Laura Loomer claimed last week that it wouldn’t be long “before some lobbyists try to cook up a possible pardon campaign” for the imprisoned sex offender. And Whitney Webb similarly warned that the Trump administration’s renewed interest in Maxwell was suspicious, claiming that scapegoating the Epstein associate would be the perfect way “to both avoid releasing the bulk of Epstein documents still held by the government and still seem like they are pursuing ‘justice’ in the case.”

“This could also pave the way for the ‘Pardon Ghislaine’ movement,” Webb, a prominent conspiracy theorist, wrote on X Tuesday, theorizing that Maxwell would only unveil the names she’s instructed to so that she doesn’t end up like Epstein.

Meanwhile, Trump was almost undoubtedly in Epstein’s universe. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department had notified Trump in May that his name appeared several times in the Epstein files.

Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times, Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday, the real estate mogul reportedly flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times, and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

South Park’s latest episode parodied Donald Trump as a vain, thin-skinned bully. In a splenetic statement responding to the portrayal, the White House did nothing to dispel that description.

White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers on Thursday bashed the show and the political left in statements to Entertainment Weekly and other outlets.

“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end—for years, they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” Rogers wrote. “Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

The offending cartoon episode ridiculed Trump’s personality, as well as his failures and iniquities since taking office. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone also took aim at the show’s own parent company, Paramount, for its two capitulations to Trump: canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and settling with Trump over 60 Minutes’s editing of its 2024 interview with Kamala Harris.

Stone and Parker also delivered some lower blows, depicting Trump with a “teeny-tiny” penis and portraying the president literally in bed with Satan (a recurring character on the show).

“President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history—and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak,” Rogers’s statement continued.

But, as the Trump administration has bungled the case of notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein (another topic South Park parodied in its episode), Trump’s supposed “hot streak” already seems thoroughly derailed.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Trump’s Justice Department in May informed the president that his name appears repeatedly in the Epstein files. (After that notice, the DOJ announced it would not release additional files and Trump deemed the case a “hoax,” deriding his supporters who remain interested in it.)

This is to say Trump’s White House already has much on its plate. But it’s apparently always willing to defend the ill-humored president’s honor at the drop of a hat, deepening the impression that he can’t take mockery in stride.

If you thought Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that Hillary Clinton was taking a “daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers” while she was secretary of state sounded a little dubious, you’d be right.

The national intelligence director parroted the conclusions of Russian spies at a White House press briefing Wednesday, saying that Moscow had seen evidence of Clinton’s “psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.”

But what Gabbard didn’t seem to remember was that these same documents were reviewed and debunked by the FBI years ago, as pointed out Thursday by independent journalist Marcy Wheeler.

In 2018, the Department of Justice released the results of an FBI investigation into Clinton’s leaked emails and other related Russian intelligence reports that they had obtained. Parts of that report had remained classified until this month.

The FBI analysis finds that much of the Russian intelligence the bureau looked at was “objectively false,” and they never found the stolen documents on which the Russians’ conclusions were based. The 2018 report even says that it’s not clear “if such communications in fact existed.”

In Wednesday’s press conference, Gabbard quoted a different report from 2020—one conducted by the Republican-led House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that analyzed, in part, the DOJ’s 2018 report to assess the “manufactured Russia hoax.”

The House committee report plucked details from the Russian intelligence without acknowledging the context that the DOJ had already discovered: that what the Russian spies had written was just not true.

Alongside conspiracy theories about Clinton’s temperament and reliance on tranquilizers, Gabbard also said the report’s findings provided proof that former President Barack Obama had attempted a “coup” by alleging Russian interference in the 2016 election—interference that’s been verified by multiple other investigations, including one by then-Senator and fellow MAGA Republican Marco Rubio in 2020.

Obama’s office called the allegations “bizarre.”

Whether Gabbard’s uncritical repetition of Russian intelligence is a continuation of her sympathetic attitude toward Russia that members of her own party have described as “traitorous,” or just an attempt to distract from the Epstein chaos, we may never know. But we do know who we can thank for clearing up this conspiracy: Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, whose tireless work to declassify the 2018 report for his own ends has, in this case, worked in Clinton’s favor.