MTG Reveals How Trump’s White House Is Bullying Her on Epstein

The White House is apparently desperate to get Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to stop pushing for the release of more files on Jeffrey Epstein—but she’s still not blaming Donald Trump.

Speaking on the Real America’s Voice show Bolling! Wednesday night, the Georgia Republican described the White House’s efforts to urge her not to support Representative Thomas Massie’s discharge petition to release all files on the alleged sex trafficker.

“Oh, I got a lot of pushback. I got phone call after phone call last night. They didn’t want me to sign the discharge petition. They want to focus on the oversight investigation,” Greene explained. “They hate Thomas Massie more than they can hate any Democrat, which makes no sense to me. And they don’t want to work with Democrats at all.”

But even as the target of a pressure campaign from the White House, Greene was still loath to blame Trump, and claimed that White House staffers were responsible.

“Eric, you and I both know any president is insulated and in a cone of information based on the people that work directly with him, and I don’t think they’ve informed him on what a big deal this really is,” she said.

Greene condemned a Wednesday statement from a “coward” White House official that had warned Massie’s discharge petition was a “hostile act” against the Trump administration.

“I take very big offense to that, because I put my life and my fortune on the line fighting to get that man elected,” Greene said.

Greene also pushed back gently on Trump’s disturbing dismissal of the survivors’ press conference Wednesday, calling their pleas to release the complete Epstein files a “Democratic hoax that never ends.”

“It’s not a hoax, because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile. That takes away the whole hoax thing. It’s not a hoax. It’s not a lie,” Greene said.

The representative also said she hoped Trump would change his mind, and invite the survivors to the Oval Office. “I want him to be the hero and champion of this issue,” Greene said. “And I want him to fight for these women, because I know him to be a fighter.”

Greene is one of four Republicans supporting Massie’s discharge petition, and the second to offer her own baffling defense of Trump’s inaction. On Wednesday, Representative Nancy Mace claimed Trump was “committed to protecting women and children,” shortly after he had claimed that survivors of sexual abuse were lying.

A bipartisan group of U.S. representatives—ranging from progressives to MAGA true believers—unveiled legislation Wednesday to ban stock trading for members of Congress and their relatives.

The surprising group has united behind one bill dubbed the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which Democratic Representative Seth Magaziner and far-right Republican Chip Roy officially introduced.

At the bill’s announcement on Wednesday, progressive Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said any prospective members of Congress who are vexed by the proposal are probably not cut out to serve.

“If anyone says, ‘This isn’t fair. I’m going to have to divest all my stocks if I’m going to run for Congress,’ maybe you should stay home,” said Ocasio-Cortez. She added that it’s “outrageous” that some representatives see the proposed ban as “some undue burden.”

Ocasio-Cortez also observed the need for more working-class representation in a Congress where millionaires are overwhelmingly overrepresented. “I feel that actually banning the trade of individual stock can help even the playing field,” she said.

“This body has been enriching itself on the taxpayer’s dime, and, dadgummit, it’s got to stop,” added MAGA Representative Tim Burchett.

Progressive Democrat Pramila Jayapal spoke to the importance of voters knowing their representatives “are taking votes on issues where they’re not thinking about their own stock portfolio.”

“This is beyond an 80–20 issue,” said Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick. “This is a 95–5 issue, and the five that are against it are probably in this institution day trading.”

Asked why the bill is limited to the legislative branch, Magaziner suggested that a ban on stock trading for the president and vice president could be introduced down the line, as an amendment or a separate bill.

“Many of us, I think in both parties, support including the president and vice president,” he said. “We are working to see if we can get a critical mass of support to include them or not.”

Representative Nancy Mace offered a wild defense of President Donald Trump, who has dismissed calls for more transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, less than 24 hours after crying with survivors of the alleged sex trafficker.

Mace left a meeting with survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse visibly upset on Tuesday afternoon, and later said she’d had a “full blown panic attack” in the face of their stories, having been a recent survivor of sexual assault herself.

“I feel the immense pain of how hard all victims are fighting for themselves because we know absolutely no one will fight for us. GOD BLESS ALL SURVIVORS,” she wrote in a post on X.

But on Wednesday, Mace went out of her way to defend Trump—who had just that day dismissed continuous calls to release Epstein’s list of clients as a “Democratic hoax that never ends.”

“President Trump is the one who banned Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. President Trump is the one who cooperated with the feds to get this guy. President Trump is the one who is COMMITTED to protecting women and kids,” Mace wrote in a post on X, linking an NBC News interview with some survivors who claimed they hadn’t witnessed any misconduct from Trump.

Mace’s claims stand in stark contrast to statements from survivor Chauntae Davies, who, while speaking Wednesday at a major press conference, said that Epstein’s longtime friendship with Trump was his “biggest brag,” and revealed that he had a framed picture of the two of them on his desk.

This is just the latest in a laundry list of revelations tying the president to the alleged sex trafficker.

Even though Trump has not been directly implicated in Epstein’s crimes, his attempts to discredit survivors and prevent the release of more information could easily be presented as efforts to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Before the press conference, survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse held a rally where they spoke about their experiences and condemned lawmakers who would fashion their trauma into political weaponry. Clearly, Mace’s solidarity with survivors of sexual assault only goes so far.

Mace did, however, lend her name to Representative Thomas Massie’s latest petition pushing for the House to release more files on Epstein, following the lackluster release of documents that were mostly already public, or duplicates of older reports.

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze $2 billion of government funding to Harvard University, dealing a notable blow to the president’s attempt to “unwoke” academia under the guise of stopping antisemitism.

“The Court grants Harvard’s request for a permanent injunction that prevents Defendants reimposing any unconstitutional conditions imposed to date, and enjoins Defendants from issuing any other termination, freezing of funds, stop work orders, or withholding of payment on existing grants or other federal funding, or refusal to award future grants, contracts, or other federal funding to Harvard in retaliation for the exercise of its First Amendment rights,” Judge Allison D. Burrough wrote.

Burrough also dissected the administration’s antisemitism justification in just a few sentences.

“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of the [Administrative Procedure Act], the First Amendment and Title VI,” Burroughs wrote pointedly. “Further, their actions have jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes.”

“The record here … does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment,” she added.

Burroughs stated the obvious: The Trump administration doesn’t actually care about antisemitism, they’re just looking for something to use to excuse their right-wing takeover of some of America’s top colleges and universities. This is pure culture war.

This story has been updated.

Over 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services have demanded that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resign for “placing the health of all Americans at risk.”  

The signatories, who released the letter on Wednesday, include representatives from a number of health-related agencies, such as the Administration for Children and Families, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and more. 

After a reportedly anti-vax shooter attacked the CDC on August 8, a number of federal health employees sent a letter to Kennedy, urging him to stop spreading false information about Covid-19. But now, as Kennedy “continues to endanger the nation’s health,” these horrified federal workers, scientists, and physicians are leveling up their demands.

 Last week, Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, which spurred the resignations of multiple other high-ranking officials. Demetre Daskalakis, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was one of those who stepped down. He shared his resignation letter on X, writing: “I am unable to serve in an environment that treats the CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”

Current and former employees cited these examples, along with Kennedy’s appointment of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts,” his refusal to be briefed by CDC experts, and his rescinding of the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the Covid vaccine, as reasons they were demanding  Kennedy’s resignation.

“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” employees wrote.

The letter is also addressed to Congress. If Kennedy refuses to step down, the signatories requested that Congress and the president appoint someone new to take his place. 

But for the sake of these federal employees, and the health of all Americans, let’s hope it doesn’t get to the point where relying on the sanity and compassion of congressional Republicans is our only option.