The Most Pathetic Republican Excuses on Trump Epstein Birthday Letter

GOP lawmakers are tying themselves in knots to defend President Donald Trump after his unsettling, sexually suggestive 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein was released Monday. The damning document appeared in a scrapbook that the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed from the deceased sex criminal’s estate.

Below are some of the most pitiful reactions and denials from congressional Republicans.

1. “We’ve seen autopens they’ve used in the Biden administration”—Tim Burchett

Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, shown the letter by CNN’s Manu Raju, denied its veracity and weaved a fanciful narrative.

“I mean, anybody can do a signature. We’ve seen autopens they’ve used in the Biden administration,” he said, adding, “I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist either”—even though, as Raju noted, there is actually a history of Trump making sketches.

“So you think really someone might have just forged this somehow?” Raju asked.

“Yeah,” Burchett replied. “I mean, ‘somehow’? It’s so easy to do.”

The Tennessee congressman suggested the document was created by the Biden administration, despite it having come from Epstein’s estate. “They’ve had all this stuff for four years, and now they’re bringing it out? I just don’t buy it,” he said.

Asked how the Biden administration could possibly be behind the letter—given that it was contained in a 2003 book subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate—Burchett replied, “I mean, was I there in 2003 when they got it? Were you? No. That’s the problem. You got to look at the chain of command on this stuff.”

2. “It’s not his signature”—Byron Donalds

Representative Byron Donalds of Florida joined the chorus of conservatives claiming that Trump’s first name at the bottom of the letter is different from the president’s current autograph. (Analyses, however, show the 2003 sign-off to be a perfect match with contemporaneous examples of Trump’s signature.)

“From what I see, it’s not his signature,” Donalds told reporters. “I’ve seen Donald Trump sign a million things.”

“This doesn’t look like his signature to you?” a reporter asked.

“Nope!” he replied.

Donalds is, indeed, quite familiar with Trump’s signature—or, at least, its current iteration. In July, when Trump was seeking to rally the GOP around his signature tax and spending plan, Donalds was among a gaggle of Republicans to visit the White House and leave with signed MAGA merchandise. (Burchett was there too, and posted a video online afterward in which Donalds encouraged him to show off his signed goodies.)

3. “Been a little busy today”—Mike Johnson

House Speaker Mike Johnson reacted to the letter by reflexively deferring to the president’s word.

First asked about the message on Monday, Johnson said: “Been a little busy today. I haven’t dialed in on that. I’m told that it’s fake.”

Asked again on Tuesday, Johnson said that he had not seen the drawing: “I’ve heard about it. But no,” he told reporters, per PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins. “And the White House say[s] it’s not true. So.”

Never mind that Trump has been caught in lie after lie about Epstein.

4. “I take the president at his word”—James Comer

House Oversight Chair James Comer on Monday deflected questions about Trump’s letter, accusing Democrats of attempting to score political points.

“The Democrats, they find one thing in there and they promote it and try to get a narrative. This investigation’s about providing justice and accountability for the victims,” Comer told reporters, apparently seeing pursuing accountability and scrutinizing the commander in chief’s close relationship with Epstein as incompatible.

On Tuesday, Comer, like Johnson, approached the claims of the man known as the most dishonest president in U.S. history with utmost credulity.

“The president says he did not sign it,” Comer told CNN. “So I take the president [at] his word.”

5. “I haven’t seen it”—Jim Jordan

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio appears happy to take the ignorance-is-bliss approach on the matter.

Asked about the letter by CNN’s Raju, he said, “I don’t know if that’s legit, and I haven’t seen it. I’ll take a look at it.”

“Don’t you want to learn more about Trump’s relationship and friendship with Epstein?” the reporter asked him on Monday.

“No,” he said. “I want to have [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel in next week, where we’ll ask him about all kinds of things.… I haven’t seen it. Don’t buy it.”

Throughout the Epstein affair, Jordan hasn’t always been so quick to dismiss new evidence—or, at least, not when it’s favored Trump.

When it was revealed that Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell told the FBI that Trump wasn’t guilty of any misdeeds, Jordan was eager to believe the claims of the convicted sex trafficker currently angling for a pardon from the president.

“This confirms what we all knew,” he told Fox News at the time. “We knew President Trump didn’t do anything wrong here.”

In a massive loss for election denialism accountability, the 15 Michigan electors who signed a document falsely stating that Donald Trump won their state in 2020 have now gotten off scot-free.

On December 14, 2020, 16 Michigan Republicans masquerading as “duly elected and qualified” electors gathered in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters and signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes. The certificate was sent in to the National Archives. This was of course a lie, as Joe Biden won Michigan by three points. Nonetheless, their move was one of many similar stunts pulled by Trump supporters across the country, as they also submitted false certificates declaring his victory.

“We signed a blank piece of paper,” one of the electors, Michelle Lundgren, said. “And that’s all [I] can tell you.”

Each of the 16 electors except one, who reached an agreement with the state attorney general’s office, faced charges of forgery, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and uttering and publishing.

“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in 2023.

Now, five years later, Judge Kristen Simmons, appointed by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, has thrown out their cases.

“This is a fraud case, and we have to prove intent, and I do not believe there is evidence sufficient to prove intent,” she told the courtroom on Tuesday.

Prosecutors reportedly had issues establishing that the electors actually knew what they were doing was against the law, as many of the defendants stated that they thought they were engaged in a “legitimate process” that night in December.

“Where’s the evidence of any intent that anybody had to commit to crime?” John Freeman, a lawyer for one of the electors, said in a hearing last year. “It’s all wishful thinking.… It’s a politically motivated witch hunt that has no basis in the evidence.”

Republican Women’s Federation of Michigan president Robyn Peake admitted that Simmons’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that Trump is back in office.

“There’s a possibility that they have been testing the political winds and how things have changed since Trump’s current term to see what is the public opinion and what is the tone of the United States at this point,” Peake said, according to The Detroit News. “We’ve seen a lot of changes in the last almost 12 months and I think the political tone right now is different in the United States than what it was.”

Zohran Mamdani is maintaining a major lead in the race for New York City mayor, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University.

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, is the preferred candidate of 46 percent of likely voters, handily beating competitors Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa, and Eric Adams. Former Governor Cuomo trails Mamdani in second, with 24 percent of the vote, then Republican Sliwa at 15 percent, and current Mayor Adams at a dismal 9 percent.

Those polled indicated that Mamdani, a democratic socialist, was the best candidate to address their top two concerns: affordability and housing. And around 60 percent of likely voters said that Mamdani was “inspirational”—he’s the only candidate viewed positively by a majority of voters, according to the poll.

Unlike the primary, which employed ranked-choice voting, the general election in November will be a head-to-head race. However, it’s shaping up to be anything but traditional: In deep-blue New York City, the Democratic primary is usually more important than the general in determining the city’s next mayor.

But though Mamdani appears to be headed for victory, he’ll be challenged by two other Democrats, both running as independents: Cuomo, who suffered an unexpectedly brutal loss in the primary, and Adams, whose corruption-plagued tenure seems to be seriously affecting his reelection bid.

And then there’s Sliwa, the Republican candidate, who non-New Yorkers may be surprised to learn does not have the backing of the Trump administration—but is still polling higher than current Mayor Adams.

However, the president has still attempted to pull strings behind the scenes. President Donald Trump and strategists have reportedly been brainstorming ways to get Adams and Sliwa to drop out, creating a one-to-one race between Mamdani and Cuomo, the president’s preferred candidate.

Were that to happen, the new poll shows Mamdani’s lead enduring but shrinking significantly: Mamdani came in with 48 percent of the vote and Cuomo with 44.

Nearly a million fewer jobs were created between April 2024 and March 2025 than previously reported, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The new data, published Tuesday morning, speaks to a weak job market during both former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump’s terms—and is another harbinger of economic turbulence to come.

Despite what monthly payroll tallies indicated, employers added 911,000 fewer jobs from last April until this March. This implies that only 850,000 jobs were actually added to the economy during that time, just half as many as previously reported, according to The New York Times.

This is the second time in a week that Americans have been hit with troubling economic news.

On Friday, the August jobs report revealed that unemployment has risen to a nearly four-year high, and the United States only added 22,000 jobs that month—an underperformance from the projected 75,000.

Annual revisions are normal, but this one is pretty significant: it’s the largest since the 2008 recession. It also comes at a bad time for Trump, who just fired the head of the BLS last month because her jobs report was weaker than expected.

It seems as if the president’s economy is shrinking: The number of foreign-born workers is declining as Trump deports immigrants en masse, and it’s likely that the number of native-born workers isn’t rising to meet the difference. Tariffs are causing people to buy less, and the number of unemployed Americans has grown larger than the stock of available jobs.

No wonder economists are saying that we may be “on the brink” of a recession.

It’s unclear whether President Trump plans to run again in 2028, despite the Twenty-Second Amendment unambiguously barring a president from being elected for a third term.

In a Monday evening interview, Fox News host Brett Baier broached the subject with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett—and the wording of the Trump appointee’s response alarmed some observers.

“The Twenty-Second Amendment says you can only run for office for two terms,” Baier said.

“True,” answered Barrett.

“You think that that’s cut and dry?”

“Well, that’s, you know, that’s what the amendment says, right?” Barrett said. “After FDR had four terms, that’s what that amendment says.”

Many online were concerned that Barrett had left room for interpretation, among them California Governor Gavin Newsom, who wrote on X, “The answer is: YES.”

In an appearance on CBS last week, Barrett—currently on a book tour—gave a better answer when interviewer Norah O’Donnell noted that she “explicitly write[s] in the book that the Constitution ‘leaves no room for second guessing when it comes to term limits.’”

“The Twenty-Second Amendment sets a two-term limit,” Barrett said, again citing the history of the amendment’s enactment after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four elections. “So really, I can’t say anything else but just point to the Twenty-Second Amendment. If you ask the question how many terms a president can serve, I would point to the Twenty-Second amendment.”

Trump, for his part, has teetered on the question of whether he sees himself as constrained by the Twenty-Second Amendment—not to mention the Constitution in general.

In March, he told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he was “not joking” about considering a third term. There are “methods” by which he could do so, he claimed, one being if Vice President JD Vance was to win the presidency, then pass the baton to Trump.

In May, however, Trump declared to Welker that he will be “a two-term president”—though he seemingly couldn’t help but add, “There are ways of doing it.” In August, he said he would “like to run” again but “probably won’t.”

Online, the president sells “TRUMP 2028” hats, with the product description stating: “Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.”

President Trump greenlit Israel’s Tuesday bombing of Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, according to Israeli sources speaking with the media after the shocking attack.

The Israeli Defense Forces said they were targeting a meeting of Hamas leadership, who were gathered in Qatar to discuss a ceasefire proposal put forward by the Trump administration.

“The members of the leadership who were attacked led the terrorist organization’s activities for years, and are directly responsible for carrying out the October 7 massacre and waging the war against the State of Israel,” the IDF stated.

Israeli sources told multiple outlets—including CNN and Israel’s Channel 12 that the United States had prior knowledge of the planned attack.

The attack comes just months after Trump toured Qatar, hailed the country as a close ally, and accepted that $400 million private jet from Qatari leadership.

Qatar, which has served as a primary mediator in hostage and ceasefire talks and hosts a major U.S. airbase, has condemned the strike as “criminal” and “cowardly.”

“This criminal attack constitutes a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari. “The State of Qatar affirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and its continued tampering with regional security, as well as any action targeting its security and sovereignty. Investigations are underway at the highest level, and further details will be announced as soon as they become available.”

Hours after the attack, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement that expressed both approval of Israel’s actions and regret for the location (Israel bombed a residential neighborhood).

“This morning, the Trump administration was notified by the United States military that Israel was attacking Hamas, which very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” Leavitt said. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.... The president views Qatar as a strong ally, and friend of the United States, and feels very badly about the location of this attack. President Trump wants all of the hostages in Gaza, and the bodies of the dead, released, and this war to end now.”

Leavitt then refused to elaborate when asked about what prior knowledge Trump had regarding Israel’s attack, if any.

Qatar has already confirmed it is suspending its mediation between Israel and Hamas after the bombing. Israel’s attack may very well prolong Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and Hamas’s detainment of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel seems to care less about the latter with each passing day.

Aside from that, this episode shows that (1) deference to Israel’s violence is still the Trump administration’s policy, and (2) no amount of groveling and gift-giving to Trump can stop you from getting backstabbed.

This story has been updated.

One Republican lawmaker known for pushing conspiracy theories suggested a surprising culprit behind President Donald Trump’s lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju Monday, Representative Tim Burchett suggested that Trump’s apparent signature had been forged—by the dreaded autopen.

“I mean, anybody can do a signature. We’ve seen autopens they used quite a bit in the Biden administration. I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist either, so I kind of draw that into question,” Burchett said.

While the crude drawing of a naked woman on Epstein’s note wasn’t exactly the work of an artist, Raju pointed out that Trump had been known to draw pictures.

“The thing is, it’s been there for four years and now it’s just come out,” Burchett continued. “I just don’t buy it.”

Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory that staffers for former President Joe Biden frequently used an autopen, in an attempt to magically undo the work of the previous administration. Trump also claimed that he never uses an autopen, before admitting that he does, but “only for very unimportant papers.”

Now Burchett seems to be hoping he can use the president’s catchall undo button to discount the damning evidence that Trump wrote a creepy message to his close friend, the alleged sex trafficker. It’s worth noting that the Tennessee Republican has a tendency to boost conspiracy theories that drift into the mainstream, like a bill he introduced opposing weather modification.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal published an image of Trump’s lewd 50th birthday letter to Epstein, after it was delivered to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee by lawyers for the alleged sex traffickers’s estate—sending the White House scrambling for any way to claim the letter was a fake.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers used to have to fill out paperwork before they arrested someone. Now, likely in service of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, that requirement has been scrapped.

Six current and former ICE agents told NBC News that they had previously been required to record a person’s name, appearance, employer, last known address, immigration history, criminal history, and more.

The form used to be required for every arrest made, except when ICE was called in to work with local law enforcement agencies. But in the last few months, that policy has quietly vanished because some at the agency thought it was a “waste of time,” according to Darius Reeves, the former director of ICE’s Baltimore field office.

“It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’” one of the former ICE officials told NBC News.

Despite everything the Trump administration says to the contrary, it’s been clear for months that ICE is not targeting individuals with criminal histories; it’s performing massive, indiscriminate sweeps. Back in May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller yelled at ICE agents, threatening to fire them if they didn’t make at least 3,000 arrests a day.

In an attempt to stop the blatant racial profiling, a federal judge in July issued a temporary restraining order blocking ICE from conducting “roving patrols” that used people’s race, or their language, as a reason to detain them.

And it actually helped: An analysis from the right-leaning Cato Institute said that arrests fell 66 percent in L.A. after the order.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court lifted that order, and ICE officers are now free to racially profile broad swaths of people to their hearts’ content: in L.A., in D.C., and soon in Chicago.

For those who believe that this type of lawlessness should have consequences, there’s one silver lining. If officers make arrests without probable cause, they could be sued, according to ICE’s former chief counsel in Dallas. The now-defunct paperwork requirement wasn’t just in place to protect civilians from the agents but to protect ICE officers from legal liability.

As the White House grapples with the House Oversight Committee’s release of a lewd birthday letter from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, additional mentions of the president in the deceased sex criminal’s 50th birthday book have emerged.

On one page of the 2003 book, a man identified by House Oversight Committee Democrats as “a longtime Mar-a-Lago member” appears to joke about Epstein selling a woman to Trump for $22,500.

Epstein, standing alongside two men and a woman whose identity has been redacted, holds a giant check supposedly from Trump, in payment for the woman. The note reads: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500. Showed early ‘people skills’ too. Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money or the girl!”

As the president seeks to dispel the scandal surrounding perhaps the world’s most notorious sex trafficker, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a more embarrassing revelation than his name appearing on an enormous check for a woman from Epstein.

On another page, a letter from a woman whom Epstein apparently took around the world mentions meeting both Trump and former President Bill Clinton. (Clinton also reportedly penned Epstein a letter in the book.) “Before Jeffrey, I was a 22 year old divorcee working as a hostess in a hotel restaurant,” the message states. Since then, she wrote, she met Trump and Clinton, among other dignitaries.

The White House has been quiet about these pages thus far, as they instead seek to disprove the authenticity of the infamous birthday note in which Trump seems to have typed an unsettling poetic dialogue between himself and Epstein, framed by a marker drawing of a woman’s figure.

The letter’s release on Monday undermined the Trump administration’s claims that The Wall Street Journal’s prior reporting on the letter was fake. White House spokespeople have since persisted with that narrative nonetheless—desperately trotting out recent autographs by the president that appear different from Trump’s first-name signature on the 2003 birthday note. But examples abound of contemporaneous examples that are a perfect match.

Ghislane Maxwell’s former lawyer just admitted what we all suspected: The sexual abuser and Epstein accomplice was transferred to a nicer, minimum-security prison so that she could give the Trump administration something in exchange—like a favorable testimony. 

Arthur Aidala, who represented Maxwell in her 2022 sex-trafficking trial and appeals, appeared on CNN on Monday to talk about the case. 

“The deputy attorney general met with Ghislaine, and then she was shortly thereafter moved to a cushier prison,” CNN’s Abby Phillips asked Aidala, who has also represented Alan Dershowitz, Harvey Weinstein, and Rudy Giuliani. “Why?” 

“Well, there are things I’m not allowed to talk about, right?” Aidala replied, stumbling over his words. “So there are things I can’t talk about.”

“Let’s just—” Phillips attempted to interject. 

“Obviously I can talk in generalities,” Aidala continued. “Anybody who’s represented by a lawyer who knows what they’re doing, [and who] goes in and meets with the government … there’s always a quid pro quo.… Anytime the government wants information from a citizen, the citizen says, ‘Well, I have a right to remain silent. If you want me to give up that right, I need something in return.’ Usually, it’s a plea bargain. Usually, your charges are going to be lowered, and your exposure.”

Former Biden adviser Neera Tanden, who was present, started laughing at Aidala. 

“Why are you laughing?” he said. “I’ve done that for 35 years!” 

“Because you just admitted to a quid pro quo with the Trump administration!” 

“That’s how the whole system works! The whole system works on quid pro quo.” 

Phillips then asked Aidala if the government’s quid pro quo promise came before or after Maxwell sat for an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Aidala said he didn’t know. 

Maxwell is still serving out her 20-year sentence for conspiring to sexually abuse girls. 

This revelation from Aidala, along with recent release of the Epstein birthday book, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s baffling lie about Trump being an FBI informant, only adds more fire to the theory that Trump is willfully cooperating with Maxwell to push her to absolve him of any scrutiny that his numerous appearances in the Epstein files will bring.   

The Trump administration allegedly “working” with such a vile woman while calling the entire fiasco a “Democrat hoax” is a slap in the face to Epstein’s numerous survivors and their families who have come forward.    

“It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received,” said the family of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim and legal advocate who committed suicide in April. “Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency. Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas.… The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.”