President Donald Trump could not explain the discrepancy between the multiple answers given on his fallout with Jeffrey Epstein and instead resorted to attacking the media for bringing it up.
The president spoke with reporters while returning to the U.S. on Air Force One on Tuesday, where he was asked about the different responses.
A reporter pointed out that Trump said on Monday that his falling out with the convicted sex offender stemmed from Epstein taking workers from his business. The White House previously said the disgraced financier was thrown out because he was a creep.
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“Well, maybe they’re the same thing. You know, a little bit of the same thing,” the president shot back.
“No, he took people that worked for me, and I told him, don’t do it anymore, and he did it. I said ‘stay the hell out of here,” the president added, repeating similar claims to what he said the day before.
The reporter, who identified herself as being from NBC News, followed up by asking if that was what the administration meant by Epstein being a “creep.”
Rather than answer the question, the president went after NBC as “one of the worst” and moved on to the next question.
Later in the same session with the president, a different reporter asked Trump whether some of the workers that the president said were taken from him were young women.
The president started off by not wanting to answer before confirming it.
“Well, I don’t want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken,” the president said. “It was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad.”
Trump then conceded that yes, they were young women who worked in the spa.
“I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago, and people were taken out of the spa,” Trump said. “Hired by him. In other words, gone.”
He said that other people would come and complain to Trump that Epstein was taking people from the spa, he also acknowledged it included Virginia Giuffre, who was poached at 17.
Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, said she had met Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.
Trump and Epstein were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s. The disgraced financier even attended the president’s wedding to Marla Maples before they had a falling out.
On Monday, Trump said that his split with Epstein and the convicted sex offender being exiled from his resort had to do with Epstein taking workers.
“For years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate: He hired help,” Trump said. “And I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me.”
“I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you know the truth,” the president claimed.
But the president’s more recent claims about his Epstein breakup contradict the White House statement last week after a bombshell Wall Street Journal report about the president being informed he was mentioned in the Epstein files.
“The fact is that The President kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” said White House communications director Steven Cheung of Epstein.
Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
He was later arrested again in July 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges, but he died in prison just over a month later before he could stand trial.
