What do tariffs, covert military operations, and criticizing journalists have in common? They’re all things that the press have accused President Trump of using to distract them, and the public, from the Jeffrey Epstein saga.
Since the release of the first batch of Epstein-related files in late 2025, hardly a thing has happened in American politics that some member of the press hasn’t deemed a Trump-engineered “distraction” from Epstein. Below are just some examples of this increasingly absurd trend:
In addition to the examples shown above, here are some other stupid things journalists have dubbed “distractions” from Epstein:
In July of 2025, CNN anchor Laura Coates narrated a wild, conspiratorial segment about Trump’s recent social media posts. Her theory was that everything the President had said online about non-Epstein-related topics in the previous 48 hours was meant to be an elaborate distraction, including:
- Weighing in on the plea deal for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students.
- An AI-generated video poking fun at former President Obama (a routine hobby of Trump’s).
- Sharing a video of witness testimony at a recent Senate hearing.
- Posting an amateurish video compilation of people doing stunts and tricks.
Perhaps nothing Coates mentioned seems out of the ordinary to anyone familiar with the president’s Truth Social habits. But maybe that’s why none of us are being paid big money by CNN to find the secret patterns in the Trump’s boomerposting.
In August of 2025, then-MSNBC (and current MS NOW) host Chris Hayes asserted that the Department of Justice had launched an investigation into John Bolton to sidetrack the public. Months later, Hayes would complain that the myriad photos of Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island that were included in a subsequent document dump were meant to be a distraction from discredited allegations against Trump.
That complaint about the Clinton photos inadvertently revealed something about the media’s rationale with regards to the Epstein files. To rabidly anti-Trump journalists like Chris Hayes, the only imaginable reason to treat Epstein as a story was to damage Trump. Thus, all other evidence implicating anyone who wasn’t Donald Trump was worthless. It wasn’t newsworthy. It was a “distraction.”
Hayes’s colleague, Ali Velshi, had a similar mask-off moment in August of 2025 while guest hosting The Last Word. In addition to echoing Hayes’s critique of the Bolton investigation, Velshi he sneered that the newly-released audio interview of convicted Epstein conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was the second of two distractions engineered by the Trump administration.
But no journalist could match the creativity of daytime MS NOW host Chris Jansing, who just hours before the 2026 State of the Union Address, ran this thought by her panel:
The headline in The Times today is that the President would like to use this address tonight as a “reset.” Is that his focus, if he’s resetting, is that his focus, and an acknowledgement that he needs a reset given the polls — or might it be something that he wants to say to distract from these Epstein questions?
Of course, Jansing’s question wasn’t a question at all, but rather an implication that Trump wanted to use the State of the Union to distract from Epstein.
The reason that’s an insane way to frame a Sate of the Union address is because it automatically divides everything mentioned in the speech into two categories: things that are the Epstein files, and things that are not. Given the state of the union is not Jeffrey Epstein, Jansing was basically pre-labeling the entire State of the Union address a Trump-made distraction.
Sure, maybe Donald Trump didn’t invent the State of the Union address, and fine, maybe Trump wasn’t personally responsible for it being February — the month in which said address is likely to be given. But, Jansing mused thoughtfully, might it all still be some grand distraction?
There’s no fixing this. If Trump broke the media’s brains, clearly the Epstein files melted whatever was left.
