Exclusive reporting out of the New York Times on Wednesday highlighted the frenzied, divisive response in the Trump White House to the president’s alleged ties to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — and brought the Epstein files back in the spotlight in a way that former John McCain adviser Mark McKinnon described as the “worst case possible.”
“There’s been just a drip-drip-drip of the Epstein files since the start of this administration,” MS NOW host Ana Cabrera said in the segment, asking McKinnon what the Times’ reporting “says about this administration’s apparent disfunction and inability to handle a crisis.”
Running with the “Ana Cabrera Reports” host’s “drip-drip-drip” assessment, McKinnon described the well of sordid information regarding Trump and Epstein’s relationship as a dam that’s on the brink of breaking. He maintained that the administration’s biggest mistake is not being transparent about the Epstein files and continuing to veil the president’s well-documented friendship with the financier.
“I did comms for presidents and candidates for most of my adult life, and, you know, the maxim was always when you have bad news, the best way to deal with it was to get it all out as quickly as possible and being transparent,” McKinnon said. “And this is just the worst case possible. This is like they had a dam or reservoir full of bad news and rather than just break the dam and let it blow, they have, as you said, let it drip-drip-drip.
“So we’ve gotten news almost every day since the beginning that’s bad news. And the cumulative effect is way worse than, I project, would’ve happened if they’d just let it all out at the beginning. But they’re paying the consequences for it, and again, where will this story even end at this point?”
Watch the full “Ana Cabrera Reports” segement below:
MS NOW’s “The Weekend” co-host Jackie Alemany also dialed in for the segment, breaking down the New York Times’ reporting that found there were hurried West Wing meetings about how to respond to Epstein-related allegations and how to protect the president rather than releasing the files transparently.
“There are a series of unflattering depictions and anecdotes in here that I think really illustrate just how much this issue has plagued this White House, really, since Trump took office and the lengths that aides and the people around him have gone to try to inoculate and protect the president from some of the more disturbing and problematic claims and pieces of information that were inevitably going to come out in some way if the Epstein files were released,” Alemany said.
She described the reporting as reflective of a “self-fulfilling prophecy or a vicious cycle” in that the Epstein case has been part of a “news cycle that has never ended for them because of the lack of transparency.”
Read the full Times report, titled “Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files,” here.
