President Donald Trump‘s continued refusal to release a list of notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s clients was the main topic of the day on Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Retired MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews was one of several “Morning Joe” panelists who took the opportunity Thursday to slam Trump’s handling of the government’s Epstein files. Matthews noted that Trump may have tried to direct Americans’ attention away from the Epstein files by deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., but said, “It didn’t work. It’s back again.”
“We’re having a battle of the conspiracies now,” Matthews observed. “Everybody on the Right, Far Right, thinks there’s something there. [They think] there’s these rich people that abuse young women, girls really, and they get away with what nobody else in the world can get away with. They can get away with evil.”
“It seems like Trump is denying that reality,” Matthews concluded. “How do you deny to the right wing what they believe intuitively? They believe you guys, rich guys, are covering up this crime.”
Regarding the Trump administration’s recent release of previously confidential pages related to Epstein, Matthews remarked, “[Trump] says, ‘I’ve got pages and pages and pages.’ Pages? Nobody wants any more pages, they want the names!”
On Wednesday, a group of Epstein accusers recalled the sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of the deceased, convicted sex offender. With the support of prominent female MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace, they additionally called on the government to release all of its Epstein files. “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski said that presents a problem for Trump and his supporters that may be too much for them to overcome.
“These survivors, these women who have been abused repeatedly over the course of years and then invalidated about that abuse, that’s akin to having nothing left to lose,” Brzezinski explained. “That’s dangerous, and these Republicans have a lot coming their way, if they think they’re going to be quiet. They’re done. You can hear it. You can see it.”
For her part, MSNBC political analyst Molly Jong-Fast took the time on “Morning Joe” Thursday to remind viewers of the moral relevance of the Epstein case.
“I think it’s important to just remember the sheer scale of this. This went on for years. The numbers are more than 200 victims probably. I mean, it could be many, many more than that,” she said. “The larger point is, you know, bigger than politics — it really is. If we can’t say that people shouldn’t rape children, then what are we doing?”
You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself in the video above.
