The hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” questioned First Lady Melania Trump’s “beyond bizarre” decision to host a press conference Thursday denying her alleged ties to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his infamous accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“It was just beyond bizarre, and all of the reporting is that the people that were in the White House Briefing Room yesterday were just absolutely stunned,” host Joe Scarborough said Friday morning. “Stunned, in part, that it came out of nowhere. And secondly, that she would actually pretend that she didn’t know who [Epstein] was or that she had no relationship with him or they had no close relationship with him.”
During the press conference, Melania denounced the “lies” that have linked her to Epstein and Maxwell, categorizing a released email she sent to the latter in 2003 as “casual.” The First Lady also called on Congress to grant Epstein’s survivors a public hearing about the crimes committed against them. Scarborough, for his part, pushed back on her categorization of the email to Maxwell.
“It doesn’t sound casual,” he argued. “Everybody’s waiting for another shoe to drop. I don’t know if it will or not. But again, the timing of that was so strange, especially bringing up something that obviously the president doesn’t want brought up and calling for hearings. That’s just the opposite of what the president has been talking about for months.”
Fellow MS NOW anchor Jacqueline Alemany further discussed the press conference on the morning show, revealing that she spoke with President Donald Trump afterward.
“I asked him if he was aware of the substance of Melania Trump’s statement prior to her delivering it. He said he didn’t know anything about it,” Alemany revealed. “The president, though, did obviously catch what she said after the fact and, before he hung up, he said he was in the middle of a meeting on the war in Iran. He added that ‘she didn’t know him,’ referring to Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, meanwhile, noted that the First Lady’s surprise press conference was just part of a “barrage of bad news” for the president on Thursday.
“Iran says the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and it is demanding tolls for ships that pass through. That move is in response to Israel launching deadly strikes on Lebanon, which Iran maintains violated terms of the ceasefire agreement,” Brzezinski explained. “Here at home, new data released yesterday showed the U.S. economy grew at a slower pace in the 4th quarter than previously estimated.”
