With war raging in the Middle East and midterms on the horizon, the White House seemed to have finally shaken theJeffrey Epsteinsaga that plagued the first year of Donald Trump’s second term.
Inside the White House, officials had started to move on.
But forfirst lady Melania Trump, the Epstein story was still all consuming.
Trump’s extraordinary remarks on Thursday distancing herself from the late sex offender were driven by her monthslong fixation on press coverage and internet speculation about her ties to Epstein, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.
The first lady’s dismay over the issue prompted her seemingly abrupt decision to publicly address it — despite little apparent need to do so and with minimal advance notice given even to her husband.
“There were stories about her that were being amplified by random blogs — and they were still hitting her over Epstein, because that is what they do,” one of the people familiar with the matter said. “She wanted to go on the record and deny it.”
The White House announced on Wednesday morning that Trump would be making a statement, without specifying the topic. Standing in the Cross Hall a little more than 24 hours later, the first lady stunned senior White House aides.
Even her husband said in a brief phone interview later that day that he didn’t know about it ahead of time. On Friday, he toldThe New York Timesthat he knew the first lady had wanted to speak about Epstein at some point but confirmed he did not know what she planned to say.
The president declined to tune into her remarks in real time, a senior White House official said.
But those remarks immediately reverberated across the Republican Party. They upended a news cycle dominated by highly anticipated efforts to negotiate a Middle East peace and dragged a saga her husband had been desperate to escape right back to the fore.
Melania Trump tried to sweep the Epstein saga away, but she ended up reviving it
Among those who know her best, it fit a yearslong pattern of Melania Trump finding and focusing on negative coverage of herself no matter where on the internet it came from.
“She’d see things that I had no idea about and tell me something was ‘everywhere’ and send me links to websites I didn’t even know existed,” one former staffer told CNN, who was among those who recounted the first lady often complaining about stories from obscure sources. “It was not ‘everywhere.’”
Trump had informed West Wing officials ahead of time that she planned to make a statement but gave no indication what it was about, the senior White House official said.
The episode has left administration officials befuddled and bracing for the fallout, including the potential for the White House to get bogged down again by Epstein coverage.
