President Donald Trump’s involvement in the war with Iran is not only increasing gas prices, but also the likelihood that scrutiny over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein fades from view, according to author Anand Giridharadas.
“You might almost imagine it was rational for someone in such a desperate situation to do literally anything to change the subject,” Giridharadas toldThe Daily Beast Podcasthost Joanna Coles.
Giridharadas, who has extensively examined the powerful networks surrounding Epstein—the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019— on hisSubstack, said that looking at Trump’s actions from a “corruption-minded bend,” may raise questions about whether the U.S. war with Iran “was a deliberate effort to change the subject” by the 79-year-old president.
The journalist and author told Coles that if he were Trump and was “presented with the options he was presented with,” while seeing his “enmeshment in this Epstein story,” which he said “truly got to the heart” of why some of Trump’s voters and parts of his coalition “was starting to crack,” he would understand how choosing distraction could appear to be a rational response.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has sought to distance himself from the Epstein files related to the disgraced financier and his former friend, calling the matter a “hoax” and consistently claiming he knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes.
Yet, according to Congressman Jamie Raskin, who reviewed the Justice Department’s unredacted version of the files, the president’s nameappears in the documents more than a million times.
Giridharadas told Coles that “you have to wonder” if the “only person” who has benefited from the war with Iran—aside from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country launched coordinated military operations with the U.S. against Iran, claiming to neutralize its nuclear and missile programs—was Trump, “for changing the subject away from the Epstein files.”
Giridharadas explained that “we don’t know exactly why Donald Trump did what he did,” but that “tragically, literally anything turned out to be” a distraction from the files.
Similarly to Giridharadas, author Michael Wolff told Coles in January on theInside Trump’s Headpodcast that the administration’s handling of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro at the time provided a temporary reprieve from bipartisan pressure over Trump’s relationship with the late convicted sex offender, arguing that elements of Trump’s foreign policy posture function as apolitical distraction from domestic scrutiny.
“He has done what he always manages to do, which is to change the subject through a fundamental reordering of the narrative, of the drama that we’re living in,” Wolff said on the podcast.
Trump’s involvement in the war with Iran on Feb. 28, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and sent gas prices rising in the U.S. and globally, has once again pushed the Epstein topic into the background, only to be briefly revived in April whenFirst Lady Melania Trump denouncedwhat she called “mean-spirited and politically motivated lies” linking her to the late child sex trafficker.
“A war broke out. Human beings circled the moon. Kim Kardashian was spotted with Lewis Hamilton. Memories faded, and the virus of collective rage went hunting for new hosts,” Giridharadas read from his Substack, asking, “Was the Epstein story just another story? Was it just more grist for the mill? Was it a chance to vent the frustrations of an age in which some get away with anything they do, and others never get anything they need?”
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