Name: Scott Jennings calls WSJ report on Epstein birthday letter a 'dud'
Uploaded: 2025-07-18T17:08:30.000Z
Duration: 6 min 46 s
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Not sure I saw quite what this was coming, but first of all, just on the legal front, Ellie, the threat to sue over the existence of this letter, whether he himself wrote it or not, how credible?

I mean, he has shown that he is ready, willing, and able to sue media organizations at the drop of a hat.

If he does sue, it's gonna be really tough because the legal burden here is very high because Donald Trump is, of course, a public figure, so it's harder to win a defamation suit.

First of all, that the Wall Street Journal defamed him, that the statements here are damaging to him.

The harder part, though, is going to be to show that they acted with what we call actual malice, meaning that they knew that what they reported was false or that they were reckless as to its falsity.

Wall Street Journal, I mean, they tend to know what they're doing.

They tend to have their stuff buttoned up, so wouldn't surprise me if he sues and would surprise me if he wins, not knowing the facts, but just knowing how high the legal bar is.

So Trump is saying, I didn't do this, but I think, to me, it's a separate question, Scott, whether this thing exists.

And it seems that the journal has evidence that it does, in fact, exist and that it's perhaps among the many, many, many documents that are in the possession of investigators here.

Yeah, I mean, my reaction to reading this was, so?

I mean, 2003, before anything had happened.

We also know he disowned him and kicked him out of his club.

I was waiting all day long for this rumoring of a bombshell.

And look, the president says it's not, I don't know.

But either way, this gives me like a Kavanaugh yearbook vibes.

My impression is Republicans are gonna strongly rally around the president on this thing.

I mean, he may have been facing some turbulence over the Epstein situation, but this is the sort of stuff that brings people to circle the wagons around him.

Just to be clear, Trump doesn't agree with you because he's clearly very pissed off about this, perhaps very freaked out about it because it's embarrassing.

I think this goes deep into the MAGA psyche and creates a cognitive dissonance.

That is why we're seeing them revolt against him in this moment.

He was supposed to be their guy who would go in there and do what the people would want and fight against the globalists who are pedophiles.

Here's a perfect example of a globalist who is a pedophile.

Trump told us, I'm gonna out that guy in his client list.

Now he gets in, he acts like everybody else who's protecting the globalist pedophiles.

So how could you continue to think as MAGA, he's gonna protect us when he clearly didn't in this situation?

And Trump has also, I mean, talked about Epstein.

Scott, you're making the point that, oh, they were just friends.

This was before he knew anything about Epstein's, you know, alleged bad acts.

But here's what he said in 2002 in a New York magazine.

So this would have been a year before this birthday message.

It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do.

And many of them are on the younger side.

This is all in the public record as well.

One, I think if this was such a big deal and why it wasn't used against him long before when he was running for president, I believe the president on this one.

I think he probably is not a guy that draws pictures.

I know a lot of people that have gotten a lot of notes from him and they've never gotten a picture.

They get a note from him and his signature that takes forever to sign.

Like I look at this and I sit there and I'm like, this is it?

Now we're talking about like- We're talking about pictures of women, but we do have- We're talking about pictures here.

We're talking about the 20, 22 year old stuff.

I'm just saying, Trump says in this statement- It's so rare you got 30 grand for a picture, to my point.

He says, I never wrote a picture in my life.

I don't know if he draws pictures of women, but he has drawn a picture in his life with a Sharpie, which is similar to what we are hearing about this image.

Look, I think, Abby, here is the bottom line.

Whether or not he drew this picture, whether or not this was actually a letter that he actually wrote or typed out or whatever it was with the weird picture that he drew behind her or didn't draw behind it, the bottom line is that, to me, is somewhat irrelevant.

This is someone who said infamously on camera that came out about two months before the 2016 election, I can grab women by the you know what, and he still won the election.

So I think that kind of persona, perhaps, is baked in.

I think the bigger issue here is that this has caused the MAGA base to kind of lose its mind.

And the question is, is the MAGA base going to come back together or is this a base that is fractured that is significantly fractured?

Because people have been, well, okay, your colleagues, Charlie Kirk, the scroll people you know very well, have been all over the place saying that they're very disappointed in Donald Trump.

Well, I should say that Charlie Kirk and Laura Loomer tonight have both said to other outlets that they don't necessarily believe that Trump wrote this or what have you.

So they're starting to circle the wagons on this, which is what Scott suggested earlier.

The facts of Donald Trump's base are this, and we reported on this this morning here on CNN.

Since the Epstein business started, his job approval among Republicans has gone up.

I know you're a Democratic strategist, maybe not an expert on the MAGA base.

Some of the large voices in his base have been very frustrated.

Because while we're all sitting here dealing with this nonsense, out in real America, he's signing legislation on fentanyl.

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Scott Jennings calls WSJ report on Epstein birthday letter a 'dud'

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