President Donald Trump knows the myriad of foreign policy and domestic issues bombarding Americans are a welcome counter-narrative to the demand for the Epstein files, his longtime biographer said.
Author Michael Wolff said the clashes over immigration operations in Minneapolis, the conversations about a U.S. takeover of Venezuela and Greenland, and Trump’s threats to Iran are all intended to distract from the sustained clamor for the release of documents related to the notorious sex offender.
“Obviously, Epstein remains a potentially mortal threat to Donald Trump and he knows it and that’s why he is doing his Trumpian best to distract from it and create an entirely other counter-narrative,” he told Inside Trump’s Head co-host Joanna Coles. “We’re now an imperial power taking over the world and sending troops and defending or not defending protesters who are trying to overthrow their countries’ despotic regimes.”
Trump started the new year by announcing that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela indefinitely after American forces seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, in a shocking raid that claimed about 100 lives.
The 79-year-old commander-in-chief, seemingly emboldened by the success of his Venezuela operation, then began to ramp up his threats to take over Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Trump also threatened to attack Iran over the killings of anti-government protesters—then later walked those statements back, angering his own base.
Back at home, the president has also been fending off criticism of his hardline immigration policy, which saw Minneapolis become the flashpoint of tense clashes between ICE agents and protesters. Tensions have been rising steadily since immigration agents fatally shot a 37-year-old mother and injured a Venezuelan national during their operations.
“There is no way around this. The Trump people have—I mean, this is a catastrophic mess-up, not to mention a piece of catastrophic cruelty, and then they get in this position that they have to double down on their own defense of this,” Wolff said of the killing of