A bestselling author has revealed what he believes was the strongest force behind Donald Trump’s first presidential bid.
In a new column for his Substack, Howl, Michael Wolff detailed Jeffrey Epstein’s initial reaction when his former best friend, Donald Trump, descended a golden escalator to announce his bid for the White House in 2015.
While Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, and Trump had ended their friendship about a decade earlier, the man now known as America’s most notorious pedophile still had a unique insight into the now-president’s psyche.
“Epstein knew that Trump’s star turn on The Apprentice was fading and that he urgently needed a new platform for the promotion of Donald Trump—indeed, he could talk of little else, how to avoid television’s fate: cancellation,” Wolff wrote.
According to the author, Epstein believed Trump had little interest in politics or being president at all. Instead, his presidential campaign was a way for him to nurture one of the things most important to him: his fame.
“Donald has never spent a moment in which being seen was not his main goal,” Wolff remembers Epstein telling him. “Money, sex, fame, it’s in that order.”
Epstein said it explained Trump’s fascination with former President Bill Clinton and the late President John F. Kennedy.
“Trump is fascinated by Clinton,” Epstein told Wolff. “That was what he was always trying to figure out—how do you get laid when you’re president? That’s why he was obsessed with Kennedy, because JFK, even in the White House, was able to f--- with impunity. Donald can’t give up f---ing. Not possible.”
It was because of Trump’s priorities that Epstein knew how dangerous he was, Wolff alleged.
“You don’t understand, it’s Donald Trump. No shame. Do you understand how powerful that is?” Wolff remembers Epstein telling him.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment regarding Wolff’s retelling.
Wolff said that at first, he wasn’t entirely sure how Epstein felt about his former friend. But it was during this time period, Wolff says, that the disgraced financier confided that he believed it was Trump who tipped off Palm Beach police about him, culminating in his arrest. Epstein ultimately landed a sweetheart plea deal in Florida in 2008, which allowed him to avoid serious federal charges despite extensive evidence that he had abused and trafficked underage girls.
“Sometimes I thought it was just a comedic spectacle for him; Epstein, perhaps more than anyone, got the Trump joke,” Wolff wrote. “But other times you couldn’t miss the current of pure hatred.”
Trump, for his part, has insisted that he and Epstein were never close friends. He has asserted that he distanced himself from the late financier after Epstein was placed on the sex offender registry in 2008, shortly after he pleaded guilty to a charge of solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
Still, in the same way that Trump haunted Epstein in the final years of his life, the pedophile has been a dark shadow looming over the president’s second term.
“I said [to Epstein], wholly oblivious to the foreshadowing: “You’re in the crosshairs of history,” Wolff wrote.
