Opinion
President Donald Trump is desperately trying to move on from his ruinous war in Iran. But there was no way he expected to be moving on — or moving back — to the Epstein files.
Thanks, Melania.
The world gasped when the first lady emerged from the mists on Thursday to give a statement that ended up yanking America’s eyeballs back to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Be Best,” this was not.
After firing the prevaricating Pam Bondi and threatening on Easter that the Iranians might soon be “living in Hell,” the president surely thought he was finally wriggling away from the sordid, sticky pedophile scandal.
For mysterious reasons, the Slovenian Sphinx stunned the West Wing, walking into the grand entrance hall of the White House to dump kerosene on the flickering Epstein fire.
In effect, Melania’s dramatic message was: Hey, guys, we’re not done here yet. Everybody come look at what my husband so terribly doesn’t want you to look at!
No one, not even Trump’s inner circle, seemed to know that this bizarre monologue was coming or what was driving it.
Gobsmacked aides scrambled to answer reporters’ questions about what the president knew and when he knew it.
When Jacqueline Alemany of MS NOW called Trump, he told her he knew nothing in advance about the first lady’s statement.
The next day, he clarified to The New York Times′ Shawn McCreesh that, while he did not know that his wife was making the statement, he had known that she was upset by rumours that she was closer to Epstein than she had said, and wanted to clear the air.
“It doesn’t bother me,” he said, contradicting those who sniggered that she threw him under the bus. She had “a right to talk about it,” he said.
But he mused: “Would I have done it that way? Perhaps not, perhaps, I don’t know.”
For the first time, the first lady — who glided so serenely on skyscraper stilettos in her infomercial, Melania — looked shaken.
“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” she told reporters, adding: “The false smears about me from mean spirited and politically motivated individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good name to gain financially and climb politically must stop.”
The irony of Melania bitterly complaining about the sort of slimy tactics that fuelled her husband’s rise was not lost on listeners.
“To be clear,” she said, “I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell.” They had “overlapping social circles” in Palm Beach and Manhattan, which explained the photo of her partying with Donald, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Melania turned up in the Epstein files with a 2002 email to Maxwell, complimenting her on a picture that ran with a magazine piece about Epstein, asking how Palm Beach was, and telling Maxwell to call her when she was back in New York. She called Maxwell “G” and signed off, “Love, Melania.” Ghislaine wrote back, calling Melania “Sweet pea.”
“My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note,” Melania said.
The first lady called on Congress “to provide the women who have been victimised by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centred around the survivors” so they could tell their stories.
Shouldn’t the men doing the alleged crimes be the ones called to answer?
It was also astonishing that she felt compelled to clear up the little matter of how she and Donald met.
“I am not Epstein’s victim,” she said. “Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband, by chance, at a New York City party in 1998.”
In her memoir, the first lady recounted that a friend took her to the Kit Kat Club in Manhattan, where she met the celebrity developer.
She described how Trump flirted with her and asked for her number even though he was with a “beautiful” blond date. She refused but said that she would take his instead.
“I tucked the card into my clutch before his date returned to the table,” she wrote.
That should have been an early warning for her about Donald the Duplicitous.
The party was hosted by Paolo Zampolli, a former Italian modelling agent who recruited the young Slovenian model to come to America and who takes credit for introducing Donald and Melania. Zampolli has now been elevated by the president to be a special envoy for global partnerships, whatever that means. The flashy Trump acolyte got a DC townhouse where he throws parties and shows off pictures of the Trumps.
Zampolli posted photos on X this week showing himself with Vice President JD Vance and Viktor Orban at a table in Hungary. He has offered to testify before Congress that he played Cupid for the pair.
As the New York Times recently reported, Zampolli asked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to interfere in a nasty custody battle he was having with Amanda Ungaro, his Brazilian ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child.
Ungaro, in jail in Miami on a fraud charge, was deported after Zampolli’s call. He claims that he was merely inquiring about her case, not trying to get her deported.
The Epstein obsession among Trump’s base was planted by his henchmen and most devoted followers and then it came back to bite him — including this new chunk taken out of him by Melania. Conspiracy theories about Melania feed off a web of intersections. Through the modelling world, Zampolli had met Epstein and they had talked about buying a modelling agency together. His name pops up several times in the Epstein files, where Epstein refers to Zampolli as “trouble”.
Early Thursday just after midnight, Ungaro, clearly upset that Melania didn’t help her in the ICE deportation, posted threatening messages directed at her on X. One now-deleted post read: “I have nothing left to lose in my life. I will tear down the entire system — be careful with me bitch.” In another, she said: “Maybe you should be afraid of what I know … of who you are, and who your husband is.”
Melania’s statement came later that day, but who knows if there’s any connection?
As always with the sphinx on the Potomac, it’s a riddle.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
