Melania at White House; Donald Trump and Melania with Epstein (File photo)
The TOI correspondent from Washington: It was just another tormenting Thursday in the capital of absurdity that is Washington DC these days. In a single 24-hour news cycle, the US first lady held a surprise news conference to swear she barely knew the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, while her husband took to Truth Social to verbally decapitate MAGA talking heads whom he once embraced. All this, while the US veep was packed off to Pakistan to salvage a war started by his boss to distract everyone from the Epstein files, which the boss’ wife has now brought back to attention. The day began with the sort of event that makes press secretaries weep: Melania Trump, usually as visible as a ghost in a witness-protection program, strode into the East Room to assert “I was not close to Epstein. We met at a handful of social events in the early 2000s, that’s all,” in a tone that suggested a desire to be someplace else and an accent that showed she was from someplace else.
The statement raised almost as many questions as it answered because no one, at least publicly, had been asking about her connections. In Washington’s warped news theater, this was seen as a sign that something big was about to drop and she was trying to get ahead of the story. A simpler explanation: She’s mad about a raft of AI-generated images and memes that have Epsteined her. Meanwhile, her husband, who found time to tell a reporter he had no idea his wife was dropping a bombshell in the White House while he was asking Netanyahu not to bomb Lebanon, was unloading on a quartet – Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones, and Candace Owens – who once formed the Mount Rushmore of MAGA media. “They have one thing in common: low IQs. They’re stupid people; they’re nut jobs, troublemakers, and will say anything necessary for some “free” and cheap publicity. These so-called “pundits” are losers. As president, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don’t return their calls because I’m too busy on world and country affairs,” the leader of the free world raged in a blistering 482-word post that he managed to compose between war and peace because they had trashed his war on Iran among other policies. “It may be time to put grandpa up in a home,” Candace Owens said in a 11-word response, a frequent sentiment on the liberal spectrum in America. Democrats, with little to show by way of a roadmap to return to power, rejoiced at the MAGA meltdown. Thursday’s double feature — Melania’s dubious denial and Trump’s digital dumpster-fire — was less a news cycle than performance art. The first lady insists she barely knew the pedophile; the former president insists he barely knows his megaphones. Meanwhile, the actual war grinds on, the bombs keep falling, the files keep leaking, and the rest of America is left wondering if the capital’s real national security threat is the feedback loop of its own narcissism.