Jon Stewart Flags The Telling Trump Comment That Led To DOJ’s Epstein Findings

Politics

“Daily Show” host Jon Stewart suggested that President Donald Trump’s initial hesitancy toward releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files was a telling sign of his FBI and Justice Department’s eventual findings on the disgraced financier, a memo that contradicts past comments from those in his administration.

Stewart, in a recent episode of his “Weekly Show” podcast, referred to Trump’s wary response in June 2024 when he was asked if he’d “declassify” such files.

“Yeah, yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so, because you don’t know — you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world,” Trump told Fox News.

Stewart swiftly highlighted the president’s use of the word “phony.”

“We all know the definition of phony when it comes to Donald Trump, anything that reflects poorly on Donald Trump is phony or fake,” he declared.

“So by the very fact that he used that word, specifically, tells you something.”

The memo — which indicated no evidence Epstein was murdered or had a so-called “client list” — contradicted comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who claimed in February that Epstein’s “client list” was sitting on her desk for review.

The findings also challenge remarks from Trump’s top FBI officials, ones they’ve since backtracked from. The memo’s release has sparked outrage from MAGA world, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Prior to the memo’s release, documents linked to Epstein and his death have included names of those with whom he associated, but those associations were largely publicly known.

Years before taking the Oval Office, Trump partied with Epstein before the financier’s downfall, and the president’s name has appeared in unsealed documents related to the Epstein case, although he’s never been accused of wrongdoing linked to Epstein’s crimes.

Stewart — who joked that it’ll turn out that the Epstein files were written in “lemon juice” and need to be held up to a light — argued that the focus on conspiracies sparked Trump’s rise to power and “drew his movement together.”

He added that such theories were much more of a “glue” to the MAGA movement than patriotism before pointing to claims that the administration would “clean” Epstein’s case up upon entering the federal government.

“It is so fucking bananas to watch them now try and diffuse this bomb that they planted,” Stewart said.

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