Cackles Erupt When Trump Fan Tries To Blame CNN for MAGA Epstein-Mania
Cackles erupted on the set when reliable Trump defender Ben Ferguson tried to blame the proliferation and prevalence of MAGA Jeffrey Epstein conspiracies on CNN.
The backlash to President Donald Trump’s attempt to quash conspiracy theories about deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein escalated to new heights this week with a series of public statements disavowing those supporters who continue to ask for more information.
But as many observers have pointed out, the conspiracies were fueled for years by MAGA figures, including current members of Trump’s administration.
On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, anchor Abby Phillip and a panel comprised of Van Jones, Scott Jennings, Ana Navarro, Ben Ferguson, and Jeffrey Toobin to discuss the latest uproar, and challenged Ferguson when he tried to blame nameless misleaders.
When Ferguson tried to blame CNN for “selling it,” laughter broke out and Phillip identified one promoter who definitely is not with CNN:
FERGUSON: I had her on my show when we asked that question. And one of the things that she said was, we have to make sure that we’re not putting on information on victims. And so that takes a lot of time. And apparently there were a lot of victims is what we were led to believe. It goes back to the point —
JENNINGS: Well, there were a lot of settlements.
PHILLIP: Ben, but do you buy that? If this was about the victims, that actually should be the easiest thing to redact.
JONES: It’s a sharpie. I mean, I —
PHILLIP: Why — do you — truly, do you buy that the issue here is that they can’t redact the names and identifying information of victims?
JONES: That’s the easiest thing to do in the world.
FERGUSON: I go back to what I said at the beginning. I think it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of people that said this was bigger than maybe it actually was, that there was more, that there was there. A great example, I would be furious if I was one of the people that left the White House with one of those white binders that said the Epstein’s files part one.
PHILLIP: Right. And they are, in fact, furious.
FERGUSON: And they’re furious. And the problem is when you sell something like that, and this goes back to political advice that Scott was saying earlier, you either have it or you don’t, and you don’t want to mess this one up.
I go back to the victims though. And that’s all I care about. I want to see what is there that dealt with people that abused children.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Let me play —
NAVARRO: People are saying, okay, we exaggerated, we lied, we may have made some stuff up, we were being hyper —
FERGUSON: I don’t think — well, it depends on who you’re saying made it up. I think there was a lot of people who —
NAVARRO: Well, Pam Bondi.
FERGUSON: No. I think there was a lot of people that were led to believe over years and multiple administrations —
PHILLIP: By whom, Ben?
FERGUSON: — that there was a lot — Democrats and Republicans.
PHILLIP: No. Hold on.
FERGUSON: I can go back and (INAUDIBLE) of them selling the Epstein files years ago.
PHILLIP: But who led them to believe that the Epstein files had incriminating information on their political enemies on Democrats?
FERGUSON: I could a 20-minute montage of CNN selling it when Joe Biden was the president.
(CROSSTALKS)
NAVARRO: Do you think that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Charlie Kirk and all of these people were led by CNN?
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Ben, let me just give you one example of one such person. Here’s J.D. Vance’s tweets in 2021. “What possible interest would the U.S. government have in keeping Epstein’s client secret? Oh.” He also says, “if you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case, you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve? I’m sure there’s a middle class teenager somewhere who could use some harassing right now, but maybe try to do your job every once in a while.” I mean, he was one of the people who made it seem like it was a government and media conspiracy to protect certain people.
Watch above via CNN NewsNight.
