CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Maggie Haberman Slam Trump Allies Painting Ghislaine As Victim: Epstein’s Victims Would Like A Word’

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman ripped media allies of President Donald Trump for painting Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell as a victim.

It has been almost three weeks since the Trump administration first tried to bury the promised mountain of information on deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, and the heat just keeps going up. At every turn, Trump’s efforts to quash the story have only intensified interest in it, and deepened Trump’s own association with it.

Maxwell has become an important subplot in the controversy as Trump’s DOJ meets with her and Trump allies push the victim narrative.

On Friday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Collins and Haberman discussed the prospect of a pardon for Maxwell, which Trump has said he is empowered to do but isn’t thinking about.

They then called out MAGA figures who appear to be softening the ground for Maxwell:

HABERMAN: What I think you’re seeing the Trump administration potentially moving toward is claiming she was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, that she was somehow not a sex trafficker herself, but somebody who was caught up in his crime wave. The reason, I think, that is that people close to the administration have started describing her as a victim.

COLLINS: MAGA media has already been doing that. I’d actually — we have two of those sound bites put together, of people making the shift that you’re referencing here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREG KELLY, NEWSMAX HOST, “GREG KELLY REPORTS”: She just might be a victim. She just might be. There was a rush to judgment. There was a lot of chaos there for a while. All right, granted, she hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that’s apparently not good. But she’s in jail.

CHARLIE KIRK, HOST, “THE CHARLIE KIRK SHOW”: This is why they’re going straight to the source, and why this is so powerful. If anybody actually has the information of what has happened around Jeffrey Epstein, it’s not going to be some James Comey-created file. It is going to be Ghislaine Maxwell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: She hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that’s apparently not good.

HABERMAN: Apparently–

COLLINS: The victims, I think, would like to have a word.

HABERMAN: Well, I mean, I think you just — you just hit on a thing that I think is key here, is that this involves real crimes that Jeffrey Epstein committed against young women. There are real–

COLLINS: Girls.

HABERMAN: There are real — girls. There are real victims here. There are real victims who suffered, whose lives have been irreparably damaged. And they are being — some of them have said, feel like they are being used in a way that is very unpleasant.

COLLINS: Maggie Haberman, as always great to have your reporting.

HABERMAN: Thanks, Kaitlan.

Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.

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