‘It’s a Terrible Thing’: Trump Slams Epstein Files Release, Rages At Republican Pushing For It

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that “it’s a terrible thing” that Democrats and a few “bad Republicans” are forcing the release of the Epstein Files. Trump particularly attacked Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) over his efforts to force a vote on a bill to release the files, which Trump eventually signed into law.

“Mr. President. Were you surprised by the number of photos of Bill Clinton in the Epstein files, and can you commit to their full release by the end of the year? Some of the victims were protesting that too many of them were redacted,” a reporter asked Trump during a presser in Mar-a-Lago.

“I know there are a lot of people that are angry about all of the pictures of other people, you know, but I think it’s terrible. Look, I don’t like the—I like Bill Clinton. I’ve always gotten along with Bill Clinton. I’ve been nice to him, he’s been nice to me. We’ve always got along, and respect him. I hate to see photos come out of him, but this is what the Democrats—mostly Democrats and a couple of bad Republicans—are asking for, so they’ll give me their photos of me too,” Trump replied, adding:

Everybody was friendly with this guy. Either friendly or not friendly, but he was around. He was all over Palm Beach and other places. The head of Harvard was his best friend, Larry Summers. And Bill Clinton was a friend of his, but everybody was. I actually threw him out of Mar-a-Lago. And as a person that was in Mar-a-Lago, I threw him out. This is Mar-a-Lago. It’s the hottest place in—I think it’s the hottest place in the world, but it’s the hottest place in Florida. And everybody would come here. He’d come here. We actually threw them out. But, no, I don’t like the pictures of Bill Clinton being shown.

I don’t like the pictures of other people being shown. I think it’s a terrible thing. I think Bill Clinton is a big boy, he can handle it, but you probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago, many years ago, and they’re, you know, highly respected bankers and lawyers and others, and they’ll come up because of guys like Massie, who’s a real lowlife, whose polls are down to about 9 percent, by the way, in the great state of Kentucky.

If you look at Kentucky, Kentucky is such a great place, but I don’t know, they’ve got a couple of people in there that are very strange in terms of leadership, but Massie’s a loser, and he likes it, and he works with the Democrats. He’s just being used by the Democrats because what this whole thing is with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has. Like, for instance, today we’re building the biggest ships in the world, most powerful ships in the world, and they’re asking me questions about Jeffrey Epstein.

I thought that was finished. I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents. And there is tremendous backlash. It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein, but they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues. A lot of Republicans are angry because of the fact that it’s just used to deflect against a tremendous success. Look, we have $18 trillion coming into our country. We have, I believe, we’re going to have the most successful economy in history. We inherited a mess. Now prices are coming way down. Gasoline is less than two dollars in some states—one ninety-nine, $1.97, $1.95 a gallon. A dollar and 95 cents, think of that a gallon.

Nobody ever thought they’d see that. They don’t want to talk about that. They want to talk about Epstein.

And the problem is a lot of Democrats are being caught up in the web, like Larry Summers. Larry Summers was the head of Harvard. He’s now been forced to resign from every board he’s on, and he was thrown off the Harvard board. Now he was, you know, he was at Epstein’s island a lot. I wasn’t. I never went there, by the way. But fortunately, it’s nice. But I never went there. But a lot of people did go there.

The Department of Justice released some of the Epstein Files last Friday to comply with the federal law’s deadline, but is expected to release more files in the coming days and weeks. The DOJ heavily redacting the files it has released so far has sparked an outcry among critics who are calling for greater transparency.

Watch the clip above via NewsNation.