Maggie Haberman And Kaitlan Collins Call Out Trump Over New Epstein Contradictions: ‘All Over The Map’

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman called out President Donald Trump’s latest contradictory messages about Jeffrey Epstein and the uproar surrounding the late sex criminal.

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.

Just this week alone:

• Trump flipped out and threatened to sue after The Wall Street Journal dropped a hotly anticipated profile of the Trump-Epstein relationship that included a highly suggestive note.
• A slew of unearthed videos depicting Trump as a sex creep went viral.
• A new bomb that Trump was previously told he’s in the Epstein Files dropped.
• The rollout of Trump’s baseless and discredited accusation of “treason” against former President Barack Obama appears to have flopped.
• A House subcommittee voted to subpoena all documents relating to the case.
• Trump denied he was briefed on the case by Attorney General Pam Bondi after he had already copped to being briefed.

On Friday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Collins called out the latter point, and Haberman roasted a communications strategy that she said was “all over the map”

COLLINS: We start tonight with my lead source. New York Times White House correspondent, and Author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” Maggie Haberman.

Maggie, just first on what we heard from Trump, when he was landing in Scotland tonight. Is it clear why he is now saying he wasn’t briefed on his name being in the files, after no one denied that when it was reported. Instead, this week, after The Wall Street Journal noted that, White House officials were confirming it and saying, It’s not a big deal.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUTHOR, “CONFIDENCE MAN”: They were saying, in fact, that it shouldn’t be a surprise, because he was in before, and it’s not an indication of wrongdoing.

I think he is now just reflexively saying no, to certain things, when he gets asked about it, in connection with Epstein to not have additional television footage of him talking about it, honestly. I think that’s the main reason. But I think, Kaitlan, it’s very hard to track a through line on what he’s been saying, what the White House has been saying, what the Justice Department has been doing on this. It has been all over the map, and it just continues to mushroom.

And I understand what’s happening, right now, with Ghislaine Maxwell. They are looking at this as something of an escape hatch, in the White House. And the Justice Department, I don’t know that it’s going to provide that.

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

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