Trump
Says First Lady ‘Had a Right’ to Talk About Epstein
President
Trump said in an interview that he had known his wife wanted to address rumors
about the late sex offender at some point, but that he had not known exactly
what she would say.
Shawn
McCreesh
By Shawn
McCreesh
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/us/politics/trump-melania-epstein.html
April 10,
2026
President
Trump said Friday that he had known his wife wanted to speak about Jeffrey
Epstein at some point, and that he “thought she had a right to talk about it,”
even if he had not known what exactly she planned to say.
“It
doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone interview, referring to
the remarks Melania Trump made from the entrance hall of the White House a day
earlier.
“I didn’t
know what the statement was,” he said, “but I knew she was going to make a
statement.”
The first
lady’s comments certainly came as a surprise to many other people who work in
the White House, according to two officials familiar with the situation who
asked for anonymity to discuss the matter. It was not clear why she had chosen
that moment to talk about Mr. Epstein. Absent any explanation, questions and
feverish conspiracy theories swirled.
The
president said his wife had been agonizing for a long time over her press
coverage and rumors connecting her to Mr. Epstein. What was particularly
upsetting to her, Mr. Trump explained, was one theory positing that it was Mr.
Epstein who introduced her to her future husband. In her remarks on Thursday,
Mrs. Trump recounted the story of meeting Mr. Trump “by chance at a New York
City party in 1998.” She said she did not encounter Mr. Epstein for the first
time until two years after that.
“She
finds it very insulting,” Mr. Trump said of the rumors. “And I said, ‘If you
want to do that, you can do that.’ I said if she wants to do it — I didn’t
recommend it, but I said, I let it be her, I said, if you want to do it. …”
He added,
“She didn’t meet me through Jeffrey Epstein. And I could understand her
feelings. But I said, ‘If you want to do it, do it.’”
He would
not say when exactly he had this discussion with the first lady, but said that
“it wasn’t a big discussion. I’d say it lasted for about two minutes. I had no
problem. I thought she actually did a good job.”
And yet,
the first lady’s remarks redirected focus onto a story line that her husband
and his administration have been thrashing against for a year. Just last week,
the attorney general lost her job in part over her inability to contain the
furor, which has now been reignited.
After
Mrs. Trump spoke, the internet lit up with speculation about what could have
prompted her to come forward. Mr. Trump insisted she was simply fed up with her
press coverage.
But once
she did, old photographs of her and Mr. Trump palling around with Mr. Epstein
and his companion Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of facilitating years of
sexual abuse, went viral again. The spectacle braided two narratives that
officials in this White House always approach with utmost caution: the deeply
private first lady and the deeply poisonous Epstein saga.
Mr. Trump
projected sang-froid about it all on Friday. “I don’t mind anything having to
do with Epstein,” he said, insisting he had been exonerated from all things
Epstein related. “The only thing I don’t like is I waste a lot of time” having
to talk about it.
But he
was talking about it again because of something his wife chose to do. Was he
upset that she had single-handedly thrust this story that had so bedeviled him
back onto front pages around the globe?
“No,” he
said. “I never get upset.”
He said
that after he watched Mrs. Trump’s statement, he thought to himself: “She had a
right to talk about it, because the fake news covers her so inaccurately.”
“Would I
have done it that way?” the president mused. “Perhaps not, perhaps, I don’t
know.”
Shawn
McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump
administration.
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