Psaki Immediately Walks Back Trump-Epstein Claim After Realizing She Went Too Far

Holding the establishment media accountable for each instance of deliberate and malicious deception would amount to a game of whack-a-mole. Nonetheless, President Donald Trump has picked his battles, and that strategy appears to have had an effect. For instance, in a clip posted Thursday morning to the social media platform X, MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, host of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki” and former White House press secretary under the Biden administration, made an outrageous and potentially defamatory claim about Trump before immediately correcting herself.

“You’re talking about the other predators out there in addition to Trump,” Psaki said during an interview Wednesday with Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, his party’s ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. Psaki was referring to associates of the late convicted sex offender and suspected trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, in whom Democrats showed no interest during four years of Biden’s presidency.

Since Biden left office, however, Democrats have engaged in desperate and dishonest tactics in an effort to link Epstein with Trump. No one, of course, has produced evidence that in this case Trump, unlike Epstein, did anything immoral, let alone illegal. A little birdie — perhaps a producer in her ear — must have reminded Psaki of that fact, or Psaki realized herself that she had gone too far. Either way, she quickly corrected herself. “I mean, I’m not saying he is. We don’t know all the details about that,” she frantically clarified, arms waving. “I just mean, in addition to what we’ve learned about Epstein and others, there’s other predators out there.”

One would have to assume by now that establishment propagandists like Psaki would have learned a lesson. After all, in December ABC News reached a $16 million settlement with Trump over potentially defamatory comments made on-air by network propagandist George Stephanopoulos, who falsely stated that a jury had found Trump liable for the “rape” of journalist and author E. Jean Carroll. A jury had found Trump liable for “sexual abuse” — not “rape.”

Then, in July, CBS parent company Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement over “60 Minutes’” decision to edit an October 2024 interview with then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in a way that made Harris sound coherent. Last week, according to a report, Trump “threatened” to sue the British Broadcasting Corporation for $1 billion over that network’s selective editing of Trump’s speech immediately preceding the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021, which made it appear that Trump encouraged violence. BBC has issued an apology for its “error of judgment.”

In all of these instances, media figures propagated a lie. A federal jury found Trump liable not for rape but for sexual abuse in the Carroll case. Harris spoke — and speaks — not with clarity but in word salads. And Trump encouraged supporters to protest peacefully on Jan. 6. Of course, the Trump administration could make the current controversy go away by releasing everything pertaining to Epstein. Instead, the administration has largely shown indifference to the Epstein case and eagerness to move on from it. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, in particular, have discredited themselves on the issue.

In short, we may rightly mock Democrats for their habitual dishonesty and celebrate Trump’s legal chastisement of the establishment media, which Psaki probably remembered before correcting herself. But we also have a right to demand the full truth about Epstein from everyone in the U.S. government.