Insiders bring receipts as MAGA claims Trump’s Epstein signature is fake — and GOP feigns ignorance
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Donald Trump at a MAGA rally in Rome, Georgia on March 9, 2024 (Phil Mistry/Shutterstock.com)
Political insiders on Monday worked to prove a signature on a lewd birthday card to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein matches that of President Donald Trump — even as MAGA diehards insist the autograph is "fake."
"Does the below from the WSJ look like this actual signature from the President? I don't think so at all. Fake," right-winger Charlie Kirk posted on X.
Meanwhile, NOTUS reports, Republicans in Congress resorted their tried-and-true defense of Trump: insisting they're in the dark about recent developments in any given scandal.
Michigan Rep. Tom Barrett told NOTUS, "I’ve got to activate my Wall Street Journal subscription, I guess, because I haven’t seen it.”
Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former Trump doctor whose Navy rank was recently restored by the administration after he was demoted for "behavioral issues," also claimed he hadn't seen the drawing, saying, “I just saw in the news he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Both Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC), two of the four Republicans who signed a petition to force the release of the Epstein files, also claimed they hadn't seen it yet, with Greene telling NOTUS, “I know that we had received a bunch of things from what we had subpoenaed, but I haven’t had a chance to look at them."
Vice President JD Vance, who questioned the authenticity of the doodle when the WSJ originally broke the news about it, wrote on X, "The Democrats don't care about Epstein. They don’t even care about his victims. That's why they were silent about it for years. The only thing they care about is concocting another fake scandal like Russiagate to smear President Trump with lies. No one is falling for this BS."
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt went the same route, saying on X, "The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire “Birthday Card” story is false. As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation. Furthermore, the “reporter” @joe_palazzolo who wrote this hatchet job reached out for comment at the EXACT same minute he published his story giving us no time to respond. This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!"
None of the denials and feigned ignorance could stop the frenzy of Trump signatures that flooded social media in attempts to prove that Trump did indeed sign the salacious doodle.
A viral photo of Trump signing a woman’s chest with a black Sharpie during a campaign rally in 2015 was one such effort.
Niece Mary Trump confirmed the veracity of her uncle's autograph on X, saying, "That’s definitely his signature. Just saying.”
When asked about the GOP's denial of the drawing's legitimacy or existence, Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) told CNN's Kaitlan Collins, "The fact that the president is a liar? I mean, he's consistent."
But perhaps one of the most damning destroyers of the GOP's strategy came on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show when the longtime host showed a check sent to his charity years ago with Trump's signature on it. O'Donnell described the signatures as "strikingly similar."
"You’ll see all the basic shapes are exactly the same, all of the grand strokes are exactly the same, those two signatures are more alike than any two exemplars of my signature, which varies day to day and signature to signature,” O'Donnell said.
Podcaster and former journalist Keith Olbermann also got a letter back in 2006 and posted the two side by side on Bluesky, saying, "Sorry MAGA. That's Trump's signature. Compare it to the one on his letter to me. You would've been smarter (lol) to claim it was a copy or tracing or a xerox or stolen from my letter but no... you're not smarter."
Former Trumpworld associate turned critic George Conway showed his own Trump-signed letter on X, where he also followed up with expert handwriting analysis from the WSJ.
""The signature and font used in the 2003 Epstein letter resemble … "… a thank-you letter Trump sent in April 2006 to attorney George Conway … "… and a letter sent in November 2000 to Hillary Clinton congratulating her on her election to the U.S. Senate," Conway posted, along with video evidence.
So far, Trump has been uncharacteristically silent on the latest report, a stark contrast from his reaction when the Journal first broke the news of the drawing's existence back in July.
"The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly [sent] to Epstein," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his a—— off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”