Conservative demands Trump explain why he's protecting Epstein associates

National Review writer Noah Rothman admits Democrats are tearing President Donald Trump to shreds for clinging to friends and confidants of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Rothman pointed to a recent X post by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — which accused Trump of protecting child abusers and claiming that in her home country of Somalia, child predators are executed — to argue that Trump is carrying the kind of baggage that could bring down an entire administration.

“The president and his allies have not been able to leverage reckless remarks like these, render them liabilities and impose a political price on their expostulators,” Rothman wrote. “They don’t even seem to be trying. It’s not at all clear why.”

Trump’s “onetime aide and federal convict, Steve Bannon,” was “chummy with Epstein long after the child abuser was convicted of his crimes,” reports Rothman. “Indeed, even on the eve of Epstein’s final arrest, Bannon was committed to making a documentary about the former financier explicitly designed to rehabilitate his image.”

So why on earth, demands Rothman, would Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer be lobbying an appeals court to drop charges against Bannon to erase his conviction for obstructing the House's January 6 investigation?

“Behavior like this is the augur in which conspiracy theories bloom,” warned Rothman.

Similarly, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “maintained surreptitious relations with Epstein long after he repeatedly claimed (once, under oath) that he cut the pervert off, (after 2005),” according to what Rothman told CNBC.

But the so-called ‘Epstein Files’ made Lutnick out to be a liar by revealing that in December 2012, Epstein invited Lutnick to lunch on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The two also had business dealings as recently as 2014, according to CBS News.

Any retaliation the Trump administration makes against Democrats’ Epstein accusations, said Rothman, “will be limited by the administration’s efforts to shield those in Trump’s orbit with deeper ties to Epstein from accountability.”

“Certainly, figures like Bannon and Lutnick, who are guilty not of mere association but of misleading law enforcement, lawmakers, or the public, complicate the White House’s efforts to indemnify the president,” said Rothman. “It’s not at all clear why these two replaceable components in the MAGA machine are worth the effort."