BULLETIN: TRUMP DENIALS OF WSJ EPSTEIN BOMBSHELL COLLAPSE - 7.17.25

in the third person. According to the Wall Street Journal bombshell story on Thursday night, quoting again voice over, there must be more to life than having everything, the note began, Donald, Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey, nor will I since I also know what it is. Donald. We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Yes, we do, come to think of it, Donald, Enigma's age. Have you

noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you, Trump, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret. This story is the story of the Trump Epstein connection and that phrase wonderful secret? What in the hell is Trump talking about? The Wall Street Journal put this story out at about sunset on

Thursday night. It was immediately denied in the strangest way of all of the denials of all of the Trump stories, of all of the Trump sex stories in the last decade or more, since long before he became a would be dictator. At the risk of reading the entire Wall Street Journal paywalled story, there are parts that I would like to quote for batim. The headline, for instance, Jeffrey Epstein's friends sent him body letters for a fiftieth birthday album.

One was from Donald Trump. The subhead the leatherbound book was compiled by Gallaine Maxwell. The president says the letter is a fake thing. What may live out of this story is not the letter, which is not by any means conclusive of about anything at all other than a relationship between Epstein and Trump. And we all know about that. And Trump's efforts to separate himself from Epstein have been

pro forma at best and pathetic at worst. What may linger are the denials Trump seems to be journalistically doing the equivalent of perjury here again and again, needless, stupid, easily disproved perjury in a journalistic sense. There is no such thing as lying to a newspaper being some kind of legal offense. The story begins thusly. It was Epstein's fiftieth birthday, and Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein's family and friends,

One of them was Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein's other associates for a two thousand and three birthday album. According to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, So put this back in its timing, this would have been twelve years before Trump ran for president. This is not ancient history. This is not something that predates his political aspirations, which we know began certainly no later than twenty eleven and had been festering inside that

semi brain of his since the twentieth century. The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is body like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text, framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the women's women's breasts, and the future president's signature is a squiggly donald below

her waist, mimicking pubic hair. One thing above all else about the forty fifth and forty seventh president of the United States is all class. The denial from Trump is the most interesting part of the story. Quote to the journal, this is not me. This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a picture in my life. I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not my language, it's not my words. I'm gonna sue the

Wall Street Journal, just like I sued everyone else. This, of course, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. I never wrote a picture in my life. Stand by forgive my language, writes jd Vance, who is Renfield to the Dracula in this equation? But this story is completed, utter bullshit. The WSJ should be a shamed for publishing it. Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it. Does anybody honestly

believe this sounds like Donald Trump? Well it doesn't have to sound like Donald Trump. Somebody else would have composed it for him, and he would have paid them less than he promised. To my goodness, he actually could in two thousand and three write things that made sense, that seemed to be in English, that did not seem to be coming from a brain damaged individual. I received a letter from him in twenty fourteen that was a suck up letter, a fan letter, a disingenuous fan letter, and

what I'm sure he'd like to destroy. I'll get to that in a moment. But this phrase I never wrote a picture in my life was disproven within an hour

of the Wall Street Journal printing the denial. Within an hour, no fewer than online copies of at least two dozen Donald Trump drawings that had been publicly sold doodles, pictures often sold at charity events, almost invariably of skylines, all carrying his crazy signature, all resembling his crazy, ironically enough heartbeat kind of signature, at least two dozen, one that sold for two hundred dollars in Iowa, if I remembering

it correctly. And then this story about a doodle by Donald Trump of the Manhattan Skyline has sold an auction for a grand total of twenty nine and eighty four dollars, placed on the market early this week by the Los Angeles based Nate D. Sanders Auctions. The drawing is typical Trump, featuring the Trump Tower right at its center and the president's nightmarish signature scrawled below it in gold marker the

dates to obviously the first term. It's an otherwise nondescript and childlike portrayal of New York City with unadorned bill bildings lined up in a row like tetris blocks topped with triangle roofs. I think they're actually being kind of unkind to him. There is a certain well, there's a certain charm to this thing. But more importantly, I think it's impossible to look at the drawing that Trump did

and not see what this really is. There are at least four buildings that look like erect penises, and all the other drawings are the same thing. I don't know that anyone has yet produced a Trump took a picture of a naked woman with his signature as her hair. But we have this denial from Laura Lumer also already disproved. I'm calling bullshit on this Trump birthday letter to Epstein. It's totally fake. Everyone who actually knows President Trump knows

he doesn't type letters. He writes notes in big black sharpie. Trust me, I would know he doesn't use email and he doesn't type write. Lumer, who is a genius prince type write as two words. He writes messages in big black sharpie. This is not true. I have and I have retained it, despite what are clearly subconscious efforts on my part to destroy the damn thing by putting it

in file cabinets full of garbage. I still have from twenty fourteen the fan letter he wrote me about my ESPN two show, particularly a commentary I did about Ted Turner. It is typed. It doesn't have to be typed by him, It's typed by somebody else. He, however, dictated it. It is his language, and it has a few notations and marks on it with a big black sharpie, and of course he's crazy ass signature. We've also seen him draw

on things like, you know, hurricane maps. It is fascinating that his typing and his drawing and his writing habits are denied here, and not the implications of sexual perversion, nor the cover up of the Epstein crimes by Trump, nor the connection between Trump and Epstein. That is not what his defenders or even what Trump are denying. They are denying that he draws pictures, And suddenly two dozen pictures appear already online. Jay d Vance says, why haven't

they shown us the picture? Where is this picture? What if the picture now turns up, and of course the ridiculous idea that Trump would have to personally type a typewritten note himself or it doesn't count somewhere. That's what happens when you get a millennial, and not a particularly bright one, trying to figure out what a typewritten letter is and who has to use the typewriter when they

type it. Also, the only negative here that I see in the short term is it gives those wavering in their support of Trump over Epstein, particularly those he called, you know, weaklings and idiots and former supporters. It gives them something to rally a against and kind of walk back towards his side, even if it is the Murdoch Wall Street Journal against which they are rallying. It may work to his advantage in this respect, but in a

larger sense it underscores this. This story will stay alive into a third work week, and very few Trump scandals have lasted that long. We will now be in the mode in which the remaining news organizations in this country begin to look for something else. Also, this story, as mild as it is comparatively, drove Trump nuts and raged. Trump attempted to kill the story from Status by the

reporter Oliver Darcy, formerly of CNN. Trump is said to have personally called Emma Tucker, the journal's editor in chief, to voice his objections. The specifics of the call remain unclear, but it's hard to imagine Trump voiced anything but outrage. There's a slightly different version of that in Breaker by

Lachlan Cartwright. There had been it's in recent days from the White House to have the story killed, including a phone call to Journal editor Emma Tucker from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, where Trump was on the line. Breaker has learned, Oh no, how could you handle a call from Caroline Levitt? The Division three softball center fielder. But one thing I can't get past happy birthday? And may every day be another wonderful secret? What in God's

name could that mean? And do any of us want to know another wonderful secret? It fits all of the cliches and all of the assumptions about Epstein, and particularly about whatever Trump's relationship to Epstein really was. That's the main thing. It's a vibe, as the kids say, and the denials have already been disproved. The lead story on the Murdoch owned Fox News Channel shows Tonight, Hunter Biden something something Laura Ingram insisting Trump shouldn't fall into the

special prosecutor trap about Epstein. If it weren't for special prosecutors like Ken Starr, Laura would never have a TV career. She had followed her mother and she'd be waitressing into her seventies. Let me rephrase that that's an honorable career. Her mother had not like what Laura is doing now.

There was, apparently late in Laura Ingram's program, a reference to something about the Wall Street Journal story coming up after the break, And when the break happened and ended and we went back to Laura, she said nothing about it. All we saw is that attempt to make her face

smile after all that work. Also of note as to Trump's health cover up, you will have noticed Trump's terrifyingly swollen ankles you would go to the hospital, and his obvious use of makeup over an area of his hand that clearly shows there's been an IV attached there perhaps or electrode patches put there, or that his hands have had profound bruises in the area, and makeup used to cover those bruises. The area seems to be about the size of a silver dollar. The White House says he

has now been tested. There is no deep vein thrombosis, no heart problems, but he has had swelling in his legs. That's what they checked him out for. And they say he has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency or venous insufficiency, which occurs when leg veins fail to pump blood to the heart, causing the blood to pool in the lower limbs,

which can then become swollen. They say this is minor, and we have long since learned never to trust the White House Press Office about anything, but especially his health. They are this close to sodom husseining him. They are this close to announcing that, like Sodom Hussein used to claim to the people of Iraq, he's had a magic stone implanted in his chest and is therefore immortal and

cannot be shot or killed. But this insufficiency in the veins may be legit because they have never before cited an actual disease Trump has, especially one which may have implications for travel, for flying. And the ankles have looked like he was wearing winter boots. This is a real problem and it may be a real and treatable problem. But that leads to the second half of the story, which is even on thinner ice than the first half. Is it's the stuff about his hands. Those aren't bruises

or leftovers from patches or ivs or electrodes. Oh no, says the White House. They are from shaking too many hands while taking aspirin to treat the chronic venous insufficiency, which is I believe this is a medical term. Bullshit. They are claiming it is not serious, that it's the result of the disease, which isn't serious, even though it blew up his ankles. And sure, everybody has swelling in their legs and they only need aspirin to cure it.

But if you take the aspirin, the thing causing the swelling in your legs will then cause bruising on your hand, bad enough to require makeup on your hand. This does not add up. Trump, simply put, is in worse physical shape now than Joe Biden got within a million miles of but he can still instinctively talk fast and loudly. So Jake Tapper isn't writing a goddamned book about it. His clarity, though, is clearly descending about half a point a week. That quote to the Wall Street Journal is

nonsensical or nearly such. I never wrote a picture in my life. Oh good. I never wrote a picture in my life either. Holy crap. And it didn't even turn out to be true. There's one other note to mention in this bulletin. CBS has tonight canceled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It will linger on in ever less supported lame duckness until May of next year, which is utterly bizarre. But I have to assume they are refusing to just give him any money to go away. Right now.

They are citing economics CBS is, and I believe that there is some legitimacy to that. Nothing in television is paying, certainly nothing as expensive as a late night talk show. But of course that was also what they cited when they denuded the CBS Evening News, and what they presumably will cite when they cut the nuts off sixty minutes. I'm going to do my reaction to this out of order.

I'm going to do the unpopular part first. I have alluded to this before my experience with Stephen Colbert, which dates back I believe to his fourth show on Comedy Central in two thousand and seven eight when I did a favor to Jonathan Alter, one of our regular guests on Countdown, whose wife was the guest booker on a show nobody wanted to go on with called the Colbert Rapport. My experience with Stephen Colbert over all that time is

one hundred percent negative. I'm doing him a favor. When he goes to CBS once again, missus, Alter asks me to come on and be a guest for the demo show, like the second time they tried to do a Stephen Colbert late night CBS show in front of an audience, and I come on and give up my time, which isn't that valuable, But I shaved and I come on and he asks me what I'm going to do now that my ESPN two show has been canceled, and I said, I don't know. There are a couple of possibilities, but

I legitimately don't know. And he responds, tell me, when you were on Countdown and somebody gave you a bullshit answer like that, what did you do? What I thought of doing, since we weren't actually on TV, was getting up and spitting in his face and walking off. I happened to be telling him the literal truth. I didn't know what I was going to do. There was an offer from CNN, there was an offer from MSNBC, there were two sports offers. I didn't know what I was

going to do. Ultimately, I didn't do any of those things. I'm doing this guy a favor, and he's saying I'm lying. Later, after they got the CBS show on the air, I pre recorded for him again, it's just my time. It wasn't some sort of I didn't cancel some sort of vacation to go do it for him. It was within walking distance, but they asked me to come over one morning and record a very unfunny bit about Alex Rodriguez

of the New York Yankees. The intro that Stephen Colbert read while I was in the studio standing not twenty feet from him, was here's the man who's had more jobs than you had hot dinners. Then I go home to watch to see if the thing was any funnier on TV than it was live, and he has re recorded it. It's no longer the man who's had more jobs than you've had hot dinners. It's become the man who's been fired more times than you've had hot dinners.

That is as cheesy a thing as I have ever heard in the entirety of my fifty years in the entertainment and information media business. That's Stephen Colbert. And if it wasn't his idea, it was the idea of his executive producer at the time, Chris I will later kill CNN licked. Stephen Colbert is not an honest broker, He is not a sincere guy. He is not worthy of

your trust. And the more I reflect on it, the more I think there was something to the old conservative theory about the Comedy Central show, that he was not some liberal pretending to be a stupid conservative, a really dumb bill O'Reilly who kept stepping on rakes, That he was a conservative pretending to be a stupid conservative so he could surreptitiously counter liberal narratives in a liberal space and counter more importantly things like reality and facts and

democrats and worst of all, when they can anseled the David Letterman Show. When they eased David Letterman out, Colbert and the people working for him were brutal to the Letterman people, going to the extent of ripping up everything in the Ed Sullivan Theater that had any connection to David Letterman and throwing it away the morning after the

last show. No auctions for charity, no farewell items for the staffers, nothing, a blood letting to make sure that everybody forgot David Letterman and thought only of Stephen Colbert. And now Stephen Colbert is finished and everybody thinks remember David Letterman. So to hell with him. I hope he never works again. The platform, however, will be missed. His stuff became reliably anti Trump, meaning anti dictatorship. Occasionally it

was funny. CBS, of course, jumped the shark with the deal that Sherry Redstone's been making with Trump, that bribe dressed up as a settlement of the ludicrous lawsuit over

the editing of the Kamala Harris interview. The question now is will these a moral cash whorees who are taking over CBS paramount also fire John Stewart, who, after a bad both sides this start to his return on Comedy Central, has gotten closer to his old form and was about one hundred times more valuable in the political space than Colbert ever was at his best. In any event, This

has been a Countdown bulletin podcast. The next regularly scheduled full edition is Monday, dropping at midnight Eastern Sunday night. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. I never wrote a picture in my life other than these two or three hundred, and let me close by just saying, may every day be another wonderful secret. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.