MAGA media star Megyn Kelly had some harsh words for President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein crisis, saying it was “hard to have a lot of sympathy” for the administration after a series of unforced errors.
The issue has dominated the news for weeks after the Department of Justice and the FBI issued a memo earlier this month concluding that the financier, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, did not have a “client list” and was not murdered—as many of the MAGA faithful believe—but killed himself.
Instead of putting the controversy to rest, the announcement sparked anger and accusations of a cover-up among even some of Trump’s most ardent supporters.
That response was completely predictable, Kelly said on Monday’s episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, making it “hard to have a lot of sympathy” for the administration.
“Now the president’s very annoyed that it won’t go away. It won’t go away because of the way he’s handled it,” she said.
She listed a series of missteps on the part of the administration, including Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision to issue the memo in the middle of a slow news summer without holding a press conference to answer questions about the findings.
That decision was particularly misguided considering Trump’s picks to lead the FBI—Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino—had previously “fanned this flame” and pushed the theory that Epstein was murdered to protect his powerful associates.
“Whoever told the Justice Department that this could somehow be buried and that people would move on and that the Trump administration could get away with that ridiculous two-page summation of ‘You’re not getting any more information because there’s no there there’ should be fired,” she said. “That person is an idiot and didn’t understand the Republican base—certainly the core MAGA base.”
Instead of getting out ahead of the scandal, the administration has been trying to play catch-up by seeking the grand jury transcripts from Epstein’s criminal proceedings—despite knowing the court was not likely to release them—and by speaking to Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell, however, is not a reliable source considering she’s currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for luring and grooming and Epstein’s victims, Kelly said.
“Can we really trust anything this woman says when she it’s either this—give something up or someone up—or spend 20 years in jail?” Kelly said.
Kelly said she agreed “completely” with Morgan’s assessment of the administration’s handling of the scandal, which he described as “leading everybody up to the water’s edge, and then not giving anyone a drink.”
“This is self-inflicted,” she said.
Trump and Epstein were friends for years until they had a falling out not over Epstein’s sexual impropriety but because he “stole” Trump’s hired help, the president said Monday.
