The US President has seen the way the wind is blowing and decided to get out of the storm
Perhaps it was as simple as this – that Donald Trump finally saw the way the wind was blowing and decided to get out of the storm.
That would account for the 180-degree turn he made late on Sunday when, amid mounting anger in his party, he urged Republicans to vote for the release of the Epstein files.
“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” he said on Truth Social.
“It’s time to move on from this Democrat hoax perpetrated by a radical left lunatic in order to deflect from the great success of the Republican Party.”
The dramatic shift from the 79-year-old US President came as he is about to endure what might be the most difficult week yet of his second term.
On Tuesday, members of the House of Representatives – among them his ally-turned nemesis Marjorie Taylor Greene – are set to vote on releasing all the information the government has about convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Though he told supporters he would make the material public, until this point, Trump had gone out of his way to block such a step.
At least four Republicans – Greene, along with Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace and Thomas Massie – have said they will vote with the Democrats, despite a pressure campaign from Trump to try and make them change their minds. Some commentators believe as many as 50 Republicans in the House of Representatives could back the measure, siding with Epstein’s victims rather than the US President.
On Sunday, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson claimed whatever happened would not cause problems for Trump. “They’re doing this to go after Trump on this theory that he has something to do with it,” Johnson told Fox News. “He does not.”
Trump has long denied any wrongdoing in regard to Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring and says that although he knew him in the 1990s, he ended contact with him 20 years ago.
Last week, the White House brushed aside information contained in thousands of files released by the House of Representatives, including an email from Epstein to his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, saying that Trump “spent hours” at one of his properties with one of the victims, Virginia Giuffre.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt referenced a 2016 deposition by Giuffre, in which she had said she did not see Trump “have sex with any of the girls”.
“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that Trump did nothing wrong,” said Leavitt.
Yet the problem for Trump is that even if he has done nothing wrong, the way he continues to behave raises more questions than answers. Greene, 51, a congresswoman from Georgia, said on X that the way Trump was acting “really makes you wonder what is in those files”.
Trump hit back, saying he was terminating his support for her reelection bid and denouncing her as a “ranting lunatic”
Also on Tuesday, Trump is set to meet Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, better known as MBS and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
The visit, during which Trump is expected to try and push MBS to normalise ties with Israel, will draw scrutiny to the business deals Trump and his family members have with the kingdom.
Trump has claimed the trip by MBS, the first in seven years, is being treated almost as a state visit.
“We’re more than meeting,” he said last week. “We’re honouring Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince.”
Trump could be asked about the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. US intelligence concluded that MBS must have ordered the killing of the sometimes-critical commentator but he has always denied this.
Among those appealing to Trump to intervene is Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan El-Atr Khashoggi, who told The i Paper she had written to the US President requesting his help in obtaining her late husband’s body so she can bury the remains.
She said she also wanted his phone, laptop and personal effects returned. Since MBS told CBS News in 2019 that, as the kingdom’s leader, he had to “take responsibility” for what he said was a “mistake”, she believed she should also be eligible for compensation.
In an open letter to the US President, Khashoggi, who lives in Washington DC, wrote: “The murder of my husband has caused me to lose everything: the love of my life, my livelihood, and my family.”
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She added: “This is not a closed matter. There is unfinished business that remains.”
While Trump may get some tricky questions over Khashoggi, the issue of Epstein, who took his life in jail in 2019, has the potential to create greater challenges.
Even if it passes the House of Representatives, the bill to release the files awaits an uncertain fate in the Senate. Republican leader John Thune has said he does not think the chamber needed to pass the legislation.
But as Massie noted, the Senate will be under pressure “if we get a big vote in the House”.
If two-thirds of both chambers vote to release the material, it would mean Trump – if he should change his mind again and oppose its release – could not overturn the decision by means of a presidential veto.
Will a sufficient number of politicians vote to do so? No one can know. But polls suggest as many as 77 per cent of Americans want the material released.
If those senators and members of the House of Representatives are listening to their constituents, they may feel obliged to do so.
That would be enough to make it a very tricky week for Trump indeed, particularly given it would only be Tuesday.
