No matter what he says, this is a major humiliation for Trump

SEATTLE — “I beg you, President Trump, please stop making this political. It’s not about you,” said the woman as she leaned into the microphone.

“You are our President – please start acting like it. Show some class. Show some real leadership. Show you actually care about people other than yourself.”

Of the many words uttered on an astonishing day, when both chambers of Congress voted overwhelmingly to release all the material the government has on the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, few carried more power then those spoken by Jena-Lisa Jones – one of several survivors who addressed the media.

The words from Jones, who was 14 when she was first recruited by Epstein, also served as a rebuke for the president.

“I voted for you, but your behaviour on this issue has been a national embarrassment,” she added. “It’s time to take the honest moral ground and support the release of these files, not to weaponise pieces of [them] against random political enemies that did nothing wrong.”

We may never precisely know why Donald Trump made the last minute decision to back the release of the files, having for months done everything he could to prevent them becoming public.

It may have simply been he could sense sufficient Republicans were going to vote with Democrats on Tuesday irrespective of his wishes, and he hoped his volte-face could put an end to him being asked questions he has for months had no good answers to.

With the president’s approval, the measure passed in the House of Representatives 427-1, with a single Republican, Clay Higgins, from Louisiana, voting against.

As the scale of the vote was still sinking in, the Senate promptly passed the same bill unanimously. The Democratic Party’s leader in the Senate, New York’s Chuck Schumer, said: “This is about giving the American people the transparency they have been crying for.

He added: “The American people have waited long enough. Jeffrey Epstein’s victims have waited long enough. Let the truth come out.”

Putting aside the dramatic action by Congress, long accused of having failed to stand up to many of the excesses and abuses of the president’s second term, what happened on Tuesday can also be seen as a humiliation for Trump.

He had been forced to permit a vote, after failing to silence members of his own party who supported the material’s release.

The president has insisted there was no wrongdoing on his part in regard to Epstein’s sexual trafficking of minors and young women.

At the same time, if he had really wanted the material released, he could have either gone in person or sent a senior official, to speak alongside the victims.

As it was, he snapped at a reporter – “terrible person” – who asked about Epstein as he met in the Oval Office with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, finalising a controversial deal to sell F-35 fighter jets.

“I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump said. “I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.”

Later, writing on TruthSocial, Trump claimed he was indifferent about the vote.

“I don’t care when the Senate passes the House Bill, whether tonight, or at some other time in the near future,  I just don’t want Republicans to take their eyes off all of the Victories that we’ve had,” he wrote.

By contrast, it was a day of victory and vindication – no matter how painful and long overdue – for Epstein’s countless victims, many of whom carried photographs of themselves as they were when first preyed upon, as they spoke on Capitol Hill.

“I want everybody to take a look,” said Haley Robson, who said she was also a teenager when she was first abused.

“Everybody sees us today as grown adults, but we are fighting for the children that were abandoned and left behind in the reckoning. This is who you’re fighting for.”

What happens now? Trump has said he will sign the measure as soon as it reaches his desk. Because both the Senate and House easily cleared the two-thirds threshold, he cannot use a presidential veto.

Having said that, we might not get to see all the materials the government has, at least not immediately.

Writing on social media earlier this week, Trump said the House Oversight Committee “can have whatever they are legally entitled to”.

Was he suggesting there was some material it was not “legally entitled” to?

Last week, he ordered the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor to look into people such as Bill Clinton and others who were also one-time Epstein associates.

It is possible Trump might try and hold onto some of the files saying they’re part of ongoing investigation.

For him to do would be astonishing. Even he finally seems to have realised the strength of feeling across the country about this issue.

It feels this is where the rubber finally hits the road.

Sooner rather than later, we are set to get those files, and see what they do, or do not contain.