Trump’s TV debacle
He hints Epstein was murdered, wishes Ghislaine well (again) and throws tantrum over America’s soaring Covid death toll
DONALD Trump yesterday questioned if Jeffrey Epstein was murdered before saying of Ghislaine Maxwell ‘I wish her well’ and playing down the US’s coronavirus death toll in a chaotic interview.
The US President said ‘I’m not looking for anything bad for her [Maxwell]’ and speculated that Epstein could have been ‘killed’ in his cell while awaiting trial last August.
In the same interview Mr Trump said ‘it is what it is’ about America’s spiralling coronavirus death toll.
And when he was challenged about America’s dismal record on the pandemic, he told journalist Jonathan Swan ‘you can’t do that’.
The bizarre interview broadcast on US network HBO on Monday sparked a backlash with many saying it showed Mr Trump was in denial about the reality of the pandemic in the US. last month during a White House press conference the president said he had ‘ met her [Maxwell] numerous times’ – they moved in the same circles in Florida’s Palm Beach in the 1990s – and ‘I wish her well frankly’.
The comments led to outrage among Epstein’s victims and speculation he could be considering a pardon for her.
Maxwell, 58, is accused of procuring girls as young as 14 for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997. She denies the allegations. When Mr Swan questioned why the president wished her well, Mr Trump replied: ‘Her friend or boyfriend was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She’s now in jail. Yeah, I wish her well. I’d wish you well. I’d wish a lot of people well. Good luck, let them prove somebody is guilty’.
Mr Swan asked: ‘So you’re saying you hope she doesn’t die in jail?’
Mr Trump responded: ‘ Her boyfriend died in jail and people are still trying to figure out how did it happen, was it suicide or was he killed. I do wish her well. I’m not looking for anything bad for her.’
Elsewhere in the interview Mr Trump argued that the US had a lower number of coronavirus cases than other nations.
The US has 4.8million cases and 155,000 deaths – both the highest in the world.
The President said: ‘ They are dying, that’s true. And it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it’.
Mr Trump held some brightly coloured graphs and said: ‘If you look at deaths, right here, the United States is lowest in numerous categories, we’re lower than the world’.
But when Mr Swan pointed to death as a proportion of the population, Mr Trump lost his temper, saying ‘you can’t do that’ and insisting ‘you have to go by the cases’.
While the US has seen a relatively low rate of deaths among those who have the virus, the disparity in national testing rates makes the figure an unreliable indicator of different countries’ progress.