Jon Stewart on Trump’s Epstein files flip-flop: ‘This dude is flailing’

Late-night hosts tore into the next chapter of Donald Trump’s never-ending Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart ripped into Trump on Monday evening after the president abruptly changed tack and called on House Republicans to authorize the justice department’s release of files related to Epstein, a convicted sex offender – files which Trump himself could order to be released.

“If he had nothing to hide, he could have declassified and released these files himself at any time,” the Daily Show host explained. “How do I know this? A legal expert named Donald Jurisprudence Trump said so.”

Stewart then played footage of Trump from 2022 in which he insisted that the president can declassify anything, at any time, just by saying so or “even by thinking about it”.

“Is it possible that Trump’s whole bullshit facade is crumbling?” Stewart wondered. “I mean, right now, all he can do is distract from one lie with what is clearly another lie.”

Stewart then rolled a clip of Trump attempting that move, telling reporters: “All I want is I want for people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability.”

“What planet do you live on?” Stewart responded. “Great job on affordability? My Taco Bell order is now $72!”

“This dude is flailing,” he later added. “The normally reliable Trump is even struggling to deliver on his greatest gift: the cutting nickname.”

Over the weekend, he took to Truth Social to call his former ally Marjorie Taylor Greene “Marjorie Taylor Brown”, explaining in parentheses that green grass turns brown when it rots.

“You know, I’ve always said that the best nicknames are the ones you have to explain in parentheses,” Stewart joked.

Jokes aside, Stewart concluded: “Epstein was a convicted sex offender at the time of these emails. And of course, mentioned in these emails more than anyone else, more than 1,600 times, is Donald Trump.”

“Is that evidence of his guilt? No,” he continued. “But it shows that he’s a part of that world and certainly the circumstantial evidence points to his understanding of what was occurring.”

Stephen Colbert

On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert homed in on one specific email from Epstein, in which the late pedophile claimed Trump “knew about the girls”. The line prompted Republicans to accuse Democrats of cherrypicking. “Let’s pause there,” said Colbert. “Guys, for this one, let’s maybe go with a different fruit.

“So to prove that the Democrats were, let’s say, pineapple-choosing,” he continued, “House Republicans released 20,000-plus pages of other Epstein documents.

“They did it to show that they were way more transparent than the Democrats, who they say released just enough to make Trump look bad,” said Colbert. “And they were right because the Republicans’ additional release of documents made him look awful.”

In the new batch of documents, Trump’s named appeared more than 1,500 times.

“These are not casual mentions, either,” Colbert noted. In one email, Epstein wrote: “i have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.”

“It’s gotta hurt when Jeffrey Epstein calls you a bad guy,” said Colbert. “That’s like an airport muffin accusing you of being dry.”

Seth Meyers

“This weekend, Trump sought to quell the Maga furor by ordering an investigation, but only into Democrats,” Seth Meyers explained on Monday’s Late Night. “Which even some Republicans fear could be another delay tactic.”

As Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky put it: “If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can’t be released. So this might be a big smokescreen, these investigations, to open up a bunch of them as a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files.”

“How dare you accuse the president of setting up a smokescreen,” Meyers laughed. “For one thing, I don’t think he’s nimble enough for that. If Trump threw down a smoke pellet, he wouldn’t run away. He would just stand there coughing until the smoke cleared.”

Reporters asked Trump about Massie’s statement on Sunday night, and “all Trump had to do was make clear that he was sincerely interested in getting to the truth”, said Meyers.

Instead, Trump claimed “fake news” and said the media “kept bringing [Epstein] up to deflect from the tremendous success of the Trump administration”.

“Nailed it!” Meyers joked. “Everyone knows the least suspicious thing you can do when someone asks you about a scandal is to say ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ and then immediately insult. Try that next time your spouse asks why you got home so late.”

And then Trump flip-flopped again, telling House Republicans to vote for a discharge petition for the justice department’s release of the Epstein files, after he spent months opposing the measure. “But the whole point of the House vote was to force you to release the files, which you can do on your own. So if you’re in favor of releasing the files, then just do it,” said Meyers. “This new position makes even less sense.”

Jimmy Kimmel

And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked ahead to a House vote, possibly as early as Tuesday, to authorize the release of the files, with dozens of Republicans expected to break ranks. “Which has forced Trump to now claim that he’s for the files being released,” Kimmel noted. “After almost a year of saying he didn’t want them released, after a year of stalling, hedging, browbeating members of his own party, last night, all of a sudden, Trump reversed course completely.”

Trump posted on Truth Social: “As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”

“We have nothing to hide?” Kimmel laughed. “There’s no ‘we’. ‘We’ have nothing to hide. It’s just you.

“If you have nothing hide, why even have the vote?” he added. “Why not just have the Department of Justice release the files now?

“After 10 months of fighting tooth and nail, doing everything he could to keep the files secret, he’s now asking for a full release,” Kimmel continued, “which is what got all these guys in trouble in the first place.

“So his plan now is hurry up and release the files so I can start saying they’re fake.”

Trump also instructed Pam Bondi, his attorney general, to investigate prominent Democrats’ ties to Epstein. “Which is like Diddy ordering an investigation into why there were so many bottles of baby oil in his house,” Kimmel joked.