Melania Trump’s surprise Epstein statement prompts bafflement | Melania Trump

Melania Trump’s surprise statement denying she had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein sparked confusion about why she had chosen to speak out, and whether Donald Trump knew that the first lady was planning to draw attention to a subject he has called for the public to move on from.

Even normally well-sourced correspondents for rightwing outlets were at a loss to explain why Melania Trump felt the need to issue the seemingly out-of-the-blue statement about her relationship with Epstein, the late sex offender who socialized with her husband for nearly two decades, or his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich said that she and her team were baffled.

“We’ve been trying to understand why she made it today, if there was something that she is reacting to that might already be in the news that has upset her, or if there’s a story that’s yet to come out, that’s about to drop that she wanted to get ahead of,” Heinrich told Fox viewers. “Because it did feel like it came out of left field for us.”

“We’re still trying to figure out why she made this statement today,” she added. “I’ve called every contact in my phone, including the president, and not gotten any answers.”

The New York Post, which, like Fox, is owned by Rupert Murdoch and often acts like an arm of the Trump White House communications team, was also puzzled. “It’s unclear why the first lady chose to hold the press event at a time when the White House is trying to move on from the Epstein saga that has been a drag on her husband’s second term,” the New York tabloid reported.

Marc Beckman, a senior adviser to the first lady, told the Post only that she “spoke out now because enough is enough”.

“The lies must stop,” Beckman added in his cryptic statement. “It is time for the public and media to focus on her incredible achievements as first lady, the lives she has positively impacted, and her commitment to our nation.”

The press statement was especially perplexing because it came at a moment when the Iran war has become all-consuming in Washington, raising questions about why the first lady had chosen to speak out now. With her reasons still unclear, reporters spent much of the day trying to find out what, if anything, Donald Trump knew about her plans.

Shortly after the first lady delivered her statement, an MS Now host reported that she had spoken by phone to Donald Trump, who said he did not “know anything about” the first lady’s statement before she appeared on camera. “She didn’t know him,” the president added before hanging up, apparently referring to Epstein.

An unnamed spokesperson for the first lady told the New York Times the president did know that his wife planned to make a statement. That report was then updated to note that the spokesperson later said it was not clear if the president knew what the statement was about.

Although the first lady claimed in her statement to have only a passing acquaintance with Epstein, because “Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time”, she was photographed with Epstein multiple times at a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club in 2000.

She also acknowledged on Thursday that she had written a friendly email to Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in October 2002, signed “Love, Melania”. The first lady did not mention that her email, released in January, included praise for a flattering profile of Epstein in New York magazine that came out that week, which she called a “Nice story”. That 2002 profile featured a glowing quote from Donald Trump praising his friend as “a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

In the written statement she read aloud with some difficulty, Melania Trump suggested her own email was “trival,” apparently misreading the word “trivial”, but Maxwell’s reply, the justice department also released, began with the term of endearment “Sweet pea”.

Three weeks after the email exchange on 11 November 2002, the future first lady and Maxwell were photographed together in New York, along with Donald Trump and Naomi Campbell, at a Dolce & Gabbana event.