Eric Trump ran to the friendly confines of Newsmax Monday night to offer up a laughable defense of the “bawdy” sketch that his father allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein for the convicted sex offender’s 50th birthday.
“I can tell you my father does not sketch out cartoon drawings,” the presidential scion declared, despite the incontrovertible fact that multiple Donald Trump doodles have been sold at auction houses.
The younger Trump’s denial comes as the White House world throws everything against the wall to explain away the publication of the “birthday book” sent to Epstein in 2003, which includes a letter that features an imagined conversation between Epstein and the president framed by a hand-drawn figure of a naked woman. Meanwhile, the president’s alleged trademarked scribbled signature is placed in a location to mimic a woman’s pubic hair.
The president has furiously denied composing the letter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in July, calling it a “fake thing” and “nonexistent.” After the WSJ first broke news about the card’s existence, the president filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the paper, its reporters and owner Rupert Murdoch, claiming that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”
Once a copy of the birthday letter was made public on Monday after Epstein’s estate provided a tranche of documents to the House Oversight Committee, the administration continued to insist that the card was a “hoax” and that the signature wasn’t the president’s.
“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted on Monday. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”
Taylor Budowich, another White House official, added that “it’s not his signature” and that Murdoch’s media empire would need to “open the checkbook” in response to the president’s ongoing lawsuit.
Despite the White House claiming that the signature is a “fake,” specifically noting that the Epstein card only includes Trump’s first name signed, there are multiple examples of personal letters he sent during the late 1990s and 2000s that feature a similar first-name signature and bold serif lettering.
This has prompted other Republicans to go so far as to suggest an autopen was used to forge the president’s signature on the 22-year-old document. “It’s so easy to do,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told CNN. “I just don’t buy any of it right now because we have a prior administration that has a history of dishonesty.”
Sitting down with ultra-MAGA Newsmax host Carl Higbie on Monday night, Eric Trump was asked about the “stupid drawing,” which Higbie also described as “absurd” and the “dumbest thing in the world.”
After asserting that his “father does not sketch out cartoon drawings,” even though the president has explicitly sold multiple sketches of New York City skylines in the past, the younger Trump went on to cite Epstein’s attorneys to clear his dad of any wrongdoing.
“I mean, it’s insane, not to mention Epstein’s lawyer said he asked specifically about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump never once came up, and there is no correlation, and it’s ironic given that my father was the very guy that threw him out of the club because he thought he was a scumbag,” Eric Trump exclaimed. “My father’s intuition was actually incredibly right.”
Amid the rising controversy this summer over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, which has featured the president calling it a “Democrat hoax” while ordering his supporters to move on from the saga, Trump claimed he fell out with the late pedophile in the mid-2000s because he “stole” young female employees from Mar-a-Lago.
“He took people, I say ‘don’t do it anymore,’ you know they work for me... beyond that, he took some others,” the president declared in July. “Once he did that, that was the end of him.”
Comparing the Epstein story to the “Russia hoax,” Eric Trump would go on to gripe about the “level of dementia in the mainstream media” and how “people don’t buy it anymore.” At the same time, he complained that the New York Times was going to try to keep his latest book from becoming a bestseller, something Higbie said he would do his level best to prevent from happening.
“Even if you don’t read too much, and I don’t read too good, I bought it because I want you to be number one just to give a middle finger to whoever is trying to keep you down,” Higbie concluded.
Democrats, meanwhile, have blasted the president and his administration following the release of the alleged birthday letter, calling the document “sickening” while mocking the Trump team’s attempts to claim the whole thing is “fake news” and a hoax.
“President Trump called the Epstein investigation a hoax and claimed that his birthday note didn’t exist. Now we know that Donald Trump was lying and is doing everything he can to cover up the truth,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said on Monday after House Democrats posted the letter on social media. “Enough of the games and lies, release the full files now.”
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY), however, accused Democrats of “cherry-picking documents and politicizing information” that had been received from Epstein’s estate, adding that Trump “is not accused of any wrongdoing and Democrats are ignoring the new information the Committee received today.”
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