Donald Trump brought up Jeffrey Epstein on Saturday to blame Democrats for corruption, telling a Wall Street Journal reporter in West Palm Beach, Florida, that the Epstein scandal is “all Democrats involved.”
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The reporter had asked why Trump sees corruption as a top issue heading into the midterms, after a Fox News poll found 88% of Americans are extremely or very concerned about it. Trump said Democrats are “very corrupt” and pointed to Minnesota, Los Angeles and New York. When the reporter tried to follow up, Trump asked who he wrote for. Once he heard the answer, he turned on the paper.
“You guys are worse than anybody, you know. The Wall Street Journal has lost its way,” Trump said. “But you oughta look at the real corruption. It’s Democrat corruption, and that includes Jeffrey Epstein. All Democrats involved.”
Trump’s own name runs all through the Jeffrey Epstein record.
The two were friends for years on the Palm Beach and New York social scenes. In a 2002 New York Magazine profile, Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” and said he “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Trump has said the two had a falling out around 2004.
The Wall Street Journal is the same paper that reported on a sexually suggestive birthday letter bearing Trump’s name in a 2003 album put together for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump denied writing it, called the report “false, malicious, and defamatory,” and sued the Journal for $10 billion. That lawsuit is still pending. In September 2025, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released the letter after getting the album from Epstein’s estate. It matched the Journal’s description, down to the drawn outline of a woman’s body and the closing line, “may every day be another wonderful secret.” The White House insisted the signature was not his.
Two months later, the committee’s Democrats released emails from the estate. In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who is now in prison for helping him traffic girls, Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Trump “spent hours at my house” with a victim whose name was blacked out, and called Trump “that dog that hasn’t barked.” In a 2019 email to journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.” What Epstein meant by that has never been made clear. The White House called the release a smear, and the woman described in the 2011 email previously said under oath that she did not believe Trump knew about the abuse.
Trump has never been charged with any crime connected to Epstein, and he has consistently denied knowing about the trafficking.
Pointing the finger at Democrats is not new for him. In November 2025, Trump called the scandal the “Epstein hoax” and asked the Justice Department to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman, writing that Epstein “was a Democrat” and “the Democrat’s problem.
Saturday’s attack on the Journal also follows its reporting on Kimberly Guilfoyle, who resigned as Trump’s ambassador to Greece earlier this month after the paper reported she bragged that wealthy Greek businessmen were paying for her travel.