Trump Freaks Out at Rupert Murdoch Over WSJ Epstein Story

Donald Trump’s threats to sue The Wall Street Journal have extended to the daily’s owner, Rupert Murdoch.

The president has promised to sue the newspaper over its latest report that Trump penned a cozy and salacious letter to his “pal” Jeffrey Epstein for the child sex trafficker’s 50th birthday. By Friday, that scheme had extended to include Murdoch, the multibillionaire conservative media mogul who Trump claimed he would force to “testify” in the lawsuit.

“I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The Journal reported that Trump wrote the letter at Ghislaine Maxwell’s request, as part of a compilation of messages celebrating the glitterati socialite in 2003. Other notable figures accused of being involved in the project include Harvard University professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who defended Epstein during his first criminal trial, and billionaire Leslie Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret and co-founder of Bath & Body Works, Inc. Dershowitz did not deny to the Journal that he may have taken part in the collaboration.

“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret,” Trump concluded his letter to Epstein, according to the Journal.

The Journal reported that Trump’s letter was framed by a crude drawing of a nude woman, done in Sharpie. His signature on the note was scrawled between the woman’s legs and resembled pubic hair.

“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump posted to Truth Social Thursday shortly after the report’s publication. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter!  DJT”

Facing enormous pressure from his base, Trump ordered the Justice Department to release additional documents pertaining to its investigation into Epstein. The White House did not specify if the documents would be made public, and did not explain the sudden contradiction after Trump had spent the better part of the last week insisting that the Epstein fiasco was a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

Donald Trump is already lying about why CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was canceled. 

“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

But the decision clearly had nothing to do with ratings. 

In the second quarter of 2025, Late Show averaged 2.42 million viewers across 41 first-run episodes, according to Late Nighter, summoning a larger viewership than competitors in that time slot, including ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Meanwhile, Fox News’s Gutfeld did surpass Colbert during its earlier time slot, with an average viewership of 3.29 million people. But when considering the host’s penchant for racist and antisemitic drivel, there isn’t much to idolize there.  

Colbert’s cancellation came just days after the host called out Paramount, CBS’s parent company, for agreeing to pay $16 million to the Trump administration to settle a lawsuit over an edited 60 Minutes interview of failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. It’s worth noting that Fox News has absolutely shredded taped interviews with the president in a desperate attempt to make him sound normal. 

During his monologue, Colbert argued that Paramount knew the lawsuit was “completely without merit” but agreed to pay a “big fat bribe” to ease its sale to Skydance Media—a deal that needs approval from the president.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren took to social media Thursday night to defend Colbert. “CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump—a deal that looks like bribery,” she wrote on X. “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also backed up the late night host. “CBS’s billionaire owners pay Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit while trying to sell the network to Skydance. Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late night host, slams the deal. Days later, he’s fired. Do I think this is a coincidence? NO,” he wrote on X. 

Fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel, who was name-dropped in Trump’s rant, defended Colbert. “Love you Stephen. Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS,” Kimmel wrote in a post on Instagram. 

Alina Habba, Trump’s shamelessly biased personal lawyer, will soon be out of the job he gave her.

The president appointed Habba, who defended him in his hush-money and E. Jean Carroll defamation cases, as interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey in March. The role was for 120 days, allowing Habba to bypass Senate confirmation. But those 120 days are up next Tuesday, and all signs currently point to Habba not getting officially confirmed, as New Jersey Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker have sworn to block her nomination.

A source close to the situation told The New Jersey Globe that Habba admitted to her staff on Thursday that she’s not sure what’s next. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I’m grateful for my time. This is an amazing office, and I hope I can stay,” she reportedly said.

The end of Habba’s DA tenure prevents one of Trump’s most ardent supporters from grasping even more power. Her history indicates that she would have only used her role to blindly carry out the president’s agenda.

In October, amid the tragedy of Hurricane Helene, Habba falsely claimed that the Biden-Harris administration left “babies floating in the water.” Fox News of all outlets checked her live on air. When Trump fell fast asleep during his own trial, Habba chalked it up to him having tired eyes. “President Trump, he reads a lot,” she said. “He’s been sitting there, as he’s forced to, at the threat of going to jail if he’s not sitting there, for what I assume would be a very mundane day.” She demonstrated a shocking lack of legal expertise at that same trial when she clearly misunderstood what “due process” entailed. And in March, she said that the thousands of military veterans that DOGE fired were simply unfit.

New Jersey seems to be safe from Habba’s sheer incompetence for the time being. Only time will tell if she remains in Trump’s orbit or fades into MAGA obscurity.

After facing enormous pressure from his base, Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to release additional details pertaining to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The offering was, apparently, more than enough to get a chunk of far-right influencers back on his side.

By Friday morning, conservatives on X were abuzz, trying to find any reason to dismiss a Wall Street Journal report that Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein more than two decades ago for the financier’s 50th birthday.

Self-described “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh wrote on X that the letter, which was reportedly requested by Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, “screams fake.”

“The writing doesn’t sound like Trump at all,” Walsh claimed. Hours earlier, Walsh had insisted that Trump’s efforts to shed his Epstein-conscious base by deriding them as “weaklings” and as “stupid” and “naive” was the “number one way to make sure that I keep talking about the subject.”

Laura Loomer, who earlier this month had called on Trump to throw his attorney general out of the government for her role in the reprised scandal, was similarly busy defending the president by Friday morning.

“I’m calling bullshit on this Trump ‘birthday letter’ to Epstein. It’s totally fake. Everyone who actually KNOWS President Trump knows he doesn’t type letters. He writes notes in big black Sharpie,” Loomer insisted. “Trust me, I would know.”

The Journal reported that the drawing of a nude woman that framed Trump’s letter was done in Sharpie. His signature on the note, which was scrawled between the woman’s legs and resembled pubic hair, was also done in Sharpie.

And Elon Musk, who plainly accused Trump of delaying the release of the Epstein files on the basis that the MAGA leader was implicated in them, elevated a script from his AI chatbot Grok that claimed the Journal reporting was “most likely fake.” Grok cited Trump’s “strong denial” of the story and his threat to sue the newspaper and its owner Rupert Murdoch over the letter’s publication.

But not everyone on the right was sold by Trump’s meager offering.

“Last week, the Dept of Justice claimed the Epstein Files don’t exist but they’re also a Democrat hoax, and there is nothing in them except child sex abuse material,” wrote white supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes. “Now the DOJ, under public pressure, is going to unseal grand jury testimony? Not buying it.”

On Thursday, Fuentes thoroughly mocked Trump as “fat,” “a joke,” “stupid,” and “not funny,” and said that “the liberals were right” and that the country would “look back at MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history.”

Donald Trump and JD Vance clearly didn’t take the time to get their story straight about the president’s lewd 50th birthday letter to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that in 2003, Trump penned Epstein a “bawdy” note inside of a doodle of a voluptuous woman as part of a book of birthday notes for the financier. The president wrote that he had “certain things in common” with the child sex offender, and wished his “pal” that “everyday may be a wonderful secret.”

Trump and his team leapt to discredit the reporting—but unfortunately, they didn’t all jump the same way.

Vance took to X to defend Trump, claiming that the president’s team hadn’t even laid eyes on the letter before it was published.

“Forgive my language but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it,” Vance wrote. “Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?”

“Doesn’t it violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter like this without showing it to the victim of this hit piece?” Vance wrote in a separate post. “Will the people who have bought into every hoax against President Trump show an ounce of skepticism before buying into this bizarre story?”

But Trump went a different route, claiming that he’d personally warned the publication that he’d sue them if they published the “false, malicious, and defamatory” story.

“The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

So which was it? Was the Trump administration completely blindsided by the publication of the letter, or did Trump get enough advance warning to personally threaten them with a lawsuit if they published it? And why go to such lengths to prevent publication if the letter is so obviously fake?

This latest controversy comes amid a firestorm for the Trump administration, as the MAGA horde have demanded more transparency on the so-called Epstein files, after the Justice Department published a memo claiming that the sex criminal kept no incriminating client list. Trump’s attorney general had previously claimed to have that very list sitting on her desk. The mishap has Trump so thoroughly backed into a corner that he’s begun claiming that the so-called Epstein files are a hoax created by Democrats, and seething at his supporters for caring about the files at all.

It’s worth noting that Vance’s complaint that the letter doesn’t “sound” like Trump falls completely flat. After all, the note came just one year after Trump was quoted in a 2002 New York Magazine profile of Epstein, calling him a “terrific guy.”

“He’s 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,” Trump said at the time.

Trump’s attorney later claimed that the two had “no relationship.”