Nobody asked him to campaign on this but he did. Heavily.
I'm wondering what Trump actually said about releasing the Files. Per Grok:
Q.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, what did Trump say about the possibility of releasing the Epstein files?
A.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump expressed varying levels of willingness to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, often with caveats about the potential for misleading or false information. In a June 2024 interview with Fox News, when asked by Rachel Campos-Duffy if he would declassify the Epstein files, Trump responded, "Yeah, yeah, I would," but added, "I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died. It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc." This clip was widely circulated, including by the Trump War Room on X, with the caption that Trump would declassify the 9/11, JFK, and Epstein files. However, in the same interview, he noted caution about releasing files due to potential "phony stuff" that could affect people's lives.
In a September 2024 interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Trump reiterated he would have "no problem" releasing Epstein files, stating, "It probably will be," when asked about a supposed client list, and added, "I’d certainly take a look at it... I’d be inclined to do the Epstein, I’d have no problem with it." He expressed hesitation about affecting people’s lives with potentially false information, indicating a nuanced stance.
On October 22, 2024, then-Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, also voiced support for releasing the Epstein files, stating on Theo Von’s podcast, "Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list."
Trump’s campaign rhetoric consistently suggested openness to declassifying the Epstein files, particularly to shed light on Epstein’s death, which he described as suspicious due to circumstances like non-functional cameras. However, he frequently qualified his statements by warning about the risk of releasing unverified or fabricated information, reflecting a cautious approach to the files’ contents. |
