Throughout a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Trump was required to confront what a British journalist described as “the elephant in the space”: the sacking of the UK’s Ambassador to the United States, Lord Peter Mandelson.
” Do you have some sympathy with him, that he lost his task over historical links to Jeffrey Epstein?” the press reporter asked Trump, who also has numerous links to the late disgraced financier.
President Donald Trump claims he did not know a high-profile British Ambassador who was fired last week over his ties to kid sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, regardless of welcoming him to the Oval Office.
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” I don’t know him, actually,” the President responded. “I had heard that, and I believe possibly the Prime Minister would be better speaking of that. That was an option that he made, and uh, I don’t know.”
He then accepted Starmer: “What is your response to that?”
In the image, a smiling Trump is seen shaking hands with the then Ambassador, who had actually also spent his time in D.C. working conservative circles and MAGA figures across the capital.
The book features a lewd drawing apparently signed by the president in 2003, however Trump insists he had absolutely nothing to do with it.
“They literally put out a fake file, according to the president!” Moskowitz reminded him.
But Trump’s claim that he did not understand Mandelson came despite the set being photographed in the Oval Office together in Might after announcing a trade deal with the UK.
“On what basis?” the FBI director responded.
Trump’s dismissal of the concern is emblematic of the ongoing headache the Epstein scandal has actually continued to be for the president, who was a known associate of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Sure, I’ll do it,” Patel stated.
The procedure of ending up being a diplomat also involves formally sending diplomatic credentials to the president in the Oval Office.
On the day Trump got here in the UK, pictures of the set were projected onto a wall of Windsor Castle by demonstrators, and likewise plastered on a giant photo that was unfurled on the yard outside the gates of the castle.
Back home, the concern also continued to control, consisting of at an intense Capitol Hill hearing with Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, who was cornered into opening an examination into whether Trump’s signature was created in the infamous 50th birthday book.
Starmer initially safeguarded his ambassador, informing parliament that he had his “complete self-confidence”.
However hours later, Bloomberg published a chest of e-mails in between Mandelson and Epstein, in which the Brit revealed assistance for his good friend and provided to talk with political contacts about his infamous 2008 Florida trial.
“Some info emerged recently, which wasn’t available when he was designated, and I made a decision about it,” Starmer responded when Trump diverted the concern to him.
The ambassador came under installing pressure this month after Home Democrats launched a 2003 “birthday book” compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday, in which Mandelson had penned a handwritten note describing the well-known sex wrongdoer as “my best pal.”
Mandelson– a polarizing figure on the left of British politics for years– was fired as UK ambassador to the US recently after his ties to Epstein became another unwanted problem for the embattled Starmer.
“Will you be opening up an examination into the Epstein estate for putting out a phony document with the president’s signature connecting him to the world’s largest pedophile ring?” Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz asked Patel.
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