In one of the newsiest Friday nights of Donald Trump’s second Presidency, he broke up with a huge MAGA icon, blasted Phantom of the Opera on the White House terrace and confirmed the real reason for his MRI scan
Last night may have been the newsiest Friday night of Donald Trump’s second presidency. After two days in bunker mode following the bombshell release of tens of thousands of Epstein emails, hundreds of which mention him, he finally took questions from reporters on Air Force One – and it got spicy. And earlier he’d granted a particularly slithery interview to British opinion broadcaster GB News, who asked not a single question about the notorious dead paedophile.
Meanwhile in Trumpworld
- He blasted music from the White House
- A Ghislaine pardon is still on the table
- Marjorie Taylor Greene is off his Christmas list
- Sadiq Khan was never on it
- He plans to sue the BBC for a bajillion dollars
- His mystery MRI may or may not have been aimed at his brain
Here’s everything you need to know
Epstein
1. DJ Donny T on the ones and twos
If you wanted an illustration of what Trump’s bunker mode looks like, you could hardly ask for a better one than this. The President of the United States rattling around his newly paved-over Rose Garden, apparently blasting out all his favourite songs. It’s all very sulky teenager, but this is what was really happening at the White House on Friday afternoon.
2. He won’t rule out Ghislaine pardon
Later, speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump refused to rule out handing convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell a presidential pardon. He said: “I haven’t even thought about it. I haven’t thought about for months. Maybe I haven’t thought about it at all.” Asked why he would not rule it out, he said: “I don’t rule it in or out.”
3. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Trump has publicly ditched one of his most prominent MAGA-world supporters, calling Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene “‘Wacky’ Marjorie” and saying he would endorse a challenger against her in next year’s midterms “if the right person runs.”
The breakup was a while in the post, as Greene has seemingly moderated her political profile. The three-term US House member has increasingly dissented from Republican leaders, attacking them during the just-ended federal government shutdown and saying they need a plan to help people who are losing subsidies to afford health insurance policies. Accusing her of going “Far Left,” Trump wrote on Truth Social that all he had witnessed from Greene in recent months is “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” adding, of Greene’s purported irritation that he doesn’t return her phone calls, “I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day.” Many Brits may know her from her wild exchange with Emily Maitlis, whom she told to “f*** off” after being questioned about her promotion of an antisemitic “Jewish space lasers” conspiracy theory. In recent months she has been a prominent Republican voice calling for the full release of the Epstein files.
4. Of course, MTG fought back
Greene Tweeted claiming Trump had “attacked me and lied about me.” She added a screenshot of a text she said she had sent the president earlier in the day about releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, which she said “is what sent him over the edge.” She said it was “astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level,” referencing next week’s House vote over releasing the Epstein files. Writing that she had supported Trump “with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him,” Greene added, “I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”
5. Epstein texting congresswoman during Cohen hearing
The Washington Post has done a sterling job of lining up some of Epstein’s texts with reality. In particular, they’ve identified text exchanges apparently between the notorious paedophile and a Democrat member of Hongress – Stacey Plaskett, delegate to the House from the US Virgin Islands – during a Congressional committee grilling of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen. In one exchange, Epstein’s texts appeared to influence her questions. He mentioned “RONA- keeper of secrets” to her in one text, misspelling the first name of Trump assistant Rhona Graff.” “RONA??” Plaskett responded. “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym?” “That’s his assistant,” Epstein replied. “He’s opened the door to questions re who are the other henchmen at trump org,” Epstein later said, to which she responded: “Yup. Very aware and waiting my turn.”
Later she asked Cohen about Trump associates, saying : “Are there other people that we should be meeting with?” “So Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer in The Trump Organization,” Cohen replied. But Plaskett interrupted, saying: “You’ve got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them. Is Ms. Rhona, what is Ms. Rhona’s– …?” Cohen replied: “Rhona Graff is the — Mr. Trump’s executive assistant … She was — her office is directly next to his, and she’s involved in a lot that went on.”
6. Have a ‘Banging’ Christmas
Donald Trump allegedly told friends he was “banging” his 28-year-old White House assistant, a prominent author claimed to Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolff, who has written several books and articles about Trump, made the claim in a draft of a portion of a book shared with the paedophile financier in a 2019 email. In it, he names Madeleine Westerhout as the assistant. Ms Westerhout last night told the Mirror the claims in Wolff’s email were “absurd” and “unhinged from reality”. The email was released as part of a 23,000 document trove of communications and papers handed to Congress by Epstein’s estate. The draft recalls Trump’s decision to spend the 2018 Christmas holiday at the White House, rather than decamp with his family to Mar A Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida resort.
You can read the full story here
The Special Relationship
7. Trump re-heats Sadiq Khan feud
In a hilariously uncritical Oval Office interview with GB News, Trump reignited his feud with Sadiq Khan. Asked about Sir Sadiq, Trump said: “He’s a terrible, terrible mayor. As an example, I was a high ranking officer, sort of always, or President. Even as a civilian, I was a respected person. He treated me very badly. I said who is that guy? He’s a terrible mayor, and look at the crime in London.” Violent crime is falling in London. There was a 6% reduction in violence against the person recorded by the metropolitan police in the 12 months to March 2025. Londoners are statistically less likely to be a victim of violent crime than across the rest of England & Wales .
Trump went on: “My mother loved London, she loved that city…but it’s a different London than you have today. Today you have people being stabbed in the ass. Or worse. But no it’s crazy. Your mayor is a disaster. I don’t even know him. If you put him there I wouldn’t even know who he was. I can tell you he’s a disaster. He’s a nasty person. And he’s letting crime go.” He went on to repeat claims widely spread by far-right and white supremacist groups in the UK that there are “no-go” areas for the police in London, and areas where so-called Sharia Law has supplanted British law. Neither of these claims is true.
You can read the full story here
8. Trump threatens to sue BBC for a bajillion dollars
Donald Trump says he will sue the BBC for between one and five billion dollars over the increasingly preposterous Panorama editing row. And he falsely claimed not to have spoken the words used in the programme at all. But the broadcaster indicated it would not pay him damages over the programme, which did not air in the US. “We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and five billion dollars, probably sometime next week,” Trump told a reporter on Air Force One on his way to Florida. “I think I have to do it, they even admit that they cheated. Not that they wouldn’t not have done that. They changed the words coming out of my mouth. That’s worse than what CBS did with Kamala.”
This is untrue. None of the speech elements the BBC broadcast were fabricated. All of them were complete sentences spoken by the President during his January 6th 2021 speech. Countless courts, plus the US House of Representative agreed that Trump’s speech played a role in inciting violence on what became a bloody insurrection at the US capitol shortly after the speech.
9. Trump claims the Beeb literally manipulated footage to make him say things he did not
Trump also appeared to suggest in the GB News interview, broadcast later, that the BBC had manipulated the footage to make his voice say things that he did not say. This is also untrue. The phrases used in the broadcast were from different parts of the speech, but they were not invented.
“The word fake is one thing but this is beyond fake, what they did. The lawyers walked in and said: “sir, you’re not going to believe this…” They showed me the one, and then they showed me the other. And it’s not even …it’s different words. It looks like even the same mouth movement. Who even would be able to even find …somebody did an amazing job to be able to…but it’s a totally different meaning and totally different words.” He added: “[CBS] changed [Kamala Harris’] answer but at least they didn’t show it coming out of her mouth.”
READ MORE: How Donald Trump turned the White House into a tacky gold palace full of trinkets in 100 days
10. Keir Starmer is going to get a call…
Trump went on: “The people of the UK are very angry about what happened, as you can imagine, because it shows the BBC is fake news.” Asked if he’d raised the issue with Keir Starmer, he said: “I haven’t but I’ll call him. He actually put a call in to me, because he’s very embarrassed.”
Trump’s health
11. MRI
Trump says the MRI he had during his recent visit to Walter Reed medical centre is a totally normal and completely routine element of a physical, saying: “What you think I shouldn’t get it? Other people get it.” Reader, it is not. He went on to say he had no idea which part of his body was being examined in the scan, only that “the doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen. The result was outstanding.” Which led to this brutal question from a reporter: “Was it your brain?”