MASTER AND APPRENTICE

Vance Accidentally Sabotages Trump’s Epstein Files Plea

An interview published just before the president ranted in the White House showed divergent messaging from the two men.

Vice President JD Vance appears to have split with President Trump on what should happen next regarding the latest dump of the Epstein files.

The newest tranche of documents, released last week, re-ignited a familiar headache for POTUS. It also saw the return of a familiar veiled plea, after his name or related terms were found 5,300 times within the documents. “I think it’s really time for the country to get onto something else,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon.

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But, around an hour prior, the Daily Mail dropped a wide-ranging interview with Trump’s second in command, where he suggested that he was open to a fresh probe in relation to the files.

Over the weekend, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, previously known as Prince Andrew, should be prepared to testify before Congress about his past dealings with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.

“I saw Keir Starmer said something about this,” Vance told the Mail, before firmly stating his position. “I’m certainly open to it,” he added.

As Trump was trying to brush three million files under the rug in the Oval Office, the vice president was telling one of the world’s most read publications that he thinks official probes into the files should continue.

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“I’ll let them determine whether they should talk to Prince Andrew,” he said of Congressional Republicans. “I’d certainly be open to it. But it’s their call, not mine.”

Driving home his position, the vice president said the files released by the Justice Department on Friday showed that “there’s a pretty incestuous nature to America’s elites.”

Vance has been vocal about the murky world of Epstein in the past. “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…" he tweeted in 2021, when he was an Ohio Senate hopeful.

He added in a separate post, “If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve? I’m sure there’s a middle class teenager somewhere who could use some harassing right now but maybe try to do your job once in a while.”

When he entered Trump World, Vance struck a different tone. He often tried to link the scandal to “left-wing politicians and left-wing political leaders.” He also insisted that the Trump administration was “not shielding anything” by not releasing the files, even after missing a legal deadline to release the tranche in December 2025.

Now that millions of files have been made public, Vance is sticking to his story, saying that the releases have exonerated his boss. In the Daily Mail interview, he attempted to shift the focus onto Democratic figures.

“President Trump is very much outside of the social circle,’ Vance insisted. ”He knows a lot of these people. He certainly has similar wealth and power. But he never really was friendly with Epstein in a way that a lot of these other people were."

Vance continued, “I think that it just shows there’s an incestuous nature to America’s elites, and it’s pretty gross. And, a lot of people, I think, it reflects very poorly on them. Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, a lot of others.”

This comment was more in line with Trump’s pleas in the Oval Office later on Tuesday. “Now that nothing came out about me, other than it was a conspiracy against me, literally, by Epstein and other people. But I think it’s time now for the country to maybe get onto something else,” he said.

The White House and representatives for Vance have been contacted for comment.

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