Donald Trump abruptly ended a phone interview with CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski on Tuesday after being pressed about newly resurfaced photos showing him alongside convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — including at Trump’s 1993 wedding and an event where Epstein is seen near a young Ivanka and Eric Trump.
The images, dating back three decades, show Epstein mingling with Trump’s family at the Harley Davidson Café opening and appearing at the Mar-a-Lago wedding to Marla Maples. Though publicly available on image archives like Google and Shutterstock, the photos had not been widely circulated until CNN published them this week under the banner of “never-before-seen” exclusives.
Trump, reportedly furious, lasted just 30 seconds on the call before hanging up.
“When I asked him about the wedding photo,” Kaczynski said on air, “he paused and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ called CNN ‘fake news,’ and then hung up.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung doubled down, slamming the report as “disgustingly misleading.” He insisted that Trump had “kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for being a creep,” and dismissed the images as “out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous events.”
However, the CNN story comes amid growing backlash from Trump’s own base over how his administration has handled the Epstein case. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent conclusion that no further charges would be brought has enraged MAGA loyalists, who continue to fuel theories that Epstein was murdered in prison and that a hidden “client list” is being suppressed.
Maxwell, the only Epstein associate so far convicted, is fighting to overturn her conviction, arguing her prosecution violated a 2008 plea deal Epstein struck. The DOJ has rejected her appeal request.
As for the photos, CNN admits they weren’t exactly “new” — just largely ignored until now. But they’ve reignited a storm of criticism, not just against Trump’s past but his present: a Justice Department still struggling to convince its base that the Epstein saga is truly closed.