Late-night comedians had a field day this week mocking Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to divert attention away from his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, especially after reports revealed he was informed back in May that his name appears in the Epstein files.
Seth Meyers kicked off his “Closer Look” segment by playing a clip of Trump urging Republicans to focus on Barack Obama “stealing” the 2016 election whenever asked about Epstein.
“It’s like watching a magic trick,” Meyers said, “except the magician sucks and the trick is obvious.” He added, “Now he’s got his intelligence director—Tulsi Gabbard—fully on board,” referring to her parroting of a conspiracy theory that Obama orchestrated the Russia investigation to sabotage Trump.
Gabbard had called the investigation “a yearslong conspiracy against the American people.” Meyers wasn’t buying it. “Whatever is in those Epstein files must be really bad,” he joked. “They’ll have to rename them the Trump Files featuring Jeffrey Epstein.”
Mocking the absurdity, Meyers said, “At this point, we’re one Epstein headline away from Trump announcing UFOs are real just to change the subject.”
Meyers also pointed out the irony: “Of course he’s in the files! He was close to Epstein for 15 years. Epstein once called him his closest friend.” The real kicker? “Republicans hyped these files for years thinking they’d hurt Democrats. Now they want them buried.”
He played an old clip of Dan Bongino demanding the Epstein files be released and laughed: “Now he is the ‘they’ hiding it. These guys are gonna end up doing conspiracy podcasts about themselves—‘Why did I bury the Epstein files? Who got to me?!’”
Stephen Colbert chimed in on The Late Show with his own take on the Wall Street Journal report that Trump was warned months ago about being named in the Epstein files. “I was shocked,” he deadpanned. “Next you’ll tell me the Pope’s in the Catholic files or a bear’s on the cover of Modern Woodspooper.”
Colbert showed footage from Epstein’s 2010 deposition where Epstein pleads the Fifth—and then some—when asked if he socialized with Trump in the presence of underage girls. “He invoked the Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendments,” Colbert noted. “That’s not a legal defense. That’s a panic attack in legalese.”
He added: “When a pedophile won’t say if he hung out with you around minors and invokes every amendment known to man, you’re in deep trouble.”
Colbert also highlighted a statement from Epstein’s brother, who contradicted Trump’s claim that he ended the friendship. According to Mark Epstein, it was Jeffrey who cut ties after realizing Trump was “a crook.”
“That’s next-level,” Colbert said. “When Jeffrey Epstein thinks you’re too corrupt to hang out with, you’ve got serious issues.”
The Daily Show’s Josh Johnson also weighed in: “Epstein died in 2019, but not since Tupac has a dead guy dropped so many bangers.” Reacting to Epstein’s vague legal evasion in his deposition, Johnson said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”
And when Pam Bondi, who reportedly briefed Trump on the Epstein files, suddenly dropped out of a CPAC event citing a “torn cornea,” Johnson quipped, “Even her cornea’s like ‘release the Epstein files or I’m out!’”
Across the board, the message from late-night: Trump’s deflection isn’t working—and the distractions only make people more curious about what’s in the files.
