The View Calls Trump's Epstein Reversal PR Stunt, Say He Could Just Release Files If He Really Wants

Instead, they debated "why the sudden 180" after the president released a statement on Truth Social over the weekend urging House Republicans to vote to release the files. The reversal came after he'd been calling the whole thing a "Democratic hoax" and urged his followers to just forget all about Jeffrey Epstein and move on.

Now, he's urging for the files to be released so the GOP can "get BACK ON POINT," as he emphasized in all-caps. "I don't buy this 180 at all, I think it's PR," argued Alyssa Farah Griffin. "I think that he's hearing from the MAGA base -- he usually really has his finger on the pulse of what they care about -- and he realizes this is out of control, he can't convince them to not care about it."

Instead, she thinks that he's hoping that by looking interested in releasing the files, his base will be pleased "because it hits to the core of what got Trump into power: drain the swamp."

"So many of his followers thought he was going to take on the powerful and the politically connected," she argued. "And by not releasing this, not leaning into full transparency, he seems like he's protecting those very people."

Sunny Hostin then turned and asked Griffin, who has spent time with Trump's circle, why he's been so reluctant: "He hasn't been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, right, and so I don't know that he has loyalty to anyone, Jeffrey Epstein wrote that, he has loyalty to no one. Why not release the files?"

"Because it might implicate the finances," Sara Haines interjected, after the women had discussed Epstein alluding to possible alleged financial malfeasance in Trump's real estate dealings in some of the recently-released emails.

"I think it could also be powerful donors who've given a lot of money, friends of his," Griffin added, while Ana Navarro had earlier suggested that she thinks it's as simple as embarrassment. Already, Trump's name appears more than 1,000 times in the emails the public and media are combing through now, and not always in the most flattering light.

"He's all over the files. He's all over these emails," Navarro said, to which Hostin clarified, "But no criminal wrongdoing."

"It doesn't matter that it's not criminal wrongdoing, it's embarrassing, it's mortifying," Navarro argued. "Do you think Donald Trump wants to hear Epstein, his close friend of many years before they had that breakup, talk about him being insane and having dementia and talk about his financial malfeasance."

She also said that many of the people in Trump's inner circle, even if he's not guilty of anything, are "implicated" in one thing. "They are implicated in rehabbing Epstein's image after he had served jail," she asserted. "They are implicated in accepting a pedophile back into polite society after they knew that he was a registered sexual predator."

All of these factors, the women argued, are why Trump might have been holding back on releasing the files until this weekend's reversal.

"This is what should disgust us," Navarro insisted. "I think so many people knew, had an inkling, should have known what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. If not before 2008 when he got put in jail, then certainly after 2008, but they chose to look the other way because they think that rick and powerful men can do whatever the hell they want without any accountability."

Hostin, at another point, argued that Trump "can order the Department of Justice to release the Epstein Files without Congressional authorization, but he has refused to do so, though it may not be quite that simple with multiple ongoing investigations involving said files -- including one Trump just launched with the DOJ against some major banks and Bill Clinton.

At the same time, Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to echo Hostin's argument, when he argued on X directly at the president that the House "vote is to compel YOU to release them. Let’s make this easier. Just release the files now," as reported by Deadline.

But Deadline also notes that the DOJ could use the ongoing probes, including the one Trump just launched, as justification for continuing to withhold files.

"Trump has turned the Department of Justice into his own personal law firm," Hostin argued on Monday's episode, citing a New York Times article over the weekend that interviewed "60 Attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump's Justice Department."

"60 attorneys, former and many, many current prosecutors, were interviewed and the top ethics official, prosecutor [Joseph] Tirrell, was fired by Pam Bondi because she didn't want to listen to the ethics rules, Kash Patel didn't want to listen to the ethics rules," she asserted, "and so I think what we're hearing now is a lot about fealty to Trump and not necessarily an ode to the Constitution."

"But to Sunny's point, he has the authority to direct the DOJ to release everything they have," Griffin pointed out. "He doesn't need this discharge petition, he doesn't need a vote in Congress."

Haines also emphasized that despite how it looks, and how even their conversation was going, this should not be a political issue, which is another reason Trump may have felt compelled to flip his stance. She shared video of some of the alleged survivors of Epstein's sex trafficking, who showed pictures of themselves as 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds when they were sexually abused.

"He's losing any support he had," she said of Trump's initial anti-release position. "They say right now that Republicans are flocking to support this because this isn't political, this is a crime. There was a pedophile involved here and there are people hiding this."

"I remind everyone, the innocence of life lost, whether you're 8, 4, 15, these are our young people and they will carry this forever," she urged. "So the least people can do is demand transparency and hold people accountable for this."

"Andy by the way, 16 years old, that is pedophilia. Anyone under legal consenting age, that is pedophilia," Griffin reminded the audience.

Ultimately, Joy Behar ended the segment with a note that Senate Majority Leader John Thune "has refused to open the file." She added that Lindsay Graham, John Kennedy, Josh Hawley, and Thom Tillis "are calling for the release in the Senate," so there may be enough support there for it to pass if it comes to the floor.

Ana wondered if Thune could refuse "if he gets it from Congress with an overwhelming majority vote, including Republicans," but Sunny reiterated, 'Well why doesn't [Trump] just release it? He has the authority to do so."

The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.