In this week’s premiere episode of First Draft: Your Look at the Headlines and the Journalists Who Write Them, Susan Demas and Nina Burleigh cut straight to the core of Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein — a window into how power, money, and misogyny intertwined for decades. It was a “competition for female flesh,” where women were passed around like props and cruelty was part of the fun, says Burleigh. That’s the world Trump came up in, and Epstein was right there with him. What looks like gossip in the tabloids turns out to be a blueprint for how both men operated in public life.
The story gets darker when it overlaps with Trump’s own family orbit. Melania arrived in New York as part of a wave of Eastern European models funneled through shady agencies and pageants, a world Epstein and Trump both exploited. As Burleigh put it, “It is not unlikely Epstein would have known her.” What keeps reporters from pushing further isn’t lack of evidence — it’s the arsenal of lawyers around Trump and Epstein who specialize in scaring people silent, what Burleigh calls “litigation terrorism.” That silence, she argues, has protected powerful men for decades while leaving victims unheard.
And then there’s the hypocrisy. MAGA built an entire mythology around “release the Epstein files” — yet inside Trump’s DOJ, a thousand FBI agents were ordered to scrub his name from those same records. The result? Ghislaine Maxwell in a cushy prison, Epstein’s lawyers shuffled into Trump’s orbit, and whispers of a pardon waiting at the end. All the while, the survivors are being ignored.
For Burleigh, it all points to the same conclusion: “We are looking at a lawless regime.” And if history is any guide, the coverup may prove just as consequential as the crimes themselves.
Tune into a conversation that won’t go away, as much as Trump wants it to. And for more investigative journalism, subscribe to Burleigh’s Substack, American Freakshow, for COURIER Newsroom.
