Lawrence: Trump wants us to talk about Jimmy Kimmel. So we'll talk about Trump & Jeffrey Epstein

Well, there will be no jokes about Donald Trump's comically incompetent FBI director tonight on ABC, because that corporate media giant decided to bend to the will of Donald Trump and Donald Trump's FCC commissioner urged ABC to at least suspend Jimmy Kimmel because of something Jimmy Kimmel said about the reaction to the killing of Charlie Kirk. At 8.04 p.m., Donald Trump tweeted, Great news for America. The ratings challenge, Jimmy Kimmel show is canceled. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage

to do what had to be done. Kimmel had zero talent and worse ratings than even Colbert. If that's possible, that leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC three exclamation points from the most childish and peculiar, to put it mildly, president in history. That's what he had to say tonight. That's what he thought was important for the world to hear from him tonight.

Richard Nixon never tried this. Richard Nixon, the most corrupt American president prior to Donald Trump, never tried to get Johnny Carson fired from The Tonight Show for telling jokes about Richard Nixon. No president ever tried that. No president has ever threatened corporate America more than the current Republican president. Donald Trump is the first president in history to essentially seize a piece of a private

corporation. corporation when last month the Trump administration took a 10 percent stake in Intel, a private company. And now that is very old fashioned and very stupid Soviet style socialism. Very stupid. Private companies run best as private companies. Republicans prior to Donald Trump were right about that.

And Democrats were also right about that, because they believed that too. But Democrats still believe it. Democrats have never tried to take over private companies. Democrats have never tried to tell private companies or private universities who to hire or who to fire. When one Republican Senator, Joe McCarthy, went on a crusade against what he said were

communists working in the government, and when some other Republican members of Congress crusaded against what they believed to be communists working in the movie business, the movie business was terrified, and executives developed a blacklist of people who they would not hire. There is no history of corporate bravery in America. And so it is not surprising that corporations fearing the wrath of a president who will

take action against them do what that president wants them to do. What is shocking is that the United States of America has such a president. We have never had one before Donald Trump. We have never had a president who would tell his FCC commissioner to attack any networks that employ anyone who says anything

negative about that president, who tells a joke about that president. And now we do. Now we do have that. I have long thought that much of the coverage of the Trump political career is best left to the late-night comedians. There have been many, many news days

where I've considered commenting on some aspects of what Donald Trump had done that day and decided not to because I thought Seth Meyers will do a better job with this. Jon Stewart will do a better job with this. Stephen Colbert will do a better job with this thing. Jimmy Kimmel will do something much better

than I can do with that particular crazy thing that Donald Trump had done or said that day. And so I focused on something else that night of Johnny Carson hosting The Tonight Show, months could go by without him making a joke about the president, because the president wasn't a joke. The president was someone who was taken seriously and respected as the president by most people

in the country most of the time. Not always, but most of the time. When Johnny Carson didn't tell a joke about the president, it was usually one joke. One. And he moved on. An unwritten rule for Tonight Show writers was that Johnny Carson never told more than

three political jokes in one monologue because Johnny thought that would be boring. Because politics was boring. Remember the luxury of politics being boring? How old do you have to be to be able to remember when you had the luxury of feeling American politics was boring and you were right? Now we have a president who is a joke, a president who is an unavoidable joke for people doing daily nightly comedy.

And Donald Trump doesn't like the joke. And so, as the comedians' microphones get cut off, the joke becomes darker. We should be shocked by Donald Trump, but no real student of American corporate history can be shocked by American corporate behavior when faced with threats of real socialistic interference in their businesses. Donald Trump wants us to spend this hour talking about Jimmy Kimmel.

That's what he wants. And he has had that wish come true on most of cable news tonight. He won't have that wish come true here. We are going to continue to cover what Donald Trump doesn't want us to cover. Donald Trump wants an hour of talk about Jimmy Kimmel because he wants to show off his power to do what he did to Jimmy Kimmel.

That is what he wants. He wants outrage over Jimmy Kimmel because that will prove to his most ardent followers that he must be doing something right if the outrage is pouring out there over something Donald Trump has done. And there has been plenty

of outrage tonight on cable news. There will be more. That's good. I'm glad it's there, but that's not what this hour is going to be about., as American broadcasters, silence comedians. Guerrilla street comedians will come forward to do those jobs. In London last night, Donald Trump was greeted with pictures and videos of himself and Jeffrey Epstein, and the fond birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein with what appears to be Donald Trump's signature, all projected onto Windsor Castle, where Donald Trump is

staying during his state visit. That was a serious protest with a British comedic touch, irreverent, to put it mildly. Months ago, when the British government scheduled this flattery tour for Donald Trump in London to try to get him to come to his senses about tariffs with Britain, at least, Jeffrey Epstein had not yet risen from the dead to become Donald Trump's political and moral problem of the year.

The crimes of Jeffrey Epstein had already shaken the walls of Windsor Castle for years. The current king of England has a little brother named Andrew, who was a great friend of Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein's criminal co-conspirator and sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell. And the king's little brother, Andrew, settled a lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre that accused him of raping her. Like the king and everyone in his family throughout history,

Andrew had no idea how to deal with public criticism. And so Andrew foolishly tried to do a television interview that would dig him out of trouble, which only made matters worse.

Do you regret the whole friendship with Epstein?

Now, still not. The reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn, either by him or because of him, were actually very useful.

What a horrible, horrible human being. Jeffrey Epstein was very useful to him. That's what the King's little brother thought, still in 2019. Andrew managed to get demoted from a job that isn't a real job because of that interview, because of being so stupid in that

interview, and being so evil in his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and being so evil in his retrospective view of Jeffrey Epstein's utility to him. Andrew retained his ridiculous, archaic title of prince, but his penalty was he now had nothing to do in a way that was somehow new from every previous person with prince as a title who had nothing to do every single day of their lives. That was his penalty.

That's a prince's penalty. Keep doing nothing for the rest of your life. Take a guy that has nothing to do and officially declare he has nothing to do, and don't let him come to some of the important family gatherings because of his association with the raper of children and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The last thing the current King of England wanted was the stain of a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in his family or in his life in

any way. That was not to enter his castle. And then, because of Donald Trump's illegal and unconstitutional use of tariffs, the British government got the brilliant idea that the way to deal with Donald Trump is to flatter him with an invitation from the King of England to come to London to be showered in flattery by the family that is already disgraced because of the little brother Andrew's relationship with a raper of children, with a sex trafficker.

And so Andrew is not welcome at that table now where Donald Trump is welcome. And Jeffrey Epstein never said that he was Andrew's closest friend. But Jeffrey Epstein did say in a taped interview with Michael Wolff, I was Donald's closest friend for 10 years. And so the king of England has stupidly managed to invite his family's piece of the Epstein scandal right into his castle tonight. If Andrew was too close to Jeffrey Epstein to not be allowed close to the king, how can Donald Trump be

sitting at that table close to the king? Peter Mendelsohn got fired last week. Andrew was not allowed at that table, and now Peter Mendelsohn, who was supposed to be at that table, who was going to be at that table as of last week, is now not allowed at that table. When this flattery invitation was extended to Donald Trump, Peter Mandelson was in the room in the Oval Office. Peter Mandelson was then the

British ambassador to the United States, and he lost that job just last week because of Jeffrey Epstein. Last week, Bloomberg published emails between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 after Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in a plea deal for sex trafficking. Peter Mandelson emailed Jeffrey Epstein saying, I think the world of you, and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.

I can still barely understand it. It could not happen in Britain. That was the day after Jeffrey Epstein began serving his very light sentence in Florida, in which he was allowed to spend the day at his office while sleeping at a facility in custody overnight.

It just could not happen in Britain. I guess not. What happens in Britain is the king just makes you do nothing for the rest of your life. And so the British government, in its idiotic attempt to co-opt Donald Trump through flattery, has put their king in the center of the Epstein scandal tonight, with Donald Trump sitting at the table while the ghosts of former Ambassador Mendelsohn and little brother Andrew float around the room.

In Washington today, at the House Judiciary Committee, Donald Trump's most incompetent FBI director in history showed up for a regularly scheduled oversight hearing where Republican Thomas Massey dismantled Kashyap Patel's lazy testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

I watched some of your Senate hearing yesterday when Senator Kennedy asked you, you've seen most of the files, who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these women to besides himself? You replied, according to the transcript, there is no credible information that he trafficked them to anyone else. You also said somewhere in the hearing and here today that the problem is that the case files are constrained

by limited search warrants from 2006 to 2007 and that the non-prosecution agreement hamstrung future investigations. Those constraints only apply to Southern District of Florida. They do not apply to Southern District of New York,

the location of the 2019 sex trafficking indictment, which produced many things, including a series of FD 302 documents. According to victims who cooperated with the FBI in that investigation, these documents in FBI possession, your possession,

detail at least 20 men, including Mr. Jess Staley, CEO of Barclays Bank, who Jeffrey Epstein trafficked victims to. Victims including minors such as Virginia Roberts. You free? May she rest in peace. That list also includes at least 19 other individuals. One Hollywood producer worth a few hundred million dollars, one royal

prince, one high-profile individual in the music industry, one very prominent banker, one high-profile government official, one high-profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, at least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files, including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files, the files that you control. I don't know exactly

who they are, but the FBI does. Have you launched any investigations into any of

these people, and have you seen these 302 documents? Sir, I have asked my FBI agents to review the entirety of the Epstein files and bring forth any credible information, and we're working with Congress not only to divulge that information and produce it to you, but any investigations that arise from any credible investigation will be brought.

There have been no new materials brought to me launching a new indictment. So is the loophole here here or is it your assertion that these victims aren't credible? That the 302s maybe didn't produce credible statements that rise to a probable cause?

It's not my assertion, sir. It's the assertion of two different United States Attorney's Offices from three separate administrations who investigated those same materials in live time.

Are the 302 documents in the FBI's possession? They reviewed all that, yes sir. And so have you reviewed those 302 documents where the victims name the people who victimized

them?

If I personally know, but the FBI has. So how can you sit here and in front of the Senate and say there are no names? I said, I named one today.

Kashyap Patel obviously had no answer for that. And he obviously believes that the only way for him to continue to hold onto his job is for him to play the role of wise guy in congressional hearings in a more slovenly way than anyone in history has ever attempted to do anything like that.

Did you ever tell Donald Trump his name is in the files?

I have never spoken to President Trump about the Epstein files.

Did you ever tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files? The Attorney General and I have

had numerous discussions about the entirety of the Epstein files and the reviews conducted by our team. Did you tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files? And we have released where President Trump's name is in the Epstein files.

It's a simple question. Did you tell the Attorney General that the

President's name is in the Epstein files? During many conversations that the attorney general and I have had on the matter of Epstein, we have reviewed.

The question is simple.

Who can be the...

Did you tell the attorney general that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files? Yes or no?

Why don't you try spelling it out?

Yes or no? Yes or no? Did you tell the attorney general