Closing summary
This concludes our coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
The first lady, Melania Trump, read reporters an extraordinary statement denying that she ever had “a relationship” with Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender, or his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach,” the first lady said on Thursday. However, that contention is undermined by the fact that the most well-known images of the two couples together were taken at Trump’s own club, Mar-a-Lago, on 12 February 2000.
While the first lady did mention in the statement she read aloud an email she sent to Maxwell, apparently in reference to a 2002 note signed, “Love, Melania”, that friendly correspondence was released by the justice department in January, offering no hint as to why she chose to address it now.
Even normally well-sourced correspondents for rightwing outlets were at a loss to explain why the first lady felt the need to issue a statement denying that she had any relationship with Epstein, the late sex offender who socialized with her husband for nearly two decades, or his accomplice Maxwell.
The normally ever-present Donald Trump was out of sight all day, but the president spent hours on a social-media posting spree, complaining about perceived slights from Iran, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and four former supporters in the rightwing media who have criticized his war on Iran.
Besieged by questions about the deadly chaos he unleashed by attacking Iran and his wife’s statement on Epstein, Trump tried to shift the national conversation back to his immigration crackdown by posting graphic video of a woman in Florida being murdered last week by a man he called an illegal immigrant from Haiti.
The far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones fired back at Donald Trump for disowning him, writing on social media: “I have made it very clear that I no longer support Trump and I’m very thankful to him for making it clear that I have nothing to do with him. The new Trump is a rotting husk of the old Trump.”
The Texas radio host added a suggestion that Trump had fallen under the sway of another far-right host: Mark Levin of Fox News. Levin, who is an ardent supporter of Israel, has been engaged in a nasty feud with the former Fox host Megyn Kelly, accusing her Trump over the US-Israeli attack on Iran of being motivated by anti-semitism.
In a video response to Trump’s earlier post attacking Jones, Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Jones began by playing a clip of Trump saying to Jones in 2015: “I just want to finish by saying your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed I hope”.
“President Trump, you promised to never let me down, but now you’ve let yourself and America down,” Jones said in the latest sign of the deep fissure in the far-right movement led by Trump over his decision to attack Iran at the urging of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
