The TOI correspondent from Washington: It was just another tormenting Thursday in the capital of absurdity that is Washington DC these days. In a single 24-hour news cycle, the US first lady held a surprise news conference to swear she barely knew the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, while her husband took to Truth Social to verbally decapitate MAGA talking heads whom he once embraced. All this, while the US veep was packed off to Pakistan to salvage a war started by his boss to distract everyone from the Epstein files, which the boss’ wife has now brought back to attention.
The day began with the sort of event that makes press secretaries weep: Melania Trump, usually as visible as a ghost in a witness-protection program, strode into the East Room to assert “I was not close to Epstein. We met at a handful of social events in the early 2000s, that’s all,” in a tone that suggested a desire to be someplace else and an accent that showed she was from someplace else.
