First Lady Melania Trump took to X Thursday to claim victory after Democratic strategist James Carville took back comments about an alleged connection with Jeffrey Epstein the night she first met Donald Trump.
The First Lady let two images do the talking after her lawyers secured the retraction. They were screen captures of the transcript of Carville’s apology and a crossed-out image of his face and video of the episode titled, “The Epstein Connection: Trump & Melania.”
Carville opened his latest episode of the Politics War Room podcast on Thursday with the retraction and apology.
It went:
In last week’s podcast episode, we spoke with Judd Legum. After the episode, we received a letter from Melania Trump’s lawyer. He took issue with our title of one of those YouTube videos from that episode and a couple of comments I made about the first lady. We took a look at what they complained about, and we took down the video and edited out those comments from the episode. I also take back these statements and apologize.
The objection apparently concerned Carville’s characterization of how she met her future husband. That claim was connected to an article in the Daily Beast that reported allegations by journalist Michael Wolff that a modeling agent connected to Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump.
After the First Lady’s lawyers objected, the Daily Beast took down the article and issued an editor’s note in its place with a detailed apology as well.
“First Lady Melania Trump’s attorneys are actively ensuring immediate retractions and apologies by those who spread malicious, defamatory falsehoods,” aide to the First Lady Nick Clemens told Fox News digital. “The true account of how the First Lady met President Trump is in her best-selling book, Melania.”
The book details that Trump introduced himself at a New York fashion event in 1998 at the Kit Kat Club. Donald Trump had another woman on his arm that night and she didn’t take his interest in her seriously, she wrote.
The legal effort by the First Lady’s lawyers is understandable. In recent weeks detractors populated her X post with vile, unsubstantiated comments that tried to connect the first couple with notorious New York pedophile Epstein.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
