On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone discusses Trump's doodles and how Trump's denial of doing drawings in WSJ/Epstein story may add more fuel to the story in the media
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From the July 17, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The Weeknight
MICHAEL STEELE (CO-HOST): Angelo, further to Vaughn's point just now about the president's denial, the Justice department, in fact, Justice department officials, according to Wall Street Journal, did not respond to their request for comments, or address questions about whether the Trump pages or the pages of the birthday album were part of the agency's recent documents review. That's all the legal stuff that's going to get vetted out over the next twenty-four-plus hours. This story breaking, and and to Vaughn's point, it's captured in images that we've seen of of this president with — partying with Epstein.
How does this now play into the ongoing narrative that we started the show talking about tonight? This now drops on the heels of what has been a bruising day for the president with his base.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): And part of this, you know, at the center of all this, you know, these conspiracies, this story, the thing that keeps it churning is that you have a bunch of people that sort of gamify it. They like to find threads and then pull them as much as you can. So when you put anything into there, they pull that thread. So one, I mean, the let's assume for a second, you know, the reporting is is accurate or no — let's assume it's accurate. The sentence is kinda creepy. May every day be a wonderful secret? I mean, think of what we're talking about here. That people are gonna be like, that's weird. I wanna hear some answers. Even if it's a joke, you gotta give us something.
The second thing is his denial is part of the problem. So in his denial, he says, I don't do drawings like that. Well, actually, I can think of three off the top of my head that were auctioned. One of him doing a skyline of New York City that sold for thirty grand back in 2017. I can think of another where he did a skyscraper in black Sharpie and then made the sidewalk his name. There was another where he drew a money tree, and then somewhere in the roots was Donald. These are these are things that are easily able to be found. I remember three. There's gotta be more. So it's gonna be pretty easy to find Donald Trump's doodles that he was selling at one point or that were getting sold at auction.
So this denial that I don't even do these kinds of drawings, there's gonna be plenty of proof points to undermine that. And that's part of the issue here to your question, which is that it's just gonna give these people something to pull, which is like fresh fuel. And then as it works its way up the chain, it's gonna mean more demands for transparency.
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That's the thing, you never know what's next.
And I think that's part of why, you know, they can't just fabricate something and just throw it out there because they don't know what's out there. And there's obviously a lot of material or potential material that they're trying to account for, but this is fresh fuel for the story. Let's just say it is.
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): Angelo, to your point, about the denial, it is not simply a denial about not having drawn this specific picture or written this specific card, the president saying, I never wrote a picture in my life. We're gonna be staying with the story for the rest of the hour.