Nobody will ever accuse president Donald Trump of rank sentimentality. Legions of wrestling fans across the United States mourned on Thursday morning the sudden death of Hulk Hogan, the original wrestling star who last July literally gave the shirt off his back to Trump during a memorable, vein-popping cameo at the Republican convention.
But as ever, the national news cycle revolving around the president on Thursday was typically furious and strange. In Tallahassee, Florida, the US deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, met Ghislaine Maxwell, the English socialite currently serving 20 years for her sex-trafficking crimes and procuring minors for Jeffrey Epstein. The purpose and details of the meeting, which lasted several hours, remain obscure.
Trump took to his social media account to pay brief but heartfelt tribute to “the Hulkster”, whom he described as “MAGA all the way”. Then, a few hours later, he appeared in a white construction-site hard hat in the company of Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and of late the subject of choice Trumpian smackdowns, such as “numbskull”, “moron” and “very dumb”.
The pair made unlikely bedfellows for a photo opportunity that quickly turned surreal. The headgear was occasioned by the tour of the Federal Reserve Building, which is undergoing a complete interior and exterior construction overhaul to the eye-watering tune of $2.7 billion.
Accompanying them was Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who has been leading the White House argument that the renovation costs are crazily high and merit investigation.
“One of the reasons we wanted to see it,” Scott explained for the cameras – “was the expenses overrun”.
For some unknown and distracting reason, Scott himself was not wearing a white hard hat. Maybe he forsook that safety precaution in a valiant attempt to keep the costs down. But the moment took a theatrical turn when president Trump, producing with a flourish a sheet of paper from his breast pocket, said: “So we are taking a look. It looks like it’s about 3.1 billion. It went up a little bit.”
Powell shook his head at this.
“Or a lot.” Trump continued.
“So, the $2.7 is now $3.1.”
At this point, Powell’s patience broke.
“I’m not aware of that, Mr president. I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”
“It just came out,” president Trump replied, and handed him the paper.
Federal Reserve chairs seldom make it to the top because of their charisma or magnetism. Their job demands the opposite. But this was Powell’s moment, whether he wished for it or not. He looked perplexed as he read the paper before he saw what he was being presented with.
“It came from the Martin renovation. You just added in a third building, is what that is,” he said, handing his president the paper.
“It’s a building that’s being built,” Trump said.
“No. It was built five years ago.”
The exchange wasn’t disrespectful to the office of the presidency on Powell’s part, nor withering. But the refusal to buckle made Scott’s servility all the more vivid in the moment. It was a startling reminder of how few people in Donald Trump’s orbit dare to contradict him.
Opinion is split as to whether Powell, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2017, will go down as a good Federal Reserve boss. He was heavily criticised in some quarters for being overly complacent during the post-pandemic inflationary acceleration.
And there may be legitimate argument in Trump’s argument that now, with the housing market in the United States dysfunctional, is the time to lower interest rates.
But Powell’s backbone and his belief that the Federal Reserve must remain independent to political pressure withstood this test. At times, Powell resembled a man sombrely considering the life choices that brought him to this moment: a presidential admonishment with both men dressed in the absurd headgear, like Lego figures brought to life.
But he didn’t buckle and the bizarre encounter closed with Trump jocularly slapping Powell on the back as he answered a reporter’s question of what he would like to see happen.
“Well, I’d love him to lower interest rates. Other than that, what can I tell you?”
Friends again? Who knew. But the conversation illustrates the unyielding strangeness of the atmosphere of the political summer in Washington.
On Wednesday, House speaker Mike Johnson sent the representatives home for an extra week of recess. Republican senators were unhappy that their colleagues had not stuck around to legislate a little more. The general assumption was that Johnson broke early to avoid a vote, prompted by representative Thomas Massie’s discharge petition, to release the Epstein files.
Donald Trump presents Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell with what Mr Trump called a list of cost overruns for the Federal Reserve’s $2.5 billion headquarters renovation project during a tour with Republican senator Tim Scott in Washington, DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“I’ve got to believe that there has to be more to it, because that almost seems to suggest if they go away for four or five – or how many weeks they’re going to go away – that that problem is going to go away,” senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“Do you guys really think you’re going to take your eyes off this issue come Labor Day? The answer is ‘no’. So, I think it’s a false premise assuming if they just walk away and avoid this vote, that it’s not going to continue to be an issue.”
A Fox News poll issued on Wednesday evening found that just 13 per cent of voters believed that the White House has been fully transparent with information related to the Epstein case, with 60 per cent Republicans in that category. And only 19 per cent stated that they have not been following the story at all. Alternatively, it is on the radar of 80 per cent of respondents.
That statistic alone may explain why alternative scandal pushed by the White House this week – with Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, releasing new documents that purport to link former president Barack Obama to what has been presented as a hoax claim of Russian influence during the 2016 election won by Trump – has yet to gain traction. It’s the old principle of maximum headroom. There are simply too many lurid plates spinning in the air above the White House for even the most willing Maga loyalists to keep their eyes and minds on.
Sean Hannity, whose influential evening show on Fox is pro-Trumpian agit-prop, did his best to stoke enthusiasm on Wednesday night, during an hour in which the Epstein story did not feature at all. RussiaGate, Hannity assured his viewers, is “a very real scandal surrounding a very real hoax that makes Watergate, frankly, look like a walk in the park”.
It was an unfortunate comparison given that Watergate’s denouement featured the resignation of a sitting president. But he nudged his viewership towards considering the gravity of this new set of documents released by the White House.
“Trump-Russia collusion was a fantasy, a complete lie, phoney, false conspiracy theory fed to Democrats and perpetuated by the state-run legacy media mob by the most corrupt administration in modern history.
“Now confirmation from the director of national intelligence that nearly a decade ago, the Obama White House reportedly used the full force of your federal government to delegitimatise the results of the 2016 election, malign the then president-elect Donald Trump before he even took office.
“And it was all based on lies cobbled together with an actual Russian disinformation dirty dossier bought and paid for by Donald Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.”
It could be that the idea of a prosecution against Obama is stretching the credulity of even the most devout believers in the Maga doctrine of deep-state conspiracies. Their reluctance to be distracted from the Epstein files is bordering on stubborn.
Another Republican senator, Eric Schmitt, had this to say about the staying power of the issue. “I think people are kind of curious and want more information, whether it’s potentially testimony or the release of credible information. A lot of people support that.
“It also probably speaks to a larger issue: People feel like the government has lied to them for so long on certain things. People would like to land on the side of more transparency.”
The failure to disclose the content of the Epstein files, as repeatedly promised by key Trump administration officials, represents a breach of that promised transparency to the Maga base.
Meanwhile, the questions go on. On Thursday, chief among those was why the department of justice felt the need to send an official as senior as Todd Blanche, who was Donald Trump’s personal attorney during his Manhattan “hush money” trial last year, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, who is clearly hoping to strike some sort of plea deal.
“The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time,” Blanche wrote in a statement before confirming that another meeting would take place on Friday.
It is unlikely that the intrigue and public fascination with the Epstein issue will disappear over the remainder of the summer. The scandal has taken on a momentum of its own.
As Hulk Hogan used to ask in more innocent times: “Whatcha gonna do when Hulk-a-mania runs wild on you?”
For Donald Trump, the answer is to pull on a hard hat and explain nothing.