It really shouldn’t be that big a deal.

Donald Trump was one of many friends solicited to send messages to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. There’s a far more cautious one from Bill Clinton, too.

If the president had merely said ‘yeah, I sent it, we were joking back and forth, nothing to see here’ – this was in 2003, before the child predator was charged with sexual abuse – nobody would have blinked. The birthday book was assembled by his then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Instead, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for supposedly publishing inaccuracies in its report on the Trump birthday message.

The Journal has now been vindicated.

Trump flatly denied having sent a birthday message at all. He can’t draw, he would never do such a thing, it was inconceivable.

Now it looks a lot more conceivable.

As the Journal was the first to report, there is a friendly back-and-forth against the backdrop of a sketch of a naked woman’s silhouette. Trump’s signature is in the pubic area, and the paper says it matches other acknowledged ‘Donald’ signatures – along with his use of such phrases as ‘a wonderful thing.’

There is this exchange:

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.

That’s it, given more punch by Trump’s denial that he never sent such a thing.

In fact, after the publication of the texts and the naked silhouette – which I’m sure you’ve seen as it’s been all over television – Trump continues to deny that the letter and sketch are his. 

They’re sure doing a good job of moving on from the Epstein mess, huh?

Reached on his cell yesterday by NBC reporter Garrett Haake, Trump said: ‘I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue.’

That sounds like wishful thinking. The only ‘dead’ part is Jeffrey Epstein.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt backed up the boss in a posting:

‘The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false. As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.

‘Furthermore, the ‘reporter’ @joe_palazzolo who wrote this hatchet job reached out for comment at the EXACT same minute he published his story giving us no time to respond. This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!’ But it’s hardly a hoax to Epstein’s victims, who spoke out the other day – one voted for Trump – about how being lured into having sex while young as 14 ruined their lives.

The New York Times has a sobering report on other birthday messages to Epstein.

Venture capitalist William Elkus recalled Epstein conjuring a beautiful woman out of thin air during a visit to a farm town in Iowa, where it was hard to ‘tell the difference between the girls and the hogs.’ Elkus marveled at Epstein’s being able to find a ‘spectacular tall blonde’ whom he later invited back with him to New York, concluding he had relied on ‘some long distance escort service.’

Elkus told the Times that it was a joke and that he was referring to Epstein’s ‘charisma, which was palpable.’

A person named Leslie wrote, ‘I wanted to get you what you want,’ so ‘here it is’ – a drawing of breasts. Another writer sent photos of zebras, and lions, getting it on.

A person named Nick described a night in London that left Epstein ‘howling with laughter.’ Nick said an ‘old man smiling sweetly’ pulled down a woman’s panties and put his hand on her privates, only to find another man’s hand already there. 

Some women, including assistants and girlfriends – the names are redacted – may have been Epstein’s victims. 

One woman wrote: ‘With you, dear Jeffrey, I laugh like a little girl and feel like a woman.’ There’s a hand-drawn heart, a brief message and a photo of a woman’s butt in a thong bikini.

There’s a cartoon of Epstein in a beach chair getting ‘what appears to be a nude massage from four topless women.’ Appears? That’s exactly what it is.

There were messages from Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer for Microsoft; retail billionaire Leslie Wexner; billionaire investor Leon Black; Epstein’s onetime attorney Alan Dershowitz; and Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling scout who died in 2022 by suicide in a French jail cell after being charged with raping teenage girls.

The Washington Post has more, saying ‘attention to Trump’s relationship with Epstein is not going away anytime soon, and the political headaches for the president are likely to linger.’

In a partially redacted photo, Epstein is holding an oversized check made out to him for $22,500 with DJTRUMP on the signature line. The handwritten caption: ‘Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.’ 

Trump allies have decided to make their stand on the signature question, adding to the murkiness.

‘Is this really the best they could do?’ wrote MAGA influencer Benny Johnson. ‘Trump has the most famous signature in the world. Time to sue them into the oblivion.’

In a drawing, labeled ‘1983,’ a male figure is pictured handing balloons to young girls in pigtails. That was next to ‘2003,’ where he’s drawn getting massages from topless blonde women with the caption ‘what a great country!’

Look, there’s no other way to say it: This has the whiff of a cover-up.

I mean, are people buying the president’s insistence that he never sent the birthday message that they’ve seen with their own eyes?

Trump boxed himself by insisting, even now, that he’d never sent such a message. That’s the heart of the political problem.

The president may pronounce the story dead, but for the rest of the world – including MAGA supporters who have been obsessed with this case – it’s very much alive.

Business tycoon Elon Musk agreed with Vice President JD Vance’s assertion that the bulk of violent crime is perpetrated by a small pool of people who should be locked up.

‘The big lie the Democrats told about violent crime is that it’s ‘systemic’ and therefore no one’s really responsible. If the ‘system’ is to blame then you fund a bunch of nonprofits that don’t do anything besides give jobs to underqualified radicals,’ Vance noted in a post on X. ‘The reality is that the gross majority of violent crime is committed by a very small group of people and we should be throwing them in prison.’

Musk agreed, saying that people who have greater sympathy for those likely to perpetrate murder than for those at risk of becoming murder victims are ‘disgusting.’

‘Yes,’ he commented when sharing Vance’s post. ‘What it comes down to is this: Do you have more sympathy for those highly likely to commit murder or more for those at risk of being murdered? If the former, you are a disgusting human being and yet so many on the radical left choose this!’

Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Texas also shared Vance’s post.

‘The crime and homeless industrial complexes Democrats have set up with NGOs and nonprofits’ aren’t designed to solve problems,’ the congresswoman asserted. ‘Rather, they are fraudulent entities which exist to launder taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves, their friends, and further radical, pro-criminal policies that only endanger hard working Americans.’

Musk has also advocated for locking up repeat violent criminals for life.

‘A second conviction for aggravated violent crime should get life imprisonment,’ he wrote on X.

House Republicans are having early talks about cracking down on crime nationwide, the No. 2 GOP lawmaker suggested on Tuesday.

‘There are discussions about addressing some of these problems at a more federal level, but right now, we’re focused on D.C.,’ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital.

‘The president’s been very effectively reducing crime in D.C., and he’s got some limitations right now with a lot of these ordinances, and that’s what we’re focused on cleaning up.’

He added, however, ‘But we’re not done.’

It comes after President Donald Trump federalized the Washington, D.C., police force and deployed federal troops to the capital city in a bid to end violent crime. He’s now eyeing National Guard deployments in other cities across the country, though the idea has been met with criticism by Democrats.

The House Oversight Committee is slated to advance several bills dealing with D.C. criminal sentencing this week, which will likely get full House votes in the coming months.

Scalise’s comments suggest that while lawmakers are currently focused on overhauling Washington, D.C.’s criminal policies, it’s possible they could turn to the rest of the country at some point as well.

Trump similarly signaled last month that he wanted to see a bill dealing with crime across the U.S.

‘Speaker Mike Johnson, and Leader John Thune, are working with me, and other Republicans, on a Comprehensive Crime Bill. It’s what our Country needs,’ he wrote on Truth Social.

House GOP leaders also railed against crime in Democrat-run cities and states during their weekly press briefing on Tuesday – specifically their leaders’ opposition to National Guard deployments.

Such moves by the federal government could risk court battles with Democrat-run states and cities, as was the case when Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles earlier this year over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

‘I mean, these mayors in these big blue cities have to ask this question – and I think their voters and the residents and the law-abiding citizens in all these cities should be asking local leadership, ‘How long are you going to put up with this? When are you going to put your foot down and do the right thing?’’ Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., posed.

‘This is common sense. And I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the Democrats think this is some sort of winning political message. Yield, man. Let the troops come into your city, and show how crime can be reduced.’

Scalise, meanwhile, said at the press conference that Democrats ‘want crime to continue.’

‘They want to continue defunding the police and try to have it both ways. And President Trump is tired of that game, because he’s tired of watching people be hurt. There’s no reason for this violent crime wave that we see in so many cities,’ Scalise said. 

‘So we’re going to continue to have the president’s back and, frankly, have the American people’s back, regardless of their party, regardless of what city they live in. Everybody deserves to be safe, and Republicans are going to continue to push policies to help put that in place.’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris admits that former President Joe Biden got ‘tired’ while in office, but she insists there was no ‘big conspiracy’ to cover up his decline.

Harris made the claims in a newly released excerpt from her upcoming book, ‘107 Days,’ which details her experience running for president with frequent throwbacks to her time as number two in the White House. The excerpt, published by The Atlantic, focuses on her relationship with Biden and her frustration with how she was treated in the Biden-Harris administration.

‘Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president,’ Harris wrote. ‘On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired.’

‘That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser. I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,’ she added.

Harris went on to complain that Biden’s staff didn’t give her the support she felt was necessary as vice president, on issues from foreign policy to illegal immigration.

She complained that getting the White House press office, including then-press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, to defend her was ‘almost impossible.’

‘Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me. One narrative that took a stubborn hold was that I had a ‘chaotic’ office and unusually high staff turnover during my first year,’ Harris wrote, going on to say that some people just can’t hack it in a White House role.

‘Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,’  she added regarding Biden’s staff. ‘That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him.

The former vice president also said Democrats across the board should have been more aggressive in pushing Biden not to run, saying it was ‘reckless’ to leave the decision in his hands for so long.

”It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,’ Harris wrote.

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is traveling to Israel following the Jewish state’s strike in Qatar, a strike he argued was part of Israel’s ‘singular purpose’ to eradicate Hamas.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) announced the strike, which was intended to target senior-level leadership in Hamas, on Tuesday. However, the attack took place over 1,300 miles away in Doha, Qatar.

The Qatari government has been a key player at the negotiation table in the quest for a ceasefire and return of hostages in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas following the group’s brutal attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s targets were top negotiators in Hamas’ political bureau, who were mulling the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal.

So far, Qatari officials have condemned the strike, and the White House has taken a rare step against Israel in the aftermath.

Daines, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, likened Hamas to ‘a cancer’ that Israel needed to eradicate. He put the Jewish state’s situation into perspective of, if the U.S. were in Israel’s position and ‘1,200 innocent Americans [were] slaughtered by terrorists 40 miles from Washington, D.C.,’ then the ‘United States would do everything within its power to eradicate the threat.’

‘The Israelis, as we’ve seen, whether it’s with Iran or Hezbollah, sometimes doesn’t matter where these leaders are,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘They’re going to come after them, not unlike the United States did when we went after Usama bin Laden in Pakistan. We didn’t ask Pakistan for permission.’

Following the attack, President Donald Trump told reporters that he was ‘not thrilled’ about the situation.

‘I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect. And we got to get the hostages back, but I was very unhappy about the way that went down,’ Trump said.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and panned Israel’s move as a ‘criminal attack’ that constituted ‘a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar.’

Daines’ plan to head to the Jewish state came before the strike and was initially meant to celebrate the excavation of ancient stone steps and a pathway, known as the Pilgrimage Road, which Jesus is believed to have walked, leading from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount.

The lawmaker previously went to Israel to commemorate progress of the ongoing archaeological dig in 2023, a couple of months before Hamas’ blitz on Israel.

Now, his planned trip, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are expected to attend, is likely to take a different tenor.

Daines said he had just spoken with the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. on Monday and hoped that his schedule could line up for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also noted that he had yet to see an assessment of the strike, which hit a residential complex in Doha.

When asked if he was worried that the strike could derail ceasefire talks, Daines noted that he had appreciated Qatar’s cooperation and pointed out the U.S. has its largest military base in the Middle East there. But, he added that ‘Hamas, clearly, is trying to evade the reach of the Israeli government.’

‘And as we say, ‘Sometimes you can run, but you can’t hide,’ and Israel had to make a decision, knowing that, like they did with Iran, where they took out military leadership, they took out their nuclear scientists, because they could not allow Iran to get into their bomb,’ Daines said.

‘Similarly, with Hamas, they would have to take out their command and control structure, leadership. And they have a singular mission, and Israel will do what it needs to do to protect herself,’ he continued.

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump called for Decarlos Brown Jr. to face the death penalty for the alleged murder of Iryna Zarutska on Wednesday.

Trump made the statement on social media, saying the trial for suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. should be ‘quick.’ 

‘The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY,’ Trump posted on Truth Social. ‘There can be no other option!’

Zarutska’s slaying has brought about heavy criticism of Democrats, who critics accuse of adopting soft-on-crime laws that allow violent criminals to roam the streets. Trump argued Monday that the victim’s ‘blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail.’

Trump also placed blame for Zarutska’s killing on former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is now running for the Senate in battleground North Carolina in a crucial 2026 showdown that may determine if Republicans keep control of the chamber.

The Charlotte killing came amid Trump’s focus this summer on spotlighting horrific crimes in Democrat-controlled cities as he moves federal law enforcement into urban areas.

Brown, who is Black, was arrested soon after the stabbing and charged with first-degree murder. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice charged Brown with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

Records obtained by Fox News Digital showed that Brown has a history of arrests going back more than a decade, including convictions for felony larceny and felony breaking and entering in 2013, and a 2015 conviction for robbery with a dangerous weapon that sent him to prison for more than six years. He was released in 2020 but remained on parole until 2021, and subsequent charges against him included communicating threats and misuse of the 911 system earlier this year.

On Monday, Trump noted other recent killings in the U.S., saying that actions, like his administration’s push to end cashless bail, must be taken.

‘This cashless bail started a wave in our country where a killer kills somebody and is out on the street by the afternoon and, in many cases, going out and killing again, cashless bail,’ Trump said.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report

Jury selection is expected to wrap up Wednesday in the federal trial of Ryan Routh, the 59-year-old North Carolina man accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump last year. 

The court is working through its third and final panel of prospective jurors, aiming to seat 12 jurors and four alternates before opening statements begin Thursday morning.

By the end of Tuesday, the court had already dismissed more than 70 of the initial 180 prospective jurors, many citing strong opinions about Trump, connections to law enforcement, or concerns about impartiality in a highly politicized case. 

All eyes will be on how quickly the court can seat a full panel and whether Routh continues to test the boundaries of self-representation. Trump-appointee Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the case, repeatedly clashed with the defendant as she struck down a list of off-topic and politically charged questions Routh posed to prospective jurors during selection.

Routh inquired how potential jurors felt about Ukraine and the war in Gaza and threw in an oddball question about how they might react to finding a turtle in the road, prompting Cannon to remind him that ‘pro se’ status does not excuse him from courtroom procedure. His adult children were present in court, with one son, Oran, listed as a character witness despite currently being jailed on unrelated charges.

Routh also attempted to strike a potential juror who revealed he had once had breakfast with the president and first lady while interviewing for a golf course superintendent job 25 years ago. The man told the court he respected Trump and found him ‘very nice,’ but insisted he could still be fair. Cannon denied Routh’s request, noting the decades-old interaction did not disqualify him.

Tuesday also saw Cannon remove 23 jurors from a third pool of 60, leaving a pool of roughly 110 prospective jurors still under consideration. Among those dismissed earlier were a man who said he was present at Routh’s arrest, another who received a voicemail from him two days before, and a woman who stood up during questioning to declare, ‘I am MAGA… This is our president,’ before admitting she could not presume Routh’s innocence.

Routh himself moved to have a juror excused for racist comments in a questionnaire, which the court granted.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate and assaulting a federal officer. Prosecutors say he was armed with an AK-style rifle when Secret Service agents stopped him near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach in September 2024.

Opening statements are tentatively scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 11, if the panel is seated on time.

The trial is expected to last several weeks, but Cannon urged both sides to keep proceedings efficient.