Gatsby Without the Romance: Michael Wolff on Why Trump and Epstein Are the Same Person

“I have always said that they are the same person. And the drama of this story is that one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America, and the other in the White House.” — Michael Wolff

A few days ago we had Jason Pack on the show suggesting that the Anglo-American media elite had a degree of complicity in the Epstein scandal. Michael Wolff disagrees. The media weren’t complicit, he says. They were just dumb. They found the story unseemly, were uncomfortable with it, and avoided it out of disdain—not conspiracy. David Remnick of The New Yorker was “dismissive of the whole thing.” The word Wolff keeps coming back to is “ick.”

Wolff knew Epstein. He recorded an estimated hundred hours of interviews with him. He has tried repeatedly to sell an Epstein book. Every publisher passed—the last time as recently as autumn 2025. One cited “the ick factor.” Others feared a Trump lawsuit. The man who made fortunes for publishers with Fire and Fury couldn’t get a deal on the story he knows best. If you want the closest thing to a firsthand account, Wolff says, read “The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein” in his collection Too Famous. He’s probably right.

What emerges from the conversation is a portrait of Epstein as a middleman in a city of middlemen—but one who was genuinely interested in the people he connected, which is rare in that world. His sexual depravity was at war with his ambition to be respectable. The blackmail theory? “Certainly not true,” Wolff says. People came because they liked being there. He was their friend. And then there’s Trump. Wolff’s most explosive claim is that they are the same person—the closest relationship both men had in life was with each other. The drama is that one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America and the other in the White House. It’s Gatsby without the romance. And that’s what makes them both so vile.

As for the Trump show, Wolff has given up predicting its end. It doesn’t end until Trump dies. He is sui generis—nobody will replace him. He doesn’t understand legacy, doesn’t care about it, and when it’s no longer about him, could give a fuck. We’ll be trying to figure out how this happened for the next hundred years.

 

Five Takeaways

•       The Media Didn’t Conspire—They Were Just Dumb: Wolff dismisses the idea that the Anglo-American media elite knew more about Epstein than they were letting on. They didn’t know anything, he says. They found the story unseemly, were uncomfortable with it, and avoided it out of disdain—not conspiracy. David Remnick of The New Yorker was “dismissive of the whole thing.”

•       No Publisher Would Touch the Epstein Book: Wolff has tried repeatedly to sell an Epstein book. Every publisher passed. One cited “the ick factor.” Others feared a Trump lawsuit. The last attempt was autumn 2025. The man who made fortunes publishing Fire and Fury couldn’t get a deal on the story he knows best. The publishing industry’s failure of nerve, Wolff says, is total.

•       Trump and Epstein Are the Same Person: Wolff’s most explosive claim: Trump and Epstein are the same person. The closest relationship both men had in life was with each other. The drama of the story is that one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America and the other in the White House. Gatsby without the romance.

•       Epstein Was a Middleman in a City of Middlemen: What made Epstein different wasn’t the blackmail—Wolff says that’s “certainly not true.” People came because they liked being there. Epstein was genuinely interested in the people he connected, which is rare am