Two nights ago, Chris Hayes said President Trump was mentioned in the Epstein files “more than a million times.” Last night, Jen Psaki said “thousands.”
That’s a talking point collapsing in less than 48 hours. So… which is it?
Psaki framed it like this regarding Trump and Epstein: “There is a new story every day.” She said Trump is mentioned in the files thousands of times as if it were a proven, settled fact. But after hearing “millions” just two nights earlier, the question is:
If the story is growing by the day for Trump, why did the number just drop—from “more than a million” to “thousands”?
Because these “counts” often come from sloppy, misleading searches—not actual evidence of wrongdoing.
A keyword search can be garbage
Huge databases and document dumps are messy. Scans are messy. OCR text is messy. Names are messy. And when you run broad searches, you can inflate results instantly.
If anti-Trump Democrats are using inadequate searches—like searching fragments or loose terms—they can end up pulling massive numbers of irrelevant hits from huge document sets.
Think about how easy it is to trigger junk results with searches like:
- Don
- Donald
- Donald Trump
- Misspellings, partial strings, bad OCR text
- Other people named Don or Donald
- Random words that contain the same letters
A search for “Don” doesn’t automatically mean “Donald.” It can pull in unrelated words and fragments (like “don’t,” “done,” “London,” etc.), depending on how the system indexes text.
So when MSNBC acts like a raw “mention count” proves something, it’s worth saying plainly:
A search result count doesn’t tell you what the mentions are—or why they’re there.
The obvious question MSNBC skips: Why was his name mentioned?
If you’re going to throw out a big scary number, you should at least explain what that number could actually mean.
Here are a few common, basic possibilities—none of which automatically imply guilt:
- Contact lists / address books (names listed among many others)
- Phone logs (calls placed/received, attempted calls, forwarded calls)
- Calendars / scheduling notes (planned meetings, canceled meetings, logistics)
- Flight manifests / travel references (mentions tied to travel, staff, routing)
- Third-party references (someone else talking about Trump)
- Media clippings Epstein kept (if he was obsessed with Trump, that could inflate mentions)
- Duplicate documents / repeated entries across multiple files
- OCR errors and messy scanning creating repeated fragments
And yes—Hayes claimed Epstein was “obsessed” with Trump. If that’s true, it could explain a lot of incidental mentions right there—without proving anything criminal.
Then Psaki pivoted to Democrat border protests
After claiming Trump is mentioned “thousands of times,” Psaki moved on to another segment—showing footage outside a Border Patrol facility where DHS Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to tout Trump’s border policies while protesters dressed in chicken costumes gathered outside.
That’s the pattern: drop a loaded claim, toss out a scary number, and pivot—before viewers have time to ask basic questions.
Questions MSNBC should be answering
- What exact search terms were used?
- What counts as a “mention”?
- How many were duplicates or junk hits?
- Why exactly did Trump’s name appear?
Two nights ago it was “millions.” Last night it was “thousands.” If MSNBC can’t keep its own number straight for 48 hours, why should anyone trust the conclusion they’re trying to sell?
This isn’t journalism. It’s narrative enforcement—powered by extreme anti-Trump bias, sloppy searching, and inflated numbers. And it’s designed for one purpose: to make Trump look guilty, whether the facts support it or not.
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