Trump says a heckler ‘mentioned Epstein.’ Then: ‘I was the one that was totally exonerated’

A man in the Chillicothe crowd shouted something. Donald Trump, by his own account, caught one word of it: Epstein.

“You know, he mentioned Epstein,” Trump said. “So, I threw Jeffrey Epstein out of a club like 20 years ago.” Epstein, he added, “was a Democrat.” Then he upgraded the story: “I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago.” Then, after the cheering: “And I was the one that was totally exonerated from him.” Those are his claims, and he offered nothing to back them.

Then he turned to the heckler. “These guys are paid protesters,” Trump said. “They give him $250.” He said the money had been traced. He didn’t say by whom. Then the closer: “And now he goes home, and his boyfriend gets upset with him.” The crowd booed.

About a minute later Trump complained that hecklers “always hit me right in the middle of the punch line.” Two nights earlier in Mississippi it was a $250 heckler too. Same price, same complaint, new punch line.