Top administration officials hold urgent meeting with vice president after Trump shouts about nuclear weapons from White House roof

There's now confirmation from multiple sources that a good chunk of the Trump administration's top people are meeting tonight at, sigh, JD Vance's house. There's also confirmation of the reason for the meeting.

Top Trump administration officials will gather at the vice president’s residence Wednesday evening as they continue to weigh whether to publish an audio recording and transcript of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent conversation with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

The administration’s handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response, is expected to be a main focus of the dinner, three sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The meeting will include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Blanche.

NBC News suggests that this isn't even the complete guest list, reporting that "other top Trump officials" are expected to attend as well.

To say this was an unusual situation would be an understatement: This is an all-hands-on-deck crisis response. There are no normal circumstances in which a half dozen top administration figures assemble for a secret offsite meeting to discuss a president-linked law enforcement case that's spiraled out of control. It's not a thing. It's never a thing.

There are exactly two possible reasons why the top officials surrounding a sitting president would meet under such bizarre circumstances. The first, obviously, would be to orchestrate a crime. That's the one everyone is naturally presuming will be taking place, and we're all presuming it because Pam Bondi and Kash Patel were both appointed to weaponize the Department of Justice against Donald Trump's enemies while obstructing justice aimed towards his allies. Of course they're meeting to discuss how best to extricate Trump from his inextricable involvement in Epstein's child exploitation ring. Of course they're trying to figure out what "Epstein" information can be released and what can't be, so as to best pretend that the man photographed with Epstein and who has a lifelong history of alleged sexual assaults, including the already-known alleged rape of a 14 year old and the now-proven rape of an adult, is somehow not involved with any of it.

And the reason they need at least half a dozen of Trump's top officials to do it, including for some reason the sitting vice president, is presumably because trying to extricate Trump from the evidence is going to be so heavy a lift that not even the crookedest attorney general in history will be able to pull it off without coordinated help.

So, fine. If that's the story the White House is actually trying to sell us on—if that is the best nothing-to-see story that they can leak to reporters, then who are we to argue. Got it. Obstructing justice for child sex trafficking victims, normal Republican stuff. The sort of obstruction that Pam Bondi apparently lives for, in fact. Sure.

There is even more weirdness afoot than that, though. The part that sits weird is the bizarre inclusion of the vice president of the United States, who to common knowledge has no involvement with or information on the Epstein case. We're supposed to believe that the administration is coordinating with JD Vance on possible responses to the Epstein allegations?

That JD Vance? The JD Vance that doesn't get consulted on anything ever, the man whose presence in the White House was of less impact than that of Elon Musk's booger-wiping toddler meat shield? He's going to play a central, strategic role in the bid to get Americans to please stop talking about the president's alleged history of teen-peeping and assaults?

That ... No. Sorry, that part doesn't sit right.

There's something I can't get out of my head about this whole situation, and that's the optics of it. "The White House chief of staff and a phalanx of top administration officials have hastily arranged a secret meeting at the vice president's house to discuss the president in his absence" is a completely unnecessary level of weird if you're just trying to commit a crime or two while covering up the president's involvement with the nation's most notorious sex trafficker. This administration seems more than willing to break and bend laws over the phone or on half-assed Signal clones, and JD Vance wouldn't be in those conversations to begin with.

During any previous period of history, "The White House chief of staff and a phalanx of top administration officials have hastily arranged a secret meeting at the vice president's house to discuss the president in his absence" is the plot point you'd get if a sitting U.S. president had become incapable of fulfilling his duties and the officials around him were scrambling to decide what to do about it.

That's what you'd need to loop in a vice president for. In private. At his house.

And if top administration officials were scrambling to have an emergency meeting to discuss a possible need for the vice president to assume the presidency due to a sudden presidential need to be Not In Office anymore, you can also presume that the cover story they'd concoct is that no, no, they were definitely having a secret meeting to discuss how everyone could best "help" him. At the vice president's house. Without him.

Now, I am not saying this is what's happening. What I'm instead saying is that it is very, very funny to imagine this is happening, and what would be funnier still is for Donald Trump to get it in his own head that his vice president, his chief of staff, and the administration members with the most direct knowledge of Trump's connections to Epstein are all talking about him behind his back. Which, of course, they are.

That's the most improbable part of this alternate interpretation of events, after all. It's difficult to imagine any scenario in which members of Trump's hand-picked (well, something-picked) administration decide that Donald has gone so off the rails that they, the most sycophantic dear leader-worshipping seditionists the movement could find, could no longer cover for him.

In order for that part to even come 5% of the way towards plausible, Trump would have to be so visibly incapacitated that it was impossible to hide. He would have to be off-his-rocker loopy in a way previously unseen, and he'd have to do it on camera, with the whole world watching.

No. No, it's probably the first thing. I'm sure Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are having a secret meeting with the White House chief of staff and Trump's vice president because they want to all make sure they're on the same page in covering up the sex crimes. And nothing will get you in the mood to cover up sex crimes like, sigh, having yourself a nice sit-down in JD Vance's living room.