“I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story,” wrote Donald Trump on July 17th, after the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2003 the president had sent a lewd birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted paedophile who died in prison in 2019. “But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.” The lawsuit was delivered the following day.