Fox News regular Clay Travis defends Jeffrey Epstein for ‘only’ preying on teens, ‘not 9 and 10-year-old girls’ – We Got This Covered

The Jeffrey Epstein rehabilitation arc is well underway! Sure, there are teetering mountains of evidence that he lured teenage girls to his “pedophile island” to be abused by him and his wealthy buddies, but, as some on the right are now quietly muttering, maybe we were all a little too quick to judge.

Fox News regular and host of OutKick: The Show, Clay Travis has popped up with a hot take, arguing that maybe Epstein wasn’t as bad as we all think after all.

He began: “Everything that I have seen suggests that Epstein was preying on women that were of age in some states”. Hold up there folks, describing his teenage victims as “women” is a bit of a red flag – the correct term is “girls”.

Full video and transcript here: www.mediamatters.org/clay-travis/…

[image or embed]

— Reed McMaster (@mcmasterreed.bsky.social) July 9, 2025 at 9:22 PM

Anyhow, he continued: “Every state has different laws as to what is the age of consent. And for instance, I believe I am correct – I promise you’re not going to get fired for looking it up – in the state of Alabama the age of consent is 16. … Every individual state has its own age of consent law. And so some states are 18, some states are 17, some states are 16, I think some states might be 15.”

Wow, Travis really knows a lot about the age of consent in various states. I guess he must be a keen reader of state law! Anyway, in no U.S. state is the unrestricted age of consent for a child to have sex with an adult set at 15 years old.

He concluded: “My point on this is that Jeffrey Epstein was engaged with 16, 17, 18-year-old girls to the extent that they were underage, not 9 and 10-year-old girls. There’s a difference, and the difference is in some states Jeffrey Epstein’s behavior would have been legal.”

What a hill to die on!

Travis, buddy. The phrase “age of consent” has two key words in it. Well done on successfully identifying one of them as “age”, but you might also want to focus on “consent”. The girls that Epstein assaulted couldn’t have consented even if they’d wanted to, which they didn’t! And anyway, Epstein pleaded guilty to molesting a 14-year-old girl, younger than the age of consent in every state!

Maybe this is just taking an unpopular stance for clicks, but surely there’s a better way of doing that than racing to the defence of one of our times’ greatest monsters, who unambiguously used his power and wealth to sexually prey on vulnerable girls and lived somewhere the locals nicknamed “pedophile island”.