Image source, Getty Images

Yesterday was a quiet day at the White House, one of the rare times we did not hear from President Trump in person or on camera.

Reporters did, however, have a brief "gaggle" with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt outside the West Wing, where she answered questions on a wide variety of topics ranging from Gaza to the economy.

At one point, a reporter asked her about growing frustration among the President's base - commonly known as MAGA for his campaign slogan Make America Great Again - over the administration's handling of the Epstein case.

Without hesitation, Leavitt pointed to polls suggesting Trump remains popular among those ardent supporters.

"The president is the creator and the leader of the Make America Great Again movement," she said. "It's his baby, that he made, and he knows what his supporters want."

In a CBS News and YouGov poll released on Sunday, 89% of Republicans approved of Trump's job performance, compared to 42% of all respondents. At the same time, more than half of Republicans, 54%, said that the Epstein case did not matter when evaluating his presidency.

Image source, PBS

House Speaker Mike Johnson is now speaking to reporters about the Epstein files.

He says both he and other Republicans believe in "maximum transparency", but also in protecting victims of the "Epstein evils".

"We protect the innocent, so we cannot be careless in an open release like that. You got to be very careful," he says.

But at the same time, he maintains that Republicans want any individivudal who helped carry out "the Epstein evil brought to justice as quickly as possible, and the law should be brought down upon their heads."

As we wait for the events at the White House, we turn to Capitol HIll, where a group of senior Republicans are giving a news conference and have addressed the furore around Jeffrey Epstein..

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said it is "interesting to see Democrats want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein all of a sudden".

"For four years, Democrats hid and covered up the Epstein files," he says. "And Trump's in the courts right now to get a lot of that information unsealed."

Last week, Trump posted on social media that the controversy around possible federal files on sex offender Epstein was a hoax perpetrated by Democrats that "some stupid Republicans" believed. He later asked the justice department to seek court approval to release testimony taken during grand jury proceedings against Epstein.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

Image source, Bernd Debusmann Jr/BBC News

Today's meeting between Donald Trump and Phillippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is largely focused on economic and defence ties between the two countries.

But here at the White House, the eyes and ears of the media are primed to pick up anything Trump says about the Epstein case. When I walked in this morning, it was already the topic of heated discussion among journalists.

For days, the White House had seemingly gone to significant lengths to avoid the topic and worked to move the news cycle onto something - anything - else. Trump has even lashed out at reporters, and supporters, for discussing it.

The justice department's recently disclosed talks with Ghislaine Maxwell, however, have again brought the issue to the forefront, as did yesterday's White House announcement that the Wall Street Journal is being removed from the "travel pool" for Trump's trip to Scotland over reporting related to Epstein and the president.

Stay with us for more updates.

Image source, AFP via Getty Images

Welcome to our live coverage of an official visit by Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr, president of the Philippines, to the White House.

Marcos and President Donald Trump are expected to talk about trade and security in the South China Sea but many will be watching for other reasons.

Reporters are expected to ask Trump directly about a long list of issues, chiefly on disputes about federal files on Jeffrey Epstein, yesterday's release of FBI records on civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, and the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

For our Gaza live page coverage, click here.