'Significant problems': Expert warns Trump facing a 'mortal threat' that he can't outrun

A journalist who has written about Donald Trump for decades warned on Thursday that the president knows he is facing a "mortal threat" to his presidency, and he doesn't appear to have what it takes to shake it off.

Over the last several weeks, journalist Michael Wolff, who has written four books about Trump, said the president has done his best to distract from the fact that the FBI files from its investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein are still being released. Some of the files have painted Trump's relationship with the man and his accomplice, convicted sex criminal Ghislaine Maxwell, in an unsavory light.

Wolff said during a new episode of "Inside Trump's Head," a podcast he co-hosts with Joana Coles of The Daily Beast, that Epstein presents an existential crisis for the Trump administration.

"Obviously, Epstein remains a potentially mortal threat to Donald Trump, and he knows it, and that's why he is doing his Trumpian best to distract from it and create an entirely other counternarrative," Wolff said. "We're now in imperial power, taking over the world and sending troops and not defending protesters who are trying to overthrow their country's despotic regimes."

Coles said the Epstein threat became increasingly clear to Trump when he was in Detroit and a factory worker heckled him by calling him a "pedophile protector."

"It's a realization when you're out doing those public tours, which are supposed to be PR tours, and someone shouts at you, they've hijacked the news agenda, however briefly, and 'pedophile protector' is not something Donald Trump wants shouted," Coles said.