south lawn. is that the case privately? >> reporter: no, anderson. i'm told by a senior administration official, the president had been stewing over this for the last 24 hours and there are officials in the white house that were concerned there would continue to be disclosures in the jeffrey epstein case and this would continue to make alex acosta look bad here in washington and the campaign trail. you saw a slew of democratic contenders weighing in on this this afternoon and in the words of the senior administration official echoing watergate, he said what did alex acosta know and when did he know it. >> it's not good when the person himself comes forward to give a press conference to basically kind of put this away as an issue and really doesn't apologize, doesn't really kind of show much humanity and only seems to kind of make it worse and add to it.