The white-hot anger that has festered in the MAGA fever swamps over the Trump administration’s conclusion that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself and didn’t possess a “client list” has now bubbled up to the primetime hours of Fox News, where the frustration was made crystal clear.
“This just reeks,” host Jesse Watters griped on Monday night.
While Watters echoed the basic sentiment that has percolated across the right-wing media ecosystem, he was very careful not to directly criticize or implicate President Donald Trump as being part of an alleged cover-up. Instead, as has largely been the case among Trump fans, the Fox star’s anger was directed towards “the feds” and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Still, it remains to be seen if the conservative network’s MAGA-boosting personalities continue to hold fire against the president and instead cast the blame primarily on his underlings, considering that Trump added more fuel to the conspiracy embers on Tuesday when he scolded a reporter for asking about discrepancies in the Epstein probe.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy‘s been talked about for years...you want to waste the time?!” Trump chastised Steven Nelson, a reporter for Fox News’ cousin publication The New York Post. The attempt to shut down Nelson came as the correspondent attempted to press Bondi on the missing minute in the tape from Epstein’s last evening alive in jail.
During his broadcast on Monday evening, Watters devoted a lengthy segment to demanding “answers” on Epstein after the Department of Justice and FBI released an unsigned, two-page memo that revealed that no one else would be facing charges related to the deceased pedophile’s sex trafficking.
“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” the memo reads. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
It added: “The conclusion that Epstein died by suicide is further supported by video footage from the common area of the Special Housing Unit where Epstein was housed at the time of his death.”
Watters, who has been a key promoter of Epstein-related conspiracy theories for years, expressed intense skepticism over the official narrative from the administration about the disgraced financier.
“In 2019, the feds raided Epstein’s four homes after he was arrested, and they seized surveillance footage along with hard drives, disks, and tapes. Epstein had hundreds of high-profile people spend time at his homes. Nothing bad happened? Was that another glitch?” Watters wondered, referencing the missing minute on the jailhouse tape and other instances of lost emails. “One of Epstein’s accusers says the cameras saw everything.”
The host also noted that Bondi and Trump loyalist Alina Habba had promised damning and “shocking” evidence in the Epstein probe back in February that would result in criminal charges -- only for the attorney general to instead release “Phase One” binders of already-public information to a group of pro-Trump influencers.
Many of those MAGA media personalities who were given first dibs at the so-called “Epstein Files” have since become Bondi’s loudest critics for not delivering on her promises, with much of the attention this week placed on her previous claims that she was already in possession of the “client list.”
The attorney general’s past boasts about the “truckload” of evidence she had received in the Epstein case were brought up by Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy during Monday’s White House press briefing.
“According to the report, this systematic review revealed no incriminating client list. So what happened to the Epstein client list that the attorney general said she had on her desk?” Doocy pressed White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who insisted Bondi was speaking in generalities.
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“She was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork and relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, that’s what the attorney general was referring to, and I will let her speak for that,” she asserted.
“The feds spent decades investigating Epstein and have had total access to his property for years, they still cannot give us a straight answer? This is not anything new; the government has been keeping us in the dark for generations,” Watters proclaimed on Monday night, wondering why Bill Clinton isn’t facing possible criminal action.
He’d later turn to two guests – author Barry Levine and former CIA officer John Kiriakou – to speculate where this was part of a vast “deep state” cover-up to protect potential Epstein clients involved in the government and foreign intelligence agencies.
“We don’t know anything because the FBI does not want us to know anything,” Kirakou said at one point, though he added that he wasn’t blaming FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino. “I think that layer beneath them – that is part of what we like to call the deep state – has taken this bull by the horns, they have probably destroyed information.”
Watters, in the end, suggested that the heads of the DOJ and FBI should face additional criticism over the way this had been handled.
“There were no files? There were no dossiers? I’m sorry I don’t buy it. I know how these people operate,” he concluded. “And Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, great Americans – but this stinks. This just reeks!”
Notably, nowhere in Watters’ 10-minute segment did he take any direct shots at the president, whom he has served as a loyal media foot soldier for years. The same held true for afternoon host Will Cain earlier in the day, who also expressed alarm over the DOJ’s findings while criticizing Bondi.
“It’s pretty hard to stomach where we sit today based upon the expectation set by the attorney general herself just a few months ago,” he told right-wing radio host Buck Sexton.
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“How did Epstein go from being a math teacher to a global financier moving markets and moving money?” Cain wondered. “How did he go from Westchester, New York, to all of these massive connections around the globe? Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? These are questions that remain unanswered, and I don’t think this memo will even scratch the surface of making this go away.”
Placing the onus on Patel and Bongino – two former MAGA podcasters who peddled in Epstein conspiracy-mongering before being tapped to lead federal law enforcement – and Bondi has largely been the play of MAGA media since the release of the memo. This was also fairly predictable, as the trio of Trump officials had already increasingly faced criticism from conservatives in recent months for not delivering on their promises and suddenly asserting that Epstein wasn’t murdered in jail.
At the same time, one wonders if there might be a potential dam-breaking moment where the criticism finally rises above these three and makes its way to Trump himself. Especially if he doesn’t heed the call from MAGA luminaries such as Laura Loomer – whose influence with the president has spiked in the past few months – to fire Bondi for the Epstein “client list” fiasco. As it stands, prominent figures like Tucker Carlson are already warning that Trump could spark a “revolution” by reneging on his campaign promise to uncover the truth about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
Not just that, but as The Bulwark’s Will Sommer noted this week, there have been increasing murmurs on right-wing social media that the memo was proof that the administration was trying to suppress the president’s own potentially prominent role in the investigation.
“Elon was right” has begun circulating on X, referencing former “first buddy” Elon Musk’s claim last month that the Trump “is in the Epstein files” and that’s “the real reason they have not been made public.” While Musk has since deleted the tweet, the billionaire claimed this week that the DOJ’s memo was “the final straw,” while further suggesting a vast government cover-up.
Meanwhile, the president brought only more scrutiny upon himself from his MAGA base – who have made it a matter of faith that Epstein was running a vast blackmail operation that encompassed several intelligence agencies – with his reaction to Nelson’s question on Tuesday.
“I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we've had the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas,” Trump seethed. “It just seems like a desecration!”
With the president looking to shut down direct questions about a saga that his supporters (and members of his White House) have spent years fixating on, all while they’re already whipped up into a frenzy over this drama, how long will it be before the right’s conspiracy theory engine turns itself on Trump?
“One ironic aspect of the Epstein saga is that while MAGA influencers were apparently certain that the Trump administration was going to implicate a wave of prominent individuals in Epstein’s sex crimes and, perhaps, his death, there are few figures as prominent with ties as close to Epstein as Trump himself,” Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz observed, noting the long list of connections the president has shared with Epstein.
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