Fox News and other major MAGA media figures have stopped talking about Jeffrey Epstein following President Donald Trump’s request to end discussions about the topic.
The sudden silence comes after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo on July 6 stating they found no evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals and confirmed his death as suicide.
According to MSNBC, the change in coverage was dramatic, particularly at Fox News, where Epstein’s name was mentioned only eight times across all programming on Monday, compared to 158 mentions of former President Joe Biden on the same day. This shift happened after Trump’s panicked attempts to end Epstein coverage asked his allies not to ‘waste Time and Energy’ on the Epstein story.
The president’s statement faced some criticism from within his own circle. Candace Owens openly challenged Trump’s new narrative on X, stating, “Barack Obama wrote the Epstein files? LOL. This is outright embarrassing.” Other MAGA influencers like Benny Johnson also expressed doubt, simply responding “What?” to Trump’s theory.
Major Fox News hosts abandon previous coverage
The controversial Fox News host Jesse Watters, who had mentioned Epstein in more than 100 episodes over six years and claimed to be ‘leading the charge’ to expose Epstein’s connections, nearly dropped the topic completely. His only coverage of the story on Monday was limited to a beach interview segment with regular people.
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Other prominent Fox hosts followed the same pattern. Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld completely ignored the Epstein story in their Monday broadcasts, while Laura Ingraham briefly mentioned it only to redirect attention to Trump’s activities.
The silence is particularly notable because earlier this year, both Watters and Hannity had claimed that “deep state” members were trying to keep Epstein documents away from Attorney General Pam Bondi. This previous narrative conflicts with Trump’s new statement suggesting that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and deep state officials had created the Epstein files to harm the MAGA movement.
Some former Fox News personalities have taken a more critical stance. Megyn Kelly suggested either Bondi made serious mistakes or there was a cover-up with presidential approval. Matt Walsh from Daily Wire noted that there was no way to completely clear the Trump administration in this situation. However, most MAGA commentators have either gone quiet or supported Trump’s position, with podcaster Dinesh D’Souza even suggesting it was “time to move on” from the Epstein case.
