Newsmax Host Claims Fox News Is ‘Terrified’ Epstein Reporting Will ‘Piss Off’ Trump
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt accused Fox News of having “blacked out” its Jeffrey Epstein coverage and mocked the network’s hosts as “terrified” it might “piss off” President Donald Trump if it gives the story airtime.
The internal tensions in MAGA media boiled over after the Justice Department issued a memo concluding that Epstein died by suicide and did not possess a secret “client list” for blackmail.
As a result, Trump wanted the story to vanish and demanded supporters drop the issue, calling the Epstein revelations a “Democratic hoax.”
On Wednesday, the president lashed out at his own supporters: “I don’t want their support anymore!”
Some prominent MAGA figures like Charlie Kirk, who had attacked Bondi just days earlier, abruptly announced this week that he “trusted” the government and was “done talking” about Epstein.
On Tuesday night, however, Schmitt gleefully took aim at hosts at rival conservative-leaning network Fox News, who he accused of caving to political pressure from Trump.
“You may have noticed the Epstein story was almost nowhere to be found, though, on Fox News these last couple of days, after months of very consistent coverage,” he said.
He continued: “It’s clear that the White House didn’t want this to be a subject, but Trump’s base, his supporters in base, care about it. And so there was a bit of a conflict there. And a lot of TV hosts are terrified of what to say and how to say it, because they don’t want to lose their audience and they don’t want to piss off the White House at the same time. So it becomes a bit of a catch-22.”
Rounding on Fox News host Laura Ingraham as a case example, he added: “Fox host Laura Ingraham, who’s on at the same time as me, thanks for watching my show, talked quite a bit about Epstein this weekend at the Turning Point event. And then last night on her show, basically went dark on the subject, mentioning it only with disdain for about two seconds.”
After rolling back a clip from The Ingraham Angle of the host discussing Epstein, Schmitt, himself a former Fox News host, said: “And there was a little bit of it on Bret Baier’s show, Special Report, otherwise it was completely blacked out of the network. That came from somewhere, obviously. There’s a pressure point, and then it was hit.”
The jab came after MSNBC’s Ari Melber made a similar hit on Fox News, quoting Media Matters For America fellow Matthew Gertz, who reported that the network mentioned Epstein only eight times on Monday compared to 158 mentions of former President Joe Biden.
Notably, Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor behind Epstein’s 2008 “sweetheart deal,” who later served briefly as Trump’s Labor Secretary, sits on Newsmax’s board.
Watch above via Newsmax.
