Fox & Friends Obeys Trump’s Orders And Completely Ignores MAGA Outrage Over Epstein Files

Fox & Friends made a remarkable editorial decision on Monday morning: they entirely ignored the curious case of Jeffrey Epstein, a story that continues to dominate the headlines and conservative media discourse after a weekend of developments.

Late last week, a newly unsealed FBI memo delivered what many saw as a stunning yet unsatisfying conclusion to the Epstein case—and it set off a chain reaction. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino threatened to resign unless AG Pam Bondi stepped down. Trump sided with Bondi, prompting backlash from conservative and pro-MAGA influencers who blasted his handling of the controversy. The memo and Trump’s curious handling of this story immediately became the dominant story in the MAGA media sphere.

Unlike previous instances where Trump has defied or even outright humiliated his base, even his most loyal supporters are not letting this one go. The Epstein controversy was a dominant topic of frustration at the weekend’s Turning Point USA conference in Detroit, where the leading lights of the MAGA movement gathered to set the contours of the agenda for this administration. It was blindingly obvious that this story is not going away.

Laura Ingraham stirred the pot on the case’s unresolved questions. Tucker Carlson mocked Trump’s “desecration” dig at a reporter who asked about the memo. Megyn Kelly called this a problem of the Trump administration’s own making, said it’s “not going well,” and blamed Attorney General Pam Bondi for the mess.

Perhaps the most telling moment of the weekend came when Ingraham, a Fox News host, asked her crowd how many of them were satisfied with the results of the Trump administration’s Epstein probe. Her query was met with deafening boos.

No doubt sensing the decibels of discontent, Trump took to social media on Saturday for a bizarre statement urging his followers to move on from all this. “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” he opened. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!”

His plea for the media to cover its eyes didn’t work on Fox’s weekend lineup, which covered the story across multiple programs. Fox News Sunday addressed the memo that revealed there was no client list. Howard Kurtz’s MediaBuzz explored the political and media ramifications of the story, with a guest calling it a “huge PR disaster.” Even Fox & Friends Weekend acknowledged the controversy, with hosts briefly summarizing the key details and public frustration — while calling it a “ticking time bomb.”

Which brings us back to Fox & Friends. As the network’s flagship morning show and a well-known favorite of Trump’s, its editorial choices matter—not just as programming, but as signals. The decision to completely ignore the Epstein developments on Monday stands in sharp contrast to the rest of Fox’s weekend lineup, as well as the rest of conservative media, thereby raising some difficult questions: Was this a deliberate effort to avoid highlighting a story that could implicate or even just discomfort Trump?

And, if so, is Fox News making editorial decisions not based on what its audience is demanding, but on what Trump prefers to avoid?

Because the audience is not giving up on this story, which separates this quandary for Fox News from the Dominion saga, when the network spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in order to sate its audience that had come to believe Trump’s lies it was stolen. Internal communications revealed during Dominion’s defamation suit against Fox last year laid bare a central tension inside the network: the struggle to balance journalistic standards with the desire to retain its pro-Trump audience. Executives and producers privately discussed the need to “respect the audience,” even when it meant platforming disinformation or hiding inconvenient truths.

The Epstein story represents a new test of that balance: after all, the audience wants answers, while Trump wants to move on. The demand for transparency around Epstein and his powerful associates is widespread and bipartisan, but in recent years it has become a particularly potent cause among the MAGA base. That explains why coverage has flourished on right-wing podcasts, Substacks, and streaming shows.

The risk for Fox News is not abstract. As the Dominion communications revealed, Fox executives are deeply aware that their audience is both loyal and volatile. Viewers punished the network for straying from Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election, turning to competitors like Newsmax and OANN. But there’s another kind of risk: that viewers who genuinely care about issues like Epstein, government corruption, and elite unaccountability might notice when coverage feels selective — or even compromised.

In this case, Fox & Friends appears to have made a choice: to avoid a major news story in deference to Trump’s sensitivities, even when that story is clearly of high interest to its viewers. As Fox News attempts to navigate the complex terrain of a 2024 election with Trump once again at the center, moments like this raise real questions about where its loyalties lie — and whether its audience will continue to follow.

Update: As of noon Monday, the name “Epstein” has not been mentioned once on Fox News according to available transcripts.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.