My latest piece for MSNBC.com details how Fox News hosts and other MAGA media elites followed President Donald Trump’s order to move on from coverage of convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and what that response means for the future of Trump’s coalition:
Epstein’s name was brought up only eight times across the network’s programming on Monday, with its first reference coming well into the 6 p.m. hour. By contrast, Fox name-checked former President Joe Biden 158 times that same day.
Jesse Watters, who holds down the 8 p.m. time slot previously held by stars Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson, provides a case study of the network’s compliance. The Fox host mentioned Epstein’s name across more than 100 episodes of his programs over the last six years. Watters said he was “leading the charge to expose Jeffrey Epstein’s list of fixers, clients, and famous friends,” unlike the corrupt mainstream press whose silence he claimed aided the “powerful people [who] want to keep you from knowing about Epstein’s world.”
But on Monday night, Watters obliged the demands of a powerful person with myriad, longstanding ties to the disgraced financier: Trump. The sole discussion of the Epstein story on his broadcast came during a segment in which his producer interviewed beachgoers.