When House Democrats released emails which showed Jeffrey Epstein claiming Donald Trump “knew about the girls”, rightwing news channels in the US reacted the same way: with silence.
Viewers of Fox News and other conservative networks would have had no idea that the president allegedly spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of his victims. Rightwing media largely kept quiet on all of it, apart from a notable slip when a progressive guest on Sean Hannity’s show repeatedly told his audience: “Trump’s all over the Epstein files.”
A similar playbook was in use as Republican infighting over the emails began, with up to 100 Republicans preparing to defy Trump’s wishes by voting for the so-called Epstein files to be released. Rightwing news viewers were kept in a state of blissful ignorance.
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That first policy – ignore – lasted for days. Viewers were unaware that Trump was desperately attempting to suppress the release of Epstein documents, warring with Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in the process.
But earlier this week, Fox News adopted a new tactic, in the face of an embarrassing loss for the president. Trump had been thwarted over the Epstein files, his party issuing a remarkable act of insubordination by preparing to vote for their release despite the president’s opposition. About to lose, he performed a humiliating U-turn, deciding that after months of opposing the files release, he now wanted the documents out there.
This capitulation by Trump, however, was the prompt for Fox News to spring to life over the Epstein story, presenting Trump’s caving as a masterstroke.
“Trump’s calling their bluff on the Epstein files,” Laura Ingraham declared on Monday. She wheeled out James Comer, a tame Republican congressman, who claimed Democrats did not care about Epstein’s victims but were releasing the files because they “hope and pray there is something in there that will embarrass Trump”.
Ingraham asked Comer, the chair of the House oversight comittee, why Trump would not simply release the files of his own volition, if the president was so keen to have them out there.
Comer claimed the White House had released “what they can legally release”, which is not the case – Trump had the authority as president to release the documents himself, but chose not to.
“We’re getting the documents and as soon as we get them on the oversight committee we’re making them public, I think that’s what the president wants,” Comer said of Trump, who days earlier had been furious at the prospect of the documents being made public.
Ingraham has a checkered history on Epstein. In early July, it seemed like she might have come to the forefront of the release-the-files movement, after she whipped up the crowd at a Turning Points USA event by asking how many of them were “satisfied” with the results of the investigation (the crowd booed).
But less than a week after that moment, Ingraham’s behavior was scrutinized after she promised, on air, to cover new information on Epstein only to never mention his name again for the rest of her show.
Ingraham told her audience she had “new news coming on [about the Epstein saga] from The Wall Street Journal”. That day, the Journal had reported that Trump had sent Epstein a lewd letter for his 50th birthday album, a revelation which led to follow-up reporting from much of the rest of the media.
Despite Ingraham’s promise, she never covered the Journal’s story.
This week, it wasn’t just Ingraham. On his primetime show, Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that Chuck Schumer “fell in the Epstein trap” by wanting the files released.
“Trump’s not hiding anything. He just said he’ll release everything the government has on Epstein,” Watters reassured his audeience. That’s not quite true – Trump has ordered investigations into several individuals, which could limit what the justice department is able to release, on the theory that releasing them would affect active investigations.
The new message was clear: Trump is a master dealmaker who wanted this all along. And having got that across to their audience, the right wing seemed happy to slip back into silence.
On Thursday, the Epstein coverage was restricted to four stories on Fox News’ website, two of which were really about ABC News, whose reporter Trump clashed with on Wednesday. Another was about Kamala Harris appearing on a podcast, during which Fox News claimed she had “shouted” at Trump to release the Epstein files.
Instead, Fox News appeared to have found a new topic to titillate its audience: the network had two stories about the Miss Universe competition on its website.
