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Newsmax mocks ‘terrified' Fox News for avoiding the Epstein story: ‘Don't want to p*ss off' Trump
Schmitt's mockery of the conservative cable giant comes as right-wing media continues to be thrown into chaos as Donald Trump is now ordering his 'boys' and 'gals' to move on from Epstein, which he claims is a Democratic-fueled 'hoax' and 'bullsh*t.'
The president added further fuel to the fire on Wednesday when he fumed that his 'PAST supporters have bought into this 'bullsh*t,' hook, line, and sinker,' adding that he doesn't 'want their support anymore!'
The MAGA meltdown, of course, was sparked last week after Trump's Justice Department concluded in a memo that Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial and did not maintain a 'client list' in order to blackmail prominent figures who took part in the disgraced financier's sex trafficking activities.
The memo, which refuted several Epstein-based conspiracy theories that Trump world had long fanned, came after Attorney General Pam Bondi previously claimed she had the long-fabled 'client list' on her desk. With many of Trump's most prominent supporters calling for Bondi's resignation or termination following her about-face, the president has publicly backed his attorney general while privately calling her MAGA media critics to tamp down the backlash.
Meanwhile, the president's plea this past weekend for his allies to stop talking about Epstein has resulted in mixed results across the conservative media landscape. Though many right-wing media influencers and networks continued to criticize and scrutinize the administration's decision not to release any further Epstein documents, Fox News dutifully fell right in line and appeared to take the president's demand literally.
On Monday, for instance, Epstein's name was only mentioned eight times on Fox News – with the first reference being made after the 6 p.m. ET hour. In comparison, the pro-Trump network brought up former President Joe Biden 158 times on the same day.
While the channel's chief political anchor has since noted that the 'Epstein Files Saga' does 'not go away here' during a Tuesday night report on Trump's attempts to dismiss the controversy, Fox News has still offered only slight coverage of the fallout over the memo.
During his Tuesday night Newsmax broadcast, Schmitt pointed out the growing rift in the conservative infotainment complex when it comes to appeasing the president or reacting to their increasingly irate audience's demand for the release of all the Epstein files.
'Pressure appears to be working. We're hearing things sounding pretty good. Again, this is what MAGA voters voted for — a government for the people where the rich and the powerful get the same justice as the rest of us,' Schmitt noted at the top of his program, referencing Trump grudgingly saying he'd be okay with Bondi releasing 'credible evidence' related to Epstein.
'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,' Schmitt, an ex-Fox News host himself, said of his former network. Indeed, the network's top stars had earlier this year relentlessly blamed a 'Deep State' conspiracy for Bondi's previous 'Phase One' Epstein flop before the president suddenly claimed the whole thing was a 'hoax' made up by Democrats.
The Newsmax anchor went on to note that Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who had been outspoken in his criticism of Bondi over the weekend, said on Monday that he was 'done talking about' Epstein and 'trusted his friends in the government,' only to backtrack the following day.
'So, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people don't really know what to do with this,' Schmitt stated. 'There's a lot of people that are very scared, because it's clear that the White House didn't want this to be a subject.'
He added: 'But Trump's base, his supporters and 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 p*ss off the White House at the same time. So it becomes a bit of a catch-22.'
Schmitt also pointed out that Fox News star Laura Ingraham, who dove into the Epstein uproar during the TPUSA event over the weekend, 'basically went dark on the subject' during her weeknight show and mentioned 'it only with disdain for about two seconds.' In fact, Ingraham took a snarky swipe at 'conservative influencers eating their own' despite feeding into that backlash herself.
'That was it. And there was a little bit of it on Bret Baier's show Special Report,' Schmitt concluded. 'Otherwise, it was completely blacked out of the network that came from somewhere. Obviously, there's a pressure point, and it was hit.'
While Newsmax is taking shots at its higher-rated rival, the Trumpy network has its own potential conflicts of interest when it comes to covering the Epstein files.
Alex Acosta, the former prosecutor who negotiated the 2008 sweetheart deal with Epstein and later resigned as Trump's Secretary of Labor following renewed criticism following Epstein's 2019 arrest, currently sits on the board of Newsmax.
During a Tuesday night segment on his primetime show, Newsmax host Greg Kelly defended Acosta and claimed that the 'Epstein story was rebooted because they wanted to embarrass' him and the Trump administration over the plea deal.
'So, yeah, he did get a light deal, right? He didn't go to that much prison for fooling around with 15-year-old girls. He didn't. But he's not the only one who gets a sweetheart deal,' Kelly added.
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