Hosts on Fox News are too "terrified" of President Donald Trump to cover the growing anger from his MAGA followers over the administration's handling of late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's files, according to Newsmax host Rob Schmitt.
"It's clear that the White House didn't want this to be a subject, but Trump's base, his supporters in [the] base, care about it," Schmitt said on his Newsmax program, "Rob Schmitt Tonight," on Tuesday.
"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."
Schmitt, a former Fox News host, pointed out that Laura Ingraham, whose program is on at the same time as his Newsmax program, has gone "dark" on the subject of Epstein, "mentioning it only with disdain for about two seconds" after talking "quite a bit" about him at last weekend's Turning Point event.
He added that there was also a "little bit of it on Bret Baier's show, 'Special Report,'" but "otherwise it was completely blacked out of the network. That came from somewhere, obviously. There's a pressure point, and then it was hit."
Media Matters For America fellow Matthew Gertz reported this week that Fox News mentioned Epstein eight times on Monday, compared with mentioning former President Joe Biden 158 times.
Trump earlier Tuesday made it clear that Attorney General Pam Bondi should release any "credible" information on Epstein to the American public.
"He knows this has become a key issue with the people who support him the most, [who] have supported him for the past nine years," said Schmitt.
He noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will play a critical role in whether former Epstein associate and girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving time in prison, could be called to testify to Congress on the matter, and that Rep. James Comer, the head of the House Oversight Committee, has indicated "full support" for the testimony.
"They both say they want transparency from the government on Jeffrey Epstein," said Schmitt.
Democrats, he added, are "humiliating themselves" by trying to score a "cheap political win" over the controversy.
They are "fanning the flames of a MAGA mutiny that they perceive here, as everyone tries to figure out what to do about Epstein, pretending they care about any of this after ignoring all of it while Biden was in power and had the ability to just release all these files himself," said Schmitt.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.