‘Huge PR Disaster!’: Fox News Drags Trump Over Epstein Files
Scandal over document release goes into another week
Fox News, the right-wing cable network that usually is the biggest cheerleader for Donald Trump, instead turned on him and top members of his administration over their handling of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.
A Fox News panel over the weekend not only couldn’t ignore the growing controversy over the Trump administration’s denial of files related to Epstein, the late wealthy financier and convicted sex offender who was a longtime associate of Trump’s, but it fully acknowledged the matter which has seen many of Trump’s most-loyal backers walking away from him.
A number of top officials in the Trump administration had been the ones stoking theories about what could be contained in those files. But now that Trump’s president, Attorney General Pam Bondi has denied that any “client list” of powerful individuals associated with Epstein exists. And Trump, himself, has demanded that the subject of Epstein be dropped.
That’s not satisfying many, as there appears to be a break even within the administration. Dan Bongino, a right-wing influencer who now works as deputy director of the FBI, refused to show up for work Friday in protest of Bondi’s handling of the matter.
Fox News host Howard Kurtz acknowledged that many of Trump’s MAGA base consider the refusal to release all Epstein documents as a betrayal.
“Yeah, I think it’s obvious that this is a huge PR disaster for the Trump administration. There’s no way for them to spin their way out of this,” agreed Sarah Bedford, investigations editor for the right-wing newspaper, The Washington Examiner. “I think that Epstein issue had, for a lot of MAGA types, became a proxy for whether this [Justice Department] was going to live up to their very high expectations. And obviously Bondi, Bongino, [FBI Director Kash] Patel, everyone involved in this sort of failed on that.
“I don’t think they could have scripted a better way to keep the conspiracy theories alive than the way they handled it, promising that a lot of information was going to come and then sort of backtracking without any real explanation,” she added. “I think this is only going to add fuel to the conspiracies around Epstein.”
Lucy Caldwell, a Fox News commentator on the panel, argued that the growing Epstein scandal — now in its second week — represents a “fracture point” for Trump with his loyal base.
“And as I said, I do think that this is a turning point. Whether or not this was a cover-up, now there’s almost like a cover-up of a cover-up going on, and Pam Bondi and others are insulting the intelligence of their base,” she said. “When Pam Bondi, who’s the attorney general, says something like, ‘Oh, well, yes, the file was on my desk. I didn’t know what was in it. I had to go review it,’ as though she’s some junior staff attorney who’s, like, reviewing, doing doc review for the first time, that insults the intelligence of the American people and especially of Trump’s supporters who have been believing them.
“I would say to them, you know, don’t feel that you have to be bound to these people anymore because they are lying to you,” Caldwell added. “Yes, I agree, no question — I don’t know that Pam Bondi is not going anywhere, but I agree that this all leads back to Trump, that she and others, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, they are simply carrying out the wishes of Donald Trump. Why he wants it to be this way, don’t know. But it certainly is not a good luck at. And I agree with Sarah, it’s a PR disaster.”
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