Newsmax has been relying on Alan Dershowitz to soft-pedal the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, but it has also been working to distance President Trump from it. A June 6 article, for example, touted a former Epstein attorney (David Schoen, not Dershowitz) insisting “authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively” that his client had no information to hurt Trump, adding, “I specifically asked him!” A July 18 column by Blaine Holt sought to tamp down the controversy:
Perhaps one of the most hopeful developments was then-new U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announcing she had the Epstein files and was going to release them all.
Promises made, promises kept.
All was well.
Along the way the Trump faithful’s impatience grew.
When would charges be filed on any of the criminals?
Aren’t the DOGE USAID revelations enough to commence the indictments process?
Is Tina Peters (Colorado 2020 election whistle blower) still in jail?
Wait a minute!
Did Kash Patel and Dan Bongino just say that Epstein did, in fact, kill himself?
Steady! More to come . . . Simmer down MAGA nation!
And then the shot heard “’round-the MAGA” Ms. Bondi now says there are no Epstein files at all and that he was not engaged in human trafficking.
Are you kidding me?
This is an immovable redline to those who backed the president from the start.
Epstein represents far more to MAGA than some salacious headlines.
[…]We can assume that President Trump and his team have knowledge which makes the Epstein twists and turns that we see, look logical.
However, what the average patriotic American sees is minors abused, our government potentially compromised, and intelligence services and global elites involved.
There’s more than enough information that has come out to know this is no hoax, but we can sympathize with our leader who may be trying to warn us that this is far more dangerous than we had imagined.
Come back to your faithful Mr. President.
We are all in this war together. And to be certain, it is a war.
A Newsmax TV host used the controversy to score points against a competitor:
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.
[…]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.
Newsmax called on Schoen again to downplay the scandal in a July 22 TV appearance:
Criminal Defense Attorney David Schoen, who represented deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, told Newsmax there’s not much left now save for “conspiracy theories.”
Schoen told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren” on Tuesday that a pending request by the Justice Department to unseal grand jury transcripts in the prosecution of Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, won’t amount to much.
“It’s just going to lead again to more conspiracy theories. And even if they’re disclosed, I don’t believe there’s anything.”
Dick Morris tried his hand at attempting to change the subject, complete with lots of italics, in his July 25 column:
Where there’s smoke . . . there’s smoke.
The Democrats have metastasized the Jeffrey Epstein scandal into a national news peg to try to drown out the real news: The incredible economic performance of the Trump administration.
With no factual basis whatever and just the tawdry record of Epstein, the Democrats have tried to convey the misimpression that Trump and Epstein were somehow connected.
They want to public to assume that where there is smoke, there is fire.
But, in Washington, D.C., there is only more smoke.
We can’t let the non-scandal drive media attention away from the very real fact that Trump has all but extinguished inflation, generated important job growth, turned the economy around, stopped illegal immigration, and deported over one million people who have no legal basis to call themselves Americans.
There is no scandal here.
Just the media trying to create the impression of one.
[…]Trump can’t count on the facts to come to his defense. The Democrats have tried to replace facts with groundless speculation and fantasy.
There is no fire here, just smoke.
Morris didn’t mention that Trump himself is creating the impression of a scandal by so adamantly refusing to release the Epstein files.