Fox News is doing its best to move the Jeffrey Epstein scandal currently bedeviling President Donald Trump out of national headlines. To do so, the network has gone into overdrive, covering criticism of actress Sydney Sweeney’s ad for American Eagle, while largely ignoring the Epstein story.
Media Matters for America published a report Tuesday revealing that, since the story first broke Monday, Fox has given exhaustive coverage to Sweeney’s story and barely spoken about Epstein. The network aired 1 hour and 25 minutes dedicated to covering Sweeney, while the time devoted to Epstein was a blink-and-you-missed-it 3 minutes.
By contrast the other 2 major cable news networks, CNN and MSNBC, have mentioned Epstein more—likely because that story involves an ongoing government cover-up of information regarding the president’s possible involvement in sex crimes and the other is Hollywood gossip.
Fox is following the lead of Trump, who quickly latched on to the Sweeney story. The actress has been criticized by some—not anyone of note and certainly not Democratic elected officials—for an American Eagle ad praising her for having “good jeans,” which has been interpreted by a few as a reference to eugenics.
It was also revealed Monday that Sweeney is a registered Republican, which led to Trump bragging on Truth Social that “now I love her ad.”
Trump and Fox would rather people focus on Sweeney than the Trump administration’s ongoing stonewalling of the release of the Epstein files. A friend of Trump’s, Epstein was allegedly at the center of a sex trafficking ring and died while in police custody. Information relating to his list of clients has not been released to the public, and the Trump administration is refusing to do so.
After the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s name is included in the Epstein files, he sued the paper and owner Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox.
The Department of Justice, led by Trump appointee Pam Bondi, has moved Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower-security prison, raising concerns about a potential deal to protect Trump in exchange for her cooperation.
Republicans have been fumbling around for a story to distract the media from Trump’s Epstein scandal, and right now Sweeney seems to fit the bill.
But Americans have told pollsters—despite Trump’s claim to the contrary—that they do not support his obfuscation of the Epstein files, with many saying that they believe a cover-up is happening. Trump’s personal involvement in the case would raise the stakes for him, since he has spent so much time telling his loyal MAGA base that he will release the files and that Democrats would be implicated.
Fox is devoted to making Trump look good by burying stories that could damage him or his administration. The network has been trying to get rid of the Epstein story—now Sweeney has given it a path forward.