On Monday morning, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released a jaw-dropping report about Donald Trump’s longtime ties to deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, including a brand new allegation that the president brutally raped a young beauty pageant contestant.
“The bottom line: there is more than sufficient evidence to launch a criminal investigation,” the Judiciary Democrats wrote in the report, calling for an independent special counsel to investigate and prosecute the president’s alleged criminal activity alongside Epstein.
Normally, one would think a 53-page congressional report detailing allegations from 11 women tying the president to a pedophile financier’s sex-trafficking operation, with five women directly accusing the commander-in-chief of raping or sexually assaulting them, would lead to round-the-clock coverage by the mainstream and legacy media.
Well, you would be wrong.
“Not sure when a new, on-the-record rape allegation against a sitting president isn’t considered news – especially considering Trump was found liable by a jury in a similar case – but it was ignored by most mainstream media outlets,” Popular Information founder Judd Legum observed this week.
Among the three largest newspapers in America, only the New York Times has bothered to publish anything about the Democrats’ new report, though its single article on the topic was just six paragraphs long and completely sidestepped the latest rape accusation. Instead, the piece merely stated that the report “largely cites allegations that have already been public” in order to accuse Trump of being “an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of young women.”
In an interview she gave with Judiciary Committee staff, Beatrice Keul – a former Swiss model who claimed in 2024 that Trump grabbed and groped her in 1993 – gave a far more extensive account of what she previously said happened, claiming she was the victim of a “brutal” rape at the hands of the president. Afterward, she claimed Trump demanded she keep quiet, telling her: “the show must go on.”
The Times article also never made the front page of the paper’s website, something Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky first pointed out on Tuesday. (Ironically, the Times spoke to Keul last December for a deep-dive into Trump’s relationship with Epstein, though she didn’t reveal her new claims of rape.) The paper’s story on how Barack Obama’s “Cheesecake Factory” joke about the Trump White House “has struck a nerve,” though, was prominently featured – and almost twice the length of the Epstein report article.
“Much easier for the media to lock in on faux Cheesecake Factory outrage than a House Dem report indicating Todd Blanche basically told Ghislaine Maxwell ‘stop talking’ when she was about to discuss a girl that could more closely tie Trump to Epstein,” blogger Scary Lawyer Guy aptly noted. (The Dem report alleges that Blanche “directed Maxwell not to discuss” a survivor’s claims that could implicate Trump.)
At least the Times provided some limited coverage. Both the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal – which is currently being sued by Trump over its groundbreaking reporting on Trump’s longtime friendship with Epstein – have outright ignored the Democrats’ report. A Wall Street Journal spokesperson declined to comment. Representatives for the Times and Washington Post did not respond to requests for an explanation on their lack of coverage.
On the broadcast news networks, it’s been a similar story. None of the national nightly news broadcasts – ‘NBC Nightly News,’ ‘ABC World News Tonight,’ or ‘CBS Evening News’ – have mentioned the report or the rape allegations. The same goes for the broadcast morning news programs.
NBC News did publish an online story about the report, noting that it “signaled an avenue of focus for lawmakers in January should Democrats win a chamber of Congress.” At the same time, much like the Times, NBC steered clear of mentioning the new on-record allegation of rape. The network also aired segments about the report on its streaming channel.
CBS News and ABC News, on the other hand, offered up no digital stories on the report or the sexual assault accusations against the president. A CBS News insider noted that the network has reported extensively on the Epstein files, including an exclusive today about classified material the released files were missing. An ABC News representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Among the three major cable news channels, MS NOW is the only network that has given the report and allegations extensive coverage, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, brought on multiple times as he pushes for a special counsel investigation. (He appeared on both ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell’ and ‘Deadline: White House.’)
CNN has mentioned Epstein at least a dozen times on air since Monday afternoon, but mostly in terms of Democrats using the issue in midterm ads. But CNN has stayed away from covering the new allegations and report. The same is true on its digital site, even though the network has a section explicitly devoted to the Epstein Files.
As for Fox, which has spent the past year-plus actively trying to avoid covering anything about Epstein so as not to “piss off” Trump, it shouldn’t really come as much of a shock that the conservative cable giant has ignored this latest story. Representatives at CNN and Fox did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Trump has long denied any wrongdoing and has continued to distance himself from the notorious financier, all while downplaying his lengthy relationship with the convicted sex offender. The White House continued that trend by calling the new allegations false.
“This ‘report’ is nothing more than a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans from the surging Republican momentum driven by President Trump’s historic achievements,” a White House spokeswoman told NBC News. “The President kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club at Mar-a-Lago because he was a creep.”
I know this is stating the obvious here, but just imagine if Barack Obama – midway through his second term – was suddenly faced with a lengthy report by House Judiciary Republicans that included nearly a dozen women accusing him of being a co-conspirator in the world’s most famous sex offender’s criminal enterprise, claiming he raped and sexually assaulted them.
Now, do we think the establishment media would have met this with a collective yawn? I think we all know the answer.
‘So Many Unforced Errors’
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Angie Nixon on CBS News on Oct. 27, 2026.
Two months after Florida Democratic Senate hopeful Angie Nixon had to correct CBS News morning host Gayle King live on air for falsely claiming she was campaigning with leftist streamer Hasan Piker, the progressive star once again had to call out the Bari Weiss-led network for “misinformation.”
Sharing a clip of Nixon’s interview with correspondent Cristian Benavides, CBS News tweeted on Monday that Nixon “declined to say” whether Cuba is a dictatorship, noting she said “that is what people have told me” and she would “have to take their word for it.” Nixon immediately objected, posting on Twitter that it was “categorically false” to say she declined to answer the question.
“It’s disappointing to have to say this, but @CBSNews, this is a serious failure of editorial reporting. I clearly state in this clip that while I have not personally been to Cuba, I have spoken with Cubans who have described it as a dictatorship, and I believe them,” she tweeted, adding: “That is not journalism. It is misinformation.”
By that point, the CBS News post had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, with prominent Republicans and centrists declaring it a death blow to Nixon’s campaign. As the tweet went viral, the network’s standards and practices unit stepped in, as the post “was quite clearly a mischaracterization,” according to a CBS News staffer.
Ultimately, the original tweet was taken down and replaced by a new post with a different framing of the exchange on Cuba, and an editor’s note stating a “previous version of this post did not accurately portray Rep. Nixon‘s answer. It has been deleted.”
One senior CBS News staffer noted that the updated tweet and editor’s note were the standards and practices team’s “shady way of pushing back on the garbage Bari wants mainstreamed.”
The update didn’t sit well with some MAGA luminaries, such as Laura Loomer, who griped it was “pro-communist election interference by CBS News” and that the network was looking to “run cover” for Nixon.
Even though the network eventually corrected the record, staffers I spoke to saw this as yet another example of CBS placing its thumb on the scale against liberal political figures, citing recent reports of Weiss personally involving herself in the “horribly Islamophobic” 9/11 article about Abdul El-Sayed and pushing reporters to chase “thin theories about progressive candidates.”
“Good grief,” one reporter sighed over the latest kerfuffle. “It’s all so idiotic,” the senior network staffer said, adding that there have been “so many unforced errors.”
Another CBS News insider, however, challenged the notion that Nixon was mischaracterized, praising Benavides’s “fascinating and revealing interview” and adding that “her response spoke for itself.”
Nixon’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Jennings Gets Piked
Months after threatening MAGA pundit Scott Jennings with legal action for falsely claiming he advocated for the lynching of Black Americans, Hasan Piker followed through on Tuesday and filed a $72.5 million defamation lawsuit.
“Mr. Jennings did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said. He took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered, and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show,” the complaint declares. “Mr. Jennings presented those accusations as fact, telling his viewers to ‘[l]isten for yourself’ about Mr. Piker, knowing that he was playing a falsified video of Mr. Piker for those viewers, and completely disregarding the truth of Mr. Piker’s actual words.”
While Jennings is best known as a CNN political commentator, the network was not named in the suit, as the right-wing blowhard made his remarks and shared the heavily edited clips on his Salem Media radio program.
I have reached out to Jennings for comment.
Sign of the Times?
It may not just be the political polls or massive early-voting numbers that foreshadow a massive blue wave for the midterms.
According to Status’s Oliver Darcy, who got hold of Nielsen’s October ratings data ahead of its release, Fox will suffer its least-watched month in nearly three years, with total viewers down 27% and the key 25-54 advertising demographic down 32% compared to last October. Meanwhile, both CNN and MS NOW have seen year-over-year viewership gains.
The numbers are even starker for ‘Fox & Friends,’ the president’s favorite morning program that serves as both his daily briefing and propaganda megaphone. This is the second straight month it has averaged fewer than a million total viewers and marks its lowest-rated month since July 2015. (In the 25-54 demo, it’s the worst month in 25 years.)
That said, Fox still handily beats its cable news competition on multiple platforms and, despite the ratings plunge, remains the top network in cable broadcasting, beating ESPN in total day viewership and placing second to the sports network in primetime audience. Fox’s primetime viewership also remains higher than CNN and MS NOW’s combined.
As we’ve seen across this highly polarized cable news ecosystem – with MSNBC’s (now MS NOW) and CNN’s ratings plunging after Trump’s victory two years ago, and Fox’s dropping after Joe Biden won in 2020 – deflated partisans tend to abandon their preferred networks when their parties lose. Is this what’s happening here?
“The fact that their ratings are dropping ahead of the midterms shows the desperate tactics by the hosts to distract with culture wars or blame it on Biden aren’t working. I do worry, though, if Republicans lose and Trump cries voter fraud, that Fox will go all in on suggesting the election was rigged,” a former Fox producer told me. “We saw that desperation play out in 2020 when their ratings plummeted and they knowingly engaged in election fraud lies to gain back viewers who went to Newsmax or OAN. I have no doubt they’ll do that again if they think it can get them out of this ratings free fall.”
