On MSNBC’s The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone explains how Epstein files scandal is fracturing MAGA media

ALICIA MENENEDEZ (CO-HOST): There is the question of whether or not this is the thing that will actually break through. And given Fox News and Wall Street Journal’s ties, I am curious to hear from you about how Fox News is possibly covering the fallout of these last few days. 

ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): Yeah, and I want to start with a little bit of context there too because the thing to consider is nothing about his poll numbers should be surprising because he ran on Project 2025. It was extraordinarily unpopular when he ran on it. And, you know, they’ve implemented about 40% of it so far. There’s 20% more so in progress, so they’re about 60% of the way there. It shouldn’t shock anybody that his poll numbers in the tank. So then the question is why does this not seem to have any of the political consequences that these types of trendlines would typically have in normal politics, Earth one why? 

What is the thing that is holding it back and the backstop? And it’s not just a backstop, it is actually driving the momentum of Trump, not just now, but long term. It’s his sustainability and durability, and it gives us a sense of where we’re going is the media apparatus that he sits on top of. And Fox is an important — in the past was the crown jewel of that. Whatever Fox did would be the way you could sense of what’s happening the rest of the landscape. Now, they’re just one big piece of the puzzle. So how is Fox covering it? They’re carrying water for him. They’re carrying water.

MENENDEZ: Against their own corporate interests?

CARUSONE: Against their own corporate interests. They did not cover the Wall Street Journal article for more than 24 hours. Brett Baier made a fleeting mention of it on the second day after the news broke. The only person that mentioned it within the first 24 hours after the Wall Street Journal reported it was Laura Ingraham saying, “We’re going to cover it when we get back from the break,” and then never talked about it. That was the only mention of it in the first 24 hours. That’s not supposed to happen. That’s not normal. Everybody else was talking about it because it was big news. So, one is they do two things. They ignore and deflect. 

And that is an important part of this because it’s not just the audience that is consuming Fox that’s getting it. You have to think about the downstream effect. Fox is sort of like an assignment editor for a lot of other people online that take the Fox segments and talk about it, or a whole network of wannabe, you know, Rush Limbaughs who say, I’m going to make the next big conservative talk, I’m going to be the next Ben Shapiro, and I’m going to do is build my new audience on whatever I just watched on Fox News a few hours ago or yesterday. So, they echo. That’s why we call it an echo chamber. 

So they see the Fox segments and they regurgitate it back out. What Fox doesn’t cover, they don’t cover. And then what Fox does cover and it gets — the other thing is they say, “Just don’t believe your lying eyes.” All the things you see and feel either aren’t happening, and if we can’t convince you that they’re not happening, there’s somebody else’s fault. And that’s the one thing they’ve proven to be very good at is when the reality hits them, figuring out who to blame.

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MICHAEL STEELE (CO-HOST): You know, Angelo, you got — it’s interesting because everybody’s sort of caught between these various spots, but the American people seem to be cutting a pathway forward on this and letting us know how this is falling for them, irrespective of the Fox base and what’s happening there. You’ve got CBS News | YouGov poll on the Epstein files. 89% said they should be released, all the information should be released. 11% say they should, you know, should not. What does that tell you relative to the next part of this story, not the rest of it, but the next part of it?

CARUSONE: What it tells me is that most Americans who are casual consumers, who maybe pay attention for a few minutes here or there, they’ve taken away the most important part of the story, which is that somebody with a lot of power, with a lot of other people who had a lot of power, got together and did a lot of really terrible things to women, young women in particular, and that those people were never held accountable, most likely because they had a lot of power. It is the very thing that helped fuel and foment a lot of the animosity that Trump harnessed during his political campaigns. And it’s a universal sentiment that there’s bad people that have power that got away with it. 

That’s the thing. That’s why those numbers are that way. Because aside from the political chatter and how we think about it, which makes a lot of sense because we’re looking at it through this landscape, the political landscape, most people take away the important part, which is that really bad stuff happened and no one was held accountable. That’s what it tells me. And so what it means is that it’s not going to go away. There’s too much fuel there. And if you don’t burn that fuel, it’s toxic. It still spills out.