TV’s Biggest Stars Smash Networks’ Wall of Silence on Epstein-Trump Tapes

Two of television’s biggest names broke days of silence from their networks about the bombshell tapes uncovered by the Daily Beast in which Jeffrey Epstein talks about his relationship with Donald Trump.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel both spoke of their shock at the tapes, with the late-night host complaining that they had not been widely covered by other outlets.

A small sample of the tapes was first revealed last Thursday by author Michael Wolff, and on Saturday the Daily Beast published recordings of Epstein making extraordinary claims about his friend of a decade.

The convicted pedophile suggested intimate knowledge of the West Wing. He claimed that Trump liked to screw with his best friends’ wives, that Trump first made love to Melania Trump on Epstein’s “Lolita Express flight,” called Trump a serial cheater who bragged about “f—ing black girls” , claiming without proof that Trump had had an affair while in the White House. The tapes were made two years before Epstein’s death in a federal prison cell when he spoke to Wolff as the source of his bombshell international bestseller, Fire and fury. Wolff said Epstein showed him a cache of photos of Trump with topless young women on his lap.

Such dramatic claims about the character of a presidential candidate on the eve of a campaign would normally be expected to be picked up immediately by major television networks, especially given the light they shed on Trump’s largely unexplored relationship with one of the ​​America’s Most Notorious Sex Offenders.

But instead, they were met with silence, despite being singled out by leading Democrats, including Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, who wrote on X: “Trump is all over the Epstein files.”

The wall of silence lasted until the night before the election, when first MSNBC’s Maddow and then ABC’s Kimmel talked about them on air Monday night.

On MSNBC, Maddow listed what she called “October surprises,” comparing the tape to the revelation that Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said that Trump is a textbook fascist and that The Iowa poll that put Harris three points ahead in the deep red state. Both have received general coverage on liberal-leaning MSNBC and other networks.

The Beast can reveal that Maddow spoke out despite an NBC News “standards” decision not to report on the tapes. The network’s “standards” unit had warned its staff that the tapes were “DNU”, meaning “Do Not Use”, and said they could not be mentioned until there was “an attempt to listen to the full unedited version of recording to note what was left out.” Wolff has said he has 100 hours of footage.

Notably, MSNBC has not aired the segment where Maddow talks about the tapes on X until Tuesday.

On ABC, Kimmel, who is not bound by news standards, spoke freely about his shock at the recording and hinted at the silence surrounding the Beast’s bombshell.

“We heard a bombshell tape where Jeffrey Epstein says he was Trump’s ‘closest friend’ and shares a bunch of crazy stories. This hardly moves the needle,” Kimmel said. “Remember when Mitt Romney went down due to he put a dog cart on the roof of his car? We just got 100 hours of Jeffrey Epstein saying he and Trump were BFFs; I didn’t even get a warning about it on my phone.”

Wolff revealed in a post on X that the tapes had previously been offered to “most major broadcast outlets,” adding, “That includes networks, streaming platforms, cable channels. I say ‘most’ rather than ‘all’ because after a while of working down the obvious candidates, the effort seemed clearly unproductive and unlikely to yield a different answer elsewhere.”

While TV has ignored the tapes, the most subscribed commentator is on Substack historian Heather Cox Richardsonhighlighted them to her 1.6 million subscribers and to 2 million Facebook followers. Google’s interest in Epstein, and particularly in the term “Epstein-Trump,” has also increased significantly since the Daily Beast first reported the existence of the tapes on Nov. 1.

The Daily Beast has reached out to NBC News for comment.