Charlie Kirk, who raged against Murdoch media's ‘hit job' on Trump, tapped to host Fox & Friends Weekend
This will be the Turning Point USA founder's first time hosting a show on Fox News. As Axios first reported, Kirk is set to join regular Fox & Friends Weekend co-hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy and Charlie Hurt on the curvy couch this coming Saturday and Sunday.
With the dog days of summer upon us, cable news networks are reaching deep into their benches to fill out hosting slots, as this is prime vacation time for anchors and reporters. Therefore, it isn't surprising to see Fox News turn to outside personalities for one-off hosting gigs during this time of year, especially someone with a well-established audience like Kirk, who hosts a radio show and a top-rated podcast.
What does make this stand out, though, is that Kirk was one of the MAGA influencers who was highly critical of the Wall Street Journal's bombshell story on the 'bawdy' birthday card Donald Trump allegedly sent deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. According to the WSJ, the card included a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, with Trump's signature mimicking pubic hair.
The report, which Trump immediately described as 'fake,' led to the president suing the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News. Meanwhile, the story appeared to dissipate the MAGA uproar over the Epstein files, as prominent conservatives who had grown increasingly frustrated with the administration's handling of the saga quickly rallied around the president over their shared disdain of the mainstream media.
'This is not how Trump talks at all. I don't believe it,' Kirk tweeted in response to the Wall Street Journal story shortly after it was published. He would go on and share other social media posts from Vice President JD Vance, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Donald Trump Jr. blasting the report as defamatory.
Kirk would be even more outspoken about the story on his radio show this week, where he fumed that the WSJ 'attempted a terrible drive-by… of our phenomenal president' while applauding Trump for his $10 billion lawsuit against Murdoch.
'As soon as I read this story, I said this is the dumbest, obviously fakest thing. I don't believe it,' he declared. 'Now I quickly, and we quickly, came to the president's defense because this thing was obviously a hit job. Obviously, a drive-by shooting trying to go after President Trump and trying to tie some of the Epstein news to President Trump to try to bring down his approval rating.'
Meanwhile, the MAGA backlash against the WSJ as Trump comes for Murdoch has put Fox News in something of a bind, especially considering that the conservative cable giant shares a symbiotic relationship with the president and has helped staff up his administration.
Left without the option of doing what is the network's standard modus operandi, which is parroting Trump's attacks on the mainstream media, Fox News has also decided against defending its sister publication and its owner. This has resulted in the network largely ignoring both the WSJ's blockbuster article and the president's lawsuit, mentioning both only a handful of times since last week.
Additionally, the network has also devoted significantly less airtime to the Epstein controversy than its cable news rivals and even other right-wing outlets. After the president began ordering his supporters to 'stop talking about' Epstein, Fox News has pulled way back on its coverage of the drama surrounding the administration's handling of the flies, prompting MAGA media competitors to outright mock the 'terrified' network for not wanting to 'p*ss off' Trump.
Sharing common ground with Fox News on the issue, Kirk has also sought to heed the president's demand that the MAGA base move on from Epstein and instead concentrated on the various seeming distractions he's tossed out into the ether, such as changing sports teams' names back to racist caricatures or reigniting the 'Russia Witch Hunt' conspiracy and demanding 'Barack Hussein Obama' be charged with treason.
After hosting a TPUSA student event that featured young activists railing against Trump over the DOJ memo that concluded Epstein died by suicide and didn't keep a 'client list,' Kirk returned to his podcast that Monday and said he was 'done talking about Epstein' and would instead 'trust my friends in the government.'
That announcement came shortly after it was reported that Trump personally called Kirk to ask him to ease up on the criticism of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had come under intense fire from MAGA loyalists over the memo, particularly because she had previously said she had the so-called 'client list' on her desk for review.
Kirk would later backtrack from his proclamation that he was moving on from Epstein, declaring the following day that he had merely meant 'yesterday' when he said 'for the time being,' grousing that the 'fake news' had taken him out of context.
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