'Just let it go': Fox News killed Stormy Daniels story to help Trump win

Fox News knew about Trump’s alleged affair with actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, but killed the story for the express purpose of helping Trump’s electoral chances.’

New details of the cover-up came Monday morning from an explosive piece in the New Yorker exposing the unethical relationship between Fox News and Trump.

Entertainment reporter Diana Falzone was ready to run the story of Trump’s sexual relationship with adult film actress Stormy Daniels in October 2016. But when she brought proof to her editors, the bosses at Fox News refused to print the story.

The reason was simple: Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox News, wanted Trump to win the election and would not let good reporting hurt Trump’s chances.

“Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win,” Falzone’s editor told her, according to the New Yorker. “So just let it go.”

In January 2018, CNN broke the story that Fox News killed the Stormy Daniels story before the election, but the New Yorker lays out the explicit reason for it doing so. One of Falzone’s sources told the New Yorker he was confident that if the story had run, it “would have swayed the election.”

If Fox News had exposed the truth, it would have run the same month as the famous “Access Hollywood” tape of Trump bragging about his habit of sexually assaulting women.

Instead, Fox News helped cover it up, and Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels was not known to the public until the Wall Street Journal wrote about it — about a year after Trump was already in the White House.

The affair has been back in the news after Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer,’ Michael Cohen, testified before Congress last week. Cohen testified to the fact that he paid $130,000 in hush money to Daniels, at Trump’s direction, in order to keep Daniels from speaking about the affair in the final weeks of the campaign. When Cohen pleaded guilty to this action, Trump’s Justice Department indicated Trump was involved in the criminal acts.

Fox News tried to hide Trump’s behavior in the past, but the network can’t stop the truth about Trump unethical — and likely illegal — behavior from coming out now.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.