The newest opinion hour on the daily Fox News roster, Fox News Primetime, is having a relatively slow start, ending its first two weeks on air with fewer viewers than when it started.

Primetime debuted at 7 p.m. on Jan. 18, following a schedule shakeup at the network, with 1.88 million total viewers, and 313 in the key demo of viewers age 25-54, according to Nielsen. Two weeks later, on Jan. 29, the show had 1.64 million total viewers, and 255 in the demo. While Primetime had more total viewers than timeslot competitor Erin Burnett OutFront on CNN for two days in a row – Jan. 26 and 27 – the show couldn’t quite beat the competition in the demo on any day in its first two weeks.

Fox News Primetime, an opinion show in the vein of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle, replaced The Story with Martha MacCallum, which focused more on news than opinion. The Story was moved to 3 p.m.

Overall, in the 7 p.m. hour, OutFront continues to have a lock on the demo, while OutFront and MSNBC’s The ReidOut alternate the top spot with total viewers. So far, Brian Kilmeade and Maria Bartiromo have served as Primetime show hosts, and former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) is expected to take over temporary hosting duties for the week starting Monday.

Although Fox News Primetime might be struggling to make a ratings splash, Fox’s actual prime time lineup won in both total viewers and in the demo Friday, averaging 2.68 million overall viewers and 430,000 in the demo. MSNBC was second in prime time, with 2.65 million total viewers, but was third in the demo, with 401,000. CNN averaged 1.62 million total viewers in prime time, and 422,000 in the demo.

In total day viewers, the top spots went to MSNBC and CNN, with MSNBC having the most total viewers, 1.7 million (but the fewest in the demo, with 256,000), and CNN dominating the demo with 342,000 A25-54 viewers (but the fewest overall, with 1.34 million). Fox held the middle ground in total day, with 1.57 million total viewers and 273,000 in the demo.

MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show was again the most-watched show in all of cable, and the most-watched show in cable news Friday, with 3.72 million total viewers and 577,000 in the demo. Tucker Carlson Tonight was second, with 3.19 million total viewers and 477,000 in the demo. Hannity was third in total viewers, with 2.71 million (458,000 in the demo), while the second hour of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer had the third-most viewers in the demo for the day, with 463,000 (1.55 million viewers total).

Morning Joe on MSNBC had the most early morning viewers overall, 1.51 million, and 230,000 in the demo. Fox and Friends was second, with 1.15 million total viewers and 207,000 in the demo. New Day on CNN was third, with 743,000 total viewers and 192,000 in the demo.

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Ted Cruz came under intense scrutiny for questioning the election results and in particular his objections to the results in Arizona. Days before that January 6th vote Cruz announced his plans to object to electors from several states and talked up how “the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.” In recent weeks, even some other Republicans have been calling out Cruz and Josh Hawley and saying they should step up to say clearly and without qualification the election wasn’t stolen despite baseless claims from the former president and his allies.

In an episode of the podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz last week, the senator continued to mock the media because “their talking point is ‘there is no voter fraud.'”

But while continuing to defend his own actions, in comments that got some attention this week, Cruz criticized former President Donald Trump for his rhetoric about the election.

Cruz said, “President Trump’s rhetoric I think went way too far over the line. I think it was both reckless and irresponsible, because he said repeatedly, he said over and over, he won by a landslide, there was massive fraud, it was all stolen everywhere.”

“That evidence — the campaign did not prove that in any court, and to make a determination about an election it has to be based on the evidence,” Cruz said. “And so simply saying the result you want — that’s not responsible.”

As for the impeachment trial over the former president’s actions that led to his supporters violently storming the Capitol, Cruz described the process as “vindictive” on Twitter Monday.

In the midst of a pandemic, Democrats are advancing their political agenda through a vindictive impeachment instead of working on legislation that would put our nation on the path towards recovery & help the millions of Americans hurting during these unprecedented times.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) February 1, 2021

You can watch Cruz’s remarks above (the relevant part starts at the 16:50 mark).

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images.

Former President Donald Trump’s new impeachment lawyers are no strangers to seeing their names in headlines: David Schoen represented self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone (before Trump commuted his sentence) and met with infamous convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a few days before he committed suicide (but he says Epstein was murdered), and Bruce Castor, Jr. was the district attorney who declined to prosecute Bill Cosby in 2004.

News broke on Saturday that the original five attorneys on Trump’s legal team for his second impeachment trial had parted ways with the former president, and Trump had brought on Schoen and Castor to replace them.

Stone, a former Trump adviser, was convicted of seven counts of lying to Congress and the FBI and witness tampering, and sentenced to forty months in prison. Stone was due to report to prison last July, but Trump commuted his sentence.

Trump’s decision to protect his longtime friend from prison was met with loud criticism, including from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who penned an op-ed for the Washington Post to defend the work of his office as proper and in compliance with the law, and point out that Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”

Of course, Stone was not without his defenders, and some of the most fervent were on Fox News, including host Sean Hannity, who scored the first interview with Stone after the news broke of his commutation, along with his attorney, Schoen.

“This commutation is a great tribute to President Trump,” said Schoen during that July 2020 Hannity appearance, launching into a screed attacking Mueller and the other investigators involved in the case as “rotten to the core” and “ethically bankrupt” and profusely thanking Trump for recognizing that Stone’s trial was “unfair” and saving his client from prison.

This would be far from the first time that a flattering Fox News appearance preceded being hired by Trump: both his coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas and attorney Jenna Ellis reportedly caught his eye after signing his praises on the Murdoch-owned network.

Unsurprisingly, Stone has continued to staunchly defend Trump in public, including backing his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen and speaking at pro-Trump rallies, such as the January 5 one in Washington, D.C. pictured at the beginning of this article, one day before the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

In a September 2020 interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times, Schoen lauded Stone as “very bright, full of personality and flair,” and described the case against him as “very unfair and politicized.”

“I represented all sorts of reputed mobster figures: alleged head of Russian mafia in this country, Israeli mafia and two Italian bosses, as well a guy the government claimed was the biggest mafioso in the world,” Schoen bragged in the interview. The reporter noted that Schoen had also “worked with accused rapists, capital murderers and international narcotics dealers.”

Schoen met with Epstein on August 1, 2019, just days before he was found unresponsive in his cell on August 10. Schoen has spoken with multiple media outlets about that meeting, adamantly stating that he believed the accused sex trafficker was murdered.

“I saw him a few days earlier,” Schoen told Fox Nation. “The reason I say I don’t believe it was suicide is for my interaction with him that day. The purpose of asking me to come there that day and over the past previous couple of weeks was to ask me to take over his defense.”

“I still think he was murdered,” he told the Atlanta Jewish Times last September.

Castor was the district attorney for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania who declined to prosecute Cosby for an alleged 2004 sexual assault. In a press release, Castor wrote that he had “conclude[d] that a conviction under the circumstances of this case would be unattainable,” and therefore “decline[d] to authorize the filing of criminal charges in connection with this matter.”

The post One of Trump’s New Impeachment Lawyers Represented Roger Stone And Says Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself, The Other Declined to Prosecute Bill Cosby first appeared on Mediaite.