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Iran hawks coalesce around a post-midterms narrative: The war was great until JD Vance ruined it
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11/02/26
Fox hawks say new Iran strikes are coming “after the midterms”
11/02/26
Fox hawks say new Iran strikes are coming “after the midterms”
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 11/02/26
Fox News hawks who suggested in June that President Donald Trump should “slow-walk” the Iran war to preserve the GOP’s political standing in the months leading up to the midterms and then resume combat operations after Election Day are now predicting that major U.S. strikes are imminent.
“The thing that's going to get the president's attention — I don't care whether he keeps both houses [of Congress] or doesn't, or loses both — is going to be Iran,” Fox & Friends co-host Brian KIlmeade said on his Fox News Radio show Thursday. “He wants to get this thing done before January to start his final two years, and then you’ll watch oil and gas go down, along with foreign fertilizer and especially diesel.”
If such predictions come to pass, those MAGA pundits will have encouraged what amounts to an effective hoodwinking of the electorate by a president who deliberately deprived voters, who broadly oppose the war, of critical information about his intentions to resume it.
The Iran war marked the most consequential test yet of the Fox-Trump feedback loop, with the network’s coverage and its hawkish hosts playing a critical role in encouraging the president to launch the operation in February. While the war’s supporters tried to declare the war a victory almost immediately, it quickly settled into a costly stalemate after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, sending the prices of oil and gas soaring.
After Trump’s June signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian regime that largely failed to resolve the U.S. war aims, right-wing hawks called for a new strategy of holding off on the war to limit Republican defeats in the election, then resuming combat.
Fox’s Mark Levin suggested on social media that the U.S. “consider slow walking the enemy, building up our munitions, our oil reserves, get the price of gasoline down, get through the midterms, then knock them out.” His colleague Hugh Hewitt agreed, adding that it would be “right and proper” for Trump to be “factoring in the realities of domestic politics” because GOP control of Congress “isn’t just a political goal for Republicans, it’s critical to the national security.”
Brian Kilmeade was even more direct about the strategy. “The closer it gets to the midterms, I think the less likely the president [is] to act,” he explained to his Fox & Friends co-hosts. “But after the midterms, the gloves come off.”
This line of discourse initially struck me as a way for Fox’s Iran hawks to cope with Trump backing away from the war they had demanded without criticizing him. But ultimately, the administration seems to have followed the plan the hawks laid out, keeping the war, which is deeply unpopular with the public, under wraps until after the elections.
The memorandum of understanding frayed over the summer and then expired — and Trump did not respond by ordering the resumption of combat operations. That reduced the war’s salience in the months leading up to the vote. At Fox in particular, Iran coverage cratered as the network’s commentators focused on subjects more unifying for the right.
And four months after Kilmeade predicted a return to combat “after the midterms,”, with Election Day in sight, his prophecy seems on track to be fulfilled. The Pentagon recently bolstered U.S. forces in the region and reportedly provided Trump with plans for major Iran strikes. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has been briefed on the plans, describes them as “insane” and likely to trigger “devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.”
The Iran hawks who urged Trump to tamp down on combat operations until after the midterms seem aware of what action the president intends to take.
Kilmeade’s comments on Fox last week followed similar statements on his radio show in recent weeks.
“We seem poised to go back to war after the midterm elections,” he said on October 23, later adding: “My sense, after the midterms, there's a plan in place to go back in, even though the oil has gotten up almost to pre-war levels in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“I think the president is really thinking about going back in right after November 3 and finishing it off,” Kilmeade further claimed last Monday. “This is what I hope. I want a bunch of different military plans and executions. I want the president to push on this plan to make it effective. Understand that they’re going to bomb our bases and go for the pipelines.”
Hewitt and Levin have been somewhat less specific, even as they broadly insinuate that new strikes are on the horizon. Hewitt said on Thursday that “the Iranian regime will be going away soon”; earlier in the month, he said he doesn’t “expect the president to keep the guns holstered.” Levin, meanwhile, has suggested that the increase in U.S. forces means “something is stirring” and claimed that “Iran is going to be addressed further is what I'm reading and seeing.”
Other well-connected Fox hawks have further suggested that the U.S. will soon return to combat operations against Iran.
“I do not believe President Trump will pass this problem to his successor,” senior strategic analyst Jack Keane, a retired general, said on the network last week. “He's going to finish it. Asked whether “America and Israel have a plan to go after Iran, in Iran, to finish it … [and] take that action imminently,” Keane replied, “I don't think we would wait too long to do that.”
And Sean Hannity, confronted on Thursday by a radio caller disenchanted with Republicans, told that caller: “Gas prices will drop. This war in Iran will end sooner than later. I'm telling you.”
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In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
New cope from Iran hawks: Once the midterms pass, Trump will attack Iran again
06/23/26 12:03 PM EDT
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One of the forces behind President Donald Trump’s Iran paranoia was the fear that a single nuclear blast miles above America could knock out the power grid and plunge the country into darkness.
*The New York Times* reported on Wednesday that the political prominence of beliefs that Iran could knock out the U.S. with nothing more than an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Ironically, the report began by mentioning that during Trump's first term, he "signed an executive order directing federal agencies to defend the United States against an unusual type of nuclear strike that his advisers warned could shatter the power grid, wipe out critical infrastructure and lead to a national collapse."
The problem is that it's incredibly unlikely.
The report explains that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that Iran managing an EMP attack would be extraordinarily difficult to carry out. An EMP is a powerful burst of energy that is created when a nuclear weapon is detonated high in the atmosphere. In a normal nuclear strike an EMP likely wouldn't kill people the way an actual blast would. The real problem is that it would disable electricity, communications, transportation, banking, water systems and other U.S. infrastructure. In an era run by technology, it would collapse the U.S.
In 2019, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to strengthen U.S. resilience to EMPs after a New York "dairy entrepreneur" sounded the alarm that even a small nuke from Iran could trigger an EMP and collapse the U.S. Henry Schwartz has been on a mission to incite panic among top Republican officials and advisers in the U.S.
That's when conservatives like Frank Gaffney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, John Bolton, Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe and JD Vance began panicking and promoting the warnings and advocating for military action against Iran’s nuclear program.
According to the experts who spoke with the Times, the freakout is being dramatically overstated.
To have a successful high-altitude EMP attack, Iran would likely need a hydrogen bomb, not a basic atomic weapon. They would also need the exact altitude, orientation, "precise alignment of its gamma rays" and unpredictable space-weather conditions.
According to Stephen M. Younger, a former Los Alamos physicist, even advanced nuclear states would struggle with this and the odds that it could take down the U.S. are worse than even a coin flip.
"In the vacuum of space, however, the gamma rays create no shock waves or mushroom cloud. Instead, they strike the planet’s upper atmosphere, producing a chain reaction that creates something akin to a super-strong radio transmitter," said the report. "The gamma rays hit air molecules and knock out electrons that spin around the Earth’s geomagnetic field lines, creating waves of electromagnetic energy so powerful they can fry circuits thousands of miles away."
Experts have certainly kept an eye on it, but it isn't as likely as Mr. Schwartz seems to believe. Still, his close relationship with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggests a Schwartz believer is at the top.
The report closes by making it clear that while nuclear proliferation should always be a concern and grid security is important, an Iranian EMP attack is not a credible near-term existential threat. Schwartz's EMP movement may be politically influential, but among the scientific community, reality reigns. It turns Schwartz's exaggerated campaign into a confrontation with Iran.
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09/22/26
The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, 3/2/26
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham said on her September 21 show that she opposed President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, a position that would almost certainly come as a surprise to her viewers. Those who had watched her show in early March, as the Trump administration launched its war against Iran alongside Israel, heard something very different.
“I've not been for the war in Iran,” Ingraham said. “I'm not happy with high gas prices — I see a lot of other good trends, but I'm not happy with those at all.” She added that she’d been opposed to it “from day one."
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From the September 21, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Ingraham’s revisionist history is self-serving, as public opinion about the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran sinks and the MAGA movement lurches toward whatever form it may take after Trump is no longer sitting in the Oval Office.
It is true that prior to Trump launching the war on February 28, Ingraham was mildly skeptical of it by Fox News standards.
On January 12, Ingraham said, “We know that America does not have the best track record when it comes to regime change in the Middle East, so that can’t really be the goal here."
During an interview with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on January 14, she said about a war in Iran: “How does that help the average American who is still struggling to pay some bills?”
On the eve of the war on February 27, Ingraham worried about the possible spike in “energy prices, which could be affected if we get into some really protracted engagement in Iran."
Ingraham gets on board with the Iran war
None of that is a full-throated denunciation, of course, but it does evince some small degree of reluctance.
Within days, Ingraham’s weathervane had caught the breeze and her tone was markedly more hawkish. Her March 2 show was a full endorsement of Trump’s war of aggression.
“Only a few days into military strikes, none of the major objections to this action withstand serious scrutiny,” Ingraham said.
This is not a “pointless war,” she said, adding: “Trump has given us no indication that he is going to betray his supporters by asking them to make unnecessary sacrifices.”
Her guest and Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump falsely claimed that Iran was “very clearly on the path to making another nuclear weapon,” and Ingraham fueled baseless and Islamophobic speculation “about sleeper cells in the U.S.”
On March 5, Ingraham declared: “Trump has already won in Iran.”
On March 25, she cautioned that the conflict with Iran could be creating “a series of cascading problems for the region, including maybe outside the region — political problems for the president in a midterm election year.” Later in the episode, she warned that voters are “very impatient for victory,” and polling suggests “the American people are sending a message to President Trump that it's time to put the focus back on the home front.”
But by March 31, Ingraham had fully reverted to the Fox News neocon mean.
“Why are people calling this a quagmire after a month?” she wondered. “Trump is taking some big risks. But, with big risks come great rewards. Eliminating the Iranian threat is a gift to future generations.”
Ingraham has not been the loudest voice at Fox News in favor of the Iran war. But to claim she has opposed it “from day one” is a self-serving fantasy.
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09/18/26
Fox & Friends keeps pushing Trump to expand the Iran war to Yemen
09/18/26
MAGA media's broken promises about higher gas prices
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...Each individual program had more “socialism” mentions than “Iran” mentions in August. Ingraham’s show had the most “socialism” references that month, with 203 against just 25 “Iran” references. Hannity, Jesse Watters Primetime, and The Five each had more than 100 “socialism” mentions and 50 or fewer “Iran” ones. On Gutfeld!, “socialism” was referenced 9 times more frequently than “Iran.”
They’re all speaking from the same hymnal, as a sampling from their voluminous commentary shows.
Watters warned in June that victories by two democratic socialists in Democratic congressional primaries in New York City were “dangerous,” saying of them: “You're coming for us. You're coming for our money, you're coming for our people, you're coming for our way of life. It's not socialism, guys. This is communism. You can't reason with these guys. You have to crush them. And we will.”
“We're not going to let our civilization get destroyed,” he added. “These people are going to steal from us. These people want to hurt us.”
Hannity said in July that the “extreme positions” of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, a self-described democratic socialist, were “the perfect illustration, representation of the socialist base, the radical communist base now, that is the Democratic Party.”
(Hong subsequently lost the primary to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a “moderate Democrat.”)
Discussing Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan and a self-described capitalist, Gutfeld claimed in August that “America is not going to become a socialist country, but the Democrat Party could become a socialist party,” adding: “I resent having to debate over ideologies that have not only failed, but killed millions.”
“Every Democrat should be condemning this language and this movement, but they're not, because above all, they want to win and they're afraid of losing,” Ingraham added later that month. “So, for all you job creators, all you entrepreneurs out there, sorry, because if the DSA-ers tolerated by the Democrat Party have their way, it's confiscation time.”
Trump’s symbiotic relationship with the network’s coverage has been on full display.
Trump “has seized on ‘communism’ as his new favored line of attack against Democrats, having invoked the word more than 100 times since late June as he tries to rouse voters and preserve a narrow Republican congressional majority in the upcoming midterm elections,” NBC News reported on August 21.
Speaking at Mount Rushmore on July 3, the president warned of “a resurgence of the communist menace in our land” and promised to “vanquish communists quickly” and “send them into exile.”
No war but the culture war — as Iran coverage fades, a new focus on WNBA, Fauci
As the summer wore on, familiar culture war fixations joined fearmongering about socialism as major topics on Fox’s evening “opinion” shows.
The WNBA suddenly became a regular topic of discussion across the network beginning in late June and continuing through the summer (with no end in sight).
Much of the debate revolved around criticizing the league over issues pertaining to race and trans inclusion, with the network’s stars devoting significant airtime first to whether Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark received hard fouls because she is white, and eventually to a monthslong firestorm over the possibility of trans athletes in the WNBA, kicked up by comments made by the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham and subsequently accelerated by former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom’s antics (even though, as Wired noted, “no transgender women have ever played in the league”).
The deluge of coverage led Watters to comment during a segment on The Five: “I don’t want to cover women’s basketball. … We have to do this again, really?”
Meanwhile, the Fox hosts devoted significant time to relitigating the response to the COVID-19 pandemic after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) released over 1,000 pages of entries from former public health official Anthony Fauci’s diary written from 2019 to 2022, and Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than giving testimony at a subsequent hearing before Paul’s committee.
Hannity’s show, which played a key role in encouraging Trump to attack, mentioned “WNBA” nearly twice as frequently as it did “Iran” in August (93 to 50). Gutfeld! and The Ingraham Angle also had more “WNBA” mentions than “Iran” mentions. Gutfeld!, Jesse Watters Primetime, and The Ingraham Angle had more “Fauci” references than “Iran” mentions.
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Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s unilateral war with Iran, some advisors — and the MAGA community in particular — has speculated how much wealth and lives Trump and his Secretary of Defense are willing to throw at his futile campaign.
Christopher Lee, veteran campaign operative and Foresight Strategic Advisors founder, said any proposal for a draft and ground invasion had best be off the table unless Trump wants to get his Republican Party curb stomped for the foreseeable future.
“The reason is simple: invading Iran with ground forces has the same practical military sense as would building a house on top of an active volcano,” Lee told the Mirror.
Lee’s comments come days after Trump threatened Iran yet again and warned Americans in the region to prepare as he said that “the biggest attack of them all is waiting in the wings” in a Truth Social post.
The Mirror reports speculation of a draft really took off earlier this year with the news of changes proposed by the Selective Service System, transforming the draft from a self-registration system to an automatic registration system. This could come into effect as early as December of this year.
For now, Lee pointed out that Trump’s Iran conflict has largely been fought in Gulf waters by air by either carrier-based aircraft or land-based heavy bombers, making the draft and a U.S. ground invasion unnecessary. But Trump is not making progress with “death from above” tactics — and he and his secretary of defense have rapidly depleted U.S. ammunition stockpiles. They’ve also ballooned U.S. debt with Trump’s unnecessary military invasion. Add to that the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz and subsequent price increases on fuel and fertilizer for Americans and farmers and Trump is feeling the heat to end the war before the November midterms.
Declaring defeat could be one option, but it will leave a stain of impotence on both the 80-year-old president and the Republican Party that enabled and allowed his war. The only other real option is escalation — but that would involve ground forces, and likely blood and U.S. casualties. The Iran War has already caused the death of U.S. servicemembers. More coffins piling up at military airports would look bad on a president who himself repeatedly avoided the military draft in the Vietnam War.
Worse, if Trump activated the draft, Lee said the president will find that he has deported a sizable portion of the draft’s most eligible young people.
“As is the case within any draft, it will be solely men ages 18-26. Again, the irony bites Trump hard here. The law passed in 2025 would require every male citizen to register. But, interestingly enough, the very people the Trump Administration wants to deport from this country could also be subject to any draft. This includes refugees, people seeking/granted asylum and green card holders,” said Lee.
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STUDY: Figures on Fox News' key programs have called for escalation in the Iran war more than 250 times since the initial ceasefire
Mark Levin, Brian Kilmeade, and Gen. Jack Keane accounted for nearly 90 calls for escalation
Written by Harrison Ray
Research contributions from Isabella Sherk, Rob Savillo, Tyler Monroe & Casey Wexler
Published 08/26/26
In the four months since the initial ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, Fox News figures have continuously warmongered. Throughout the cycle of ceasefire violations and stalled peace talks, individuals on Fox have urged the president to “decapitate and destroy this regime,” send Iran “back to the Stone Age,” and urged him to “send the SEALs in and blow something up just for grins.”
Media Matters found that 7 key shows on Fox News — which includes Fox's evening programming as well as some shows hosted by commentators whom President Donald Trump has praised or promoted during the Iran war — called for escalatory action in the Iran War at least 252 times since the initial ceasefire agreement on April 7.
Key Findings
From April 7, when the U.S. and Iran reached the first ceasefire of the war, through August 6, network personalities and guests called for the Trump administration to escalate its war in Iran at least 252 times. Over the period, figures on Fox frequently argued for military strikes, ground invasions or seizing territory, regime change, arming Iranians, or attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Just 5 individuals — host Brian Kilmeade (35 calls for escalation), host Mark Levin (32), Fox News senior strategic analyst retired Gen. Jack Keane (22), former national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (16), and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen (13) — accounted for nearly half of all these calls for escalation. These 5 figures have all played a prominent role at some point in informing Trump's foreign policy, at times specifically on Iran. Trump has discussed Iran with Kilmeade directly and encouraged people to watch Levin's coverage of Iran, while Thiessen and Keane reportedly have his ear on Iran strategy as well. Kellogg has played high-level national security roles in both Trump administrations.
Top 5 warmongers on key Fox News shows
The network's flagship 3-hour morning show, Fox & Friends, led all shows in our study with 92 calls for escalation, followed by Life, Liberty & Levin (50), Hannity (35), and Jesse Watters Primetime (32). Laura Ingraham's show The Ingraham Angle, which has notably pushed back on the war at times, produced only 8 total calls for escalation in our study.
Key shows calling for escalation in Iran war NO GRAPH
Calls for escalation consisted of several types of arguments
The arguments within these calls for escalation fell in 1 of 5 categories — Fox figures arguing for resumed or expanded military strikes, ground invasions or the seizure of territory, further regime change, arming the Iranian populace, or attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure.
All together, there were 299 unique arguments made over the course of the study period (calls for escalation could — and often did — include more than one argument).
Arguments calling to escalate Iran war
Speakers consistently advocated to resume or expand military strikes
As the Trump administration repeatedly announced imminent peace deals throughout the four-month period, network guests and personalities argued for the resumption or expansion of military strikes. Over that period, speakers on the 7 Fox News programs argued for resuming or expanding military strikes at least 119 times.
Brian Kilmeade, who was the network's chief advocate pushing for military strikes, argued 21 times in favor of additional strikes. Kilmeade frequently argued that the U.S. should resume military action, saying he doesn’t “see any scenario” in which the Trump administration would not have to “go back in and finish the job.” The Fox & Friends host argued that “the quicker we start again, it’s the quicker we end it.”
Fox & Friends led the key shows by a large margin, arguing for resuming or expanding strikes at least 65 times.
Jack Keane (14) and Marc Thiessen (11) followed Kilmeade with the most arguments to resume or expand military strikes. On June 5, in the middle of the supposed ceasefire, Keane said, “Let's go big, take down as much of their capability as we possibly can, and get these guys as close to collapse as a military operation can possibly achieve.”
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From the June 5, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Speakers frequently suggested deploying ground troops or seizing territory
Throughout the war, network guests and personalities frequently advocated deploying ground troops or seizing territory. Suggestions from these figures included seizing Kharg Island or other islands in the region, taking further military action in the Strait of Hormuz including reclaiming or occupying the waterway, and for the Trump administration to go in and physically seize enriched uranium. In total, network guests and personalities argued for deploying ground troops or seizing territory at least 63 times.
Brian Kilmeade led all speakers, arguing at least 13 times that the U.S. should deploy more troops or seize territory, often focusing on U.S. control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Keith Kellogg argued to deploy ground troops or seize territory at least 12 times, the next most of any speaker, often focused on seizing Kharg Island. Kellogg acknowledged in his appearances that he has "repeatedly" and "consistently" argued for taking Kharg Island, adding the president should “put a provisional government in charge.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Speakers often advocated for further regime change in Iran
After the initial assassination strikes on the first day of the war, network guests and personalities continued to argue for further regime change at least 51 times.
Mark Levin led all speakers, arguing for this at least 11 times. His show Life, Liberty, & Levin led the charge with at least 21 such arguments. Levin frequently argued for the Trump administration to “eliminate” the regime, insisted that nothing would change Iran “except its destruction,” and argued that “the regime itself must be pulled out by the roots.”
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From the April 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin
Speakers pushed for arming Iranians
Network guests and personalities argued for the Trump administration to arm or fund the Iranian populace or Iranian opposition groups in their fight against the Iranian regime at least 42 times.
Life, Liberty, & Levin (27 arguments) led all shows by a large margin, followed by Hannity (12).
Mark Levin was seemingly the network's chief proponent of arming Iranians, arguing for this 22 times. Levin leaned on comparisons to the Reagan administration, saying in one segment, “We need to arm the Iranian people the way we armed other entities, freedom fighters, throughout the world under the Reagan administration,” and in another, touted the “success” of the Reagan administration when they “armed the freedom fighters.”
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From the May 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin
Speakers advocated for attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure
With network guests and personalities seeming to grow frustrated with stalling negotiations, speakers resorted to arguing for attacks on civilian, oil, or other non-military infrastructure at least 24 times over the four month period.
Fox News host Sean Hannity proposed a campaign to “take out 10%” of Iran's infrastructure every three days until “everything is wiped out.” Keane argued to “destroy and dismantle” the country's energy infrastructure “on the mainland.” And Fox host Jesse Watters repeatedly touted Trump's so-called “bridge and power plant day.”
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From the April 7, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
Fox News' warmongering rhetoric has real-world implications
Donald Trump's close relationship with Fox News has blurred the line between the network's political commentary and unofficial policymaking. The president watches the channel “religiously,” its personalities have direct access to him, and their on-air demands often worm their way into the administration's political agenda.
And while the promised “four to five week” war — which has strained household budgets, failed to achieve its stated objectives, and killed thousands overseas, including at least 18 U.S. troops — ran on, many of Fox News' personalities and guests spent their time on air encouraging the president to dig in his heels and escalate.
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Nick Fuentes on the Iran war: “This is the worst loss of the 21st century and it isn’t even close”
08/20/26
Rudy Giuliani calls Fox News a “bad station”
08/20/26
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After President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran failed to achieve any of his stated goals, his strategy shifted to emphasize economic pressure that he hopes will force capitulation. But according to new reporting from Politico, his plan has resulted in little more than mockery from the Iranian regime, and it’s unlikely to achieve anything more.
“Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure,” Politico explains. “Tehran may be willing to wait even longer. Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation ‘never seen before,’ former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.”
“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” former ambassador James Jeffrey – who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term – told Politico. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”
His statement highlights the asymmetry of the stand-off. As Politico explains, “The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near. Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated.”
According to Politico, former administration officials warn that Iran has an outsized incentive to muscle through the pain, making the success of Trump’s blockage strategy dubious. “I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” one former Trump administration official told Politico.
What’s more, Iranian leadership has been bluntly dismissive of Trump’s plan, and publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted, “Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement.” He added, “Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league. Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”
While the Iranian economy has undoubtedly taken a severe hit, according to Politico, “those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.” As Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement, explained, “It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point.”
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Has Sean Hannity given up on the Iran war?
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The growing MAGA media despondency over the Iran war quagmire
Benny Johnson once called to rebrand the Strait of Hormuz in the US’s image, but now he has acquiesced to Iranian control over the crucial waterway
Written by John Knefel
Published 07/29/26
As President Donald Trump’s war on Iran extends into its sixth month, some figures on the right are recalibrating their messaging from an original demand for maximalist victory to something much more modest.
Although the war has created some fractures in right-wing media, at the outset of the conflict it had no shortage of boosters — either Iran hawks or MAGA hacks. Now, as the Iranian government has survived months of bombing and operationalized its previously unrealized control of the Strait of Hormuz, some of those pundits are scaling back their ambitions.
MAGA influencer and right-wing media weathervane Benny Johnson provides the clearest example of this trend. On March 12, Johnson, who initially was both skeptical of the war and giddy with the promise of U.S. world domination, offered a particularly Trump-ian rebranding proposal.
“Can we rename the Straits of Hormuz the Straits of America, please?” Johnson said. “Are we there yet? We should be there.”
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From the March 12, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
Fast forward to July 26, with the public turning against the war and any endgame seemingly a distant prospect, and Johnson sounded quite different.
“If Iran oversees boats in the Strait of Hormuz, that doesn’t bother me one bit,” Johnson said. “I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I didn’t care about it ahead of time, and that’s where we were before the war, and I don’t care about it now really. I want — oil was less than $2 a gallon in January of 2026, so that’s kind of where my head’s at.”
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From the July 26, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
Johnson’s about-face may be the most dramatic rhetorical retreat, but he’s not alone. Newsmax host Carl Higbie, who endorsed bombing Iran “back to the stone age” in late February, spent months praising the Trump administration’s plan for the war only to recently change his tune.
“Now, the bulk of the people in that press briefing room are so high on their own farts that they stick their nose in the air and [say] well, if I don’t know the plan, that means Trump doesn’t have a plan,” Higbie said on April 6.
“You know what?” Higbie added. “The Pentagon and Trump and the State [Department] — they owe us no explanation on what they plan to do.”
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From the April 6, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
A chyron on his April 23 show read: “Legacy media falsely claims Trump has no plan w/ Iran.”
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From the April 23, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
“This is the highest — not to sound crass again — return on investment in military history,” Higbie said on June 17, while discussing the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
But in the last few days, Higbie has started to express some doubts about the Trump administration’s larger strategy even as he continued to push for dangerous escalations.
“This is now a war — this is a turn of events in timeline,” Higbie said on July 23 in response to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asking Congress for additional military funds after four more U.S. service members were killed.
“You said you need this much more money,” Higbie continued. “So tell us what it buys us.”
“I will pay my taxes twice this year to help with that nut if you tell Congress that this is what we want to do and this is how we’re going to achieve it,” he added. “Like the first mission in Iran, Midnight Hammer — there was [an] objective, it was planned, there was action, and completion. And then you go get Congress to buy in and they declare war. … For God’s sakes, give those families on the tarmac today a reason their children died.”
The chyron read: “Define the mission.”
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From the July 22, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
Like Johnson, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles has alternately expressed hesitancy about the war while also defending the Trump administration from accusations of “hypocrisy.” Still, on March 10 he was willing to dismiss the concerns of right-wing critics of the campaign to that point.
“As I’ve said from the beginning of the Iran war — very, very high stakes for President Trump,” Knowles said. “But as of now, all the ‘panicans’ predictions have been wrong. Like, all of them.”
But more recently, Knowles acknowledged the war’s deep and growing unpopularity in a monologue about the House of Representatives passing a war powers resolution in opposition to the conflict.
“It’s a leading indicator that the appetite for this war is waning, not just with the broader public but even among the legislators,” he said on July 24. “So I agree in principle it would be good to wrap-up the war, but this is the problem with war. … These situations can really spiral out of control.”
“It should be wrapped up, but there’s no end in sight,” Knowles concluded. “Because in war, your opponent gets a say.”
This shifting rhetoric shows the delicate balancing act right-wing media are engaged in: The hawks want to escalate and the hacks want to continue to ingratiate themselves with the administration, while even Trump voters are growing more opposed to another forever war.
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07/29/26 8:39 AM EDT
07/27/26 5:56 PM EDT
Fox News spent only 15 minutes covering gas prices hitting the $4 mark
07/24/26
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CHRIS HAYES TIKTOCK OF TRUMP TWTS ON WAR 5 8 26
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As the Iran war teeters on the brink, let's revisit the numerous “Mission Accomplished” moments from right-wing media in early March
MAGA media’s Iran war hawks promised a cakewalk. The conflict is about to enter its sixth month.
Written by John Knefel
Research contributions from Helena Hind, Isabella Corrao & Jane Lee
Published 07/21/26
Within days of President Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran in late February, right-wing media figures began predicting a short, easy conflict that would be over quickly. Major conservative pundits unilaterally declared in early March that the war was a “wrap-up mission at this point,” a “done deal,” and “winding down.” Instead, the war is about to enter its sixth month with no clear end in sight, with the potential for escalation seemingly everywhere.
Where right-wing media promised a cakewalk, the Trump administration has delivered a quagmire, as recent developments make clear.
The U.S. military resumed striking targets in Iran in the middle of July, following the breakdown of a largely illusory ceasefire. Iranian authorities told The Associated Press that the recent wave of strikes have killed 50 and injured over 500. Over the weekend, the Pentagon announced the deaths of three U.S. service members, and The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is now on the verge of “all-out war with Iran after more troops are killed.” And according to The New York Times, the Defense Department has been withholding the full number of U.S. troops who have been wounded in the conflict.
CNBC reported that a maritime risk firm characterized the current state of the Strait of Hormuz as a “worse-case scenario,” with the key waterway nominally open but still a primary point of conflict between the two countries.
These grim assessments stand in stark contrast to the predictions Iran hawks made in the days after the U.S. and Israeli militaries began their joint campaign on February 28 — the pundits listed below may as well have unfurled a “Mission Accomplished” banner for all of their premature declarations of victory.
In early March, right-wing media figures predict imminent end to Iran war
Although some in right-wing media expressed early skepticism of the war, there was no shortage of hacks (and hawks) who got on board immediately.
On March 3, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham set a tone that others would soon match. “We've already knocked out so much of their capability,” Ingraham said. “It looks like this is just a wrap-up mission at this point.”
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From the March 3, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Two days later, her colleague Greg Gutfeld speculated on The Five that “maybe there's just nobody who can declare surrender because they're dead. I don't know, but I don't see how this thing can continue much longer.”
The Five returned to the topic the next day. “Do not lie about the war,” host Jesse Watters shouted at his liberal colleague Jessica Tarlov. “You know the war is going well.”
Fox News contributor Tyrus Murdoch added: “I’m willing to say this is a done deal.”
Some prime-time hosts at right-wing network Newsmax took the same line.
“I think we're at the end of serious U.S. involvement in Iran,” said host Rob Finnerty on March 9.
The same night on the same network, Greg Kelly said, “This time next week, we may be able to declare victory and warn Iran, don't do it again. But it could be over.” Kelly’s comments were illustrated by a graphic that read “I Predict: War Over Soon.”
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From the March 9, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
Finnerty doubled down the next night. “The war in Iran appears to be winding down,” he said. “I think it is.”
Also on March 10, Fox News’ Sean Hannity weighed in during his Premiere Radio Networks radio show. “I am a firm believer that this is going to end very quickly,” Hannity said.
As the month drew to a close, Hannity again saw the conflict’s end in sight, telling his radio audience, “It's going to be on the verge of wrapping up no later than three weeks from today is my prediction.”
That was on March 30.
Conservative pundits claim in March that Trump had won the war
Sometimes right-wing talking heads went even further, not just claiming that the war would end soon but declaring that Trump was already the victor.
On March 5, Ingraham stated flatly: “Trump has already won in Iran.”
In response to a press briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 13, Heritage Foundation senior counselor James Carafano said, “The reality is the U.S. has already won this war, period. Mic drop. End of statement.”
Although Kelly’s “War Over Soon” prediction hadn’t come to pass, on March 16 the Newsmax host tried to speak that reality into existence. “I think we kind of just won the war,” Kelly said, adding: “I think we got this.”
Carafano echoed Kelly on March 23, arguing that “it does make sense for the U.S. to say, ‘Hey let's wind this down.’ Look, from America's perspective, dude, we’ve already won."
It’s now been at least three and a half months since these pundits made their various rosy predictions. Contrary to their Pollyannish analysis, the war appears to be expanding, as Iran continues to bomb U.S. military bases in the region and the Houthi militants in Yemen impose a blockade on Saudi Arabia to mirror Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
In light of these developments, a recent Fox News guest offered a different timeline, drawing inspiration from operations the U.S. military conducted after the 1991 Gulf War.
“I do expect that we're going to be there a long time,” said Robert Spalding, a retired Air Force general. “You know Operation Northern and Southern Watch went on for, you know, almost 20 years, I think.”
“I think this is going to be something similar,” Spalding continued. “We're going to have to stay there.”
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Fox guest predicts the US will be in Iran “for a long time”
07/20/26
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07/09/26
### Newsmax's Greg Kelly on oil prices: “It's going to go up, but we can handle that”
07/09/26
### Brian Kilmeade on negotiations with Iran: “One thing we need is a different negotiating team”
07/09/26
07/09/26
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Hugh Hewitt's only Iran principle is that Trump is always right
07/08/26
Fox's Marc Thiessen calls for the US to set Iran “back to the stone age militarily and then declare victory, open the strait by force, reimpose the blockade”
07/08/26 9:12 AM EDT
Fox host Lawrence Jones on the Iran MOU: “The deal was a joke from the very beginning”
07/08/26
i am not losting mma disarray on mou
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FOX HOST BRIAN KILMEADE ON IRAN: "YOU CAN'T SAY IT'S THE NEW YORK TIMES' OR WALL STREET JOURNAL'S FAULT, THEY ARE SETTING UP A TOLL SYSTEM"
06/26/26 9:20 AM EDT
https://www.mediamatters.org/us-iran-relations/fox-host-brian-kilmeade-iran-you-cant-say-its-new-york-times-or-wall-street)
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The right-wing media revolt against Trump’s proposed MOU with Iran | Media Matters for America
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an 6 26
Speaking for his podcast Can’t Be Censored, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said he is leaving the Republican Party — and he blames President Donald Trump’s ostensible support for Israel.
“I would not support the Republican party, there's no chance I would support the Republican party,” Carlson declared in his Thursday episode, with him reposting the clip on X on Monday. “How could I support a political party that is not loyal to the United States. I voted Republican my entire life, I have been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican party, but there is no defending this. I'm out.”
Carlson argued that, by starting a war against Iran in February, he prioritized Israel’s interests over those of the United States. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, Carlson asserted that the president was unduly influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter a war that America has “effectively lost already.” He added that he believes Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was funded by individuals whose “loyalty to Israel” does not align with American foreign policy priorities.
The right-wing podcaster’s split with Trump over Israel is part of a broader pattern on both sides of the aisle. A February poll taken by Gallup found support for Israel has dropped among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. Independents support Palestinians over Israel by 41 to 30 percent and Democrats do so by 65 percent to 17 percent. Republicans still overwhelmingly support Israel, by 70 percent to 13 percent, but this still counts as a 10-point drop since 2024. Overall American support for Israel has fallen from 46 percent to 33 percent in favor of Israel in 2025 to 41 percent to 36 percent against Israel in 2026.
Speaking exclusively to AlterNet, former Harvard law professor, former lawyer for Trump and Zionist activist Alan Dershowitz argued that rising anti-Semitism on both sides of the aisle will compel Israel and the Jewish community to become “stronger” and more cautious about the future.
“The alternative is to be strong,” Dershowitz told AlterNet. “The alternative is to prepare for the worst. The alternative is for Israel to be completely self-reliant, for Jews not to expect help from other people, but to do it on their own, the way they did it when they were the best musicians, the best chess players, the best inventors, the best entrepreneurs.”
He added, "I think Jews have to realize that they're not going to get, they can't count on the kindness of strangers, and they shouldn't give up any of their security in the name of public relations.”
When asked about the rise of anti-Israel sentiment from both the right and left, Dershowitz characterized it as anti-Semitic and compared the current historical moment to the World War II era.
“The antisemite to the right, antisemite to the left have more in common than they are different,” Dershowitz said, then comparing the current movements to those of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. “And that goes back to [Joseph] Stalin and [Adolf] Hitler. Stalin and Hitler had only one thing in common, that they both hated Jews.”
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s war against Gaza has led to 72,835 fatalities as of May, according to the World Health Organization. The initial Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7th led to 1,195 Israeli deaths, including 815 civilians, as well as 251 additional civilians who were taken hostage, according to Human Rights Watch.
Speaking with AlterNet in March about the tendency to blame Israel for America’s war against Iran, Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna said that one can criticize Israeli government officials without being anti-Semitic just as one can criticize American government officials without hating America. The challenge, he added, is discerning when those criticisms are used to denounce all Israelis, delegitimize Israel’s right to exist or hold Israel to a double standard compared to its predominantly Muslim neighbors.
“I can be critical of President Trump without being un-American,” Sarna told AlterNet. “Most people who criticize President Trump or the Republicans would assure you how much they love America and hold a fundamentally positive view of it. It seems to me that it's deeply important for us to do the same with Israel — that is, to make clear that there is a huge difference between disliking the policies of the Prime Minister of Israel and hating Israel itself.”
He continued, “If you wouldn't equate criticism of the President with hating America, there is no reason — and indeed it is wrong and wicked — to do so with regard to Israel.”
Ironically, Israel itself is starting to turn on Trump, with many Israelis believing that his tentative settlement with Iran will leave the nation as powerful as before and just as capable of attacking Israel directly or through proxies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. As restaurateur Daniel Dorfmann, an Israeli in the town of Metulla which is close to the Lebanon border, angrily told The Guardian, “Everyone was very pleased with the war [against Iran] but the US agreement is really not good for Israel … It’s a big mistake.”
While Carlson is officially leaving the Republican Party over Israel, this is not his first deviation from the GOP on policy matters. Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2019, Carlson challenged Republicans for seeming to prioritize capital over labor.
“My intention in writing it was to remind the Republican Party that these are now issues of concern for you, because for a hundred years you represented capital over and against labor,” Carlson told Salon at the time regarding an editorial he composed on the need for the party to be more pro-labor. “I mean that’s kind of the purpose of the Republican Party. They used to represent the investor class, right? So the conventional criticisms of the Republicans as the party of management were 100 percent true, obviously.”
He added, “What I wanted to remind Republican lawmakers was that it’s no longer true, that’s not your constituency anymore. You have a new constituency and it’s people who are primarily wage earners and primarily — not low income, but lower income.”
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Mar. 6 2026
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was spotted at the White House on Friday as President Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” by Iran.
The timing of Rice’s visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue turned heads as she served as national security adviser to President George W. Bush and was a major proponent for the Iraq invasion in 2003, while claiming Iraq was lying about disarmament. Rice went on to serve as Bush’s secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 throughout the ongoing Iraq War.
The former top Republican administration official has not served in the government for some time, but just Thursday, Rice appeared on Fox News, where she urged President Donald Trump to take care of Iran once and for all.
She also made some of the same arguments as the White House for “Operation Epic Fury” despite the death toll rising and the war escalating as Iran strikes countries throughout the region in retaliation for the U.S. attack.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/key-iraq-war-architect-at-white-house-as-iran-war-rages/ar-AA1XGDyH
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Fox host Brian Kilmeade on Iran: “I just think that the only answer for the people who we're against is you've got to go back to the fighting”
05/27/26
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Why Fox News is sticking with Trump’s wildly unpopular Iran war
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 05/21/26
My latest for MSNOW explains why Fox News hosts continue to provide lockstep promotion of President Donald Trump’s Iran war, even as it threatens to weigh down the GOP’s chances in the 2026 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump’s Iran war is a global strategic debacle and a domestic economic disaster that has taken his public support to new depths. With the president’s job approval hitting second-term lows, some Republicans are warning that he may hurt the party’s chances of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
But even as some MAGA pundits are sounding the alarm about the war and its political implications, Fox News’ coverage of the Iran war remains consistently glowing. Trump is depicted on the network as a steely-eyed negotiator who had “the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime,” in the words of one host. He now “holds the cards” against Iranian officials who are “grasping at straws,” a Fox correspondent said. On rare occasions when Fox hosts buck that narrative and express concern about the war’s impact on the country and the GOP, they quickly pivot back to the pro-war propaganda Trump craves.
Fox’s lockstep promotion of Trump’s war reflects two crucial factors: The influence of current and former Fox hosts on the Trump administration, and the network’s desperate desire to hold on to its MAGA viewership at all costs. And because Trump’s own worldview is shaped by the network telling him that he’s engaged in a globally historic victory that just needs more time — and perhaps further escalation — the result is a doom loop without a clear exit.
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### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
:{03/02/26
### Trump’s Fox Cabinet urges escalation as he ponders a return to war in Iran
:{05/18/26
### As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage
05/13/26
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Trump’s Fox Cabinet urges escalation as he ponders a return to war in Iran
05/18/26
Trump’s Fox Cabinet urges escalation as he ponders a return to war in Iran
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 05/18/26
As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with top aides to discuss next steps in the Iran war, his Fox News Cabinet is advising him to escalate.
Influential pundits on the MAGA propaganda channel are telling the president that he currently holds “the cards” and are urging him to use U.S. military might to seize Iran’s uranium stockpile, force open the Strait of Hormuz, assassinate the country’s leaders, and overturn its regime.
Fox has played a key role in getting the U.S. into the quagmire in Iran, with the network’s hosts (who often double as off-the-books presidential advisers) counseling him to launch the campaign in February. They continued to cheer him on over the following weeks, even as Iran’s regime remained intact and in control of its nuclear stockpile, its seizure of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices soaring, public support for the war cratered, and analysts issued dire warnings of U.S. strategic defeat.
With Trump’s ceasefire with Iran failing to produce a more permanent agreement to end the conflict, the president has returned to saber-rattling and reportedly plans to meet with “his top national security team in the Situation Room on Tuesday to discuss military options.” And Fox, which often plays an influential role in shaping Trump’s worldview through its coverage, is already banging the drums for a return to war, telling its viewers — which on any given day can include the president — that the war is a success and that Trump is in control of the situation and can easily escalate without risk.
Brian Kilmeade, one of the network’s most prominent hawks and a co-host of the president’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, on Monday morning proposed a series of simultaneous U.S. strikes against Iranian targets.
He called for the U.S. military to “open up the strait,” “grab the uranium,” and “target these bad actors that have been insincerely negotiating with our group,” an apparent reference to assassinating Iran’s diplomatic team. Kilmeade added that “the best chance for no casualties is you open up four different fronts immediately, simultaneously.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Fox correspondent Trey Yingst stressed on the same broadcast that Trump’s strategy has put him in control of the situation and left Iranian leaders desperate for a deal to avoid further U.S. strikes.
“President Trump holds the cards here, according to regional officials, who say that his strategic patience has given him not only the upper hand on the battlefield but also at the negotiating table,” Yingst said. “Now the Iranians … are grasping at straws. They are trying to find some path forward that would give them an agreement at least temporarily to enter into deeper negotiations to avoid such a bombing campaign.”
He added that Iran’s economic situation is “truly dire” and its officials “are having to try to sell a reality to the people that doesn’t exist. They were defeated militarily during Operation Epic Fury.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
And KT McFarland — a former Fox personality turned Trump national security adviser — even suggested during her Fox & Friends appearance that China would hesitate to engage the U.S. militarily because the U.S. success in Iran has shown them to be “no match for America militarily.”
“If you are the Chinese leader, you’ve got to look at what the United States is just pulling off in Iran,” she said. “The unbelievable precision, the capability, how everything seems to work together. We seem to have done the miraculous.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Likewise, Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Middle East hawk who Trump has urged supporters to watch for his Iran commentary, spent the weekend urging the president to push for regime change in Iran.
On Saturday night, Levin hosted retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former Fox contributor Trump named as a special envoy in 2024 who has called for “putting boots on the ground” in Iran and for the U.S. to seize its territory “like the Romans did” in Carthage.
After Levin called Trump “the only president that's put his foot down firmly and said no,” Kellogg added that “there's been eight presidents since the revolution in Iran, and only one, Donald Trump, has done something about it.” He then called for Trump to seize Iran’s Kharg Island and Qeshm Island to force open the strait.
“I would just say, go full in, get rid of this regime, whatever it’s going to take out there, because as long as you’ve got the theocratic leaders, as long you’ve got mullahs running that government, you’re going to have this problem, not just today, tomorrow, a month from now, but five or 10 years for the next presidency or our grandchildren, or children as well,” Kellogg added.
“All right, I appreciate that,” Levin replied. “I agree with that. And we’re there. Let’s get it over with already. And what do I mean by that? Destroy the regime, help the people, so they can help themselves.”
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From the May 16, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
After a similar segment on Sunday night’s show featuring right-wing commentator Josh Hammer, Levin again said the U.S. needs to “eliminate that regime, because it’s the only way to prevent them once and for all from getting a nuclear weapon, tomorrow, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”
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From the May 17, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
Levin followed that up by interviewing right-wing commentator Jim Hanson, who served in the U.S. Army special forces, about how the U.S. could, as Hanson put it, “slow roll an internal unrest” in Iran “until the regime finally gets overthrown from within.” Levin suggested that this would be necessary because the Iranian regime could not be trusted to follow through on any deal Trump made.
“We have a deal, whatever the deal is, let's say it's the greatest deal since sliced bread,” Levin pontificated. “Are future presidents, future Congresses, the American people in the future, do you think we're going to be willing to enforce a deal if they break the deal, which I think they obviously will when the president leaves?”
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### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
### As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage
05/13/26 1:23 PM EDT
### Fox’s biggest hawks are thrilled with the Iran war — and floating risky escalations
03/12/26
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As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 05/13/26
While President Donald Trump accuses news outlets of committing “virtual TREASON” by producing reporting that suggests the United States is losing his war against Iran, the president’s loyal Fox News propagandists keep telling him that he’s doing a great job, saying he’s on the verge of victory, and suggesting he can fail only by backing down.
Ten weeks after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran — and nine weeks after Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” of its leaders — Iran’s regime remains intact and in control of both its nuclear stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route for global trade whose closure has spiked domestic fuel prices. In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan wrote Sunday that Trump’s decisions have put the country on the brink of a “total defeat” whose consequences “can neither be repaired nor ignored,” and he noted that “any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks.”
With his war at a standstill and the Iranians rejecting his demands for a negotiated settlement, the president has repeatedly lashed out at the press for undermining the effort by producing “treasonous” reporting — an attack he resumed on Tuesday afternoon.
“When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement,” he wrote on Truth Social. “They are aiding and abetting the enemy! All it does is give Iran false hope when none should exist. These are American cowards that are rooting against our Country."
Recent reporting suggests that Trump and his allies have been lying about how successful the war has been.
Minutes after he posted that remark, The New York Times published a report revealing that contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, classified intelligence analyses reveal that “Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities."
Earlier this month, The Washington Post determined that satellite imagery shows that “Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East,” far more destruction than the administration has publicly acknowledged, while Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence indicates the war has not impacted Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, one of Trump’s putative rationales for starting it. NOT COUNTED IN COST?
Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Trump abruptly canceled his “Project Freedom” plan to force the reopening of the Strait after Persian Gulf allies objected.
But on Fox this week, the hawkish sycophants who encouraged Trump to launch the war in the first place are still telling him he’s doing everything right.
Mark Levin: Trump’s war prevented a second holocaust and a nuclear attack on America
Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Fox host and sometime presidential adviser whose program Trump has urged the public to watch, devoted a lengthy and increasingly loud monologue on Sunday’s broadcast to lavishing the president with praise for launching the war and averting a second holocaust.
Levin denounced the Iranian regime and the war’s critics, claiming the latter “hate America and Israel so much they'd rather tens of thousands more Iranians die horrible deaths than see our country defeat this homicidal regime” and “care not at all, not one whit, that they are not only giving aid and comfort to this horrific enemy, but they are encouraging this enemy to slaughter, to execute, to rape, to torture, and to do what homicidal regimes do, because they know the enemy, that these people are in the bag.”
After urging the U.S. to arm and organize a Kurdish resistance to the regime, Levin praised the president, saying that while “humanity allowed the Holocaust to occur,” Trump and his administration had put “this Iranian Nazi regime … on its back."
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From the May 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
“The only president with the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime, this mass-murdering, nuclear-obsessed Islamist enemy, the world’s enemy, is Donald Trump,” he said. “And unlike other such circumstances around the world where genocide is taking place — and as a practical matter, we can’t get involved in all of them — in Iran, we have the opportunity to do something about it,” he continued, calling Iran “the biggest concentration camp in human history right now.”
Levin went on to host Fox contributor Newt Gingrich, who said the Iranian regime was “fully as evil as Adolf Hitler was or Joseph Stalin was” and the war was necessary to prevent Iran from deploying a nuclear weapon “in your neighborhood,” and Fox senior strategic analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane, who urged the president to revive Project Freedom, “return to combat operations,” “put Kharg Island on the table,” and implement an intelligence operation to overturn the Iranian regime.
Sean Hannity: Iran’s leaders should “get out while they can”
Sean Hannity, the president’s chief mouthpiece at Fox, said on Monday’s show that Iran’s leaders are on the verge of fleeing the country.
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From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
After parroting Trump’s statement earlier that day that the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire is “on life support,” Hannity cited unspecified “reports tonight that Iran's very fractured fourth-tier leadership, they may be planning an exit to Russia and Vladimir Putin.”
“Now, if you recall, on this program before Epic Fury, there were reports the supreme leader, other leaders were planning a move, that they had planes with cash and currency on a tarmac ready to go,” he continued. “I said multiple times, my advice to all of them is to get out while they can. The supreme leader, all his top leadership, and then the next tier and pretty much the third tier, they're all dead. They should have listened to me then. My same advice applies here.”
Hannity then brought on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke for a report on the war, telling him, “I think they're just lashing out in utter complete paranoia, but this report that they might be planning an exit is intriguing to me.”
“Yeah, intriguing indeed,” Corke replied. “And I salute you. You are spot-on. You gave him great advice. Of course, they didn't listen and it could cost all of them.”
Hannity was off the air on Tuesday night as he traveled with the president on his state visit to China.
Fox & Friends: “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.”
The co-hosts of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show, have spent the week alternating between assuring their viewers that victory is at hand and pushing for risky escalations to the war.
Ainsley Earhart on Monday floated a military effort to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile. “The question is do we go in and get the enriched uranium? … Do the Israelis do it? Do the Americans do it?” she asked.
Lawrence Jones casually responded that such a mission — which experts say would constitute an immensely complex and risky endeavor — could be a “joint operation,” before pivoting back to how successful the war has been.
He criticized retired Adm. William McRaven’s declaration the previous day that the U.S. is “not really that much better off” than it was before starting war with Iran. “There is no doubt in my mind, taking out the ayatollah, a lot of their leadership, has put us in a better position,” said Jones. “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.” (If the metaphorical language seems confusing, consider that Jones is operating within a worldview where it’s unfathomable that we’re farther from the war’s endzone than 5 yards.)
:{Video
Citation
From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
On Tuesday, the trio stressed how important launching the war had been and praised Trump for carrying it out.
In one segment, Jones said that “we’ve been dealing with this threat for 47 years,” criticized news coverage in the face of the “phenomenal” military operation, and concluded, “I'm glad that the president has the will to deal with this."
“Don't forget the purpose of this,” Earhardt chimed in. “It is to get the enriched uranium away from them because they are planning a nuclear -- they want to have a nuclear weapon. What would they do with that? Well, they yell in the streets, publicly, death to America and wipe Israel off the face of the map. That's their ideology. That's how they think."
“They are not thinking clearly like Americans do,” she added. “They hate us with a passion, with a vengeance. And they have the capability, possibly, of building this nuclear weapon. So the president — that was why the president decided to begin this conflict.”
Brian Kilmeade added that Iran causes “chaos in the region” before adding, “For those people who think the president is boxed in and frustrated, I’m telling you, he gets coolest under pressure. He does not feel it at all.”
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MMA
5 26
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AN 5 26
Trump is arguing that higher gas prices are a small price to pay for the Iranian government not having a nuclear weapon. The Islamist regime in Tehran, Trump claims, would have developed a nuclear weapon had he not launched a series of airstrikes against that country in late February.
But MAGA Republican Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is pushing back against that claim.
In a Thursday, May 7 post on X, formerly Twitter, Kent posted, "One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon [and] that Iran would target U.S. bases in the region [and] shut down the Strait of Hormuz if they were attacked by Israel [and] the U.S. The IC also properly assessed that targeting the Iranian leadership would strengthen the regime and embolden the hardliners."
Kent added, "Despite the professionalism [and] accuracy of the IC, the narrative [and] agenda spun by a foreign government- Israel, won the argument [and] forced us into this war. We need to understand exactly how this happened to ensure we are never put in this position again."
On March 17, Kent voiced his opposition to the Iran war by announcing his resignation as National Counterterrorism Center director. Some MAGA Republicans, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, applauded his stand — while others attacked him for not sticking by Trump during the Iran operation.
Kent, in his resignation letter, posted, "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
With Donald Trump’s Iran war driving his public support to its lowest levels of his second term, the president retreated on Wednesday night to Fox News, the propaganda channel he can always count on to tell him that he’s a historic success.
Trump spent part of his evening live-posting about and posting video of segments on that night’s editions of Fox's The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, and Hannity.
At 7:57 p.m. E.T.,Trump posted Laura Ingraham’s opening segment to his Truth Social feed.
In that segment, Ingraham, over an on-screen graphic describing the president as “Still the Champ,” denounced what she called media portrayals of Trump “losing influence,” calling them “just more wishful thinking.” She went on to say that Trump “vexes all of them because he doesn't play by their rules” and “never stopped fighting.”
Ingraham then interviewed GOP pollster Matt Towery, who called Trump “a force unequaled in the Republican Party” and claimed that “the polling that you're seeing come in on Trump is incorrect.” On-screen text during the interview read, “The MAGA Momentum Is Unstoppable.”
At 9:08 p.m. E.T., Trump posted, “Chuck Devore, Army Intelligence, was fantastic tonight on Jesse Watters. Thank you Chuck!!!”
Devore, during the segment Trump referenced, claimed:
Trump is negotiating a “strong” “deal” with Iran.
Trump’s foreign policy is “like clean up on aisles two, three and 11” and “anyone that doesn't trust President Trump or doesn't give him the respect or the consideration that I think is due, given his track record, I think that they would be sorely mistaken.”
“The economy is hitting on all cylinders now” and the spike in the price of gasoline will end soon.
“Voters are going to see” the impact of that “tremendous” economic boost by the midterm elections, giving Republicans “a pretty good chance” to hold the House and Senate.
“It's a complete wild card as to whether” the Iranian regime “survives the year.”
:{Video:
Citation
From the May 6, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
At 9:13 p.m. ET, Trump posted that “Washington D.C. CRIME is at its lowest point in 30 years, plus!” He was apparently responding to another segment on Watters’ show which used similar language.
Finally, at 10:59 p.m. ET, Trump posted Sean Hannity’s opening segment to his Truth Social feed.
Hannity’s monologue, citing President Barack Obama’s recent interview with CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, alleged that “Barack Hussein Obama” is “refusing to ride off into the sunset with grace and something called dignity” because the former president is “desperate for validation.”
He went on to accuse Obama of having “wrote the book on weaponization and politicizing justice,” through his purported attacks on Trump, adding that he “is now forced to witness his entire legacy go completely down the drain, compliments of the man that he tried to destroy.”
The president often makes or calibrates his decisions based on the network’s programming and posts about it in close to real time, a phenomenon I call the Fox-Trump feedback loop. And right now, his loyal supplicants are providing him with an endless stream of happy talk.
mma
//
### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
### How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second
11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
### STUDY: Two years of Trump's Fox live-tweeting obsession, by the numbers
10/09/20
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MMA
Fox’s ”nuke” justification for the Iran war — and the higher prices it's wrought — has collapsed
Is it a small price to pay if you get nothing in return?
Written by Matt Gertz
:{:{Published 05/05/26}:
Fox pundits have repeatedly argued that the Iran war’s costs are “a small price to pay” for its supposed prevention of the imminent threat posed by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.
But a new U.S. intelligence assessment reportedly found that after two months of war, “the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year,” according to exclusive reporting from Reuters.
Trump’s war of choice against Iran is now in its third month and headed for strategic defeat. While U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed Iranian leaders and severely damaged their military, the regime is intact and has established control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital channel for global trade. Americans are seeing gas, diesel, and fertilizer prices soar as a result, and the direct cost of the war continues to grow.
Some Fox pundits, in the face of plummeting support for the war, have argued that these costs are relatively small compared to the benefit of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — but according to the new U.S. intelligence assessment, there was and remains no imminent threat of that happening.
Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump economic adviser, argued in a Monday Fox appearance that skyrocketing fuel costs are “a small price to pay to stop the nuclear activity” from Iran, which he described as “the most gruesome regime we’ve seen in a hundred years” (note that this period includes Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung’s China).
After Kudlow went on to say that “four and a half dollars gasoline — it's not a great idea, wouldn't want it forever, but it really isn't doing all that much harm,” Fox Business contributor Marcus Lemonis added, “I think you said it right, Larry. We don't want it forever, but this short-term pain has a big, big benefit to it.”
Fox host Sean Hannity, a close ally of the president and major supporter of his war, similarly claimed last week that skyrocking gas prices are merely “short-term pain” justified by preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the April 30, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
“It certainly is short-term pain,” Hannity told a guest during his April 30 broadcast. “Nobody wants to pay more for gas. Diesel is even more expensive, as you point out.”
“However, in exchange for not giving our children and grandchildren nuclear weapons, again, in the short term, I think I’d take that deal every day of the week,” he added.
And Fox host Todd Piro, during a rare mention of the $25 billion estimate a Pentagon analyst gave last week for the early cost of the war, said of that price tag, “If we are dead because Iran strikes us with a nuke, all these economic discussions are moot.”
But as Reuters reported on May 4, U.S. intelligence agencies did not assess that Iran could quickly obtain a weapon before the 2026 war began — or even before striking nuclear facilities last year — much less that the country could deploy it on U.S. soil:
U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The assessments of Tehran's nuclear program remain broadly unchanged even after two months of a war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched in part to stop the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear bomb.
…
U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded prior to June's 12-day war that Iran likely could produce enough bomb-grade uranium for a weapon and build a bomb in around three to six months, said two of the sources, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence.
Following the June strikes by the U.S. that hit the Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes, U.S. intelligence estimates pushed that timeline back to about nine months to a year, said the two sources and a person familiar with the assessments.
This new assessment further demolishes arguments for the war that Fox propagandists like Hannity offered after U.S. strikes began in late February.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who negotiated on behalf of the U.S. in talks with Iranian counterparts in the lead-up to the war, helped fuel those arguments by claiming on Hannity’s Fox show that Iranian negotiators had admitted possessing a uranium stockpile that could be weaponized “in roughly one week” and used to build 11 nuclear bombs. Witkoff lacks prior experience in nuclear diplomacy — but he does have sizable business interests in the Gulf region, at times partnering with Trump’s family business.
//
### Tulsi Gabbard just shattered Sean Hannity’s case for the Iran war
03/19/26 12:56 PM EDT
### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
### Dire Strait: Trump’s Fox Cabinet ignored Hormuz in the month before the U.S. attacked Iran
03/13/26
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POLYCRISIS?
an 4 26
The Financial Times reported Friday morning that the big banks that Wall Street is betting on are failing in private credit markets. It's something that New Republic writer Logan McMillen is sounding the alarm about because it is the same thing that happened in the 2007 and 2008 global economic collapse.
This week, the Federal Reserve likely freaked out economic experts when it demanded the largest banks "detail their exposure to the opaque, multitrillion-dollar private credit market," said McMillen. "Then, almost simultaneously, word broke that some of those same banks are imminently launching a credit default swap index with S&P Global, targeting that same market."
McMillen cautioned that the U.S.'s macroeconomic program is quickly falling apart under the stress of President Donald Trump's war against Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the rise in inflation.
It comes as the "U.S. Treasury is now desperately trying to finance a $1.9 trillion deficit without a large pool of captive foreign buyers. Trump "failed to prepare" for the crisis. A former Trump strategist told CNN last month that the president thought Iran would be just as easy as Venezuela was.
Nate Swanson, a former Trump staffer and current senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at The Atlantic Council, assumes that Trump thought the whole operation would be easy and he'd be successful
Trump was coming off a "win" from his June strikes and from capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. In the past, Trump was able to kill Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani "with virtually no repercussions," said Swanson.
Trump has done nothing to prepare for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and worse, he's done nothing to protect the U.S. economy from the ensuing disaster after the bombing began.
"China is dumping U.S. Treasuries at a rate not seen since the Global Financial Crisis, while stalwart buyers like Japan are seeing their bond yield rates creep up to their highest levels in 27 years," said McMillen, explaining it isn't healthy for the macroeconomy.
What happens this weekend might mark a shift that will be felt for at least a year or more "in the form of a liquidity crisis."
"The Fed’s request that major banks detail their exposure to the private credit market should terrify risk assessors. When macroeconomists picked through the rubble of 2008, many landed on the conclusion that there had been a catastrophic mispricing of risk," McMillen said.
Credit rating agencies continued to claim that toxic subprime mortgages were somehow AAA-rated. Regulators in 2008 at the very least knew where the underlying assests were, McMillen explained. That isn't happening with the $2 trillion private credit market. It's a black box hidden in "regulatory shadows to facilitate high-risk corporate loans that traditional banks were forced to abandon after the passage of Dodd-Frank."....
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an 4 26
On Friday, as news circulated that Iran was reopening the Strait of Hormuz amidst other signals that President Donald Trump’s war against the country may be coming to an end after nearly two months, conservative commentator Ann Coulter had a sarcastic take on the situation.
“Yay. The Strait that was open before we began bombing Iran open, is open again,” she posted to X. “Everybody pretend this is a huge victory for Trump so he'll end this catastrophe.”
Coulter’s tongue-in-cheek remark refers to the fact that the Strait of Hormuz was not an issue until the U.S. and Israel began strikes against Iran at the end of February. Iran closed the Strait in response, wreaking havoc on the global economy. While the Trump Administration famously offered inconsistent justifications for the war at its onset, the asserted goal quickly became the reopening of the economically vital waterway. So as Coulter suggests, Trump is now certain to claim credit for solving a crisis of his own creation.
She is far from the only person to argue that this outcome isn’t the success that the White House claims it is.
“We need to be honest about what we are seeing here,” wrote respected international security expert Phillips P. O’Brien. “The Iranian government is still the same theocratic dictatorship and the Iranian people are in desperate straits after the US promised them liberation. The Iranians still control the Strait of Hormuz, still maintain their right to collect tolls, still have their nuclear program, and have Trump promising to return them $20 billion in frozen assets… Trump has thrown in the towel. A massive strategic failure by the USA.”
Or as former Department of Defense official Ilan Goldenberg put it, “A reasonable deal is better than a return to war and I’ll support it. But let’s remember that this is a colossal failure for Trump and for US interests.” He notes that if Trump hadn’t left the previous Iran nuclear deal, Iran would have faced much harsher restrictions on its nuclear program. And that even having left the deal, the U.S. could likely have negotiated something similar to what has resulted from the war, without “the death and destruction across the Middle East,” the “massive damage to US allies and partners and global relationships,” the “huge use of military resources that will take years to rebuild,” “and significant damage to the global economy.”
Coulter — who has criticized the war on Iran since day one — voted for Trump in 2024, though begrudgingly, saying that he was an “awful, awful person” and that she “can’t trust Trump as far as I can throw him.” At the time, she said she made an “exception” because she wanted “a wall on the border.”
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MMA
Right-wing Christian media double down on supporting Trump's Iran war: “King David himself did this when he found himself dealing with a nation that was barbaric”
Trump and Pete Hegseth have framed the war in religious terms, including Hegseth claiming that military operations are being “carried out under the protection of divine providence”
Written by Payton Armstrong
:{:{Published 04/15/26}:
Some right-wing Christian media figures are continuing their support for President Donald Trump’s war with Iran even as some within the broader right-wing media ecosystem have split with the administration.
These right-wing Christian media personalities — including several prophetic figures who claim to share prophecies, or messages from God, with their audiences — have celebrated that “God was brought in” by Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in public messaging of the war, and claimed that “we are on God's side” so “whatever we do would have His blessing.”
Indeed, Trump and Hegseth have sometimes framed the war in religious terms, drawing support from right-wing Christian media figures, for whom Iran is reportedly “not just a strategic adversary but part of a prophetic story.”
Trump has sometimes framed the Iran war in religious terms, drawing support from Christian outlets while the broader right-wing media sphere has been split on the conflict}:
At the start of the Iran war, right-wing Christian media figures celebrated that it could signal the “End Times” and claimed “we are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass.”Right-wing Christian media celebrated the start of Trump’s war with Iran as a fulfillment of prophecy, claiming that Trump is “literally becoming Cyrus the Great” and that “the return of Jesus is back on the menu.” Media Matters, [3/4/26]
Hegseth and Trump have sometimes framed the war against Iran in religious terms.As The New York Times reported, Hegseth has “invok[ed] Christian theology in public statements about the war with Iran,” including urging the American public to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.” During an April 6 press conference after an F-15 fighter crew was rescued from Iran, Hegseth said, “God deserves all the glory. … Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings and strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection.” Trump has suggested God would approve of the war “because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of.” On Truth Social over Easter weekend, Trump warned that unless the Iranians open the Strait of Hormuz, “all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” The next day, on Easter, his account wrote: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” The New York Times, [3/20/26, 4/6/26; The Associated Press, 4/10/26; The Hill, 4/5/26; AL.com, 4/8/26; BBC, 4/6/26]
Shortly after criticizing Pope Leo XIV as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” on Truth Social, Trump posted an image of himself as a Jesus-like figure.Forbes reported: “Following backlash from conservative Christian supporters after posting a seemingly AI-generated image of himself in the likeness of Jesus Christ healing the sick, President Donald Trump appeared to remove the image Monday.” Trump's criticism came amid “a series of pounding critiques on the Iran war” from Pope Leo XIV, The Washington Post explained, while “at the same time, Leo’s top lieutenants in the United States are issuing new and remarkable calls for American Catholics to resist the war.” Forbes, [4/13/26; YouTube, Forbes Breaking News,
; The Washington Post, 4/13/26; CBS News, 4/13/26]
The Intercept: “By making Iran into a religious crusade, Trump’s spiritual advisers are making the war that much more difficult to end.”The Intercept reported: “In evangelical media ecosystems, Iran is not just a strategic adversary but part of a prophetic story — one tied to interpretations of the Book of Revelation and the battle of Armageddon. Suffering, in this worldview, is not merely tragic; it is necessary to actuate the return of Christ. ... There is a long body of research showing that when political power fuses with religious certainty, war intensifies. Religious framing makes wars far more difficult to end, not easier. Conflicts become existential, not negotiable. Identity replaces strategy. Destiny replaces diplomacy.” The Intercept, [4/4/26]
Pundits in the broader right-wing media ecosystem have been split over Trump’s Iran war. At the beginning of the war, right-wing media figures questioned whether Israel dragged the U.S. into war, with some saying Trump “fell in line” with Israel and others declaring, “Nobody drags Donald Trump into anything.” As a ceasefire was announced on April 7, some figures claimed that Trump “negotiated the deal of his life,” while others argued he “chickened out again” and warned the deal “could be an amazing victory for Iran.” Media Matters, [4/8/26, 3/9/26]
### Right-wing Christian media figures continue support for Trump’s Iran war, claiming “the unseen hand of God is moving” and “we are on God's side” so “whatever we do would have His blessing”
Self-described “prophet” Hank Kunneman cheered that “God was brought in” by Trump and Hegseth in their public messaging on the war. Kunneman — who prophesied that Trump would win in 2020 and claimed in 2021 that Trump had not yet been restored to the White House because God wants to make it look like the prophets are wrong — celebrated Hegseth crediting God with the F-15 crew’s rescue and said: “You look at the history of the kings that serve God throughout Israel's history, especially and whenever they would honor God like you heard in President Trump and Pete Hegseth, it was amazing. God was brought in. It does something of supernatural preservation and intervention.” YouTube, *FlashPoint*, [4/6/26; Media Matters, 7/18/23; Right Wing Watch, 1/20/21, 9/8/21; Newsweek, 6/11/21; Elijah’s List, 11/9/20]
Trump ally Amanda Grace, who regularly shares prophecies that she claims are messages from God, agreed with pastor Jackson Lahmeyer that the “unseen hand of God is moving, and that gives me confidence everything's going to be all right.” Lahmeyer, a member of Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board who recently announced he is running for Congress in Oklahoma, claimed, “We're seeing the unseen hand of God is moving, and that gives me confidence everything's going to be all right. The providence of God is operating like He always has. … We may not know how all of this will unfold, but we do know that the Lord is highly involved.” YouTube, *Ark of Grace Ministries*, [4/7/26; NOTUS, 3/24/26; Media Matters, 5/30/24; Charisma magazine, 10/16/23, 3/14/23, 3/31/26, 4/10/26]
Grace later compared Trump to David in the Bible employing a “madman strategy” against Iran and, after mentioning Trump’s Easter weekend threat to strike bridges and power plants, said “we see David actually do something similar in scripture.” Grace told her audience: “We're going to talk about President Trump and how it ties to David. We are going to talk about why he's doing this and how King David himself did this when he found himself dealing with a nation that was barbaric. With a nation that was pagan. With a nation that wanted to see his people destroyed.” YouTube, *Ark of Grace Ministries*, [4/7/26]
Right-wing Christian radio host Eric Metaxas, who sits on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, said “there's something beautiful about this nation” that its people “want God's will to be done. … We are on God's side, and that whatever we do would have His blessing.” Metaxas — who has pushed Christian nationalism and argued for conservative Christians to stage an “infiltration” of government — said the war with Iran is “a legitimate war, not Israel's war,” and later explained, “There's something beautiful about this nation because this nation always has had people, not all, but a lot of people who pray and who want God's will to be done. Not that we win, but that God wins, that we are on God's side, and that whatever we do would have His blessing. We're not interested in merely winning because many people in America are sincere Christians who are wise enough to know you don't want to win if you're not on God's side.” Salem Media,*The Eric Metaxas Show*, [4/6/26; Media Matters, 7/12/23, 6/12/25]
On Metaxas’ show, conservative author John Zmirak said he felt “vindicated” in supporting the war and fearmongered about “a regime run by end-of-the-world fanatics who believe that a destructive global war would bring on the Islamic second coming.”Zmirak said: “Think about a regime run by end-of-the-world fanatics who believe that a destructive global war would bring on the Islamic second coming, if you will, the Islamic apocalypse. And them having nuclear weapons and missiles that could reach Paris and Rome and Vienna.” YouTube, *The Eric Metaxas Show*, [4/3/26; The Stream, accessed 4/14/26]
Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, who is closely connected to Hegseth and was invited to lead a February worship service at the Pentagon, lashed out at critics who “want us to intervene and ‘make Pete stop it’” and said it would be “way out of line” to provide Hegseth with policy advice.Hegseth reportedly attends a church that belongs to Wilson’s denomination and during the worship service, he thanked Wilson for his “mentorship” and his “willingness to be bold.” Wilson — who CNN’s Pamela Brown has noted, “started a movement from Idaho to turn the world into a Christian theocracy based on a strict biblical interpretation” — wrote on his blog that “we either trust him or we don’t. It should be obvious that I do,” adding: “Think for a minute. Do these same critics really want me or any of my fellow pastors—with no background on the intel, with no military training at this level, with no security clearance, and with no basis for sticking our noses into the internal workings of the Pentagon—to be giving Pete any specific policy advice? That would be what keen observers would call way out of line.” Blog & Mablog, [4/8/26; The Columbian, 2/19/26; The Bulwark, 3/18/26; Instagram, 8/7/25]
ElijahStreamshost Steve Shultz and self-described “prophet” Robin Bullock said the war was predicted in “the prophecies” that God is “going to free the Iranian people.” Shultz, who has interviewed members of the Trump family on the show, said, “When I see people say, well, this is because Trump did this or wants to do that, this is about this oil and that oil, this is about the deep state — and it may involve all of those things that I just said … but the prophecies majored on ‘I'm going to free the Iranian people.’ The prophecies were making a big deal out of all those other things might have been going on, but God had heard the cries just like he heard the cries of the people in Israel when he visited Moses.” Bullock replied, “And the prophecies that were given were given way ahead of that, way ahead of that, and I don't know why I'm saying it really at the time. I just said boom, boom, this is going to happen and the Persian people will be free.” Bullock — who repeatedly prophesied that Trump would win reelection in 2020 and has previously claimed “Trump was anointed to be king” — now compared the president’s actions to biblical descriptions of Cyrus the Great: “You'll see exactly where Trump and what he's doing.” Rumble, *ElijahStreams*, [4/9/26; Media Matters, 10/18/24, 5/30/24; Right Wing Watch, 1/20/21, 7/27/23]
//
03/04/26 10:06 AM EST
03/13/26 10:18 AM EDT
04/08/26
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an 4 26
no lnx
Trump's son-in-law has a $5 billion problem
:{:{Jared Kushner applauds during U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 24, 2026.}:
Thom Hartmann March 20, 2026
There are several clear winners from Trump’s attack on Iran:
— Russia, who can again fund its violence against Ukraine with new oil revenue and now claims its unprovoked attack on that nation is consistent with this new Trump Doctrine;
— Saudi Arabia, which has long hated Iran and lobbied since at least 2008 for the US to attack that country;
— the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has similarly pushed America to attack Iran since at least 2010;
— the American defense weapons industry, which is making additional billions;
— Don Jr. and Eric, who have taken a big position in a drone-manufacturing business, getting them in on the Pentagon gravy train;
— Donald Trump himself, who’s succeeded in largely pushing Epstein off the front page;
— and Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s called for American strikes against Iran since 1992 and will stay out of prison as long as the war continues.
The losers include:
— The credibility of the United States and the rule of international law;
— the families of 13 dead and 140 injured American soldiers and airmen,
— the families of at least 160 dead Iranian little girls and thousands of other dead civilians in a dozen countries,
— American taxpayers who’re paying for the bombs;
— and future prospects for world peace.
But the biggest winner may be Jared Kushner, who apparently pushed Trump to initiate the war while he’s trying to solicit $5 billion from the same Arab states that have been begging American administrations for decades to attack Iran.
Back on March 5th, I speculated here on Hartmann Report that Kushner and Witkoff had been negotiating with Iran in bad faith, possibly to get the Iranian leadership to meet together in one place so Netanyahu (who used to sleep in Kushner’s bedroom) could kill them all with a missile strike.
Three years earlier, I laid out the backstory of how Kushner allegedly helped MBS take over the Saudi kingdom and was richly rewarded with $2 billion to fund his new investment venture.
Now, The New York Times is reporting that Kushner is back at the Arab trough, trying to pick up an additional $5 billion for his company from the same states that have been begging America to attack Iran for decades.
This represents a massive and apparently corrupt conflict of interest, as Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senator Ron Wyden pointed out when they called for an investigation into Kushner acting as an unregistered foreign agent in violation of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. They wrote:
“This revelation is deeply disturbing, as Mr. Kushner appears to be influencing U.S. foreign policy by acting as a political consultant to the Saudi government while also accepting their money. … Mr. Kushner’s proximity to President Trump and the potential for political interference warrants the appointment of a Special Counsel.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, in a brilliant imitation of Vladimir Putin, is threatening news organizations for their reporting on the War. He seems upset about news stories that Trump may have ignored warnings from his top generals that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if we attacked them; those reports appear to be well-sourced.
And it appears it was Kushner who was one of the main cheerleaders for this war, risks to world oil supplies and the possibility of the conflict igniting WWIII be damned.
Trump himself said that Kushner had advised him that Iran was preparing to strike America, something that’s patently impossible; they don’t have any missiles capable of reaching the United States and had just offered to sign a new deal promising never to develop any. Nonetheless, Trump — in an eerie echo of Bush’s lies about Iranian WMD — told America:
“Within a week, [Iran was] going to attack us, 100 percent. They were ready. They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought, and they were going to attack us.”
Did I mention that Kushner is asking the Saudis and Emiratis for another $5 billion? As Popular Information reported:
“Kushner’s largest investor is the Saudi Arabian government, which provided Kushner with $2 billion in funding in 2021. Each year, Saudi Arabia pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, $25 million, as a ‘management fee.’ Meaning he has received in excess of $100 million from the Saudi government over the last few years.
“Notably, ‘Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump’ in February, advocating a U.S. attack,’ according to reporting in the Washington Post. Trump’s comments reveal that Kushner used his role in Geneva to push Trump toward the outcome favored by his biggest client. Affinity Partners also received more than $200 million from the UAE. According to CNN, behind the scenes, the UAE was also lobbying Trump to strike Iran.”
Never before in American history have US negotiators had massive personal financial stakes in the outcome of their own negotiations. It’s a clear violation of the Constitution’s and US law’s ban on foreign emoluments, and possibly numerous anti-bribery laws.
With Congress paralyzed by terrified, spineless Republicans refusing to even look into the possibility that billionaire Trump, billionaire Kushner, billionaire Witkoff, and billionaires in the Middle East have thrown America into war just to enrich themselves, the burden has fallen on the American press.
Which has produced the predictable squeals from Carr and the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” propaganda channel, and from Whiskey Pete Hegseth, giggling about how things are going to change when David Ellison takes over CNN.
Threats notwithstanding, our elected officials need to step up now to defend both the First Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, and the lives of our men and women in uniform.
Even lacking subpoena power, Democratic leadership should convene shadow hearings to investigate this possible double-dealing that’s already killed Americans and threatens to plunge the entire world into flames.
At the very least, they should spend a few weeks holding public, on‑the‑record hearings into whether this Iran war is being steered from Riyadh, Jerusalem, and Kushner’s investment firm instead of the Pentagon.
With their Benghazi spectacle that followed the death of four Americans, Republicans taught us that when our officers and enlisted people die abroad, Congress has a duty to drag every decision‑maker before the cameras; Democrats should apply that same standard now, and ask under oath whether Trump, Kushner, and their billionaire partners are profiting from a war they helped ignite.
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AN 4 26
When U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to destroy "a whole civilization" in Iran in an April 7 post on his Truth Social platform, the comment drew scathing condemnation not only from countless liberals, progressives and centrist Democrats, but also, from many Never Trump conservatives and libertarians. Even some far-right MAGA influencers, including Infowars' Alex Jones, former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), are calling Trump out.
Yet in far-right white evangelical circles, Trump still has plenty of loyal supporters.
In a biting article published on April 10, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that white evangelicals' feelings of "persecution" are helping fuel a "disastrous" war.
"For over a decade now, the Christian Right has deflected criticism of Trump's immorality and sadism by insisting they are facing persecution for their religious beliefs," Marcotte explains. "In their minds, they are the real victims of a culture gone to hell, and they see the president as their only hope to beat back these imaginary forces of oppression. Nothing, it seems, can shatter this persecution complex. As the Iran war continues to become an ever-bigger disaster, evangelicals are clinging harder than ever to the notion that because they need to defeat their fictional persecutors, Trump's myriad flaws are excusable and forgivable."
Far-right white evangelicals' "paranoid anger," Marcotte argues, is so extreme that they even view "devout Catholics" like Pope Leo XIV as persecutors.
"Regardless of what is being said in private to Catholic leaders," Marcotte observes, "it's clear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his allies are furious at the pontiff for undermining their efforts to frame this war as a Christian enterprise — and are suggesting that those who oppose it are the equivalent of Christ's persecutors…. (Pastor) Doug Wilson, who heads the denomination Hegseth belongs to, demonstrated how valuable the phony Christian persecution narrative is for conservatives who need an excuse to stick by the (Trump) Administration amid the Iran debacle…. In the real world, Hegseth is a belligerent official who relishes threatening Iranians with 'death and destruction from above.' But in Wilson’s telling, the defense secretary is a humble servant of God, besieged on all sides by the faithless in their ongoing war against Christ's followers."
Marcotte adds, " As the administration's skirmish with Pope Leo shows, though, it's getting harder for the Christian Right to package the Iran war as a product of God's love — even to followers who have a long history of swallowing all sorts of cruelty in the name of Christ…. Some who have been among the president's loudest supporters in the past, like former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and podcaster Tucker Carlson, are now proclaiming that this war goes against everything Christians should stand for. In an effort to bring critics like these back in line, many evangelical leaders are clinging to false narratives of religious persecution."
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How fractured right-wing media are spinning Trump's Iran capitulation
Right-wing media have been split over the war. As a ceasefire is agreed to, some figures claim Trump “negotiated the deal of his life,” others argue he “chickened out again” and warn the deal “could be an amazing victory for Iran.”
Written by Gideon Taaffe, Torri Lonergan & Noah Dowe
Published 04/08/26
Right-wing media are split on the temporary two-week ceasefire between Iran and the United States, with some calling it “victory” and crediting Trump’s “hyperbolic rhetoric,” while others remain skeptical, going as far as to call it “total U.S. defeat” and arguing the deal is “very difficult to accept." Both critics and supporters of the war have criticized the terms of the ceasefire, saying it is a “defeat” and that “Iran practically got everything that they wanted.”
Trump’s ceasefire with Iran temporarily stopped attacks on Iran but left US objectives unfulfilled and weakened the American position in the region}:
Trump said on April 7 that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire.The ceasefire followed Trump’s threats to bomb civilian infrastructure and his claim that “a whole civilization will die” if a deal was not reached. NBC News, [4/7/26]
Per The Guardian, “It was Iran’s 10-point plan, not his own 15-pointer, that Trump referred to when welcoming the ceasefire.” The Guardian reported, “On waking early on Wednesday morning, the president appears to have been made aware that Iran’s 10 points include the lifting of all sanctions, the payment of war reparations and the acceptance of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, all conditions that have up to now been beyond Washington’s red lines.” The Guardian, [4/8/26]
The Associated Press framed the conflict as “yet another inconclusive war,” saying it left many U.S. objectives unfulfilled.The AP noted that, “The political class devoted to maintaining Iran’s Shiite theocracy remains intact,” and Iran has rejected calls to “completely dismantle its nuclear program” and end support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Additionally, the conflict “didn’t stop Iran from effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz … and erecting a virtual toll booth to charge countries for using it.” The Associated Press, [4/8/26]
Politico: In addition to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, “Iran’s leadership structures remain intact. Its hard-liners now have total control. Sanctions have been lifted, for now. Missiles can be rebuilt. The enriched uranium remains in Iran." Politico continued, “The discovery that even the full force of the American military cannot prevent Iran from turning one of the world’s most important shipping lanes into a de facto parking lot — with a hefty pay-to-leave barrier — will not be quickly forgotten. ... In other words, the U.S. has already accepted that Iran can impose limits on shipping in the Strait — limits that did not exist before the war began. And there’s more: Iran is already charging punitive tolls for passage through the strait, and AP reports this will continue during the ceasefire. Trump’s description of Iran’s 10-point list of demands as 'a workable basis on which to negotiate' suggests further concessions are entirely possible. ... And there’s no clarity at all on what happens to Iran’s enriched uranium, though Trump told AFP it will be 'perfectly taken care of.'” Politico, [4/8/26]
The Bulwark: “There is no way—none, at all—to understand” the state of play following the ceasefire “except as a dramatic victory for Iran.”From The Bulwark:
Pre-War
Significant economic sanctions hampered the Iranian economy.}:
Iran faced a succession crisis with the approach of only the second transfer of power in half a century.}:
The formal position of the Western world was that Iran was not permitted to obtain nuclear weapons.}:
The Strait of Hormuz was a free waterway governed by international law.}:
Iran had a plan to close passage of the strait, but this plan was unproven.}:
Iran had a fourth-rate navy and a fifth-rate air force, neither of which figured prominently in its national defense strategy
Post-War
Sanctions against Iran will either be diminished or removed.}:
Iran replaced an aging leader with a young leader, though we haven't seen him in public and a lot of the announcements of Iranian foreign policy are coming from other officials.}:
The ceasefire framework makes no mention of limits on nuclear engineering; in fact it explicitly grants Iran permission to enrich uranium and tell the International Atomic Energy Agency to go pound sand. This is tantamount to permission from the United States for Iran to continue its nuclear program.}:
The Strait of Hormuz will now be administered by Iran, which will also monetize this power by charging tolls. This change in international law carries with it the unilateral consent of the United States.¹}:
Iran’s plan to close the strait has been proven to be (a) workable and (b) a strategic weapon of immense power.}:
Iran’s navy and air force have been (temporarily) neutralized
There is no way—none, at all—to understand this shift except as a dramatic victory for Iran. The Bulwark, [4/8/26]
## Some in right-wing media praised Trump’s “art of the deal” and used the temporary ceasefire to claim “Trump just got Iran to cry uncle”, saying Iran is now “demoralized and … ready to agree to terms”
Fox host Sean Hannity said Iran is “demoralized and now apparently ready to agree to terms.”Hannity argued, “Today's ceasefire was not just the result of negotiations and tough rhetoric. All day, Iran was facing a barrage of strikes from both Israel and the U.S.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [4/7/26]
Fox host Jesse Watters: “Trump just got Iran to cry uncle. They’ve been calling him crazy for making threats, but guess the threats worked. The strait’s on its way to being opened and Iran's promising to stop firing missiles and drones.”Watters continued, “American deterrence is back. The world just witnessed an overwhelming display of military and technological superiority.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [4/7/26]
Fox host Lawrence Jones argued that “the president deserves some room to negotiate” and said he doesn’t think Trump caved. Jones: “Iran's stated goal to make the president withdraw from the military action was to put so much pressure when it comes to oil that the American people would turn on the president and that he would cave. I don't think the president has caved.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [4/8/26]
Newsmax host Rob Finnerty said Trump “negotiated the deal of his life” and Iran “blinked.” Finnerty argued, “They believed him because his threats were so crazy that they wanted out.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [4/7/26]
Newsmax guest and conservative activist Brigitte Gabriel: “This is not the end of the war. And President Trump is not going to let them off the hook to come back in 10 years and attack one of our major cities.” Fellow panelist Dan O’Shea agreed, arguing Iran is “dealing with the first leader in 50 years that is backing up what he says he's going to do.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [4/7/26]
Newsmax host Carl Higbie: “Trump just got Iran to capitulate,” calling the ceasefire a “remarkable achievement.”Higbie also said, Trump “has accomplished more than any war that we’ve fought in the last, I don’t know, three decades.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [4/7/26]
Fox guest Tom Sauer said Trump’s “haters” should “read the greatest geopolitical strategy book of my lifetime. It's calledThe Art of the Dealby Donald J. Trump.”He continued, “You use maximum leverage to get a lofty goal that might seem unattainable, and then you cut a deal.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [4/7/26]
OnAmerica’s Newsroom, The Hudson Institute’s Rebeccah Heinrichs claimed America is in the “driver’s seat” following the ceasefire.Ret. Vice Adm. Robert Harward agreed with Heinrichs that “we’re in the driver's seat,” adding, “At the end and during this ceasefire we’ll be in even a stronger position. They continue to be in a very weak position.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [4/8/26]
Shervin Pishevar, U.S.-based adviser to exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, said on Fox, “This is a victory on the American side.” He argued, “The Iranian Islamic regime of Iran is a wounded animal,” but then added, “If they don't comply, if there isn't complete regime change, then we need to finish the job.” Fox News,*Fox & Friends*, [4/8/26]
Fox News guest Jim Hanson said Trump’s threats pushed Iran to agree to the original deal, insisting, “That hyperbolic rhetoric stopped an additional escalation.”Hanson: “The same deal has been on the table for this entire time. And all of a sudden now they're going to go ahead and accept it. What changed? What changed was President Trump threatening to end the Islamic republic completely. And I think that was an eye-opener. They believed him. And they should believe him.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [4/7/26]
## Right-wing media voices both critical and supportive of the war sharply criticized the ceasefire, saying it is a “defeat” and that “Iran practically got everything that they wanted”
Trump ally Laura Loomer complained, “Iran practically got everything that they wanted.” After Trump initially bombed Iran, Loomer told President Trump he is “making us proud to be American.” She warned Iran would “probably renege on their word because you can't trust a Muslim,” and asked, “What exactly did we win? I'm not really understanding what we won. We have over 2 million Iranian proxies living in the United States, and the Iranian regime hasn't been dismantled. And they're now only going to be able to get stronger, and more powerful, and more violent.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [4/7/26, 4/7/26; The Financial Times, 3/2/26]
Jack Keane, who has been in favor of this war, said: “I wouldn't have done what we're doing. I wouldn't have gone to the ceasefire, because I think we should take control of the Straits of Hormuz." He worried, “I really think that we lost our leverage by stopping the campaign. I would have preferred to go into negotiations with the war continuing.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [4/8/26, SiriusXM, The Megyn Kelly Show, 3/27/26]
White nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has been opposed to the war, said: “It looks like Trump has chickened out again. They’re saying it is the mother of all tacos, TACO Tuesday.” He added, “This is a complete and total U.S. defeat. This is an absolute — there is no ambiguity here. It's not debatable. It's not subject to interpretation. We lost decisively.” Rumble, *America First with Nick Fuentes*, [4/7/26, 4/7/26, Media Matters, 3/2/26, 3/18/26]
Fox host Mark Levin, a leading proponent of the war, said that “this thing’s not over” because “this enemy is still the enemy. They’re still surviving.”Levin added, “What about the people of Iran? What, are we going to just leave them there? There's nothing we can do, and we're going to wash our hands over there? That, to me, is morally very difficult, very difficult to accept. And then what about the proxies, Hezbollah?” Levin’s coverage of Iran on Fox was previously directly promoted by Trump, with the president encouraging Americans to watch an episode of his show focused on “the importance of hitting Iran, HARD!!!” Fox News, *Hannity*, [4/7/26; Media Matters, 3/30/26, 3/12/26]
Right-wing host Megyn Kelly, who has been a vocal opponent of the war, said she was “not willing to pretend that this is some huge victory,” arguing that instead, “It really could be an amazing victory for Iran.” “The end result of this 38 days is the strait is now controlled by Iran,” Kelly said, adding, “It wasn't before. It now costs a toll potentially to get through. It didn't before.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [4/8/26; Media Matters, 3/2/26, 3/27/26]
## Others in right-wing media voiced skepticism about the ceasefire, calling Iran’s demands a “fantasy” and noting unresolved issues like the Strait of Hormuz
Fox anchor John Roberts argued that “there’s a lot of people who are looking at this with a skeptical eye” at the deal, citing the Strait of Hormuz, potential for continuing to enrich uranium, and the lack of “at least a transitional government in Iran.” Roberts warned, “A lot of people in the world say, Why would you let a group of lunatics continue to have control over the most economically important piece of water in the world?” He further commented: “And the fact that acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program when on the other hand the president says that there will be no enrichment and we’re going to dig up the enriched uranium that it has already. Those things are fundamentally opposed to each other. … The other thing is: Who is the new regime? I’ve got a lot of Persians in my friend circle and they were all hoping that there was going to be a fundamental regime change that would lead to a democratic process or at least a transitional government in Iran.” Fox News,*Fox & Friends*, [4/8/26]
Fox News senior strategic analyst Jack Keane: “I am skeptical about where we're heading with the Iranians, because I flat don't trust them and I don't like taking the pressure off them by going to a ceasefire.”He explained, “My preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage to make that deal.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [4/7/26]
Nathan Sales, Middle East fellow at the Atlantic Council, onFox & Friends: “What the Iranians have said publicly is just a complete fantasy list of concessions that they think the United States is somehow going to agree to. And I’ve got news for you — those are all dead on arrival.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [4/8/26]
Fox anchor Bill Hemmer: “A ceasefire deal was reached. Talks are said to be progressing, but we'll see how they go.” Hemmer added, “The concern I would have ... if it is true that only two [ships] have gotten through [the Strait of Hormuz], that is something we need to watch here throughout the day." Fox News,*America’s Newsroom*, [4/8/26]
On Fox, former National Security Council Senior Director Michael Allen said he was “still worried about this” deal because “it doesn't seem to be free passage of the Strait of Hormuz.” He explained, “Zeroing in on the strait, I don't like the language the Iranians have been using. … It doesn't seem to be free passage of the Straits of Hormuz.” Allen encouraged Trump to “make sure the Iranians live up to what we thought we were agreeing to, which is unimpeded international waterway of the Straits of Hormuz.” Fox News,*America’s Newsroom*, [4/8/26]
Fox correspondent Jonathan Hunt said, “This is a good night,” but noted, “Are we going to have nothing more than a promise from the Iranians that they will not seek a nuclear weapon? Well, we’ve heard that before, certainly.”Fox News, *Hannity*, [4/7/26]
The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Greenway told Fox News, “I think there's no leadership left to agree to, and I think the ceasefire will break down.”He continued, “If we make it two weeks, the president will have achieved a tremendous victory in bringing the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism and 47-year adversary of the United States to its knees. If they fail to keep the straits open — which I think is very likely — then the president resumes the campaign and removes the capacity to threaten its neighbors.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [4/7/26]
MMA //
04/08/26 4:16 PM EDT
### Between Hegseth and the Fox Cabinet, no restraints on Trump’s war crimes plan
04/07/26 11:50 AM EDT
### Fox News’ knives are out for NATO as Trump’s Iran war deteriorates
04/02/26
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mma
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AN 4 26
President Donald Trump is degrading his own vice president, JD Vance, over the latter’s opposition to the former’s Iran war — and it is painfully obvious to White House observers.
“Nobody in Mr. Trump’s inner circle was more worried about the prospect of war with Iran, or did more to try to stop it, than the vice president,” reported The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman on Tuesday. “Mr. Vance had built his political career opposing precisely the kind of military adventurism that was now under serious consideration. He had described a war with Iran as ‘a huge distraction of resources’ and massively expensive.’”
The Times elaborated that, although Vance is not a dove, he privately expressed the belief that a regime-change war in Iran would end badly for the United States. Because Trump wished to engage in some military action against Iran, Vance urged limited action rather than a large-scale campaign, even advocating for Trump to use “overwhelming force, in the hope of achieving his objectives quickly.”
Yet the president has reportedly noticed Vance’s reticence to declare war against Iran and is politically penalizing his own vice president accordingly, including through public displays of how he is out of the loop.
“The White House’s plans to completely annihilate Iran are so haphazard that even the vice president can’t keep up with them,” reported The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling on Tuesday. “JD Vance was apparently caught off guard Tuesday when a journalist informed him that Donald Trump had threatened to obliterate the entire Iranian civilization by 8 p.m. Vance was onstage in Budapest at the time, feet away from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.”
Even though Vance was at an event with a powerful foreign leader and Trump ally, he was forced to acknowledge that he was not part of the president’s policymaking inner circle.
“Wouldn’t you like to know the subject of this message?” Vance said at one point. “But no, uh, I need to read it first before I talk about it. But here’s, here’s … uh, what time is it in the United States right now?”
Overall, as the Times noted, Trump has emerged as a foreign policy hawk who does not want participation from those who question his judgment.
“In the end, even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump’s war Cabinet — with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war — deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive,” the Times reported. “The White House declined to comment.”
Further emphasizing how Trump does not Vance, the Times noted that the president prioritized secrecy for the meeting.
"'The gathering had been kept deliberately small to guard against leaks," the Times reported. "Other top Cabinet secretaries had no idea it was happening. Also absent was the vice president."
By contrast, the Times reported that the biggest supporter of the Iran war in Trump’s Cabinet was Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Within the Cabinet, Mr. Hegseth was the biggest proponent of a military campaign against Iran,” the Times reported, contrasting his attitude with that of Trump’s Secretary of State. “Mr. Rubio indicated to colleagues that he was much more ambivalent. He did not believe the Iranians would agree to a negotiated deal, but his preference was to continue a campaign of maximum pressure rather than start a full-scale war. Mr. Rubio, however, did not try to talk Mr. Trump out of the operation, and after the war began he delivered the administration’s justification with full conviction.”
Writing for USA Today in March, conservative columnist Dace Potas observed that Trump’s war against Iran is hurting Vance’s chances to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2028.
“I don’t have any serious issue with the Trump administration’s actions in Iran,” Potas wrote last month. “Immediately following our initial strikes, I wrote that the actions should have gone through Congress, but that I generally support military action against Iran, and I stand by my view.”
Despite his personal support for the war, though, Potas anticipated bad things politically for Vance as a result of it.
“Trump invoked the rhetoric of isolationism on the reelection campaign trail, promising no new wars to MAGA voters who rallied around that aspect of the ‘America First’ brand,” Potas wrote, adding that this is politically inconvenient for the more isolationist Vance.
“Vance is a more talented candidate than [2028 Democratic frontrunner former Vice President Kamala] Harris, but I’m not sure that’s enough to overcome his involvement in an unpopular administration,” Potas wrote. “Nor is it all that clear how he reconciles his intellectual opposition to interventionist foreign policy with his involvement in an administration active in that arena.”
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AN 4 26
On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump posted a lengthy diatribe against rockstar Bruce Springsteen, calling the singer “boring,” accusing him of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and disparaging his appearance before urging MAGA to “boycott his overpriced concerts, which suck.”
Security expert and Atlantic contributor Tom Nichols had a frank assessment of the president’s post, tweeting, “The President of the United States is an emotionally unstable man with obvious cognitive issues. We are in the middle of a war, he tanked an important speech to the nation, and this is what he's worried about.”
While Trump has attacked Springsteen before, this particular post seems to be in response to statements the singer made onstage Tuesday night during the kickoff of his latest tour.
“While working Americans struggle,” said the Boss, “our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history.”
He went on to assert that Trump is “destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world,” and that the U.S. is “no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave” but a “reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration’s and this president’s legacy.”
Trump was, unsurprisingly, not happy about Springsteen’s assessment, saying the “Born in the USA” singer “looks like a dried up prune.”
As Nichols pointed out, Trump’s response came the morning after his national address on the war against Iran, which has caused gas prices to skyrocket and disrupted the global economy with no end in sight. The president’s fixation on Springsteen has prompted many to question his priorities.
“We are on the brink of World War III and a global recession, and Trump woke up thinking about Bruce Springsteen,” posted a popular America First account, the owner of which is a two-time Trump voter. “You can’t make this up.”
For his part, Springsteen had something to say about the conflict: “I want to begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals. The America I love that's been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration. We ask you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, unity over division, and peace over war.”
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MMA SEMI RANDOM
### Nick Fuentes complains about dining alongside Black people: “They wonder why we want to segregate”
03/31/26 1:44 PM EDT
03/31/26 1:40 PM EDT
03/31/26 1:32 PM EDT
### The antisemitic influencers who popularized the term “J-pilled” know exactly what it means
03/31/26 12:59 PM EDT
03/31/26 12:42 PM EDT
03/31/26 11:41 AM EDT
03/31/26 10:37 AM EDT
03/31/26 8:47 AM EDT
03/31/26 8:25 AM EDT
03/31/26 8:18 AM EDT
### Jesse Watters says a Jewish person couldn’t win the Republican presidential nomination
03/30/26 6:14 PM EDT
### Sean Hannity predicts Iran war will end “no later than three weeks from today”
03/30/26
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MMA
President Trump told his followers to “Watch Mark Levin.” The Fox host called for U.S. troops to seize Iran’s uranium.
Under Levin’s plan, U.S. troops would try to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of buried nuclear material while under fire
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/30/26
Fox News host Mark Levin suggested the U.S. military should seize Iran’s uranium — a risky escalation experts say would place troops under fire on Iranian soil for days — during a Saturday night program that President Donald Trump had urged his supporters to watch for its discussion of “the importance of hitting Iran, HARD!!!"
Under normal circumstances, the nasal-voiced screeds a sycophantic Fox news host yells on his taped weekend program wouldn’t matter for much. But Trump is often persuaded by what the network’s MAGA propagandists tell him through his television, he’s previously leaned on council from Levin with regard to Iran in particular, and earlier on Saturday, the president urged his supporters to tune in to Levin’s show that evening.
“Watch Mark Levin interview of Brilliant Marc Thiessen tonight at 8:00 P.M., on FoxNews,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Will discuss the importance of hitting Iran, HARD!!!”
Trump’s instruction for supporters to watch Fox discourse on the prospect of further escalations in Iran comes as the war approaches a flashpoint. Iran’s regime is intact and it has successfully closed the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic victory that threatens global trade. With Trump’s initial prediction of a four-to-five-week war in doubt, U.S. troops are streaming toward the region and preparing for weeks of ground operations. The Pentagon has reportedly prepared a list of purported “final blow” options that include seizing Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal and extracting Iran’s uranium, even as Trump himself is reportedly “getting a little bored” and “wants to move on” from Iran, as a senior White House official told MS NOW.
Fox’s pro-Trump hosts are trying to influence the president’s next move. Laura Ingraham warned last week that further escalation could trigger “cascading problems for the region” and “political problems for the president,” while Sean Hannity suggested that the war is all but over and Jesse Watters said any further action would amount to a “knockout.”
Saturday’s broadcast illuminates Levin’s position among the network’s biggest hawks. And he appears to be showering Trump with praise in an effort to get the president on board with his latest escalation scheme. Levin touted Trump’s “enormous intelligence,” claimed his “victory” against Iran is “absolutely incredible,” and portrayed the war’s critics as merely Trump-haters.
The Fox-Trump feedback loop has in recent months played a role in the president’s decisions to send White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee immigration enforcement in Minnesota; prioritize the SAVE Act over all other legislation; order the deployment of ICE agents to airports; and start the war against Iran. Will it now help trigger an incredibly risky military operation?
Levin: We need ground troops in Iran because “we’ve got to get the uranium”
After spending the bulk of Saturday’s monologue praising Trump’s war and denouncing its critics (described below), Levin came to the point: He wants the president to deploy ground troops in Iran to seize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.
“Why would we need troops on the ground?” he explained. “Well, there's a lot of reasons, and we wouldn't need 300,000 of them.”
“We've got to get the uranium — if it cannot be destroyed, if it cannot be altered, we've got to get it,” Levin said. “That's why I am reading in the paper, we are talking about the 82nd Airborne, we're talking about these various special forces and the various military services and so forth.”
“He's not talking about sending regular Army and infantry in by the hundreds of thousands — the men he's talking about, the units he is talking about, they are specialized,” Levin continued. “And you know what else? I remember from my days in the Reagan administration, many of them are trained for a moment like this to try and secure enriched uranium. Many have been trained for moments like this.”
Video
Citation
From the March 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
Thiessen, the Washington Post columnist and Fox contributor whom Trump described as “Brilliant,” likewise argued that “if we don't get that enriched uranium, and they want to get back at us for what we've done, the easiest way to do it would be to get it to al-Qaida and let them use it for a dirty bomb.”
“So we have got to get what Donald Trump correctly calls the nuclear dust before this operation is done,” Thiessen concluded.
Video
Citation
From the March 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
The Wall Street Journal’s description of an operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of nuclear material buried in the middle of a hostile country during a shooting war does not sound as easy as Levin and Thiessen made it out to be. The paper reported:
Teams of U.S. forces would need to fly to the sites, likely under fire from Iranian surface-to-air missiles and drones. Once on site, combat troops would need to secure perimeters so that engineers with excavating equipment could search through debris and check for mines and booby traps.
The extraction of the material would likely need to be conducted by an elite special operations team specially trained to remove radioactive material from a conflict zone. The highly enriched uranium is likely contained in 40 to 50 special cylinders that resemble scuba tanks. They would need to be put into transportation casks to protect against accidents. That could fill several trucks, said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former nuclear negotiator with Iran.
Unless an airfield was available, a makeshift one would need to be set up to bring equipment in and take the nuclear material out. The entire operation would take days or even a week to complete, experts said.
Trump “hasn’t made a decision on whether to give the order” and is “considering the danger to U.S. troops,” but “remains generally open to the idea,” the Journal reports.
More open, perhaps, after hearing the pitch from Levin and Thiessen.
Levin: Trump has “enormous intelligence,” his Iran “victory” is “absolutely incredible”
Before urging Trump to send U.S. ground troops to invade Iran, Levin began his Saturday monologue by offering fulsome praise for the war of choice he had urged the president to start.
“I've been thinking about the war with Iran,” he began. “I like to call it a military operation. I actually like to call it a peace mission, because that's what it is, and how incredible it is, and the magnitude of this victory. It's not a final victory, but this victory up to this point is incredible, absolutely incredible.”
Levin meandered through his justification for the war, denouncing President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which he described as “an agreement that would ensure they get a nuclear weapon,” and comparing U.S. military deaths during the Iran war with those during other U.S. conflicts dating back to the Korean War as well as fatalities from murder and fentanyl overdoses.
He ultimately claimed that Iran could have turned its enriched uranium for a “dirty bomb” and then employed terrorists to detonate it in a U.S. city. “So what the president is doing is monumental in terms of protecting the American people,” Levin explained.
The host concluded that “we're in good hands” with Trump “because he's a man with enormous intelligence, enormous common sense. He's not an ideologue. He doesn't run around with slogans. He is prudential. He looks at the facts, he looks at the challenge, and he's dealing with it.”
Thiessen likewise gushed over the president’s war.
“We're about halfway through this thing,” Thiessen claimed, “and when this is all over, this is going to go down in history as possibly the greatest military campaign the United States has waged since the American Revolution.”
Levin: War critics “aren’t serious people,” they “are people who just oppose Trump”
Levin finds his own arguments so compelling that he can’t imagine why anyone would disagree with them.
Pointing to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and recently resigned former Trump intelligence official Joe Kent, Levin commented, “These aren't serious people with serious disagreements. These aren't serious people with substantive knowledge that's different than it was before. No, no, no. These are people who just oppose Donald Trump. That's the truth.”
He later complained that Schumer, “the conga line of Democrats,” and “the woke Reich neofascist isolationists” were giving Iran “the benefit of the doubt.”
“Why would you give a terrorist regime that slaughtered Americans and is the biggest promoter of terrorism the benefit of the doubt?” he whined.
Thiessen likewise told Levin that the Democrats are “rooting for defeat,” adding, “There are people in this country who hate Donald Trump more than they hate the Iranian regime that just massacred 32,000 people in their streets.”
That’s what Trump wanted his followers to tune-in for: A totally one-sided dismissal of the Iran war’s critics in favor of continued escalation in an aimless conflict that's already spiraled out of control.
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### Mark Levin’s clarion call for Trump to wage war on Iran
02/19/26 1:58 PM EST
### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
### Fox News’ united front in support of Trump’s Iran war may be breaking down
03/26/26
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How right-wing media helped the Trump administration push a “psyop” against Iran's new supreme leader
At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem ran with unsubstantiated rumors that the new Iranian ayatollah may be gay
Written by Harrison Ray, Noah Dowe & Reed McMaster
Research contributions from Tyler Monroe
Published 03/27/26
At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem helped the Trump administration push an unsubstantiated narrative that the new Iranian ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, is gay — a move that Zeteo reports was meant to be a “psyop against their Iranian enemies and the new supreme leader.”
On March 16, the New York Post published an article which claimed that President Donald Trump was told “US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay.” The Post suggested that its sources “say the implausible-sounding allegation is viewed as credible by US spy agencies, rather than false information intended to undermine Khamenei.”
Yet according to a March 27 report from Zeteo, there exists “no credible intel” on Khamenei’s sexuality; rather, “the idea was fabricated and pushed behind the scenes in the past several weeks by a cohort of Trump advisers, US government personnel, and MAGAworld associates.” One source told Zeteo that the administration “wanted to mindfuck [the Iranians] with gay shit,” while another suggested, “It’s some 20-year-old frat boy in the federal government’s idea of a good joke.”
Media Matters found that at least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem — including at least 6 on Fox News, at least 8 on Newsmax, at least 2 on One America News Network, and at least 24 podcasts or radio shows — repeated the administration’s narrative, with some adding their own absurd and bigoted commentary. Following the story's surge of attention on March 16, it has continued to be mentioned daily within the right-wing media sphere as recently as yesterday.
While some within the right-wing media simply highlighted the New York Post story, others added their own takes.
Fox host Greg Gutfeld joked about the rumor on March 16, saying, “Speaking of world leaders, rumors are circulating that the new Iranian supreme leader is gay. They know this because he keeps throwing himself off a building — that’s what they do in Iran.”
Newsmax host Chris Plante made the same joke on his March 17 podcast, saying, “If he became the ayatollah, the first thing he’d have to do as ayatollah is kill himself.” Following a lengthy and graphic fantasy about Khamenei committing suicide, Plante explained, “That’s what they always do when they hang the gay people in Iran, and the Democrats are on the side of the Iranian regime because of their many mental illnesses.”
Referencing the death of the new supreme leader’s father, former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Plante added, “And here’s the headline: Ayatollah disappointed to learn 72 virgins awaiting him in paradise are all women. Oh no, not the women. That is because, you know, it might run in the family, like monkeypox.”
That same day, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles ranted, “The ayatollah might be a homosexual, might be a little light in the loafers. You know what I'm saying? A couple fries away from a Happy Meal. The kind of fella has a long handshake.” While Knowles acknowledged that the story seemed at first “like an op” and “a demoralization tactic from our intelligence services,” he claimed, “There's a little bit of evidence that the ladies are not exactly his type.”
Newsmax host Rob Carson repeated the claim on March 22 and suggested the ayatollah has not been going out in public because “he's been in the closet.” After showing a clip of host Carl Higbie mocking “the Strait of Hormuz and the gay son,” Carson broke out in song, seemingly parodying “It's Raining Men.”
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03/30/26 2:06 PM EDT
03/30/26 1:57 PM EDT
03/30/26
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Opposition to President Donald Trump’s war on Iran is to be expected from Democrats and others on the left, but according to a popular far-right influencer, conservatives are divided and “deeply furious” over the conflict. And while much of the conservative messaging on social media has been supportive of the war, he claims that doesn’t align with the conservative discussion offline.
“I’ve never seen such a disconnect between the commentary on this site and what I hear in the real world,” posted Matt Walsh, a far-right commentator with over 4 million followers on X. “I’ve talked to dozens of normal conservatives in real life about the Iran war and I haven’t met a single one who’s actually enthusiastically in favor of it.”
He went on to say that while some conservatives he’d spoken with are “warily optimistic,” the rest are “not only opposed but deeply furious.” Many are afraid to express this fury, said Walsh, because they’re worried they’ll “be shouted down by throngs of alleged American conservatives who allegedly have wanted nothing more than for America to go to war with Iran.”
For Trump and the GOP, Walsh predicted, the political fallout could be catastrophic, as he claims to have spoken with many “VERY conservative lifelong Republican voters who are so furious and feel so betrayed that they’re planning to sit out the midterms…People are pissed.”
Walsh isn’t the only far-right media figure to express outrage over the war on Iran and thoughts on how it could impact the November elections.
Tucker Carlson has been an outspoken opponent of the war, notably giving a high-profile interview to ex-US National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who resigned over concerns about the conflict. Megyn Kelly has voiced criticism of the war but stops short of blaming Trump, claiming he was pushed toward it by more hawkish conservatives. And far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes has told his followers to boycott the midterms over the war.
Online personality Candace Owens agreed with a blunt assessment of the matter: “Not only is Trump losing the war, he has also completely forfeited his legacy and base.”
These far-right voices are speaking out as the latest polls show the stark unpopularity of Trump and his war. Over 60 percent of voters say they disapprove of the war, while the president’s approval rating has sunk to a historical low of just 33 percent.
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MMA
03/27/26 9:33 AM EDT
03/27/26 9:20 AM EDT
03/27/26 9:07 AM EDT
### Divisions emerge in right-wing media as Iran war stirs anxiety about food production, fertilizer
03/27/26
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RWW
03/25/2026
by
Martha McHardy @ The Daily Beast: Humiliation in Trump’s Backyard Could Signal Worst GOP Midterms in 100 Years
If the enormous 21-point swing against Trump in his own hometown was replicated across the country, this would be the Republicans’ worst midterms in 100 years.
Tracy Simmons @ Religion News Service: For Doug Wilson's neighbors, CNN documentary a reminder Moscow is Christian nationalism's ground zero
‘I’m hopeful that this exposure will help people recognize the signs of Christian nationalism in their own spaces,’ one Moscow resident said.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní José María León Cabrera, Annie Correal **and Eric Schmitt @ The New York Times: The U.S. Said It Helped Bomb a Drug Camp. It Was a Dairy Farm.
The Times visited a village where the United States and Ecuador said they destroyed an armed group’s training camp. Residents said it was actually a dairy farm.
Katherine Doyle, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce @ NBC News: Inside Trump's daily video montage briefing on the Iran war
The montage, which typically runs for about two minutes, has raised concerns among some of the president’s allies that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the war.
Brian Kaylor @ Public Witness: At Pentagon Worship Service, Hegseth Casts Iran Conflict as Violent Holy War Against God’s Enemies
In the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon since the start of the strikes against Iran, Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself the “Secretary of War,” used prayer and several Bible passages to cast the conflict as a holy war against God’s enemies. He prayed that God would pour out righteous wrath by helping “break the teeth” and kill the “wicked” enemies “who deserve no mercy” and should be “delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”
Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Ché Ahn says God told him to run for governor. California says he can't be on the ballot.
The New Apostolic Reformation leader's campaign faces collapse after failing to file required tax returns. He's now suing for ballot access.
David Edwards @ Raw Story: Mike Lindell found in contempt of court for refusing to pay voting machine company
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols held MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in civil contempt of court after he claimed an "inability to pay" voting machine company Smartmatic sanctions over frivolous claims about the 2020 presidential election.
David J. Bier @ Cato At Liberty: Government Defrauds Legal Immigrants and US Sponsors Who Paid $1 Billion in Fees
The US government is taking fees from immigrants and US sponsors for services that it has no plans to provide. The government took their money, and now it won’t even adjudicate their applications—in many cases, it refuses even to issue denials.
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### Newsmax host: “You lose support for me if you put boots on the ground in combat roles” in Iran
03/26/26
03/26/26
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MMA
Fox News’ united front in support of Trump’s Iran war may be breaking down
Host Laura Ingraham warns escalation could produce “cascading problems for the region,” political turmoil for the GOP
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/26/26
Four weeks after President Donald Trump launched a poorly conceived war of choice against Iran, the lockstep support for the conflict that has characterized coverage from Fox News’ star hosts is beginning to fray. The power struggle is significant — it is not an exaggeration to suggest the course of the war might hinge on which Fox shows the president is watching.
Trump is clearly approaching a decision point over whether to further escalate the war. U.S. and Israeli forces have done a lot of damage to Iranian military targets, but its regime is intact, still controls its stockpiles of enriched uranium, and has closed the Strait of Hormuz, threatening the global trade in oil, natural gas, and fertilizer. The Pentagon is sending thousands of troops to the region and reportedly prepping options for a “final blow” — some of which would involve deploying U.S. forces on Iranian soil.
When Trump is considering policy options, he often takes guidance from his loyal propagandists at Fox. This Fox-Trump feedback loop has in recent months played a role in the president’s decisions to send White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee immigration enforcement in Minnesota; prioritize the SAVE Act over all other legislation; order the deployment of ICE agents to airports; and start the war against Iran.
Against that backdrop, Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned on Wednesday’s show that further U.S. action could produce devastating unintended consequences and suggested that Trump should refocus his attention on the domestic economy and political situation.
“Iran knows it cannot win militarily, so it's using the leverage it has by prolonging the conflict,” she said during her monologue at the top of the show. “Now, what do they want to do? They want to inflict maximum economic pain on the region, on the U.S., [on] the global economy as much as possible until they think Trump relents. But the White House doesn't seem to be blinking.”
The host then aired a clip of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warning at her press briefing that day that “President Trump does not bluff, and he is prepared to unleash hell” against Iran.
Ingraham did not seem impressed by Leavitt’s rhetoric.
“Well, the problem is obviously unleashing hell means destroying infrastructure, which itself causes a series of cascading problems for the region, including maybe outside the region — political problems for the president in a midterm election year,” she said.
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From the March 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Her air of skepticism continued throughout the show.
While interviewing Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), she noted Pentagon reports of thousands of successful missions but commented, “I mean, this is a devastating blow, yet you know, we're still there.”
“It's not even a month old, obviously,” she continued, before asking, “But are you concerned about the public and people? Again, very short attention spans, very impatient for victory, as is President Trump, I might add. But in an election year, it's easy to say politics don't matter, but at some point politics do come into play.”
And in a third segment, she highlighted the disastrous polling on the Iran war, commenting, “It looks like people are pretty impatient. The American people are sending a message to President Trump that it's time to put the focus back on the home front.”
Ingraham is inching toward the type of dissent that has been virtually absent from Fox’s coverage of the war, even as the broader right-wing media has split. Her colleagues have played key roles in convincing Trump to attack in the first place and are pushing for risky escalations. Ingraham herself briefly quibbled with Trump’s handling of an apparent U.S. strike that leveled an Iranian school, killing scores of children, but had supported the war itself, which she declared three weeks ago that Trump had already won.
But if Ingraham is getting cold feet and trying to convince Trump not to escalate a war the public has soured on, she remains an outlier at the network. Indeed, if the president tuned in for the two hours following Ingraham’s program, he saw her prime-time colleagues Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity argue not only that the war is going well and that Trump will inevitably lead the U.S. to victory, but that anyone who disagrees must want America to lose the war because they hate the president.
Watters began his show with a 10-minute monologue whose thesis was that “the Iranian regime is losing leverage fast as we continue to carry out thousands of sorties over enemy airspace.” After detailing various tactical victories, he touted a potential escalation.
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From the March 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
“[President] 47 could be eyeing a knockout — Iran's crown jewel, Kharg Island,” he said. “The Republican Guard has been preparing for battle, laying mines, booby trapping, loading up on Stingers, but retired top brass says our military is ready to shock and seize the terrain by air, by sea. We don't know if it's going to happen, but if it does happen, the Iranians won't know it's coming.”
“Iran looks like this is their last gasp, but some people would rather America lose the war because they hate Trump,” Watters concluded. “So far, this is the cleanest, most surgical and one-sided operation in American military history. Now, anything could happen, war is hell, it's unpredictable, but people in the know in Washington think we're about to close it out with a pretty big blow.”
Hannity, in his opening monologue, likewise declared: “Many on the left are now rooting for America to lose. Others seem to be hoping for another Vietnam-style quagmire. Why? Because Democrats care more about their political ambition rather than the future, safety, and security of your children and your grandchildren.”
“But tonight, President Trump is ignoring all the hysteria and pushing for peace one way or the other,” he continued. “If Iran's obliterated regime will not agree to a lasting agreement, this president has pledged he will continue to decimate their resolve through force, but that's really going to be up to them. They might unleash hell, otherwise.”
After airing a clip from Leavitt’s press briefing, Hannity added, “The message from President Trump is clear: Work with the U.S. or you will be killed.”
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From the March 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
To which Ingraham might reply — what if killing them creates “cascading problems for the region”? As of yet, Watters and Hannity aren’t expressing any such concerns. And who the president is watching may determine the shape of things to come.
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### How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second
11/19/24
### Fox’s biggest hawks are thrilled with the Iran war — and floating risky escalations
03/12/26
### Laura Ingraham: “Trump has already won in Iran”
03/05/26
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MMA // HEGS TRUMP
03/23/26
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OFFICIAL 3 26
Doomsday Clock Today | Current Time & Complete Timeline (2026)
The Doomsday Clock is currently at 85 seconds to midnight — the closest it has ever been to global catastrophe since its creation in 1947.
clock moved to 85 seconds in February 2026 due to increased nuclear risks, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the Middle East conflict, climate change, and AI-related threats. It had previously been at 89 seconds.
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MMA
As Iran war drags on, right-wing media lash out at NATO and Iranians who haven’t overthrown their government
When it comes to assigning blame for the Iran war spiraling out of control, MAGA media have found convenient scapegoats who aren’t named Trump
Written by John Knefel
Published 03/20/26
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran lurches into its fourth week without any clear endgame, signs of frustration are beginning to show among President Donald Trump’s right-wing media allies. These outside figures, some of whom function as kitchen Cabinet advisers both on- and off-air, still support the war, but as it continues to escalate across the Middle East they have started to find scapegoats for the elusive easy victory many were predicting.
Two primary targets are the United States’ NATO allies, which so far have refused to deploy their militaries to open the Strait of Hormuz, and the Iranian people, who have not overthrown their government. The nexus of these two seemingly distinct critiques is that ordinary Muslims are supposedly at fault in both cases, with some right-wing pundits specifically blaming European Muslims for NATO countries’ reticence to join Trump’s war. Fox News has been leading on both fronts, but former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro have weighed in as well.
Since March 15, Trump has criticized NATO countries for declining to join his war of aggression, saying they were “making a very foolish mistake” and claiming that the United States “will protect them, but they will do nothing for us.” (The only time NATO’s collective self-defense clause has been invoked was after the attacks against the U.S. on 9/11.) Trump has also acknowledged that Iranians looking to take to the streets would face serious danger even as he has urged protesters to “take over your government,” a call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made as well. (Israeli intelligence reportedly determined that in the event of a popular revolt, Iranians would be “slaughtered.”)
Whether or not the exasperation voiced by right-wing media about NATO and the lack of a popular Iranian uprising foreshadows broader concerns about Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war remains to be seen. But as civilian casualties mount — especially in Iran and Lebanon — and markets sink, some of Trump’s allies may continue searching for people to blame, just so long as they aren’t named Donald Trump.
Fox News leads anti-NATO charge
Trump’s criticisms of NATO countries’ refusal to open the Strait of Hormuz migrated to Fox almost immediately.
On March 16, speaking over a chyron that read “The ‘alliance’ that isn’t,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham latched onto the talking point.
“If anyone watching tonight is surprised when America stands alone, well, you haven't been paying attention,” Ingraham said. “Now, of course as usual, liberals claim that Trump is the reason that any alliances are frayed. That is a joke.”
Ingraham went on to blame Muslims for Britain’s reluctance to get involved militarily. “As usual, they don't need to take out their wallets or risk any political heat at home, especially with the burgeoning Muslim population in the U.K,” she said, before airing footage of Trump complaining about the longtime U.S. ally. “All this proves is that President Trump was right all along about these friends — well, they’re friends who took advantage of us for about 80 years.”
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From the March 16, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
The following morning, Fox & Friends picked up the baton. “It's pretty amazing that Germany goes no, I'm not going to do anything; U.K. says no, I'm not going to help; France says I've got some in the area, I'll see what I can do; Japan says no,” host Brian Kilmeade said. He then downplayed the scope of the energy crisis before taking another shot at U.S. allies.
“We're going to be fine. It's going to be just a little — a couple more weeks that maybe there's more shooting going on,” Kilmeade said. “In the big picture, this backs up what the president has been saying about our allies in times of crisis.”
Kilmeade’s co-host Lawrence Jones added: “Not a good look.”
The same day, Bannon took a shot at “our great allies in NATO telling Trump yeah, I don’t know, this Iran thing’s not really our deal — keeping the Red Sea open, the Suez Canal, Straits of Hormuz, that's not really NATO's problem.”
He added: “It’s outrageous what the allies have told us.”
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From the March 17, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro took aim at NATO countries “exorbitant regulatory and welfare structures,” adding: “We don't need different allies. We need our allies to be better.”
“President Trump was always right to force NATO countries to pay up for their own defense,” he continued. “But if NATO countries want America to help them out in times of common need, they need to step up as well when one of the world's chief shipping lanes is closed by an internationally recognized terrorist regime.”
Back at Fox & Friends, on March 18 Fox political analyst Guy Benson joined Ingraham in laying blame at the feet of Muslims in Europe. “In a lot of these countries, there is a growing Muslim population where there are sectarian politics that are increasingly driving decisions that are being made about not offending that group of people on a whole host of fronts,” Benson said. “I think that is inescapably part of the calculus here.”
Jones said of NATO countries, “I was always raised — no one likes a freeloader.”
Jones agreed and replied that the “radicalization that’s happening in a lot of these countries” is “inspired … by Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of terror.”
Later that morning, Jones said of NATO countries, “I was always raised — no one likes a freeloader.”
On his Premiere Networks radio program, host Sean Hannity adopted his Fox colleagues’ rhetoric in targeting European Muslim communities. “Great Britain that has sharia courts. France has no-go zones — I am telling you, Europe is collapsing before your eyes,” Hannity said. “Unfettered immigration, they don't demand assimilation. It is now an unmitigated, out of control disaster.”
Hannity suggested punishing NATO countries for thus far staying out of the military campaign, telling his audience: “I can tell you right now, this is not going to end well for Europe. It just isn't. We'll just ignore their conflicts. We'll just ignore what they go through.”
Fox’s Mark Levin — who, along with Hannity, has been one of the network’s major Iran war boosters — praised Israel and lashed out at European countries.
“Israel is a great ally,” Levin said. “They're fighting alongside us. Look at the British. Look at the French. Look at the Spanish. They're doing nothing. Effectively nothing except undermining us.”
On his March 19 radio show, Hannity used even stronger language. “We were just speaking about how our NATO allies are pathetic, didn't I just say that?” he asked his producer, adding: “I'm frankly disgusted with Great Britain and France and Germany and even Italy. … On the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, we get 1% of our oil from going through that strait — not much — and all the president said is hey, you want to help us here?” Of the European countries which haven’t joined the U.S.-Israeli war, Hannity was blunt: “There will be a price to pay in the end. Just like they have had unfettered immigration without assimilation, they will pay a price for that.”
Fox blames Iranian citizens for the lack of an uprising: “Freedom is costly, right?”
It’s not just Muslims in European countries who have supposedly let down the war effort, according to right-wing media; the Iranians living under a repressive regime and suffering from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have as well. For these conservative pundits, Trump’s war with Iran cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Responding to her guest’s discussion of a possible popular uprising in spite of the dangers posed, Ingraham said on March 10, “They’re going to have to do it, because freedom is costly, right?”
“Our soldiers are dying in this,” she continued. “We’re paying a big price, so the Iranian people need to stand up.”
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From the March 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
On March 16, Fox Business anchor David Asman lamented that “we haven’t seen the popular uprising that we were hoping for — that can take years to happen.”
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner responded by invoking a longstanding Orientalist trope, arguing that Iranians are consumed by an ancient, irrational hatred of the West. “Their grievance is that they hate us, and I don’t really think that there’s a date on the calendar,” Faulkner said. “They could literally go thousands of years and still be at the point where they are now — I mean, they have been.”
“So I’m not sure we can generationally change them, but we certainly can take some things out of their hands,” she continued. “Like oil, and other things we’re so dependent upon as a country.”
Faulkner returned to the topic on March 18, prior to Trump attending the dignified transfer of six U.S. service members killed in the Iran war. Faulkner described one of the war’s aims as “to perhaps win a space for the people of Iran to step up into their own freedom.”
“We cannot do it for them,” she continued. “But we can be part of the solution in terms of making it possible.” More than 1,348 Iranian civilians have been killed since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli campaign, according to an Iranian official.
The New York Times reported March 19 that “a small team of British military planners has been sent to the United States to help draw up options to reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” though the effort stops “short of the sort of major military action President Trump has demanded, such as sending warships to the waterway imminently.” Similarly, Axios reported that seven countries supported a vague coalition to open the strait, but that it was “largely a gesture to placate President Trump.”
Whether there is any appetite for deescalation among the parties to the conflict remains unclear. But what is glaringly obvious is that right-wing media are already seeking scapegoats for the cascading catastrophe set off by Trump's war with Iran.
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MMA
Prime-time Fox shows gave less than a minute of airtime to the Pentagon’s $200 billion Iran funding request
Written by Matt Gertz
Research contributions from Rob Savillo, Harrison Ray & Tyler Monroe
Published 03/20/26
Fox News isn’t bothering to sell the staggering cost of the ill-conceived war President Donald Trump launched against Iran.
The Trumpist propaganda network provided roughly 11 minutes of coverage through Thursday to the administration’s request for an eye-popping $200 billion in supplementary spending from Congress — and less than 1 minute of discussion on its prime-time block, according to a Media Matters review.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that the Pentagon “has asked the White House to approve a more than $200 billion request to Congress to fund the war in Iran,” a figure subsequently confirmed by other news outlets. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not dispute the number at a Thursday morning press conference, though he indicated it “could move.”
The request “is expected to face a rocky path in Congress,” according to The Wall Street Journal, as lawmakers say “they want to see more details of the proposal amid concerns that the U.S. could become embroiled in another costly long-term war,” and even Republicans are expressing skepticism about its odds of passage.
But so far, Trump’s Fox propaganda wing isn’t engaged in trying to make the case for the funds.
The $200 billion figure has not been mentioned on the programs of Fox stars Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, or Greg Gutfeld, or on the panel show The Five.
On Jesse Watters Primetime, guest host Charlie Hurt spent 44 seconds of Thursday’s show accusing Democrats who refuse to support the spending of siding with Iran and against the troops.
“The Pentagon is asking for more money to eliminate the bad guys, and it's not just for Iran,” Hurt claimed. “Trump says it's for keeping the whole world safe. And guess whose side the Democrats are on?”
He then aired a video of a reporter telling Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), “They're asking for $200 billion now for this war,” and Ocasio-Cortez responding that she won’t support the request because “this administration has plunged the American people into a war that we don't want to be in.”
“Soldiers are risking their lives to do what every president of either party, going back decades, said had to be done,” Hurt responded. “The Democrats don't want to give them the money to finish the job.”
That was the only discussion of the $200 billion war funding figure on Fox’s 8-11 p.m. prime-time block.
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From the March 19, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
The request for war funding drew only 19 seconds of coverage on Thursday’s edition of the popular morning show Fox & Friends, with co-host Brian Kilmeade noting the $200 billion figure and asking, “Are Democrats gonna look to defund a war again?”
The remainder of the network’s coverage of the figure through Thursday consisted of reports from correspondents on America’s Newsroom and Special Report; a handful of passing mentions; and panel discussions on Special Report and Fox News @ Night.
Such lackluster coverage might suffice to help Trump ram a war spending bill through Congress if the war were popular, the consequences at home limited, and Republicans lawmakers united. But under the present circumstances, the network’s propagandists are going to need to develop some talking points if they hope to pull it across the finish line over the weeks to come.
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As Iran war drags on, right-wing media lash out at NATO and Iranians who haven’t overthrown their government
When it comes to assigning blame for the Iran war spiraling out of control, MAGA media have found convenient scapegoats who aren’t named Trump
Written by John Knefel
Published 03/20/26
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran lurches into its fourth week without any clear endgame, signs of frustration are beginning to show among President Donald Trump’s right-wing media allies. These outside figures, some of whom function as kitchen Cabinet advisers both on- and off-air, still support the war, but as it continues to escalate across the Middle East they have started to find scapegoats for the elusive easy victory many were predicting.
Two primary targets are the United States’ NATO allies, which so far have refused to deploy their militaries to open the Strait of Hormuz, and the Iranian people, who have not overthrown their government. The nexus of these two seemingly distinct critiques is that ordinary Muslims are supposedly at fault in both cases, with some right-wing pundits specifically blaming European Muslims for NATO countries’ reticence to join Trump’s war. Fox News has been leading on both fronts, but former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro have weighed in as well.
Since March 15, Trump has criticized NATO countries for declining to join his war of aggression, saying they were “making a very foolish mistake” and claiming that the United States “will protect them, but they will do nothing for us.” (The only time NATO’s collective self-defense clause has been invoked was after the attacks against the U.S. on 9/11.) Trump has also acknowledged that Iranians looking to take to the streets would face serious danger even as he has urged protesters to “take over your government,” a call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made as well. (Israeli intelligence reportedly determined that in the event of a popular revolt, Iranians would be “slaughtered.”)
Whether or not the exasperation voiced by right-wing media about NATO and the lack of a popular Iranian uprising foreshadows broader concerns about Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war remains to be seen. But as civilian casualties mount — especially in Iran and Lebanon — and markets sink, some of Trump’s allies may continue searching for people to blame, just so long as they aren’t named Donald Trump.
Fox News leads anti-NATO charge
Trump’s criticisms of NATO countries’ refusal to open the Strait of Hormuz migrated to Fox almost immediately.
On March 16, speaking over a chyron that read “The ‘alliance’ that isn’t,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham latched onto the talking point.
“If anyone watching tonight is surprised when America stands alone, well, you haven't been paying attention,” Ingraham said. “Now, of course as usual, liberals claim that Trump is the reason that any alliances are frayed. That is a joke.”
Ingraham went on to blame Muslims for Britain’s reluctance to get involved militarily. “As usual, they don't need to take out their wallets or risk any political heat at home, especially with the burgeoning Muslim population in the U.K,” she said, before airing footage of Trump complaining about the longtime U.S. ally. “All this proves is that President Trump was right all along about these friends — well, they’re friends who took advantage of us for about 80 years.”
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From the March 16, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
The following morning, Fox & Friends picked up the baton. “It's pretty amazing that Germany goes no, I'm not going to do anything; U.K. says no, I'm not going to help; France says I've got some in the area, I'll see what I can do; Japan says no,” host Brian Kilmeade said. He then downplayed the scope of the energy crisis before taking another shot at U.S. allies.
“We're going to be fine. It's going to be just a little — a couple more weeks that maybe there's more shooting going on,” Kilmeade said. “In the big picture, this backs up what the president has been saying about our allies in times of crisis.”
Kilmeade’s co-host Lawrence Jones added: “Not a good look.”
The same day, Bannon took a shot at “our great allies in NATO telling Trump yeah, I don’t know, this Iran thing’s not really our deal — keeping the Red Sea open, the Suez Canal, Straits of Hormuz, that's not really NATO's problem.”
He added: “It’s outrageous what the allies have told us.”
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From the March 17, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro took aim at NATO countries “exorbitant regulatory and welfare structures,” adding: “We don't need different allies. We need our allies to be better.”
“President Trump was always right to force NATO countries to pay up for their own defense,” he continued. “But if NATO countries want America to help them out in times of common need, they need to step up as well when one of the world's chief shipping lanes is closed by an internationally recognized terrorist regime.”
Back at Fox & Friends, on March 18 Fox political analyst Guy Benson joined Ingraham in laying blame at the feet of Muslims in Europe. “In a lot of these countries, there is a growing Muslim population where there are sectarian politics that are increasingly driving decisions that are being made about not offending that group of people on a whole host of fronts,” Benson said. “I think that is inescapably part of the calculus here.”
Jones said of NATO countries, “I was always raised — no one likes a freeloader.”
Jones agreed and replied that the “radicalization that’s happening in a lot of these countries” is “inspired … by Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of terror.”
Later that morning, Jones said of NATO countries, “I was always raised — no one likes a freeloader.”
On his Premiere Networks radio program, host Sean Hannity adopted his Fox colleagues’ rhetoric in targeting European Muslim communities. “Great Britain that has sharia courts. France has no-go zones — I am telling you, Europe is collapsing before your eyes,” Hannity said. “Unfettered immigration, they don't demand assimilation. It is now an unmitigated, out of control disaster.”
Hannity suggested punishing NATO countries for thus far staying out of the military campaign, telling his audience: “I can tell you right now, this is not going to end well for Europe. It just isn't. We'll just ignore their conflicts. We'll just ignore what they go through.”
Fox’s Mark Levin — who, along with Hannity, has been one of the network’s major Iran war boosters — praised Israel and lashed out at European countries.
“Israel is a great ally,” Levin said. “They're fighting alongside us. Look at the British. Look at the French. Look at the Spanish. They're doing nothing. Effectively nothing except undermining us.”
On his March 19 radio show, Hannity used even stronger language. “We were just speaking about how our NATO allies are pathetic, didn't I just say that?” he asked his producer, adding: “I'm frankly disgusted with Great Britain and France and Germany and even Italy. … On the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, we get 1% of our oil from going through that strait — not much — and all the president said is hey, you want to help us here?” Of the European countries which haven’t joined the U.S.-Israeli war, Hannity was blunt: “There will be a price to pay in the end. Just like they have had unfettered immigration without assimilation, they will pay a price for that.”
Fox blames Iranian citizens for the lack of an uprising: “Freedom is costly, right?”
It’s not just Muslims in European countries who have supposedly let down the war effort, according to right-wing media; the Iranians living under a repressive regime and suffering from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have as well. For these conservative pundits, Trump’s war with Iran cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Responding to her guest’s discussion of a possible popular uprising in spite of the dangers posed, Ingraham said on March 10, “They’re going to have to do it, because freedom is costly, right?”
“Our soldiers are dying in this,” she continued. “We’re paying a big price, so the Iranian people need to stand up.”
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From the March 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
On March 16, Fox Business anchor David Asman lamented that “we haven’t seen the popular uprising that we were hoping for — that can take years to happen.”
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner responded by invoking a longstanding Orientalist trope, arguing that Iranians are consumed by an ancient, irrational hatred of the West. “Their grievance is that they hate us, and I don’t really think that there’s a date on the calendar,” Faulkner said. “They could literally go thousands of years and still be at the point where they are now — I mean, they have been.”
“So I’m not sure we can generationally change them, but we certainly can take some things out of their hands,” she continued. “Like oil, and other things we’re so dependent upon as a country.”
Faulkner returned to the topic on March 18, prior to Trump attending the dignified transfer of six U.S. service members killed in the Iran war. Faulkner described one of the war’s aims as “to perhaps win a space for the people of Iran to step up into their own freedom.”
“We cannot do it for them,” she continued. “But we can be part of the solution in terms of making it possible.” More than 1,348 Iranian civilians have been killed since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli campaign, according to an Iranian official.
The New York Times reported March 19 that “a small team of British military planners has been sent to the United States to help draw up options to reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” though the effort stops “short of the sort of major military action President Trump has demanded, such as sending warships to the waterway imminently.” Similarly, Axios reported that seven countries supported a vague coalition to open the strait, but that it was “largely a gesture to placate President Trump.”
Whether there is any appetite for deescalation among the parties to the conflict remains unclear. But what is glaringly obvious is that right-wing media are already seeking scapegoats for the cascading catastrophe set off by Trump's war with Iran.
//
### Trump’s shambolic policy-making by Fox segment hits the airports
03/23/26 1:58 PM EDT
03/23/26 11:37 AM EDT
### Tim Pool: “If you had information pertaining to Trump's announcement, you just got rich”
03/23/26
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adelson pal of witkoff
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mma sorta random
### On Fox News, billionaire CEO John Catsimatidis suggests that homeless should “live in Uganda”
03/19/26
03/19/26 2:47 PM EDT
### Former Trump adviser KT McFarland: “Trump is playing four-dimensional chess with this Iran war”
03/19/26 1:59 PM EDT
### Tulsi Gabbard just shattered Sean Hannity’s case for the Iran war
03/19/26 12:56 PM EDT
03/19/26 12:49 PM EDT
03/19/26 9:32 AM EDT
03/19/26 9:18 AM EDT
### Fox News host on whether Iran was an “imminent” threat: “I just don't think that's relevant”
03/19/26 9:13 AM EDT
03/18/26 7:19 PM EDT
### Sean Hannity attacks JD Vance's allies: “Those very people are doing the most damage to him”
03/18/26 7:13 PM EDT
03/18/26 2:45 PM EDT
03/18/26
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MMA
Fox personalities used to claim that energy independence would shield the US from potential retaliatory action by Iran — such as closing the Strait of Hormuz
As gas prices rise, the network has scarcely invoked the concept of “energy independence,” mentioning it a fraction as often as it did during the start of the Russia-Ukraine war
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Allison Fisher
Published 03/18/26
The current surge in gas prices in response to President Donald Trump’s war against Iran challenges Fox News’ long-touted narrative that so-called “energy independence” would insulate the U.S. from disruptions in the global oil market and potential overseas conflicts, specifically in the Middle East. And while Fox personalities have wielded this narrative against Democratic presidents and used its talking points to advocate for more drilling and fossil fuel extraction, the network has fallen nearly silent on the concept of achieving energy independence as domestic energy costs continue rising despite Trump’s claims of achieving “energy dominance.”
In reality, America has never truly been energy independent, and such a policy is not even truly possible. Energy prices are determined by a global market, meaning the United States will never be free from oil and gas price fluctuations no matter how much oil it produces domestically. Indeed, this moment represents the most definitive rebuke yet of the idea of American “energy independence.”
Even as the U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and the Trump administration pursues a voracious pro-fossil fuel agenda, the national average price of gas reached $3.45 a gallon on March 8, with The New York Times reporting that oil prices rose “above $100 a barrel for the first time in roughly four years, more than 40 percent more expensive than it was before the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28.” As of March 18, gas has climbed to a national average of $3.84 a gallon.
But rather than conceding the point that oil markets have always been and will likely always be volatile, Fox personalities are moving the goal posts on what “energy independence” means compared to the network’s narratives in 2022 and 2020. They’re now suggesting that energy independence can be achieved by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that it means disruptions to gas prices caused by conflicts overseas are only temporary, or that energy independence enables the U.S. to start new wars that “wouldn't even have been possible if Joe Biden was president.”
## In 2022, as gas prices surged in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Fox blamed Biden’s energy policies. Now the network is downplaying the price increases as temporary.
The rapid increase in fuel prices surrounding Trump’s war with Iran mirrors how the global oil markets responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. At the time, one of the dominant narratives across Fox was the suggestion that gas prices in the U.S. were rising due to losing “energy independence” under President Joe Biden — a claim which is categorically false. (Oil production in 2022 was the second highest of any year in U.S. history, yielding approximately 12 million barrels a day.) In some cases, Fox personalities and guests even suggested America’s purported lack of “energy independence” under Biden emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in the Ukraine.
In fact, Fox News mentioned “energy independence” at least 329 times in the first two weeks of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and it continued to be a central narrative of Fox’s coverage after that, with mentions increasing to 632 one month into the conflict. Now, as prices skyrocket in response to Trump’s war on Iran, that talking point has been far less prevalent. In the first two weeks of the conflict, from February 28 through March 13, the terms “energy independence” or “energy security ” were mentioned just 12 times on Fox News programs.
Part of the 2022 narrative on Fox was also attacks on the Biden administration for releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. Fox’s Maria Bartiromo claimed the move “tells you that they were blindsided” because the SPR “is supposed to be a reserve for crises and emergencies.”
Now, on the March 13 edition of *Fox & Friends First*, co-host Carley Shimkus claimed that “President Trump is restoring America’s energy independence [by] ordering 172 million barrels of oil to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” calling it an example of how he is “battling back” against “the economic impacts of war.”
Notably, Fox correspondent David Spunt pointed out on March 9, before Trump decided to tap the reserves, that Biden was criticized by the right for releasing oil from the SPR in 2022 to offset sanctions against Russia by putting more oil in the global market.
In 2022, energy independence meant maintaining low gas prices during a foreign conflict. Now, Fox and others in right-wing media suggest price hikes driven by the fighting are only a temporary “sacrifice” for attacking Iran.
One Fox host, Tomi Lahren, did seem to acknowledge that energy independence has not shielded the U.S. from price shocks, though she still worried that people would grow impatient with gas costs.
It’s “really such a shame too because this president has worked so hard up until now on getting those gas prices down,” Lahren said. “American energy independence, still obviously a priority, but this kind of shakes the boat a little bit.”
In 2022, Fox personalities suggested energy independence was about insulating us from foreign conflicts. Frequent Fox guest and former Trump adviser Steve Moore now suggests it's about enabling us to start new wars abroad, claiming during a March 5 appearance on *Fox & Friends* that “this incursion wouldn't even have been possible if Joe Biden was president, because we didn't have the energy capacity to do it.”
“Thanks to drill, baby, drill, and Trump's America energy independence plan, … we produce more oil and gas than any other country in the world today,” he continued. “Thank you, Donald Trump, for making that possible. It’s really made it much — we're much less reliant on the Middle East than we used to be.”
And Fox anchor Shannon Bream tried to quickly move past the connection between rising global oil prices and Trump’s domestic energy policies during a March 1 interview with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), calling it “a whole ‘nother conversation.”
Kaine rebutted that it “does connect — the president wants energy independence, so he says, while he is terminating offshore wind projects and alternative energy all over the United States. If you want U.S. energy, why are you doing that?”
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From the March 1, 2026, edition of Fox News Sunday
Kaine raised a key point that often takes a back seat to calls for more drilling during moments of oil volatility: the role of domestic clean energy in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted last week, “homegrown renewable energy has never been cheaper, more accessible, or more scalable,” offering countries a way to protect themselves from the “shock waves” conflicts can create in a “global energy system largely tied to fossil fuels.”
## In 2020, Fox claimed that US energy independence under Trump “makes us far less vulnerable” to retaliation from Iran. The country’s leader just said the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed as oil prices continue to climb.
In 2020, after the U.S. assassinated Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani under the first Trump administration, right-wing media not only claimed that our supposed energy independence made the action possible, but also that it had made the U.S. “far less vulnerable” to any retaliatory action by Iran, such as cutting off the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the country’s newest supreme leader has promised the strait will remain closed, and while Trump has announced some actions to address oil market disruption, like releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, experts have warned that “higher prices will likely persist until traffic through the Strait of Hormuz returns.”
In a January 4, 2020, op-ed for Fox News, Daniel Turner with the pro-industry think tank Power the Future argued that the “US can withstand Iranian attack on global oil supplies, thanks to Trump energy policies.” He wrote: “Fortunately, President Trump has aggressively pursued deregulation and other needed policies that have led to big increases in U.S. production of oil and natural gas. This makes us far less vulnerable to Iranian threats to block the Straits of Hormuz."
Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis said on the January 3, 2020, edition ofFox News’ *Outnumbered* that Trump’s oil deregulation efforts were a “national security strategy.”
“Yes, the Strait of Hormuz, about 25% of the world's oil comes through there, so we'll be watching that closely,” she said. “But the U.S. just hit 12.6 million barrels a day in production. ... So when I look at the Trump administration rolling back regulation, what they’ve done with the oil strategy, I really look at it as a national security strategy.”
Fox Business host Stuart Varney even claimed on the January 3, 2020, episode of Fox & Friends that because of Trump’s energy independence policies, “if you took out Iranian oil installations, I don't think it would have that big an impact on us in America.”
Now, Trump is threatening to target the centerpiece of Iran’s oil production facilities on Kharg island — a major escalation that analysts warn risks “accelerating a structural shift in how energy supply chains are priced.”
“War-risk insurance premiums will likely remain elevated long after the last missile is fired,” wrote Jeff Currie of Carlyle Analysis. “And the behavioral response — hoarding, contract renegotiations, the scramble for alternative suppliers — permanently reprices the supply chain.”
The reality is that the U.S. cannot drill its way to “energy independence.” Becoming truly energy independent means weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels and adopting clean, renewable energy sources. That was true in 2020 and 2022, and it's even more important now.
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President Donald Trump is denouncing Joe Kent, his former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, for resigning in protest over his invasion of Iran. Now a respected columnist is warning Trump’s critics that although Kent may be correct in opposing the Iran war, that does not mean he is on the side of anti-Trumpers.
It just means that “it’s getting crowded under” the bus under which Trump keeps throwing people.
“How does media ― legitimate media ― cover a story in which a bad person does the right thing?” wrote Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic. “File under: A stopped watch is right twice a day. And more chaos from the Donald Trump era, and how that has affected media coverage.”
Goodykoontz then praised CNN anchor Dana Bash for explaining when covering the news that “Kent is not a typical intelligence official. He is a Trump appointee known for his ties to White nationalists, Nazi sympathizers and an embrace of the Jan. 6 conspiracy theories that we have seen so much (of) on the far right."
Goodykoontz said that “that is the perfect way to place Kent into context, and it should be repeated every time the story is updated. Good for Bash. (All the cable news networks covered the resignation, but Bash's was the most clear and efficient that I saw.)”
As for Kent’s fate, Goodykoontz expressed a rather blase attitude.
“Who gets thrown under the Trump bus next, and how will the media cover it?” Goodykoontz said. “It's hard to say, but it's getting crowded under there.”
Trump’s invasion of Iran is also harshly criticized by many of his fellow conservatives. Contributing to the conservative publication The Bulwark on Tuesday, commentator Jonathan V. Last wrote that Trump’s behavior is “stupid,” citing as one example that “mining the Strait of Hormuz is the single biggest danger America faced heading into any conflict with Iran. How did our commander-in-chief plan to deal with it?”
He added, “Six months ago the Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweepers that had been stationed in Bahrain precisely to deal with Iranian mines.”
Joe Rogan, a popular right-wing podcaster who openly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, admitted earlier in March that some Trump supporters felt “betrayed” by his invasion of Iran.
“Well, it just seems so insane, based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?” Rogan said in an episode of his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “He ran on, ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Another former Trump supporter, ex-Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), argued in February that Trump supporters who still back him despite his warmongering prove they are in a “cult.”
“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” He then mentioned Trump’s invasions of Venezuela and Iran.
“And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?” Walsh said. “What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?
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Dire Strait: Trump’s Fox Cabinet ignored Hormuz in the month before the U.S. attacked Iran
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/13/26
It’s little wonder that President Donald Trump didn't seem to worry about the Strait of Hormuz in planning his war of choice against Iran: His Fox News advisers utterly ignored the possibility that Iran could respond by closing that critical shipping lane as they urged the president to launch the attack last month.
Roughly 20% of global crude oil and liquified natural gas, along with a “dominant” share of global fertilizers, reach world markets by flowing from the Persian Gulf through the narrow strait between Iran and Oman and into the Indian Ocean. A few days after U.S. and Israeli forces launched their campaign, Iran said it would attack any ship attempting the passage, effectively grinding shipping to a halt and triggering a spike in global energy prices. This week, Iranian forces have struck oil tankers and reportedly began mining the strait.
While closing the strait in response to hostilities is a well-known aspect of Iranian strategic doctrine, the Trump administration apparently did not plan for it in the lead-up to the February 28 attacks.
“The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter,” CNN reported Friday.
The report continued:
President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.
While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.
...
The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.
“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”
The president’s official advisers weren’t the only ones who missed this. The Fox pundits Trump regularly watches on his television provide an alternate source of information and counsel which often shapes his worldview, including with regard to the Iran war. But Trump’s Fox News Cabinet, in the weeks leading up to the attack they urged him to launch, largely did not clue the president in to the risks posed by Iran closing the straits in response.
Sean Hannity, the Fox star and Trump confidante whose program the president reportedly cited in conversations about the prospective war, referenced the “all-important Straits of Hormuz” during a discussion of rising tensions in the region on his February 3 show. But Hannity did not detail why the passage is important, and he subsequently threatened Iran’s leaders not to mess with Trump.
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From the February 3, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Tensions are once again rising just off the coast of Iran where American — an American F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. Meanwhile, in the all-important Straits of Hormuz, six Iranian gunboats tried, but they failed, to intercept a U.S.-flagged oil tanker before a U.S. Navy vessel arrived on the scene.
Mark my words, the ayatollahs, the mullahs, they’re now playing a very dangerous game, one that they’re not going to win. President Trump, he does want peace, but he’s also a man of his word. He did promise he would take out their nuclear program if they didn’t negotiate, and he did. After vowing to do so, it happened. A hostile Iran will not be met with Obama and Biden-like appeasement.
That was nonetheless the most detailed treatment of the strait on Hannity’s program in February, according to a review of the Nexis database. Hannity did not mention the strait again that month, and while a handful of correspondent reports that aired on the show in February did so in passing, none of those detailed the possibility that Iran could close it.
And Hannity’s coverage of the strait, while glaringly insufficient, nonetheless stands out compared to other Fox propagandists favored by the president. The strait was not mentioned on the February editions of Fox’s Life, Liberty & Levin — the weekend show hosted by Mark Levin, an influential (and abrasive) voice in the president’s Middle East decision-making — or the programs of Hannity's evening weekday colleagues, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters, according to a review of the Nexis database.
Fox & Friends, the weekday morning show beloved by Trump that is co-hosted by Iran hawk Brian Kilmeade, also produced scant coverage of the strait. The passage was mentioned only a handful of times on the program in February, all glancing mentions — except for a single segment, nearly a month before the attack, in which a retired U.S. admiral pooh-poohed the risks posed by Iran attempting to close the strait.
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From the February 6, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Kilmeade, on that February 6 broadcast, read a comment from an Iranian official stating that “the Strait of Hormuz will be the place of a massacre” and said the official had “warned that if we do attack, they’re going to block that.”
“Well, look, Iran has been very good on rhetoric,” Kilmeade’s guest, retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, replied. “They are always talking. The capabilities are not the same as their rhetoric.”
“Sure, they can challenge the Straits of Hormuz, they can strike that, they can put mines, but we have the capability to counter that and so I think they are pretty weak at this point,” he continued. “I think that’s what everyone needs to keep in mind: Iran is at the weakest position they have ever been. They have been neutered in terms of the ability – ”
“Admiral, I agree with you,” Kilmeade replied, moving on.
Whoops.
//
### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
### Fox’s biggest hawks are thrilled with the Iran war — and floating risky escalations
03/12/26 1:57 PM EDT
### The final case for US strikes on Iran from Mark Levin and Sean Hannity
02/28/XX
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an 3 26
The United States remains under a cloud of international criticism after it bombed a girls' school in Iran and tried to blame it on Iran itself. Now it's being revealed that the CIA gave President Donald Trump the false intelligence, but made it clear after 24 hours that it was a U.S. bomb. Still, Trump ran with the allegation that it was Iran that hit their own people.
According to *The Guardian*, the CIA believed that the missile may not have been from the U.S. because "the fins appeared to be positioned too low for it to be a Tomahawk cruise missile." But they quickly realized it was, in fact, a Tomahawk missile from the U.S., and the sources said they briefed the president on the reality.
The truth didn't matter to Trump, however, as he "had already settled on the explanation that Iran was responsible for the strike." Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to say one way or another so as not to contradict Trump. Instead, he told reporters that it was under investigation.
Trump's biggest problem with the lie is that he accepted the reality that it was a Tomahawk, and falsely said that Iran had such missiles when it is "used only by the US and a handful of allies, including the U.K., Japan and Australia," the report explained.
“Giving Trump preliminary information is dangerous because he can turn it into a total embarrassment,” a former CIA officer told The Guardian. “If the principal asks you a question, the best thing to say is you don’t know. Knowing how hard it is to go back later to correct the record.”
Former intelligence members blame the briefers and Trump for the public embarrassment.
The most recent numbers show that at least 175 people, mostly children, were killed in the blast at the school.
The report said that the updated numbers mean that the strike is "one of the deadliest targeting errors in recent decades."
The investigation Hegseth referenced is trying to uncover why the intelligence claimed that it was a military target when it was well-known that it was a school. The Australian version of ABC News reported that it was even clear on Google Maps that the IRGC naval base was separated from the colorfully painted school by a large wall. The wall has been there since 2013. The school was converted sometime between 2013 and 2016, The Guardian said.
The Pentagon investigation has been focused on why the intelligence was outdated and whether it was double-checked.
International humanitarian law (IHL) is a set of rules designed to protect those who are not directly involved in the conflict. It includes aid workers, medical professionals, the sick, injured and children. The U.S. has signed and ratified Geneva Conventions of 1949. Breaking those rules is considered a war crime.
The Guardian explained that the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency look at imagery to build a "target database" using a program called Maven Smart System.
A former senior defense official explained that there are years of analysis that go into the system and "layers of oversight." However, once "entered into the database as a possible target, it may not necessarily be reviewed again until a strike is considered." The target list is generated by the system using Maven and "artificial intelligence tools such as Claude, Anthropic’s large language model," the report explained.
In late February, around the time Trump decided to go to war, he instructed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's AI technology. PBS News reported at the time that Anthropic has long demanded that the government not use its system for "fully autonomous weapons systems" and mass surveillance.
On Feb. 23, five days before the bombing, Axios reported that the Pentagon and Elon Musk's AI company, Grok, had reached an agreement under which his AI tools would be used instead. xAI agreed to allow its system to be used for everything, including military and warrantless surveillance. So, it's unclear which systems were responsible for putting the girls' school on the target list.
The head of Centcom, Adm. Brad Cooper, told reporters last Wednesday the United States is “leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools" for the attacks.
The Washington Post reported last week that two Israeli officials claimed the girls' school "was not cross-checked or discussed with the Israel Defense Forces before it took place."
Human Rights Watch has called for a war crime investigation.
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he was talking about invasion in dec?!
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NO LNX VID
Fox’s biggest hawks are thrilled with the Iran war — and floating risky escalations
Kilmeade inches toward ground troops while Levin, Hannity fawn over Trump
Written by Matt Gertz
:{:{Published 03/12/26}:
Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump launched an ill-conceived, ill-planned war in Iran, the Fox News Cabinet members who urged him to launch military strikes there are either pushing him to escalate or stressing what a great job he’s done.
Zeteo’s Justin Baragona and Asawin Suebsang confirmed on Thursday that televised input from the Fox propagandists Trump trusts played a role in the president’s decision to launch a war of choice. Trump regularly shapes policy based on what he sees on the network, and hosts Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade were loudly urging the president to attack Iran in the days before he did so.
Though U.S. and Israeli forces have successfully bombed a wide array of Iranian targets and assassinated its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the U.S. military also appears to have killed scores of Iranian children with a Tomahawk missile strike on a school, Iran has now taken the incredibly obvious step of closing the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which about 20% of global crude oil and liquified natural gas flows — and it remains unclear what a strategic victory could look like.
But if Trump is watching his favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, he’s hearing Kilmeade call for an expanded mission that would require putting troops on the ground in Iran.
“We killed their commander, and we’re killing a lot more, and the Israelis’ intelligence on the ground is unbelievable,” he said on Thursday. “Hopefully, that leads to grabbing that uranium out of some of those destroyed sites, maybe that’ll be something that will be announced shortly.”
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From the March 12, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Kilmeade’s casual invocation of “grabbing that uranium” elides the difficulties involved in attempting to secure and transfer potentially over a thousand pounds of material that has likely been dispersed across a hostile foreign country and possibly outside of it.
Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, detailed the potential dilemmas of such an operation in a Wednesday appearance on MS NOW.
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From the March 11, 2026, edition of MS NOW's All In with Chris Hayes
Kilmeade has also suggested U.S. forces seize Iranian territory — using language that seems carefully chosen to appeal to the president.
“I just wonder how soon until we decide to grab that Kharg Island, where 90% of all the Iranian oil is shipped,” Kilmeade offered on Wednesday.
“If we have that, you want the ultimate leverage, we have it,” he added, “I just think that that's something the president has talked about since the ‘80s, everyone knows it, and that would really get their attention.”
Kilmeade went on to say that the administration could be hesitating because if the U.S. seizes Kharg Island, there would be “a temporary uptick” in the cost of oil during the “transition.”
“But Iran can't adjust economically without it,” he added. “So if you want to create ultimate leverage on a regime that is so scared, they are afraid to put their supreme leader out in public, I think that's one way to do it.”
He concluded, appearing to address Trump directly: “If you are in control of it, you literally are doing what you did with [Venezuelan President] Delcy Rodriguez. We took all their ships and said nothing is coming in or out. We will control your oil. We flipped the government to take Maduro out, and now we’re refining their oil.”
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From the March 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Kharg Island “is arguably the country’s most sensitive economic target,” Dan Sabbagh, defense and security editor for The Guardian, wrote on Wednesday, but “an effort to seize the island, given its size, would be likely to require a sizeable and sustained operation, greater than a typical special forces incursion.”
He further reported that “experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline.” That could cause a “tailspin” for global markets, even if oil shipments subsequently resumed.
Levin and Hannity can’t stop praising the “extraordinary leader” who launched the war
While Kilmeade is focused on coming up with new ways for Trump to risk the lives of American service members and undermine global financial and political stability, Hannity and Levin have been telling their viewers — which could include the president on any given night — that the war is going swimmingly and that anyone who says otherwise is lying.
“After just one week, Iran's Air Force, Army, Navy is in tatters,” Hannity said Monday. “Its radical leaders, they're all dead. A murderous regime is now a shadow of its former self.”
He went on to explain that in Iran, “a new supreme leader, ayatollah, has been announced and his days as of this hour are likely numbered” and the country “is apparently struggling to put up a fight.”
On Tuesday, Hannity praised Trump for demanding Iran remove any mines it had placed in the Strait of Hormuz, commenting: “Tonight, the message from the Trump administration and President Trump is crystal clear. Any Iranian ship that poses a threat to the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz will be obliterated without warning and sent straight to hell and the bottom of the sea in a million pieces.”
He added, “A little advice to anyone still alive in Iran's Navy, dock your vessel, head to dry land, and maybe you want to go home and join your families.”
And on Wednesday, Hannity began his nightly monologue with “the very latest figures out of Operation Epic Fury.”
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Iranian ballistic missile attacks, they’re down by over 90%. More than 5,000 targets, now, have been eliminated.
Air dominance has been secured. More than Iranian vessels have been obliterated, including all four Soleimani-class warships. The old ayatollah, supreme leader, and all of his top deputies and the next layer of leadership are all dead.
The new ayatollah is too afraid to appear anywhere in public. In fact, we don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.
Now, all of this in less than 11 days. America and Israel are dominating the evil regime in Iran.
On Saturday, Levin lavished Trump with praise for attacking Iran, calling him “an extraordinary leader and president who spent most of his life as a captain of industry, several industries, in fact, who gave up an enormously successful career to serve his country, a country he so dearly loves.”
He went on to attack those who suggest U.S. aims in Iran are unclear.
“Now, lot of people are saying, people who know better, what's the mission? Why are we acting now and so forth and so on?” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it's just appalling to hear Democrats and commentators and others make these statements when they know damn well what the mission is. We've faced this for 50 years.”
Levin subsequently asked Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “It's so important that we have this commander-in-chief when we have this commander-in-chief because literally none of this would be happening, would it?”
“Mark, I don't believe that presidents know when history is going to come knocking,” Goldberg replied. “It happens at times you can't expect. But what makes a great president is being willing to answer the call, not to shy away, not to cower, not to be deterred, as many past presidents have, and repeatedly throughout his two presidencies, when history knocks, President Trump answers the call, and that is what he just did.”
Goldberg went on to say of the war: “We are six days in, seven days in and this is moving at a pace no one could ever have imagined. We are decimating their missiles, their drones, their Navy, their ability to remake a nuclear weapons program, and soon, with the help of our allies in Israel, decapitating their ability to wage war against the Iranian people as well.”
“Understand what is at stake here for our national security. Donald Trump is delivering for the United States of America,” he concluded.
“Beautifully put, and conversely, the Democrats are trying to obstruct him every step of the way,” Levin replied.
The president was watching Levin and Goldberg wax poetic about how great he is.
“Rich Goldberg was GREAT on Mark Levin tonight,” Trump posted that night. “Two guys who really get it! Thank you both.”
---
SORTS RANDOM MMA
### Right-wing media embrace “regime collapse” in Iran
03/12/26 4:23 PM EDT
03/12/26 3:08 PM EDT
03/12/26 2:39 PM EDT
### Fox’s biggest hawks are thrilled with the Iran war — and floating risky escalations
03/12/26 1:57 PM EDT
### Ben Shapiro rants about “nut” Tucker Carlson, “coward” Megan Kelly, and “little bitch” Piers Morgan
03/12/26 1:36 PM EDT
### Fox stars dropped “mass deportation” language months ago
03/12/26 11:23 AM EDT
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03/11/26 4:37 PM EDT
### PBD Podcast panelist on war in Iran: “I think we're at the front door of quagmire”
03/11/26 3:57 PM EDT
---
MMA
Right-wing media blamed Iran for bombing of Minab elementary school, but reporting suggests it was a US strike
Reporting indicates that a US Tomahawk missile likely hit the school, yet right-wing media blamed the attack on Iran and downplayed the killing of children because “things happen in war”
Written by Torri Lonergan, Ben Van Bloem & Isabella Sherk
Published 03/11/26
Right-wing media blamed Iran for the likely U.S. bombing of an elementary school during initial U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. As evidence mounted that the U.S. was likely at fault, right-wing media called it “disinformation from the enemy.” The strike killed about 175 civilians, largely young children.
Multiple mainstream news organizations have now verified a video that appears to show a U.S. Tomahawk missile hitting a building near the school as part of an attack on an Iranian naval facility next door. Additionally, Defense Department investigators have reportedly determined that the U.S. was likely responsible for the strike. However, right-wing media figures claimed to have “photographic evidence” that Iran was behind the bombing, downplayed the killing of school children, and cast doubt on reporting about the strike, calling the entire story “a lie that has been completely retracted.”
## Reporting and video suggest that the US is likely responsible for the bombing of an Iranian elementary school
Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in southern Iran was struck by a missile on February 28, killing about 175 people. Neither the U.S. nor Israel initially admitted responsibility for the attack that killed so many civilians, including many children. NPR, [3/8/26; BBC, 3/9/26]
Evidence suggests that the missile was launched by the United States.The New York Times linked the strike on the school to a simultaneous U.S. military attack on a neighboring Iranian naval base and debunked the claim that the school was hit by a “misfired Iranian missile.” The New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post also verified a video that confirmed it was a Tomahawk missile that hit the school. All three outlets reported that the U.S. is the only actor in the war that is known to possess Tomahawks. The New York Times, [3/5/26, 3/8/26; NPR, 3/8/26; The Washington Post, 3/8/26]
Even Fox News reported that the school was likely hit with U.S. munitions.Correspondent Jennifer Griffin said, “Satellite imagery and verified video shows the girls elementary school hit in Minab, Iran, on Saturday was likely hit by U.S. precision munitions.” Even Fox host Laura Ingraham mentioned the possibility that “some horrific U.S. or Israeli mistake” caused the strike and said that if the reports are true, then “we will need to own up to it, full transparency.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [3/6/26; Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 3/4/26]
Both a U.S. official and open-source investigative journalism collective Bellingcat said the strike was “likely American.” A Bellingcat researcher identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile made by American weapons manufacturer Raytheon. Reuters reported that “U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children.” The New York Times reported that “an ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States is responsible” for the strike, noting that it was “the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military,” which “created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data” that “had not been double checked.” Bellingcat, [3/8/26; The Associated Press, 3/9/26; Reuters, 3/5/26; The New York Times, 3/11/26]
Despite this reporting, President Donald Trump denied U.S. responsibility for the strike and blamed Iran.“In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump told The New York Times. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.” Fox’s Jennifer Griffin accused Trump of trying to “muddy the waters,” saying, “It seems highly unlikely it would be anyone's Tomahawk other than a U.S. Tomahawk that hit that school, and I think the president knows that.” The New York Times, [3/5/26, 3/8/26; Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 3/9/26]
## Many right-wing media figures blamed Iran for the school bombing
Right-wing podcaster Laura Loomer dismissed U.S. and Israeli responsibility for the bombing as “Islamic propaganda” and claimed to have “photographic evidence” that the missile that hit the school was “fired by the Iranians.”Loomer argued, “The school that was struck in Iran was struck by an Iranian missile that misfired because it was fired by the Iranians, and then they blamed Israel and they blamed the United States. And I posted photographic evidence of this the other day, and you can clearly see the missile shooting up and then shooting back down in Iran. So no, the United States and Israel did not just murder 175 Iranian school girls. The Iranians murdered 175 Iranian school girls.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [3/3/26]
Fox News contributor Brett Velicovich implied that Iranian “tyrants” were “bombing girls schools in the midst of their own chaos.” Velicovich said, “This is not a country defending itself anymore, it’s a regime exporting chaos in every direction. It’s a regime full of psychopaths that should not exist in modern society. And while our military conducts precision strikes on the tyrants in Iran, they are busy bombing girls schools in the midst of their own chaos and killing more innocents.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [3/5/26]
Charlie Kirk Showproducer Blake Neff raised the possibility that “Iran might have launched one of their missiles and it didn’t go well.” Former Tucker Carlson writer Neff said of the strike, “I highly doubt our government would intentionally strike an elementary school. So there's a possibility it didn't happen at all. Accidental strike. Iran might have launched one of their missiles and it didn't go well and it landed inside their own country.” Rumble, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [2/28/26; The New York Times, 9/16/20]
Podcast host Stephen Crowder amplified an “unverified” Telegram post claiming “Iran knew they struck their own school by accident, used it — or on purpose — used it for propaganda.”Crowder said that he “would be willing to bet if it did happen that it obviously wasn't targeted” and suggested that it could have been an Iranian missile that struck the school. Rumble, *Louder with Crowder*, [3/3/26]
PBD Podcasthost Patrick Bet-David said reports about the school bombing were “disinformation,” and panelist Adam Sosnick claimed it had been tracked back to a “fallen military missile from Iran.” Bet-David responded, “Let me tell you, that’s the disinformation camp.” Later in the episode, Sosnick reiterated that it “was the IRGC,” or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and said that people complaining about the school attack were being hypocritical for ignoring violence by the Iranian government during recent protests: “You didn’t care that 30, 40, 50,000 Iranians were killed?" YouTube, *PBD Podcast*, [3/2/26, 3/2/26]
## Right-wing media downplayed the school bombing or denied US involvement
Fox host Jimmy Failla claimed that Democrats planted “a lie that has been completely retracted of these allied forces wiping out a girls school.” He blamed Democrats for planting the story in the media, saying, “If you see the entirety of the world celebrating Donald Trump, your first thought as a Democrat is oh shit. So they get out there and they plant a story.” Failla continued by claiming that Democrats want people to think, “I don't want to live in an America where Trump just blows up girls schools.” Fox News Radio, *Fox Across America with Jimmy Failla*, [3/3/26]
Newsmax host Greg Kelly said he thought there was a “major chance” that reports of the U.S. striking a school were “disinformation from the enemy.” Kelly said, “This is an authoritarian move. They do it all the time, right? Once the bullets start flying, they claim war crime, war crime.” The host later suggested the building may not have even been a school, admitting that “it’s possible, but none of the reports mention that it was located right next to the Iranian Islamic Republican Guard headquarters for that area.” Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [3/2/26]
Fox host Jesse Watters: “If someone made a mistake when they hit a school, that's bad, but that's war.” He accused co-host Jessica Tarlov of “lying about the war” and said Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “murdered 35,000 people” as a defense when Tarlov brought up the school bombing. Fox News, *The Five*, [3/6/26]
War Roomhost Steve Bannon downplayed the deadly school bombing, saying, “Those things happen in war.” He insisted, “They don't make mistakes. You may have something go offline, there's this issue about this striking the girls school that’s on a military base. Yes, those things happen in war. But the process is bulletproof.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [3/9/26]
Streamer Zack Hoyt, known online as Asmongold, dismissed concerns about the bombing of the school as “emotional manipulation” and “Karen ideology” while praising a video of Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about the conflict. YouTube, Asmongold TV, [3/2/26]
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro criticized “people putting extraordinary focus on the Iranian school” who didn’t talk about “protesters mowed down by the Iranian regime.” Shapiro said, “Every life lost is a tragedy. I've noticed that many of the people, nay, virtually all of the people who are placing extraordinary focus on the Iranian school that was horrifically struck today didn't give two bleeps about the 32,000 protesters mowed down by the Iranian regime. So they're perfectly happy to let 88 million people live under the tyranny of the ayatollahs, mowing down tens of thousands of people at a time. That, they have no problem with. No protest. Nothing. But, if in taking out the ayatollahs, a mistake is made and an Iranian school gets hit, I guess it's all game over, we have to stop. That’s nonsense.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [2/28/26]
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MMA
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MMA
Trump's media allies embrace oil wars
Amid encouragement from right-wing media, Trump is reportedly considering seizing Iran’s oil
Written by Zachary Pleat
:{:{Published 03/10/26}:
Soon after President Donald Trump launched his war against Iran, Fox News and Newsmax personalities began talking about the possibility of Trump taking control of Iran’s oil industry, and multiple news reports now say the administration is not ruling out such a move.
This development follows months of encouragement from right-wing media figures to do a similar takeover of Venezuela’s oil industry, which Trump embraced after taking military action to depose President Nicolás Maduro.
Trump won’t rule out seizing Iran’s oil, acknowledges it’s a topic of discussion}:
NBC News: “President Donald Trump on Monday left open the prospect of acquiring Iranian oil as the U.S. proceeds with” its war against Iran. NBC added: “Trump told NBC News that he did not want to discuss whether he would like the U.S. to seize Iranian oil but added: ‘Certainly people have talked about it.’” NBC News, [3/9/26]
Axios: “Administration officials tell Axios there has also been discussion of seizing Kharg Island, a strategic terminal responsible for roughly 90% of Iran's crude oil exports.” CNBC explained that Iran’s Kharg Island is “a small but strategically vital strip of land nestled in the waters of the northern Persian Gulf” where “it is estimated that around 90% of the country’s crude exports pass through it before tankers then travel through the Strait of Hormuz.” Axios, [3/7/26; CNBC, 3/9/26]
## Right-wing media muse about Trump taking over Iran’s oil
Fox host Jesse Watters suggested a benefit to Trump’s war on Iran would be that we will “have full control over the oil-rich Middle East.” Fox News, *The Five*, [3/2/26]
Watters: “What we’ve done here is, now with Venezuela and Iran, we’ve basically tipped over two petro dictatorships. … And we now control almost the entire world oil market.” Watters concluded: “So if this is a successful mission, this is what you call checkmate.” Fox News, *The Five*, [3/3/26]
America First Policy Institute’s Keith Kellogg on Fox: Iran’s Kharg Island “would be a good place if you’re going to use U.S. troops, or any type of troops, occupy Kharg Island, then you control 80% of the oil that comes out of Iran.” Kellogg added: “So, that would be a pretty good move.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [3/3/26]
Fox guest Harley Lippman: “China desperately depends on” Iran’s “oil and gas. … By the United States having control of that from Venezuela and Iran, we have a powerful leverage play with China.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [3/3/26]
Fox Business guest Ryan Payne: “We took over the infrastructure in Venezuela. Now, if we take over the infrastructure in Iran, I would argue you’re going to see lower prices because that’s more output to the market.” Payne continued: “You’re going to have less volatility. So what might happen here is actually oil prices become more normalized, not as volatile, and actually a little bit lower over the longer term, which will be great for input costs for the globe.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [3/4/26]
Fox Business host Elizabeth MacDonald: “President Trump is now moving to strengthen world security, liberating 121 million people from dictatorships in Iran and Venezuela, and also liberating $30 trillion worth of oil fields.” Fox Business, *The Evening Edit*, [3/4/26]
Newsmax host Carl Higbie: “We’re taking the oil from Venezuela now. We’re likely going to get a bunch from Iran.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [3/4/26]
Fox host Lawrence Jones: Trump “started out by saying, why do we always go to war? We don’t take the oil. … Why do we leave the engine of the people that just attacked us?” Jones concluded: “It all started, though, before he declared his candidacy for president and said we got to control the oil. Because the oil controls the world economy.” Earlier in the segment, National Review writer Caroline Downey said: “This is part of Trump’s grand strategy to counter the new Axis of Evil. … We’re doing this because Iran is a weapon of the Chinese communist regime. We got to take China’s pawns off the chessboard. One of them is disrupting raw materials from Iran and from Venezuela to China.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [3/5/26]
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt gushed over Trump’s “bold agenda,” likening Iran’s future to Venezuela’s and saying the latter “is now effectively a colony of the United States.” Schmitt outlined what he believed were Trump’s broad geopolitical plans “to change the landscape of the world to the benefit of our country,” specifically adding that Trump “wants to force American influence onto OPEC by controlling Iran, by controlling Venezuela.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [3/5/26]
Fox guest Jim Hanson suggested seizing “Kharg Island, the oil terminal that Iran uses to get 60%, or 40-plus %, of their revenue from.” He continued: “Taking that and keeping that in hold until the regime falls might be a way to shut them down.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends First*, [3/9/26]
Fox host Laura Ingraham: “If there is a way to help manage and rebuild, maybe with a joint venture in place, the Iranian oil fields … what’s the argument against doing this? Why wouldn’t it make sense?” Ingraham also said “of course Trump was right” “when he railed against Bush, President Bush, for failing himself to take control of Iraqi oil fields after that invasion.” During Ingraham’s monologue, a graphic showed an image of Trump with the words: “To the victor go the spoils.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [3/9/26]
Fox & Friendshost Brian Kilmeade: “Now they’re talking about possibly taking Kharg Island. This oil island, where 90% of Iranian oil is pumped from, the president ironically talked about taking this island as far back as 1988 in an interview when he was selling his bookThe Art of the Deal.” Kilmeade added: “There seems to be a lot of upside in doing it.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/10/26]
Kilmeade asked a guest: “Would you take Kharg Island? Should that be one of our objectives, where 90% of the oil transfers to in Iran?” The guest, former Air Force Assistant Deputy Undersecretary John Teichert, replied: “I think that’s a great idea, and I hope and expect that there are plans to potentially do so.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/10/2_{6}_]
## Trump has a history of advocating for seizing other nations’ oil supplies
Brookings Institution in 2016: “Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump has said repeatedly the United States should take Iraq’s oil as the spoils of war. With him, it’s an old refrain that goes back at least five years.” Brookings Institute, [9/16/16]
Vanity Fair in 2018: “Trump twice floated plundering Iraq’s oil to Iraq’s prime minister.” Vanity Fair, [11/26/18]
The Guardian: In an interview in 1988 to promote his bookThe Art of the Deal, Trump said: “I’d be harsh on Iran. … One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.” The Guardian, [1/12/27]
## Right-wing media previously encouraged and then celebrated Trump’s apparent seizure of Venezuela’s oil industry
Prior to Trump’s January 3 ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, many right-wing media figures urged regime change there to seize Venezuela’s oil supplies. Media Matters, [1/6/26]
Fox celebrated Trump's apparent seizure of Venezuela's oil as an economic boon. Yet Fox also previously criticized the Biden administration for merely permitting one American company to resume production of oil in that country in 2022 as part of negotiations with Venezuelan opposition groups. Media Matters, [1/8/26]
Multiple Fox personalities misleadingly claimed that Trump’s seizure of Venezuela’s oil industry would lower gas prices in the U.S. The reality is that rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry would cost a reported $100 billion over a decade, and, as of January 2026, there was an oversupply of oil with decreased demand that had caused gas prices to decline. Media Matters, [1/16/26]
//
03/06/26 5:07 PM EST
03/09/26 10:38 AM EDT
### Laura Ingraham: “Trump has already won in Iran”
03/05/26 7:41 PM EST
### Trump delivered on right-wing media’s desire for regime change in Venezuela over oil
01/06/26 10:03 AM EST
01/08/26 3:22 PM EST
01/16/2
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AN 3 26
President Donald Trump reportedly spoke with Russia about whether they are helping Iran and told other officials that he holds them at their word that they aren't involved. Now, it turns out, there is evidence to the contrary.
Speaking to CNBC about the matter on Tuesday, Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, claimed that Russia was being honest with the U.S.
"That's what they said. So, you know, we can take them at their word. But they did say that," Witkoff claimed. "Let’s hope they’re not sharing."
It prompted a question at the White House press briefing on Tuesday when one reporter asked, "The Kremlin put out a statement, a statement where Putin said, 'I would like to reaffirm our unwavering support for Tehran and our solidarity with Iranian friends.' How does the president think that Russia could be helpful if not helping Iran? And did the president push Putin on Russia sharing intelligence with Iran in this war?"
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt softened that emphatic claim by Trump and Witkoff, telling the press, "Both said that they've sent a message to Russia that if that was taking place, it's not something they would be happy with and they hope that it is not taking place."
CNN reported Wednesday morning that Russia has specifically been working with Iran on "advanced drone tactics," a problem that the Defense Department confessed was causing them headaches.
“There are not great defenses available to the U.S. military to defend against the Shahed,” a congressional official told The Atlantic last week after a Capitol Hill briefing with senior Trump administration members.
“So they have to use the defensives they have, which are costly,” the congressional official said. “We have known this for a long time. We don’t have, at scale, good defenses against drones.”
CNN confirmed that Russia is helping Iran with those drone tactics, after facing off against the assault themselves from Ukraine, Western intelligence said.
"Shahed drones, designed by Iran but mass-produced by Moscow for use in Ukraine, have been unexpectedly successful in penetrating the air defenses of Gulf nations," the report explained. "Russian intelligence sharing with Iran has until now been reported as general assistance with targeting, but specific tactical advice is a new level of support."
“What was more general support is now getting more concerning, including UAS [drone] targeting strategies that Russia employed in Ukraine,” the official told CNN.
The individual wouldn't provide specifics about the tactical help.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, “Russia has started supporting the Iranian regime with drones. It will definitely help with missiles, and it is also helping them with air defense."
He has his own drone interception experts and has agreed to send them to aid the U.S. They have a small, easily-produced $5,000 device that can stop the cheap Russian drones.
---
How Josh Hawley learned to stop worrying and love regime change - Alternet.org
3 26
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KEVIN KRAMER SEN SAYS WE HAVE BIBLICAL DUTY TO ISRAEL?
AN 3 26
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quoted the Bible — specifically the Old Testament — on Tuesday during remarks on the progress of the war against Iran, leaving some to express concerns about Christian nationalism and his potentially executing a holy or religious war.
Noting that he had just returned from Dover Air Force Base to accept the dignified transfer of another service member killed in the Iran war, Hegseth said, “I’ll close with Scripture, drawing strength from Psalm 144.”
“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,” he said. “He is my loving God and my fortress. My stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge. May the Lord grant unyielding strength and refuge to our warriors. Unbreakable protection to them in our homeland. And total victory over those who seek to harm them. Amen.”
Critics slammed his introduction of the religious text.
At The New Republic, Malcolm Ferguson wrote: “The Christian nationalist undertones of this war are getting even more obvious.”
“Listening to Hegseth read Psalm 144 feels like an ominous justification for further aggression rather than a comforting message,” Ferguson said.
“While it’s a lovely verse traditionally attributed to King David, it does not accurately portray the reality of the situation whatsoever,” he wrote. “The United States is the Goliath of this story, along with Israel. The countries’ joint attacks of aggression have killed over 1,200 Iranians, many of them young schoolgirls. Iranian fuel depots were hit so hard that oil rained from the sky in Tehran on Sunday. Seven American service members have died because a president who promised peace sent them to war for money and regime change, not liberation.”
Professor of public policy Josh Cowen responded to Secretary Hegseth’s reading of scripture: “He could have chosen Jesus’s words ‘Blessed are they who mourn’ or if he was really craving a psalm, ‘The Lord is my shepherd.'”
“Instead he’s sporting militant quotes not to assuage grief but to justify his actions that caused it,” Cowen said.
Dutch journalist Michael van der Galien, according to a translation on X, called it “concerning that Pete Hegseth uses a passage from the Old Testament to suggest that God would bless a specific war between America, Israel, and Iran.”
“From a Catholic perspective, war is always a tragedy and only justified under strict conditions of just war theory, such as self-defense and the protection of innocents, not as a divine mandate.”
Professor Massimo Faggioli, a Church historian, according to a translation on X, wrote of Hegseth’s Scripture quoting, “they’ll do absolutely anything to make it look like a religious war.”
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DUCK 3 26
factually.co
How much has AIPAC PAC donated to Lindsey Graham in 20...
Nov 9, 2025The supplied evidence supports scrutiny of pro-Israel donor influence but does not support a definitive numeric answer to "How much has AIPAC PAC donated to Lindsey Graham in 2020, 2022, 2024?" without further primary-source retrieval from campaign-finance filings or databases referenced but not quoted in the materials [2] [5].
trackaipac.com
https://www.trackaipac.com › congress
The Israel Lobby in Us Congress - Track AIPAC
Find out how much money your congressmembers are accepting from the Israel lobby. Download graphics and print posters to share with your network!
OpenSecrets
https://www.opensecrets.org › members-of-congress › lindsey-graham › summary?cid=N00009975
Sen. Lindsey Graham - Campaign Finance Summary • OpenSecrets
Donors who give more than $200 to any federal candidate, PAC or party committee must list their occupation and employer. State requirements related to itemization thresholds and employment disclosures vary. Based on the available information, the donor is given an economic code.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › List_of_politicians_funded_by_AIPAC
List of politicians funded by AIPAC - Wikipedia
List of politicians funded by AIPAC AIPAC's logo in 2020 The following is a list of American politicians and political candidates who have received funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
reversecanarymission.org
https://www.reversecanarymission.org › person › lindsey-graham
Lindsey Graham - Complicit in Apartheid | Reverse Canary Mission
Graham's unwavering support is not ideological alone — it's also financial. According to OpenSecrets.org, he received $459,665 in pro-Israel contributions during the 2020 election cycle. His loyalty to apartheid is bankrolled by AIPAC-aligned donors and defense contractors who profit from war and ethnic cleansing.
[Here Is How Much AIPAC Has Funneled to Every Member of Congress
Sludge
Here Is How Much AIPAC Has Funneled to Every Member of Congress
Mar 1, 2026The money is disbursed by AIPAC PAC, and the group highlights on its website that credit goes to both the individual donor and AIPAC, strengthening the pro-Israel group's ties to the candidates. Here is how much every member of Congress has received from AIPAC PAC from Jan. 1, 2025 through the end of January 2026.
The Citizen
Lindsey Graham and the abuse of lobbying influence
Sep 1, 2025Sources claim he received over $10 million from AIPAC and other pro-Israel donors, participated in luxury trips to Israel, and even threatened to cut U.S. funding for the United Nations in 2015—actions that aligned neatly with the interests of his benefactors. While Graham's activities may be legally defensible, the broader picture is ...
x.com
https://x.com › TrueMaga_ › status › 2030778708315840552
Senator Lindsey Graham, the epitome of an "American Last War Pig," has ...
1 day agoLindsey Graham has received over $1 million from the Israel lobby, with direct and indirect support from AIPAC's PAC. This amount includes contributions from AIPAC affiliated PACs and individual donors associated with AIPAC's network, reflecting Graham's strong pro Israel stance in Congress.
macrosfera.com
https://www.macrosfera.com › aipac-a-look-at-americas-pro-israel-lobby
AIPAC: A look at America's Pro-Israel Lobby - macrosfera.com
Jun 7, 2024Chuck Schumer received over $500,000 from pro-Israel PACs and individuals in recent election cycles. Bob Menendez received over $400,000 from similar sources. Lindsey Graham received over $300,000 in pro-Israel donations.
factually.co
How much did the AIPAC PAC donate to Lindsey Graham, C...
Nov 7, 2025A precise, single-line figure for how much the AIPAC PAC donated to Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi cannot be produced from the available documents because the provided sources do not list those three lawmakers with explicit donation amounts; instead the documents offer aggregate totals, partial recipient lists, and campaign ...
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RWW
Michele Bachmann Says America Will Be 'Blessed' By God For Attacking Iran | People For
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MMA
Christian media figures have claimed that the Iran war could signal “the second coming” or the “End Times” and said “we are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass”
Written by Payton Armstrong
Published 03/04/26
Right-wing Christian media are praising President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in launching military strikes against Iran, with some figures likening Trump to Cyrus the Great and Constantine the Great and claiming that “we are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass.”
Christian media figures have said the war could be a sign of “the emergence of the Antichrist, the tribulation period, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming,” claiming that he has “literally become Constantine the Great”; asserting that “God is using President Trump in a prophetic moment”; and telling audiences, “It’s all going to be happening in God's timing.”
Trump joined Israel in striking Iran — a longtime goal of right-wing evangelicals who believe in End Times prophecy
The U.S. and Israel launched wide-ranging military strikes on Iran, reportedly killing multiple high-ranking Iranian leaders and many civilians, and thrusting the region into a new era of instability.As of March 3, at least six American service members have reportedly been killed in action since the conflict began, and Trump has said, “There will likely be more before it ends.” Additionally, a girls’ elementary school in Minab was hit during the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, killing 165 people and injuring 96 others, according to Iranian state media. NPR, [2/28/26, 3/2/26; BBC, 3/3/26; The Guardian, 3/1/26]
Military commanders have been accused of tying the Iran war to biblical prophecy, with one combat-unit commander reportedly telling noncommissioned officers that Trump is “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” Military.com reported: “An organization that has been fighting against religious extremism in the United States military for two decades has reported more than 200 new complaints since Saturday’s initial strikes against Iran, with members across all services claiming that high-ranking officers are tying the mission overseas to fulfilling a Christian prophecy.” Military.com, [3/3/26]
For years, Christian media figures have likened Trump to Cyrus the Great and claimed he is “anointed” by God.Vox explained the comparison in 2018: “Many evangelical speakers and media outlets compare Trump to Cyrus, a historical Persian king who, in the sixth century BCE, conquered Babylon and ended the Babylonian captivity, a period during which Israelites had been forcibly resettled in exile.” NPR, [1/20/25; Reuters, 3/22/24; Vox, 3/5/18]
Evangelical leaders and right-wing media figures have long claimed Israel is central to the supposed End Times and Iran is “not simply a talking point, but what many … believe is a land of biblical significance” and “considered a major player in End Times prophecy.”For years, those figures have cited various conflicts in the Middle East to warn that the End Times are either here or imminent, and have suggested that Iran could represent the antagonist “Gog” or “Magog” in a biblical prophecy. According to Britannica, in the Bible, “the names Gog and Magog are applied to the evil forces that will join with Satan in the great struggle at the end of time.” Baptist News, [3/2/26; Media Matters, 11/7/23, 7/19/11; Harvest, 3/2/26; Right Wing Watch, 6/20/25; Britannica, accessed 3/3/26]
Conservative media figures have so far been divided over Trump’s war with Iran. Many prominent right-wing figures have supported the war, but a wide variety of streamers and podcasters have broken with the administration, with Tucker Carlson calling the attacks “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Media Matters, [3/2/26]
### Right-wing Christian media celebrated Trump’s war with Iran as a fulfillment of prophecy, saying that Trump is “literally becoming Cyrus the Great” and that “the return of Jesus is back on the menu”
FlashPointhost Gene Bailey and “self-styled prophet” Lance Wallnau likened Trump to Cyrus the Great liberating Babylon, with Wallnau saying, “Cyrus Trump holds the cards.”Bailey opened a segment discussing Iran by saying: “History has a strange way of repeating itself. … When Cyrus the Great entered Babylon, he didn't crush a people. He didn't crush a people group. He liberated them. The Persians still call him Cyrus the Great because he restored dignity, honored faith, and broke the back of the oppressive regime. His name is etched in Persian memory, not as a tyrant but as a deliverer. So, let's fast forward two thousand five hundred years now, many Persians see something similar to Donald Trump.” Wallnau later said, “Cyrus Trump holds the cards.” Bailey has interviewed Trump on FlashPoint at least seven times. Trump appointed Bailey to an advisory board on his Religious Liberty Commission, and told the host during an interview, “We’re with you 1,000%.” YouTube, *FlashPoint* [2/28/26; Media Matters, 6/12/25; The Wall Street Journal, 10/9/24]
Wallnau declared: “The return of Jesus is back on the menu.”Wallnau said: “Things are happening right in alignment with actual feasts. … There's always a feast day manifestation because Israel and the return of Jesus is back on the menu.” Right Wing Watch, [3/2/26]
Also onFlashPoint, right-wing pastor Andrew Sedra said “we're seeing President Trump literally become Constantine the Great, he's literally becoming Cyrus the Great.”Sedra celebrated that “Trump is going after the head of the snake, which is Islam,” adding, “It is a very, very good time to be alive where we're seeing President Trump literally become Constantine the Great, he's literally becoming Cyrus the Great. He's taking decisive action to make sure that Christendom freedom will last across the West for a hundred more years.” Sedra also said, “God is using President Trump in a prophetic moment of time to execute judgment on evil and wicked civilizations.” YouTube, *FlashPoint*, [2/28/26, 2/28/26; Daily Mail, 6/22/23; Ministry Watch, 3/11/24]
Pro-Trump pastor and podcaster Greg Laurie — who interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio in October — declared that the war could be a sign of “the emergence of the Antichrist, the tribulation period, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming.” Laurie, who hosts The Greg Laurie Show, said: “It reminds me of the words of Jesus who said, ‘When you see these things begin to happen, look up because your redemption is drawing near.’ As far as I can see, the next event on the prophetic calendar will be the rapture of the church. … When that event happens, all of the prophetic things that are going to take place are like dominoes closely stacked to each other. And once the first domino falls, the others will fall: the emergence of the Antichrist, the tribulation period, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming, the millennial reign of Christ, heaven and Earth become one, and somewhere in that prophetic scenario is the invasion of Magog with her ally Persia. So, it's all going to be happening in God's timing.” YouTube, [3/1/26; The Greg Laurie Show, 10/28/25; Christianity Today, 5/12/25]
Trump ally and “prophet” Amanda Grace claimed that the strikes on Iran were “prophesied back in December,” adding, “We are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass.” Grace often shares what she calls prophetic warnings and alerts and “a Word from the Lord” on YouTube and has interviewed members of the Trump family including Eric and Lara Trump. YouTube, *Ark of Grace Ministries,* [2/28/26; Media Matters, 5/30/24; YouTube, accessed 9/2/25]
Pro-Trump “prophet” Julie Green said, while discussing Iran, “We should be celebrating and being in comfort and being at peace knowing that God is in control.” Green, who has hosted Eric and Lara Trump on her online show, told her audience: “Prophetically, God has been talking about what we're seeing right now. So this is something that we should be celebrating and being in comfort and being at peace knowing that God is in control, knowing that God is having his way and he is removing every evil leader out of their powerful positions.” Rumble, *Mornings with Julie*, [3/2/26; Media Matters, 10/4/21, 5/30/24]
Right-wing pastor John Hagee streamed a sermon on YouTube titled “God's Coming Operation ‘Epic Fury’” in which he said that “we rejoice in the prophetic scriptures.” Hagee, who founded and chairs a group called Christians United for Israel and has previously argued for military strikes against Iran, opened his sermon by stating: “We thank you for our president, Donald Trump, whose wisdom and courage has crushed the enemies of Zion. Today we rejoice in the prophetic scriptures of Ezekiel, revealing God's operation fury for the enemies of Israel.” YouTube, [3/1/26, 3/1/26; The Nation, 6/24/25; The Guardian, 3/6/23]
Pastor Sean Feucht — a self avowed Christian nationalist who recently announced a “revival” partnership with the federal government for the country’s 250th celebration — noted during a YouTube stream that his evangelical group has had a presence in the Middle East since “the height of ISIS” and said, “God has us positioned there for the end-time open doors of what he's going to do in Iran.”Feucht added: “We're going to see the gospel go forth like never before.” Right Wing Watch reported that during a February livestream, “Feucht announced details of what he called the ‘Roots Of Revival’ tour in which the federal government will partner with him as he hosts prayer events ‘from coast to coast [in] all the historic and epic places of revival and awakening that were birthed in America.’” YouTube, [3/1/26; Right Wing Watch, 2/11/26, 4/21/23]
Right-wing pastor Jack Hibbs uploaded a sermon on YouTube in which he discussed the strikes against Iran in front of a screen saying “Bible prophecy update.”Hibbs, who in 2024 was invited by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to serve as the House of Representatives’ guest chaplain, invoked a verse from Jeremiah 49, which references “the latter days,” and said, “Is that what we're watching? Is that what we're seeing? We'll see. We shall see. But that prophecy has never been fulfilled. Not in total.” YouTube, [3/1/26; Media Matters, 1/31/24; One for Israel, accessed 3/3/26]
Joseph Z — who regularly shares “prophetic updates” on YouTube and in his bio has said he practices “Last Days Prophetic Journalism” — said strikes against Iran “could be Bible prophecy playing out” and “we're going to see an absolute revival come to Iran.” He suggested “what took place in Jeremiah 49” could “be a prophetic fulfillment of what's happening in Iran.” YouTube, [3/1/26, accessed 8/11/25; Right Wing Watch, 8/12/24]
//
### Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress
03/02/26 3:17 PM EST
### Trump and his MAGA allies increasingly embrace extreme prophetic media
05/30/24 9:00 AM EDT
03/02/26
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RWW
Shane Vaughn Says Trump Was 'Obeying The Dictates Of God Himself' In Attacking Iran
03/05/2026
by
In the book of 1 Samuel, the prophet Samuel delivered a message from God instructing King Saul to lead the Israelite army in an attack on Amalekites.
"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them," Samuel told Saul. "Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
During a recent broadcast, Christian nationalist pastor specifically cited this biblical example in defense of the military attack that the United States and Israel are carrying out against Iran.
Vaughn, an obsequious MAGA activist so blindly committed to Trump that he openly admits to being a "cult follower" of the president, has long been a vocal cheerleader of military action against Iran, insisting that it is necessary to prepare for the End Times and the return of Jesus.
"There was a man in the Bible by the name of King Saul," Vaughn said. "And God saw that there was a group of people called the Amalekites that hated Israel. The Amalekites had one desire: To destroy Israel from under the sun. And God raised up King Saul and told Saul, 'I want you to preemptively strike the Amalekites. I want you to go in and kill every man, woman, boy, and girl. And I don't want you to explain it to Congress. I don't want you to explain it to anybody. I want you to do what needs to be done to preserve my people a little longer on the face of the Earth.'"
"Now, if King Saul was to do that today, the entire world would turn against him," Vaughn continued. "But you see, when God is in something and a man doesn't care what the world thinks, he is obeying the dictates of God himself. When God raised up Donald Trump; Iran is to America what Amalek was to Israel. The same thing."
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MMA VIDS
Right-wing pundits want Trump to heal the MAGA rift over the Iran war via the mass deportation of American Muslims
Written by Matt Gertz
Research contributions from Ben Van Bloem
Published 03/04/26
Influential right-wing voices are seeking to bridge the divide in MAGA media over Donald Trump's war in Iran by urging the president to launch a new phase of mass deportations targeting American Muslims for denaturalization and removal.
Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military alongside Israeli forces in a massive series of strikes on Iranian targets is fracturing his MAGA media machine as commentators scramble to stake out opposing positions, bash those on the other side (if generally not the president himself), and seize audience share.
Fox’s Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro are among the most outspoken supporters of the war, while Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Steve Bannon are some of its most vocal critics. The feud has become heated: On Tuesday, Kelly called Hannity a “supplicant to Donald Trump” (true) while Shapiro denounced Kelly as an “unbelievable coward” and Carlson as a conspiracy-obsessed antisemite (also true).
These splits in the MAGAsphere have become a frequent feature of the second Trump administration, with the coalition of right-wing extremists that supported his election fracturing over his handling of issues like the Russia-Ukraine war, tariffs, U.S. strikes on Iran,
and reforms, and, most of all, the Jeffrey Epstein case.
The right-wing media ecosystem is at its most politically potent when it is united, and Trump often tries to respond to these divisions by giving the feuding pundits a common enemy to attack instead. When portions of his base revolted over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files last year, for example, he went so far as to dangle the arrest and imprisonment of former President Barack Obama over a nonsensical conspiracy theory.
Benny Johnson and Matt Walsh, both popular podcasters who are skeptical of the Iran war but support the president, are urging Trump to deploy a similar strategy now. They want the president to reunite his supporters by proposing something they can all agree with: The brutal use of state power to punish Muslim Americans, particularly those with left-wing views. Johnson and Walsh argue that such individuals must be repressed because they constitute “the enemy” and “a clear and present danger to the lives of American citizens.”
Benny Johnson: “Whatever you think about the Iran war,” it’s time for “mass deportations” and “mass denaturalizations” of Muslims
“Whatever you think about the Iran war, this moment should be the absolute and total initiation point for mass deportations, grand and mass deportations of every criminal alien, mass denaturalizations of everyone who gives aid and comfort to the enemy,” Johnson said on Tuesday.
“There is an enemy,” he continued. “There are ideologies that are incompatible with Western civilization. That is a matter of fact, and we should not want them inside of our lands. It doesn't mean that we need to go kill them in their lands, but we shouldn't want them in our lands.”
Johnson went on to describe Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as “a walking billboard for what happens when you allow this to fester,” saying that her presence at the State of the Union as a Muslim immigrant from Somalia who criticizes the president was an “insult” that “should make all Americans demand mass deportations, and immediately.”
Video
Citation
From the March 3, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
Matt Walsh: “Even if you support the current war in Iran, you should be on board” with mass deportations and denaturalizations of Muslims
Walsh warned on his podcast the same day — which was
“The Biggest Threat To Our Country Is Inside Our Border” — that “we can’t end up with a situation where we’re fighting Muslim terrorists overseas while hordes of anti-American Muslims continue to stream into the United States.”
“If you look at the history of Muslim migration to the United States and how quickly our demographics changed, you begin to realize how dire this problem is,” he explained. After highlighting the growth of the Muslim immigrant population alongside atrocities committed by individual foreign Muslims, Walsh concluded that “this is the culture that we’ve been importing.”
Walsh went on to suggest that “more likely, all of this migration is part of the larger effort to dilute the votes of American citizens by replacing us with foreigners who despise the United States,” adding, “The top priority of this administration should be to reverse this catastrophic and deliberate effort to fundamentally alter the demographics of this country.”
“This is the top national security threat we face, and it’s not even close,” Walsh said. “So even if you support the current war in Iran, you should be on board with this — every single one of these Third World foreigners is a clear and present danger to the lives of American citizens.”
Video
Citation
From the March 3, 2026, edition of The Matt Walsh Show, uploaded to YouTube
Walsh went on to say that while mass deportations and denaturalizations could prove politically unpopular, ruinously expensive, or risky, such policies are no more so than the war Trump started in Iran.
Addressing Trump directly, he continued, “If we’re going to do something drastic and explosive and unpopular thousands of miles from home, why not do it here too? That’s the question that the base is asking. If we’re going to give a major prize to the donors and pundit class — people who have tried to undermine you every step of the way, people who oppose your domestic agenda, people who, many of them, want you to be impeached and in prison — if we’re going to reward them, then will we also reward your America First base?”
The pundit then laid out a series of steps to curtail legal immigration and deport immigrants, including urging the president to “strip citizenship from paper Americans who use the word ‘they’ when they describe our country.”
“Will you finish the thing you set out to achieve?” Walsh concluded. “Will you make America America great again?”
//
03/02/26 8:02 AM EST
03/05/26 3:51 PM EST
03/05/26
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an 3 26
Leaked memo exposes Trump administration’s talking points on timeline for Iran war - Alternet.org
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omg hypoc
Mar 3, 2026 Bulwark Takes
Will Saletan revisits Tulsi Gabbard’s past warnings that Trump “lied” about ending wars—and compares them to her current role defending new bombings in Iran and moves in Venezuela.
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SOMEONE SAID DRIVEN BY LOOMER, TOM COTTON AND MIRIAM ADELSON?!
https://wareagle.substack.com/p/the-iran-war-exposes-the-farce-of
SUBSTACK
NO LNX
The Iran War Exposes the Farce of American “Representative Democracy”
J Richard Duke
Mar 03, 2026
The Iran War Exposes the Farce of American “Representative Democracy”
Ryan McMaken
“The Trump administration has unilaterally—without any Congressional debate or vote, of course—forced Americans into yet another war. This time, the war is a large-scale military campaign against Iran. Was there any groundswell of public support for this war? Did the Congress vote to spend more American tax dollars on another war? Apparently not. According to a March 1 poll from Reuters, only 27 percent of Americans polled said they support the US’s new war on Iran. Needless to say, few Americans have been calling their representatives in Congress asking for yet another Middle Eastern war.
:{:{So, why is the US now at war with Iran? Not even the administration appears to know for sure. After the war had already begun, the White House repeatedly changed its stated rationale for opening hostilities against Iran. At the beginning the US regime had been claiming it wanted regime change in Iran to “liberate” Iranians. Yet, by Monday, when Trump listed his reasons for starting the war, he didn’t mention regime change at all. Rather, the administration now seems to have settled on claims that the Iran regime was creating a missile program that, somehow, endangers the United States.}:
Yet, virtually no one believes that the Iranian regime has ever had long-range missiles capable of getting anywhere near US territory. Rather, the only “threat” to the United States is a threat to US bases which the US government has insisted on building 10,000 miles from US territory, and which have nothing to do with the safety of Americans in the United States.}:
On Monday, Rubio said that the United States began the war because the State of Israel planned to attack Iran, and that this would lead to Iranian reprisals against US bases. Rubio was essentially stating that Tel Aviv forced the US into the war. Trump today directly contradicted his Secretary of State—as well as the GOP Speaker of the House and GOP Senator Tom Cotton—and claimed “I might’ve forced their hand.”
Completely absent from all these confused and retroactive attempts to justify the war is any mention of the American people, their tax dollars, their freedoms, or even their alleged representatives in Congress. Nor is this surprising. The current war is a timely reminder that the US ruling elites regard the US taxpayers and ordinary Americans as little more than inconvenient afterthoughts in the formation of US foreign policy. At the same time, the US regime also claims to have the moral high ground precisely because the American regime is supposedly “democratic” with the support of “the people.”
Indeed, the Trump administration overall has helped make it abundantly clear that US elections and public opinion are almost completely irrelevant to the foreign policy. Throughout his campaigns, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed to be the peace candidate, announcing in his speeches that he would end wars, rather than start them. In the days before the 2024 election, the GOP posted this image in social media, clearly presenting the Trump administration as “the pro-peace ticket”:
Yet, less than a year into his second term, Donald Trump’s foreign policy looks largely indistinguishable from that of the foreign policy of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Indeed, if the current war drags on, we’ll be able to say Trump’s foreign policy is reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration.
It was clear during the campaign that the Trump ticket was trying to take advantage of public sentiment which favored less US involvement in foreign wars. With American foreign policy, however, elections don’t matter. This was recently emphasized by the bumbling US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Carlson began with a simple question for Huckabee:
Carlson: How much does it matter what Americans think?
Huckabee: Well, it matters every bit what Americans think.
[Huckabee is a delusional liar. - JRD]
Carlson then points out that about 21% of Americans support war with Iran. He asks Huckabee if that’s enough for the US regime to start a war with Iran. Huckabee states “We don’t live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be in a particular direction...”
Carlson then points out that Huckabee had just said public opinion matters a lot and Huckabee says “we care deeply about it...”
[Huckabee is a liar. - JRD]
Carlson: “If we’re ignoring it, in what sense to we ‘care deeply about it?’”
Huckabee then offers a non sequitur: “I think we care deeply when we see there’s a threat.” Huckabee then continued with more word salad in a desperate attempt to make a connection between public opinion and his preferred policy of repeatedly starting elective wars with Middle Eastern regimes that are no threat to the US population.
[Huckabee, the Ambassador to Israel, is a former pastor who does NOT understand the Bible and is puts Israel first and American somewhere below. - JRD]
The reality, of course, is closer to Rubio’s explanation for the US’s involvement in the war: following the lead of the State of Israel.
This is apparently fine with Ambassador Huckabee, of course, who in his Carlson interview, was asked if Huckabee thinks the State of Israel has a “right” to take over most of the Middle East. Carslon stated: ”Does Israel have the right to that land?” Huckabee responded ”It would be fine if they took it all.”
And what if most Americans don’t share this opinion? Clearly, the US regime doesn’t care, and neither does Huckabee, or Donald Trump.
In spite of all the US regime’s posturing about “the will of the people” and “representation” in Congress, what really matters in Washington is serving powerful interest groups. The taxpaying public simply exists as a resource to be bled dry in favor of wars, protectionism, and federal spending which serves the ruling elite’s complex system of patrons and clients that keeps the elite in power.
When it comes to US foreign policy in the middle east, the dominant interest group is the State of Israel. This is executed through the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and other elements of what foreign-policy scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen walt call “the Israel lobby.” When Mearsheimer and Walt released their book The Israel Lobby in 2007, they were predictably accused of anti-semitism. Yet, the book was ahead of its time in describing how pro-Israel interest groups have been extremely successful in gaining financial, military, and strategic favors for Israel from US policymakers. It has all been done at the expense of American taxpayers. The result has been an American foreign policy elite that overwhelmingly favors incessant foreign intervention to favor a foreign state—the State of Israel—regardless of any concern for the cost borne by Americans or the potential for drawing the US into broader conflicts that do not in any way increase the security of the United States.
In 2007, The Israel Lobby seemed controversial to many. In 2026, it is merely a statement of the obvious—that US foreign policy is tailored to favor certain interest group, rather than the interests of ordinary voters. This, however, is how all interest group politics works. The voting public doesn’t matter, and it hasn’t mattered for a long time.
This is shown in empirical studies that have tried to find a connection between public opinion and actual policies favored in Washington. The connection is tenuous at best.
For example, in a 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benajmin Page, the authors note that when it comes to “impacts on U.S. government policy ... average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” Gilens and Page note that “the preferences of economic elites ... have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.”
This can be seen in Trump’s own fundraising given how one of his biggest donors, billionaire Miriam Adelson, is notable for an extreme pro-Israel position. This is, not surprisingly, reflected in Trump’s foreign policy.
The final conclusions of Gilens and Page are clear:
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Perhaps no group of “economic elites” is more influential in foreign policy than those who control campaign funds distributed through pro-Israel interest groups like AIPAC, or through the spending of wealthy individuals like Adelson.
Other studies have come to similar conclusions. For example, in a 2017 paper on voter preferences, John Matsusake concluded that legislator preferences don’t correlate with voter preferences:
[W]hen legislator preferences differed from district opinion on an issue, legislators voted congruent with district opinion only 29 percent of the time. The data do not show a reliable connection between congruence and competitive election, term limits, campaign contributions, or media attention. The evidence is most consistent with the assumption of a citizen-candidate model that legislators vote their own preferences.
There is, of course, no such thing as a “district opinion,” but the general idea is clear enough: if a legislator’s campaign war chest depends on pleasing a specific interest group, then the preferences of the voters don’t really matter.
Similarly, in a 2016 study from Michael Barber, he writes on how votes in the US Senate bear little relation to public opinion: “[S]enators’ preferences diverge dramatically from the preference of the average voter in their state. The degree of divergence is nearly as large as if voters were randomly assigned to a senator.”
So, if policymakers are largely independent of the voters who the policymakers ostensibly “represent,” then what determines federal policy?
The current war is just the latest reminder that pluralism is wrong and elite theory is right. There is no “we the people.” There is no “representative democracy.” And, when it comes to the big stuff like war, federal spending, and the central bank, elections don’t matter. It’s why, no matter who gets elected, US foreign policy proceeds more or less as usual, year after year after year.
This is why it doesn’t matter that only about one in four Americans is interested in being on the hook for yet another Middle Eastern war with no apparent benefits for any average American. This is why the administration continues to engage in shifting claims about the origins of this conflict. The administration knows that claims about Iran being a threat to the American people are not tenable, and are on the same level as claims about Iraqi WMDs. Nor can the regime just come right out at say “our pro-Israel funders told us to fight Iran.” So, we have Rubio telling us the war was a “preemptive strike” against the potential blowback from US-funded Israeli strikes on Iran. This explanation is already falling apart, which is why Trump now denies it.
In the end, the regime doesn’t even really need to come up with a plausible explanation. The political fallout will settle largely on the current administration, and this will have little effect on the real governing elite which remains in control regardless which party is ostensibly “in power.”
Open link
SEE:
Why Parts of MAGA Feel ABANDONED After Trump Goes to War with Iran, with Marjorie Taylor Greene
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see theocRacy apoc xian nat’l
'Deeply alarming': Christian fundamentalists see Trump’s military policies as biblical war
After U.S. President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes against Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the country's far-right Shiite fundamentalist leader since 1989 — was killed, a long list of other countries were drawn into the conflict. Iran launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. installations in Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iranian drones.
Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah (a pro-Iran Shiite militia in Lebanon) fired missiles at once another. From Riyadh to Beirut to Dubai, the Middle East is on pins and needles.
Trump is claiming that going to war with Iran is necessary from a national security standpoint. But MS NOW's Zeeshan Aleem, in an opinion column published on March 4, argues that Trump's Christian nationalist allies view the conflict as a holy war for evangelical fundamentalist Christianity.
"President Donald Trump can't get his story straight on why he launched a war against Iran," Aleem argues. "But some commanders in the U.S. military are apparently telling service members that they're on a mission to fulfill biblical prophecy. The independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received more than 110 complaints from service members about their commanders' religious gloss on the war on Iran."
Aleem continues, "These complaints, according to Larsen's report, came from every branch of the military, across more than 40 different units, situated in at least 30 military installations…. MRFF President Michael Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints from service members shared a common feature: Commanders are describing the war as 'biblically sanctioned' and 'clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian End Times as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation."
Weinstein told Larsen, "Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology."
When military commanders "are reportedly selling American aggression on Iran as a holy war," Aleem warns, it is "deeply alarming."
"Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints violate the Constitution's separation of church and state," Aleem explains. "But regardless of its legality, telling American troops that they're fighting for a Christian god against a Muslim country is medieval madness. It isn't the role of the U.S., per the Constitution, to promote any religion over another. Furthermore, the reported remarks from these commanders is likely to prompt U.S. service members to dehumanize Iran's population, and help set the stage for viciousness in combat and human rights violations. The military is not supposed to be a crusading political-theological movement, but a professional defense force."
//
an 3 26
People are growing increasingly uneasy as President Donald Trump's attacks on Iran are looking more and more like they could be part of a right-wing religious fanatic's fantasy for the apocalyptic.
The Cradle Media's Jonathan Larsen wrote that American soldiers were given a pep-talk about the war in Iran. A U.S. combat-unit commander told them that the attack is part of “God’s divine plan." He said that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus” for the specific purpose to ignite Armageddon.
“U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for 'Armageddon,' Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military," Larsen wrote.
The comments come as part of a lawsuit brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; however, it is only one of "110 lawsuits brought in 48 hours from over 40 units across 30 installations," the report said. The complaints came from Christians, a Muslim and a Jewish soldier.
The Christian nationalist theory that Israel has a God-given right to much of the Middle East is one espoused by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. In a speech at a Christian Zionist church in Jerusalem in December, Huckabee conveyed his " purpose is to convert Israeli Jews to belief in Jesus in order to bring about the End Times," explained Religion Dispatches.
The concept is bad for anyone seeking peace in the Middle East, one 2024 report by Forward explained.
The sect of Christianity that Huckabee believes in holds that if they are able to remove Palestinians from the Holy Land, then Jesus Christ will return. He believes in “dispensational premillennialism,” which Forward describes as a belief that “the Rapture will come,” and deliver all evangelicals to Heaven as Israel is invaded by the armies of the world. It will cause Armageddon and prompt the return of Jesus Christ.
The language is making some fearful that the war waged wasn't really about Iran never obtaining nuclear weapons, which Trump claimed he destroyed last summer. It's a holy war, desperate to force Armageddon.
"Maybe it’s a bad idea to put people in charge of government who are eager for the rapture," lawyer and self-described nerd John Collins commented.
"Love when I'm in the military and my boss is, like, 'Time for Armageddon!'" commented author and journalist Emily St. James.
Writer and former Cato Institute policy analyst Will Wilkinson wrote, "Personally, I don’t think we should bring about Armageddon."
"One thing about the U.S., we definitely do not have insane religious zealots in charge,"said Heidi N. Moore, previously of the Wall Street Journal business side.
Writer and elections lawyer at the Cato Institute, Walter Olson, quoteda line from the 1965 song "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" with lyrics by Tom Lehrer: "And this is what he said on/ His way to Armageddon.”
:{:{---}:
MMA GRAB
### Alex Jones praises Nick Fuentes: “You're the future, Nick. We're counting on you."
03/04/26 4:36 PM EST
03/04/26 4:29 PM EST
### Nick Fuentes says Trump’s “spin” on war with Iran is “childish” and "grating”
03/04/26 3:57 PM EST
### Laura Loomer lashes out at Megyn Kelly over Iran: “Shut up, you stupid bitch. ... You're not MAGA.”
03/04/26 2:28 PM EST
### Fox News hosts want to flood Iran with small arms to incite regime change
03/04/26 2:25 PM EST
03/04/26 12:25 PM EST
03/04/26 12:18 PM EST
### One Newsmax host's critical stance on the war with Iran
03/04/26 11:32 AM EST
03/04/26 11:20 AM EST
### Newsmax host says Fox News “has just been ridiculous all day cheerleading” war with Iran
03/04/26 10:40 AM EST
### CBS’ leadership in broadcast news climate coverage is chipping away under Bari Weiss
03/04/26 10:08 AM EST
03/04/26
---
RWW
03/02/2026
by
Outraged over the US/Israel attack on Iran, Nick Fuentes tells his followers, "Do not vote in the midterms, and if you do, vote for Democrats."
Joel Webbon fears that the attack on Iran will allow Israel to "gain strength and political power" and eventually "become a rival superpower to these United States."
In defending the administration's attack, David Barton says President Donald Trump has proven track record when it comes to successful military operations based on the arrest and capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro for trafficking fentanyl into the United States. Of course, the claim that Maduro and Venezuela were smuggling large amounts of fentanyl into the country was totally false.
Robert Knight warns that Christian Democratic politicians like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Texas state Rep, James Talarico are wolves in sheep's clothing.
Finally, groyper Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback did an in-person interview with two overt white nationalists, where they had a discussion about "the Jewish question."
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RWW
03/02/2026
by
Will Neal @ The Daily Beast: ‘Peace President’ Breaks Record for Attacking the Most Countries
Trump has reportedly authorized more assaults in just the first year of his second presidency than Biden did throughout four years at the White House.
Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Trump Warns “The Big One” Is Still Coming for Iran
Donald Trump is ready to make it a whole lot worse for Iran.
Mark Wingfield @ Baptist Press: The Iran bombing is a religion story for all but one person
When the United States and Israel bombed Iran Feb. 28, the motivations and repercussions were religious as well as political.
Lee Moran @ HuffPost: Lindsey Graham Names 'Next' Country On Trump's Hit List: 'Their Days Are Numbered'
First Venezuela, then Iran — and now Cuba. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy on Sunday that the U.S. under President Donald Trump will next target the communist-led Caribbean island for regime change.
Liam Adams and Karissa Waddick @ USA Today: Trump's Freedom 250 hits the road with museum focused on faith, civics
Six mobile history museums, part of President Trump's Freedom 250 program, aim to counter 'woke agenda.' Historians say it leaves out key facts.
Karin Brulliard and Brady Dennis @ The Washington Post: Confidential database reveals which items NPS thinks may ‘disparage’ America
An internal government database reviewed by The Washington Post demonstrates the vast scope of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to revise or remove information on African American history, climate change and other topics at hundreds of national park sites.
Chauncey DeVega @ Salon: Historians resist Trump’s effort to police the past
Attempts to reshape the Smithsonian reflect a broader campaign to control public memory and what Americans learn.
Alice Gibbs @ Newsweek: What New Department of Education Banner Labels Charlie Kirk Raises Eyebrows
A large banner featuring conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has been hung on the exterior of the Lyndon Baines Johnson U.S. Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., prompting debate online over who should be publicly honored on government property.
Michael Kruse @ Politico Magazine: ‘I Don’t Know That I’ll Ever Be OK With Myself’
Nancy Mace opens up about her trauma, why she does what she does and Donald Trump as a “father figure.”
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mma context?
In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/02/26
President Donald Trump, across both of his terms, has regularly shaped federal policy in response to the propaganda he hears from his sycophants at Fox News. But his decision over the weekend to launch a war of choice against Iran without a clear goal may prove to be the most consequential example of this feedback loop to date.
Trump is deeply immersed in the Fox universe. He famously consumes the network’s content; highlights particular segments that strike his fancy on social media; hires its employees to run his administration; consults its personalities for advice on domestic and foreign policy; and doles out contracts and pardons alike based on what he sees on its airwaves.
And for decades, the Fox stars Trump trusts most have consistently called for military strikes and regime change in Iran.
That campaign took on new urgency when Trump returned to the White House.
Last June, Fox personalities — particularly Trump loyalists Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade — used their programs to urge Trump to follow up on Israeli attacks on Iran by launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. They warned that Iran is, as Kilmeade put it, “our enemy,” that it posed an imminent threat to American citizens and that, in Levin’s words, “force” is the “only thing to stop” Iran.
Other MAGA media figures from non-Fox outlets opposed U.S. involvement in the conflict. But the overwhelmingly pro-war Fox coverage — and a White House meeting Levin had with the president — were apparently dispositive.
And after Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack three Iranian nuclear sites, Fox’s war hawks rewarded the president by showering him with praise for what Hannity said would “go down in history as one of the greatest military victories.”
The same pattern appears to be playing out eight months later, albeit on a much larger scale.
A Fox-fueled push for war with Iran
Over the past weeks, as U.S. military forces converged in the Middle East, the same Fox figures again urged Trump to attack. Notably, their argument was noticeably light on defining a goal for U.S. military operations after the bombs began to fall.
Instead, they argued that because Iran could, at some point in the future, pose a threat, Trump should act now while he is empowered to do so — and that the result would be an easy U.S. victory. “I cannot think of any reason not to take this regime out,” Levin argued. The U.S. would “lose credibility forever” without a strike, Kilmeade claimed. For Hannity, “The world is going to be better and safer.”
While some on the network seemed to shy away from the topic, criticism of potential strikes largely took place elsewhere in the MAGA media — outside of the Fox programming the president himself watches.
On Friday, hours before the attack began, the trio made their final pitch.
“I hope the president chooses to go at it,” Kilmeade said Friday morning. “We have been looking at these headlines for 47 years, and we have an opportunity to end it. And this president likes to make history.”
“This president knows right from wrong,” Levin told Hannity that night. “He knows good from evil. He knows that this regime is a death cult. And he knows that there's only really two countries that are prepared and willing to put an end to this.”
“We don't need to put up with their crap,” he concluded, as Hannity nodded along. “It's time to put it to an end.”
They got what they wanted: The U.S. and Israeli militaries began attacking Iranian targets that night. Since then, hundreds of Iranians have reportedly been killed, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Pentagon has reported the first U.S. casualties in the conflict. There is no end currently in sight — the Iranian government remains defiant, while the U.S. is sending more troops to the region.
The propaganda war has an aim. The real one doesn’t.
Trump, meanwhile, has had trouble articulating what he’s trying to accomplish.
He first suggested his aim was regime change when he urged the Iranian people to “take over” the government in his first public statement after the attack, but in interviews since then, he just seems to be riffing. He told The Washington Post he is seeking “freedom for the people” of Iran, but he bemoaned to ABC News that regime figures he expected to take over the country had also been killed in the initial strikes. Trump also stressed to The New York Times that his model was the U.S. attack on Venezuela, where the dictatorial regime remained in place after U.S. forces seized its leader. But he also suggested that the Iranian military could turn over its arms to its public. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he explained.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, added to the incoherence of the administration’s message when he said at a Monday morning press conference, “This is not a so-called 'regime change war,' but the regime sure did change.” But the Iranian regime currently remains in place, and according to at least some of his statements, Trump may prefer it that way.
Perhaps the reason there doesn’t seem to be a clear goal for the U.S. bombing of Iran is because the goal, as laid out by Trump’s Fox propagandists, was for the U.S. to bomb Iran. That is the aim the likes of Kilmeade, Hannity, and Levin had in mind, and now that they’ve goaded Trump into following through, they are cheering him on.
“Donald Trump did what nobody else could do for half a century,” Levin marveled on Saturday. “How do you like that? And you know why he did it? Because he loves his country.”
So what happens next in Iran? That’s beyond the remit of Trump’s Fox Cabinet. Instead, they are gearing up for a propaganda war in which they declare Trump a world-historic victor and paint his critics as terrorists and traitors. For them, the details of what happens to the Iranians is for someone else to handle.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone within the official Trump administration has answers either.
//
### Fox continues longstanding push for war against Iran
:{:{11/17/23}:
### Trump’s Fox News obsession is driving the U.S. toward war with Iran
:{:{06/18/25}:
### The final case for US strikes on Iran from Mark Levin and Sean Hannity
02/28/26
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no lnc many vids
'The Return Of Jesus Is Back On The Menu': MAGA Evangelicals Celebrate The Attack On Iran
03/02/2026
by Kyle Mantyla
When Israel launched an attack on Iran in June of 2025, religious-right activists celebrated, excited by the prospect that it could precipitate the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.
Predictably, these same religious-right activists are once again overjoyed after the United States and Israel began jointly bombing Iran over the weekend, killing the nation's supreme leader and dozens of top military commanders.
While the attack has generated retaliatory strikes and fears of a wider Middle East war, evangelical Trump supporters are gushing over President Donald Trump's action, with megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs declaring that "for such a time as this, this man is being led by God."
During a special sermon on Sunday, Hibbs absurdly declared that "this is not regime change, this is removing the obstacle so that the people [of Iran] can pick their leadership," before marveling that the attack was carried out on 9/11 of the Islamic calendar.
"Who planned this?" he asked. "I think God planned it."
On Sunday, pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, delivered a special "prophetic sermon" in response to the attacks to explain "what God's plan of fury is for Iran."
"It's refreshing to know that God is in total control and he has plans that will not be removed," Hagee said.
During a service later on Sunday, Hagee led his congregation in thanking God "for the fabulous military victory over the enemies of Israel" and "for our president, Donald Trump, whose wise courage has crushed the enemies of Zion."
Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht likewise praised the attacks, saying that God has positioned his own prayer team in Iraq in order to take advantage of "the End Time open doors of what he is going to do in Iran when this regime is prayerfully removed."
In a separate video, Feucht declared that the attacks represent "the greatest day of harvest" for Christians to spread the gospel in Iran.
"God is using this moment to open wide the doors for evangelism like we haven't seen in 50 years," he celebrated. "Let see the gospel penetrate this ancient land."
On Saturday, Trump cultist Shane Vaughn did an emergency broadcast to explain how Trump is a "prophetic instrument of God" who "has an assignment to protect Israel."
"Yahweh raised up a man to do what happened this morning," Vaughn proclaimed. "Donald Trump did not strike Iran today because of a foreign policy doctrine ... Yahweh, the God of Heaven, raised up Donald Trump for today."
The Christian nationalist program "FlashPoint" likewise did a special broadcast on Saturday, during which MAGA cultist Lance Wallnau insisted that Trump did not want to attack Iran but "God made the Iranians just recalcitrant" during negotiations, just like when "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" in Exodus, thereby forcing Trump to take action.
"They refused to budge," Wallnau said. "And when Trump saw that they were not going to move and that there was no sense in delaying, he went ahead and made the decision, as he always does."
Later in the broadcast, Wallnau noted that the attack fell just before the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the failure of Haman's plot to destroy the Jews as told in the book of Esther.
"Isn't it interesting that the ancient stronghold of the Prince of Persia that sought to exterminate all the Jews is now coming down again under the authority of another modern-day ruler who the prayers of God's people have been empowering?" Wallnau declared. "During their feast of Purim, when they had a reversal of a destructive threat, we're watching that reversal happen again in our day."
"Things are happening right in alignment with actual feasts," Wallnau added. "There's always a feast day manifestation because Israel and the return of Jesus is back on the menu."
---
RWW
---
rww
no lnc many vids
'The Return Of Jesus Is Back On The Menu': MAGA Evangelicals Celebrate The Attack On Iran
03/02/2026
by Kyle Mantyla
When Israel launched an attack on Iran in June of 2025, religious-right activists celebrated, excited by the prospect that it could precipitate the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.
Predictably, these same religious-right activists are once again overjoyed after the United States and Israel began jointly bombing Iran over the weekend, killing the nation's supreme leader and dozens of top military commanders.
While the attack has generated retaliatory strikes and fears of a wider Middle East war, evangelical Trump supporters are gushing over President Donald Trump's action, with megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs declaring that "for such a time as this, this man is being led by God."
During a special sermon on Sunday, Hibbs absurdly declared that "this is not regime change, this is removing the obstacle so that the people [of Iran] can pick their leadership," before marveling that the attack was carried out on 9/11 of the Islamic calendar.
"Who planned this?" he asked. "I think God planned it."
On Sunday, pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, delivered a special "prophetic sermon" in response to the attacks to explain "what God's plan of fury is for Iran."
"It's refreshing to know that God is in total control and he has plans that will not be removed," Hagee said.
During a service later on Sunday, Hagee led his congregation in thanking God "for the fabulous military victory over the enemies of Israel" and "for our president, Donald Trump, whose wise courage has crushed the enemies of Zion."
Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht likewise praised the attacks, saying that God has positioned his own prayer team in Iraq in order to take advantage of "the End Time open doors of what he is going to do in Iran when this regime is prayerfully removed."
In a separate video, Feucht declared that the attacks represent "the greatest day of harvest" for Christians to spread the gospel in Iran.
"God is using this moment to open wide the doors for evangelism like we haven't seen in 50 years," he celebrated. "Let see the gospel penetrate this ancient land."
On Saturday, Trump cultist Shane Vaughn did an emergency broadcast to explain how Trump is a "prophetic instrument of God" who "has an assignment to protect Israel."
"Yahweh raised up a man to do what happened this morning," Vaughn proclaimed. "Donald Trump did not strike Iran today because of a foreign policy doctrine ... Yahweh, the God of Heaven, raised up Donald Trump for today."
The Christian nationalist program "FlashPoint" likewise did a special broadcast on Saturday, during which MAGA cultist Lance Wallnau insisted that Trump did not want to attack Iran but "God made the Iranians just recalcitrant" during negotiations, just like when "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" in Exodus, thereby forcing Trump to take action.
"They refused to budge," Wallnau said. "And when Trump saw that they were not going to move and that there was no sense in delaying, he went ahead and made the decision, as he always does."
Later in the broadcast, Wallnau noted that the attack fell just before the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the failure of Haman's plot to destroy the Jews as told in the book of Esther.
"Isn't it interesting that the ancient stronghold of the Prince of Persia that sought to exterminate all the Jews is now coming down again under the authority of another modern-day ruler who the prayers of God's people have been empowering?" Wallnau declared. "During their feast of Purim, when they had a reversal of a destructive threat, we're watching that reversal happen again in our day."
"Things are happening right in alignment with actual feasts," Wallnau added. "There's always a feast day manifestation because Israel and the return of Jesus is back on the menu."
---
// BOEBERT HILLARY PIX?
MMA
Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress
Benny Johnson and Brian Kilmeade appear to have more information than just about any elected representative
Written by John Knefel
Research contributions from Sophie Lawton
Published 03/02/26
A defining feature of President Donald Trump’s second term is its symbiotic relationship with media allies, both at traditional right-wing outlets like Fox News and among the newer cohort of MAGA podcasters and online influencers — in some cases, these figures know more about Trump’s upcoming policy decisions than members of Congress. That dynamic was fully on display in the lead-up to the unprovoked bombing campaign the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February 28.
Prior to Trump’s initiation of the war, MAGA streamer Benny Johnson and Newsmax host Greg Kelly appeared to have insider information about when the first round of strikes would occur. Beyond them, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and contributor Jack Keane claimed to have been involved in high-level briefings on the campaign.
Johnson, who was fired by Buzzfeed for plagiarism in 2014 and later disciplined by the Independent Journal Review for publishing false information, appears to have had unusually close access to officials in the Trump administration responsible for the decision to go to war.
On February 21, Johnson told his audience, “We are going to war with Iran. … I've been asking — I think that the cake's been baked.” It was unclear at the time whether he had inside information or was speculating, as he later added, referring to the publicly reported military build up, “the maps don't lie, OK? It’s happening.”
Johnson returned to the subject on February 27, just hours before the U.S.-Israeli campaign began. He began his show saying he’d just been “on the phone with top-level — let’s just say very high-level administration officials — moments ago to discuss what the plan is” for attacking Iran. Later in the same episode, Johnson claimed that he’d been talking with someone who is at the “top, top level of the administration, and we were yelling at each other — not yelling, but having polite conversation — about, like, what’s about to pop off in the Mid East.”
Ultimately, Johnson told his audience, “This is not a drill. It is actually happening,” adding: “I think in the next 24 hours we are going to see the world change. It may be the next 24 minutes, we're not exactly certain."
Newsmax host Kelly was even more precise. “A very well-informed person told me” the attack on Iran will happen Friday “after Wall Street closes,” Kelly said February 26.
By contrast, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on both the Senate committees on intelligence and on foreign relations, told reporters on February 28 that he was “learning like you are as the news unfolds exactly what's happening." The Trump administration reportedly briefed some congressional staff the following day, with a full briefing to Congress scheduled for March 3.
Johnson and Kelly weren’t the only right-wing media figures enjoying extraordinary access to high-level information. Over at Fox, Kilmeade — a weekday Fox & Friends host who came in to cover a weekend shift — said on March 1 that he “was fortunate enough to be in a briefing with high-ranking Trump officials” a day earlier.
The same morning, Keane offered more granular detail, implying a high degree of insider information. “The [Persian] Gulf states are adequately defending themselves,” said Keane, a retired general and former Army vice chief of staff. “Three of them are preparing for combat, offensive operations. One has already started and two others are about to get going. I'm not going to talk about who they are, but that is being coordinated with Adm. Cooper and Central Command. These will be coordinated, selected targets, and they will contribute to the offensive nature of what’s taken place."
Keane’s comments on Fox the next day suggested he’d been provided with high-level briefings that everything is going smoothly. “The military has got a plan here that I have been privy to understand and it is very comprehensive,” Keane said. “And we're going to stick with that plan until the conditions of these military objectives are met. So far, the plan is exceeding all expectations."
The access to White House war plans that Johnson, Kelly, Kilmeade, and Keane appear to have is even more noteworthy given that the Pentagon tightly controlled its first press briefing of the war on March 2 — having already largely replaced the traditional Pentagon press corps with a series of lackeys, grifters, conspiracists, and cranks. According to CNN’s Brian Stelter, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — formerly of Fox News — “only answered questions from his chosen outlets” and had a “pre-selected list of questioners.” Those approved outlets didn’t include Hegseth’s former employer, whose correspondent was relegated to the back row and not called on for a question.
All administrations leak and try to manage public opinion through press operations. But the alignment of messaging and interests between the Trump White House and its media allies is unlike anything the United States has seen in recent memory. Sometimes that looks like providing right-wing influencers with embeds alongside Trump’s deportation agents; other times it looks like inviting MAGA media trolls to the White House to discuss antifa. Now, it looks like some of the most slavish voices in right-wing media are getting better information more quickly than members of Congress as the United States and Israel unleash yet more destruction in the Middle East.
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MMA
03/03/26 12:12 PM EST
03/03/26 11:55 AM EST
### You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump
03/03/26 11:48 AM EST
### Tucker Carlson on “neocons” who agitated for war with Iran: “This is demonic influence, clearly”
03/03/26 11:25 AM EST
03/02/26 8:21 PM EST
### Sean Hannity says “I already know” that arming Iranians is “part of the plan”
03/02/26 6:25 PM EST
03/02/26 5:01 PM EST
03/02/26 4:47 PM EST
### Alex Jones on the war against Iran: “On its face, this is unconstitutional”
03/02/26 4:22 PM EST
03/02/26 4:06 PM EST
03/02/26 3:59 PM EST
### Daily Wire host: “Was Iran really on the brink of a nuclear weapon? No.”
03/02/26
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