FOX 12 1126
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MMA CHYRON SLAMS AS POL SPECTACLE
November 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Neither Hegseth nor the Fox & Friends crowd gave any indication of where they were getting their claim that the drug boat strikes have saved the lives of thousands of Americans. Fact-checkers have debunked similar claims from Trump, reporting that experts say the evidence for such assertions “is similar to that of the moon being made of blue cheese,” that the alleged number of American lives saved from overdose would account for more than typically die of drug overdose each year, and that in reality, the strikes “have little or no impact on overdose deaths in the United States.”
The Washington Post further reported in July that the DEA and Pentagon concluded that the strikes had not curbed cocaine trafficking into the United States. According to the DEA analysis the Post cited, they “had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire.”
What did the U.S. give up for a policy that accomplished little? According to Massie’s article of impeachment:
[Hegseth] chilled independent legal review within the Department of Defense, constructed a purported legal basis for the use of military force without constitutional or statutory authorization, and displaced longstanding precedent and codified maritime law-enforcement practices that are jurisdictionally assigned to Coast Guard and law enforcement agencies, by substituting in such place the use of summary lethal force by Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps elements. While doing so, Secretary Hegseth also oversaw orders denying quarter and failing to provide rescue, including secondary strikes against shipwrecked survivors, who were hors de combat, and the abandonment of shipwrecked survivors at sea, thereby endangering members of ... our Armed Forces in future military engagements by encouraging adversaries to subject American service members to the same treatment.
By subjecting persons merely suspected of criminal conduct to lethal military force without judicial process, without Congressional authorization, and without establishing a lawful basis for treating such persons or vessels as military targets, Secretary Hegseth arrogated to himself and the Executive Branch the roles of judge, jury, and executioner and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die. Such a power is foreign to the rule of law, repugnant to the legal traditions and fundamental values of the United States and the Western world, and contrary to United States law and customary international law. This conduct undermined the integrity and credibility of the United States and its Armed Forces, damaged the diplomatic standing of the United States, and injured the interests of the Nation.
Hegseth, as a Fox host, endorsed the extrajudicial killing of helpless, captured enemy combatants. “If he committed premeditated murder,” Hegseth said of an American service member who admitted to executing an alleged Taliban bombmaker, “then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?”
While Fox appeared to sour on Hegseth after he implemented stringent restrictions on the Pentagon press corps, the network appears to be going all-in to defend him from impeachment.
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Another key pillar of the MAGA defense for Signalgate is crumbling
04/08/25 12:21 PM EDT
Fox praised and validated Trump's legally questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean
10/29/25 3:31 PM EDT
09/05/2
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AN 11 26
On Tuesday, a host at Fox News asserted that the latest move by Republican lawmakers in the House makes it clear that they’re “not interested” in moving on from the MAGA agenda that proved to be historically unpopular in the midterms. According to Fox anchor Gillian Turner, the breaking news that House Republicans had just elected MAGA-oriented Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) minority leader for the upcoming term suggests that President Donald Trump and his allies are preparing to aggressively double down on the policies that dealt the party a historic electoral disaster — an assessment co-host Tomi Lahren enthusiastically seconded.
“He's a great messenger,” asserted Lahren, who herself is a longtime defender of MAGA policies. “And if the GOP, Republicans, MAGA, whatever you want to call them, learned anything from last Tuesday, it should be that they need great messengers out there that are able to articulate a viewpoint, a direction, an agenda.” Lahren’s claim comes despite the fact that voters just overwhelmingly rejected MAGA governance, with Trump-endorsed candidates frequently defeated by wide margins as polls show Americans are sick of his administration’s tariffs, deportation campaign, attacks on democracy, and corruption. Jordan — an avid Trump ally — defeated current House Speaker Steve Scalise (R-LA) by a vote of 106 to 73.
“He is certainly a fighter,” noted Turner, saying Jordan was the “more pugilistic choice” compared to Scalise, who himself is pro-MAGA, but prone to less antagonistic methods of pushing its policies. According to Turner, “This certainly signals, at least on the part of the Republicans who voted for him, that they are not interested in modifying their platform in response to the midterms.” While Turner had a note of skepticism in her voice, Lahren was more eager with her assertion that Republicans should “stick to their guns.”
As many commentators have noted, House Republicans’ decision to go with Jordan won’t likely thrill anyone outside Trump’s more fundamentalist supporters. “This will excite the (quickly dwindling) MAGA base,” noted Zeteo political columnist Justin Baragona. “But it is unclear how this helps the GOP House minority over the next two years.” As Democratic strategist Matt McDermott pointed out, this follows a questionable trend in post-midterm GOP appointments: “Seriously not sure Democrats could have scripted a better Republican response to last week’s historic midterm defeat than Stephen Miller becoming White House chief of staff and Jim Jordan taking over House Republican leadership.” According to National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin, “Electing Jim Jordan as caucus leader is a pretty clear sign that House Republicans intend to do nothing the next two years but fight investigations of the executive branch.” And in the estimation of former presidential appointee Andrew Weinstein, “Electing Jim Jordan as minority leader suggests the House GOP has learned exactly the wrong lesson from its defeats.”
Regardless, predicted Lahren, over the next two years, Republicans will be “drilling down on their America First agenda.” It was that agenda, she claimed, that won Trump the presidency in 2024 and created the “new” Republican Party, which she refers to as the “America First” Republican Party. “Even though President Trump will not be in office at the end of this term,” concluded Lahren, “I think that the MAGA agenda will move forward.”
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AN 11 26
Fox News airs scathing Shakespearean Trump takedown
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MMA
Fox is deeply enmeshed in potential corruption investigations surrounding the Trump family and Pentagon contracts
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 11/06/26
Fox News has spent the last two years concealing from their viewers the miasma of corruption surrounding President Donald Trump. Now that Democrats have taken control of the House and Senate and are pledging investigations, some at the network are speaking out in defense of the Trump family’s self-dealing business interests — and in so doing, exposing Fox’s own role in the scheme.
Co-host Brian Brenberg suggested on Thursday’s edition of Fox Business’ Money in the Morning that Democrats probing Pentagon contracts with drone makers would “jeopardize national defense” in order to “go after Trump family.” He added, “If you're trying to score political points with the secretary of war, you are not thinking about military readiness, if you’re Democrats, and that is their big flaw in my view.”
Likewise, after co-host Dana Perino suggested on Thursday’s edition of The Five that Democratic investigations would “burn up a lot of time” that could be spent “moving legislation,” her colleague Jesse Watters responded by contrasting Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump favorably with former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. “I mean at least the Trump boys are doing things with minerals and drones and real estate,” Watters claimed. “I mean, they actually create value.”
The potential probes Brenberg and Watters criticized would inevitably hang a lantern on Fox’s incestuous relationship with the Trumps and the Trump administration. One of Fox's own contributors — Powerus founder Brett Velicovich — is president of a drone company Trump’s eldest sons are invested in that received Pentagon contracts, and the defense secretary that oversees the Pentagon is former Fox host Pete Hegseth.
Powerus is “a new drone company backed financially, in part, by Trump’s eldest sons” that “emerged from a crowded field to snap up multimillion-dollar contracts in the U.S. and overseas” including “a $90 million Air Force contract,” as Fox’s corporate cousins at The Wall Street Journal detailed in a profile of the firm published last week.
The Journal detailed that a defense firm backed by a president’s family members receiving government contracts is unprecedented:
A fund backed by the Trump sons, American Ventures, has cashed out at least $6 million from its investment to date. The fund owns about 3.4% of Powerus, according to a securities filing, and holds warrants that can convert to tens of millions of additional shares in the future.
Dominari Holdings, the financial firm behind American Ventures, helped take Powerus public. The Trump sons each own around 6% of the investment bank, which often merges underperforming publicly traded companies with businesses in buzzy industries.
To ethics experts, Powerus is an example of the blurred lines of government and private business in the second Trump administration that are without modern comparison. “Never have we seen a president’s family benefiting from military contracts,” said Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.
The Journal further reported that Trump had posted praise of Velicovich on social media shortly after one of the Fox contributor’s appearances on the network last summer, an example of what I’ve termed the Fox-Trump feedback loop.
Powerus is part of a “a portfolio of defense technology start-ups” Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have invested in “that are benefiting from new Pentagon priorities and spending, further entangling the United States’ interests and the Trump family’s financial fortunes in an area with immense stakes for national security,” The Washington Post reported in July. Earlier this year, then-Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo congratulated Eric on air after one of those companies landed a robotics contract from the Pentagon.
Donald Trump Jr. helped secure the Pentagon leadership that is now rewarding the companies in which he and his brother have invested. He reportedly played a key role in ensuring Hegseth’s confirmation as defense secretary, helping to orchestrate a right-wing campaign to cement the necessary Republican Senate votes following weeks of disturbing reports about the wildly unqualified Fox host’s competence and character. The president’s son subsequently claimed on his podcast that he had been “assisting” Hegseth “with personnel decisions” and prioritizing “candidates who wanted to spend more money on drones,” the Post reported.
The drone deals are just one of a vast array of shady business deals involving the president and his family which could come under scrutiny in the months ahead.
Fox hosts spent years trumpeting House Republican probes of Hunter Biden’s business interests that dealt with a tiny fraction of the money implicated in the Trump family scandals and which were never successfully linked to any decision Joe Biden made in government.
But once Trump returned to the White House and his sons began using the network’s “Biden Crime Family” conspiracy theory as a business plan, Fox’s reporters and pundits either turned their backs on the subject— or openly moved to cash in.
And now that Democrats are promising to investigate the corruption these pundits ignored, Fox personalities are denouncing the probes as a “witch hunt” (Greg Gutfeld), “ruthless upcoming lawfare campaign” (Sean Hannity), a “weaponization routine” (Dan Bongino), and a “revenge agenda” (Donald Trump Jr.’s business partner Laura Ingraham).
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06/04/26
02/11/26
The Trumps turned Fox’s “Biden Crime Family” conspiracy theory into a business plan
04/13/26
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