HANNITY 4
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ESTB 1 25? PROLLY NEGLECT
SEE BAD TRINITY EG RENEE GOOD
HYPE 4 THREAT ANT-COMMIE MIDTERMS // BAD TRINITY
big lie alt fact
SEE ~ DEI BS
chickenhaWK? BOMB IRAN 4 25 ALSO 2 26 3 26 // KILMEADE
~ NATO
BOOSTED TODD BLANCHE
FASCIST ON LA ICE MARTIAL LAW? PORTLAND BAD TRINITY 10 25
see govt shutdown
biggest liar on b3 medicare cuts
SEE ANTI-COMMIE DENIAL GND
vxr 5 25 ivermectin = rfk gubmint?
note he is more wacko on radio than fox
good coverage of russia collusion?
see FOX FEEDBACK LOOP EG IRAN WAR 5 26
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oddly absent on ice chic violence praise?
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KATIE ZACH HIT?
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OMG BAD TRINITY FEAR HYPE
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Fox News is peddling election “fear porn” about Democrats to rescue Republicans
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/16/26
Fox News host Jesse Watters effectively summed up his network’s recent election coverage on Thursday when he said that Republicans need to churn out “fear porn” that paints Democrats as “scary and dangerous” in order to avoid calamity in the midterms.
Watters told his fellow panelists on The Five that “polling” shows “MAGA is engaged, it’s the non-MAGA faction and independents that the Republicans are worried about” in the midterms. He then pointed to an interview he conducted with Caroline Sunshine, a former Disney star turned MAGA political operative, saying, “She said you can't just go out and sell all the great stuff Trump did. It's been great, but it doesn't motivate."
“You got to go out and have fear porn,” Watters continued. “You have to say, these people are going to take your healthcare, they're going to let in the Third World, they’re going to jack up your taxes, and that’s what’s going to get people to come out to vote. You have to say, these people are scary and dangerous, you know what we're all about. And that’s really a choice."
Greg Gutfeld praised Watters’ analysis, saying, “Good for you, fear porn."
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From the October 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
“Fear porn” is an apt characterization of the tenor of Fox demagoguery as the midterms approach and polls show Democrats poised for a wave of victories even in deep red states.
The network’s stars — apparently finding that their hagiographic coverage of the Trump administration isn’t doing enough to help the president’s party — are trying to inculcate a sense of panic in their viewers. They are warning in the strongest possible terms that if Democrats take control of Congress, their prosperity, freedom, and very lives are at risk.
Watters himself, for example, warned last month that “the Democrat party and its communist base are running against America” and “want to shatter the pillars of Western civilization.”
“They want to abolish the Senate, police, ICE, and of course the border,” he explained on the September 9 broadcast of his show. “Some of them are even calling for reparations and rent control. Others have a little bit of a problem with whites, and a majority of Democrats don't prefer capitalism. It's like we're fighting the Cold War here in our own country.”
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From the September 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
For Watters’ colleague Sean Hannity, the Trump political operative with a Fox primetime show, this is “the single most important, consequential midterm election in our lifetime” and “the stakes, they couldn’t be any higher, nor could the choice be any more clear.”
“We can vote to build on the successes of President Trump, his first two years in office, or you can shred your Constitution, allow our country to be taken hostage by this new radicalized leftist democratic socialist communist movement and their far-left extremist candidates,” Hannity claimed on his September 28 show.
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From the September 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
According to Hannity, Republicans may be “imperfect” and even “pathetically weak,” but “Democrats are completely insane.”
“They want to abolish, now, the family,” he told his Fox audience on September 17. “They want to seize your assets, they want to control the means of production, they want to control your healthcare, your food” as well as “your decisions, your children.” He went on to invoke “the 574 ‘mostly peaceful’ riots in the summer of 2020” before warning viewers not to “let perfect be the enemy of good, especially when the alternative is socialism, communism, statism, shredding our Constitution, and outright insanity.”
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From the September 17, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Fox’s Laura Ingraham warned on Wednesday that Democrats are demanding the public “submit or be crushed.” She told her viewers that voting for them due to concerns about affordability “will only make things worse” because Democrats will “keep prices high permanently,” “want a war with Russia,” and have “horrid tax-and-spend policies.”
“While voting Democrat or not at all may punish Trump politically, the people you'll really be punishing are yourselves,” she added. “Oh, yes, the punishment is coming. They can't eliminate conservatives altogether, but they can and they will make your life as miserable as possible by taxing you, canceling you, and restricting you.”
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From the October 14, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Ingraham alleged last month that “Democrats are rethinking democracy.” According to Ingraham, “If the Democrats win the House, take the Senate, they intend to shred the Constitution and punish the country.”
She later added that the party’s leaders are “acting as mini-tyrants,” claiming: “If they had their druthers and they were in office, there would be no Fox News. They would regulate that out of existence. There would be no talk radio. There would be no alternative media.”
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Fiery guest blasts Sean Hannity to his face about GOP corruption
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John Knefel is a senior writer at Media Matters for America, a progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media.
Right-wing media’s coverage of this June’s Los Angeles mayoral primary election unsurprisingly went heavy on voter fraud conspiracy theories and presented essentially zero real evidence. Their reactions offer a warning of how MAGA is likely to respond if Republicans suffer significant losses in November’s midterms, considering that the Trump administration and its outside allies spent the summer laying groundwork to undermine voting rights using flimsy claims of foreign election interference.
After lining up behind Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor, conservative pundits began crying foul in June as the votes were still being counted. Challenger and L.A. councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Pratt after an early “red mirage,” triggering outbursts from the right.
On his radio show, Fox’s Sean Hannity said: “President Trump rightly is calling out Democrats, saying they’re probably cheating, trying to steal” the race. MAGA media influencer Benny Johnson said, “You can already see that they’re stealing and they’re cheating.” YouTube streamer Tim Pool alleged that “it appears, with new information coming in, we can now say the Democrats are cheating in the California race.”
As is so often the case, these figures were operating symbiotically with President Donald Trump, who wrote that it was “not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” decrying “Rigged Elections!”
There was no evidence of voter fraud in the L.A. mayoral primary, and it isn’t surprising in the least that Pratt would lose in a city where former Vice President Kamala Harris won 70% of the vote in 2024. But it is now a matter of faith on the right that, in the words of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, “if Democrats can’t steal elections, they can’t win.”
My Media Matters colleague Matt Gertz has characterized MAGA’s reaction as a signal that right-wing media are entering a period of “post-proof election denial.” Whereas in the aftermath of 2020, an entire cottage industry arose on the right to produce a simulacra of evidence to allege that allies of former President Joe Biden had rigged the outcome, no similar effort emerged on Pratt’s behalf.
Instead, these figures relied on nothing but vibes, especially olfactory metaphors. “It smells to high heaven,” said radio show host Megyn Kelly. “I don’t like the way any of this smells,” said Fox News co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery. “I can tell you it stinks to high heaven when you have a drop of 24,000 votes and Spencer Pratt gets zero,” said Hannity.
These pundits opened up a permission structure for others to make similarly outlandish accusations. Case in point: Two recent guests on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast claimed that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory last November was rife with fraud. (It was not.)
A segment of Real America’s Voice’s War Room on Aug. 6, 2026. Screenshot via MediaMatters for America
Ubiquitous, reflexive election denial in conservative media presages the MAGA strategy for 2026 and beyond. In early July, I laid out the broad strokes of an emerging plot to subvert the midterms that was hidden in plain view if you knew where to look.
The basics: First, a White House task force that included right-wing media figure John Solomon — who spread misinformation related to Trump’s first impeachment — would declassify documents that purportedly showed China interfered in the 2020 election. Trump undertook this step in a primetime address on July 16, although the released files provided more evidence that Russia — not China — attempted to influence the election to weaken Biden’s campaign, not Trump’s.
The second step would be for the Trump administration to issue a “national emergency” declaration based on the supposed threat posed by China, thereby unlocking “king-like powers” over election systems.
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Right-wing media downplay AI safety concerns as a hoax by comparing them to climate change and “COVID hysteria”
Written by Helena Hind, Jane Lee & Evlondo Cooper
Published 09/15/26
Right-wing media are following President Donald Trump in dismissing calls to slow down AI development in the wake of multiple hacking incidents as a “hoax,” comparing concerns over AI to “climate change apocalyptic talk” and “COVID hysteria” including support for vaccines.
Reports have surfaced in recent months that rogue AI agents from OpenAI anonymously hacked into AI startup Hugging Face servers and into software service RubyGems. As Reuters explained: “Many incidents where AI agents from developers such as OpenAI and rival Anthropic have hacked or attempted to access external systems have heightened concerns over the increasing capacity of AI models and developers' ability to contain them.” On September 12, both Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly called for a slowdown in AI development, with Altman announcing that his company would be delaying its initial public offering until 2027.
Trump vehemently rejected the idea of an AI slowdown in a series of Truth Social posts on September 14, calling the push for caution a “hoax,” “scam,” and a “SICK conspiracy.” Trump wrote: “The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change.’”
The claim that climate scientists’ predictions have failed is not borne out by the evidence — warnings about greenhouse gases causing more warming have now come to pass, with over a decade of record-breaking heat and thousands of excess deaths across Europe in climate-driven heat waves this year alone.
Nonetheless right-wing media followed Trump’s lead, comparing concerns about unregulated AI development with supposedly fabricated climate change warnings and COVID-19 pandemic safety measures like vaccines. (In reality, researchers have repeatedly proven that vaccines limited the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic, reduced the rate of severe complications and death, and continue to be a safe, effective treatment.)
On his September 14 radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity accused former President Barack Obama of “urging Democrats to fearmonger AI just like Democrats fearmongered and flat-out lied about global warming,” claiming those concerns “turned out to be bunk.” Hannity then reassured his listeners that Trump said that “the U.S. has already put guardrails in place to regulate and prosecute AI companies.”
Dismissing AI warnings on his Daily Wire podcast, Ben Shapiro stated, “This is pretty redolent of the climate change apocalyptic talk. Like all the ice caps were going to be gone, the polar bears were all going to drown, all the rest of it.”
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From the September 14, 2026, edition of the Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show.
Fox host Will Cain referenced climate change while discussing AI warnings: “Vested interests did stop nuclear [power] and set it back half a century. And that same playbook of fears played out with climate change and COVID. So now, what is so scary about AI?”
Downplaying the “AI apocalypse alarm” during Fox’s The Five, co-host Jesse Watters referenced both climate change and the COVID vaccine, asking, “If I told you the world was going to end if you didn't take this vax, what would you do? Or if the world was going to end because of global warming, what would you do? Same thing's happening here — some people get rich and we all still survive.” B/C OF LIE/HYPE?
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From the September 14, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
Fox’s Laura Ingraham echoed Watters’ comments later that evening, saying AI concerns reminded her of “the first several months of COVID hysteria.” She later evoked “fearmongering about climate change, same thing. Al Gore's film, Inconvenient Truth, oh my God. That still echoes in politics today.”
Hannity rounded out Fox's evening coverage with yet another comparison of AI fears to climate change and the pandemic.
Decrying “the climate alarmist cult religion,” Hannity said, “Al Gore was preaching from the pulpit of climate alarmism. … All these predictions have come and gone and the time frame he said it would happen, none of it came true.”
“We were lied to about COVID at a high level,” he added. “I just don't trust the government at all in that sense. But I trust America enough that we would use this for good.”
However, the over-the-top comparisons are not limited to Trump and right-wing media dismissing AI concerns. Joe Allen, previously the “transhumanism editor” on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, opposed AI at a debate held in Dallas during last week's GOP midterm convention by bizarrely referencing “algorithmic immigrants.” Semafor reported:
“You look at the data center, this incubator for algorithmic immigrants,” he said. “They’ve already broken out and invaded other companies. These immigrants are out of control.”
Allen was speaking at Forum, a policy discussion staged at a stylish venue fifteen minutes from the convention center to give the new American right an opportunity to debate some of the policy issues currently dividing it— in particular, the tension between populism’s activist promises and traditional small government, and the rise of artificial intelligence.
(Allen’s opponent at the debate, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, reportedly “compared complaints about AI to the ‘Black Lives Matter hysteria,’ and suggested they were driven by ‘psyops from China.’”)
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Fox News is treating the GOP's midterm convention as a very special episode of Hannity
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 09/09/26
“‘The vibes are very bad’ in Texas” is the headline of Politico Playbook’s dispatch from Dallas, where the GOP’s “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention has Republican attendees fearing “what could transpire on the stage — and what it might mean for lawmakers back home.”
But let not your heart be troubled, Fox News has the solution on hand — more Sean Hannity.
The Fox brass has decided to give its 10 p.m. timeslot during the convention to the network figure closest to President Donald Trump, “to make sure all the key speeches and anti-Dem video montages are seen,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Wednesday. That’s a shift from its coverage of the 2024 Republican National Convention, when Fox assigned chief political anchor Bret Baier and The Story’s Martha MacCallum to host a nightly special featuring a panel of the network’s political contributors
Hannity’s selection is a clear signal that Fox plans to produce a GOP infomercial, and it is functionally equivalent to simply letting the Republican National Committee program the coverage. Hannity is a confidant and adviser to Trump who uses his show to propagandize on the president’s behalf. Over the years, the host has appeared in a Trump campaign video; spoken at a Trump rally; scripted a Trump campaign ad; served as a White House back channel; sought, received, and carried out marching orders from the Trump White House about what to say on Election Day 2020; and strategized with Trump family members and White House aides.
The decision also raises questions about how Hannity will treat election denial when it emanates from the convention speakers. The host carried Trump’s speech from the White House on the subject in July, then offered a brief discussion of his claims. But despite promising “a deep dive into all this documentation in the days ahead for sure,” Hannity did not subsequently return to it — possibly adhering to the reported Fox ban on such discussions that reportedly played a role in longtime host and conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo’s departure from the network last week.
Hannity and colleagues try to manifest a GOP vibe shift
On the eve of the midterm convention start, Hannity and his colleagues are trying to raise Republican spirits by sheer force of will, highlighting Trump’s purported successes and warning of dire consequences if Democrats muster election victories.
Hannity opened his Fox primetime show on Tuesday with a segment on the convention, promising viewers that “we will be there” and urging them not to read anything into the numerous Republican candidates in tough races who aren’t appearing at the event. He assured the audience that he “was able to get confirmation” that the candidates attending “were invited and they're the most competitive races in the country. … Not every Republican that's running for office was invited.”
He went on to give viewers a pep talk, urging them to “take nothing for granted” because “the stakes have never been higher during a midterm election” and instructing Republican candidates to “treat every single day with the proper amount of urgency.”
Hannity reeled off a list of “promises made, promises kept by President Trump and his Republican allies,” which he contrasted to “what the radical socialist Democratic Party is now offering the country. They want to completely upend our way of life. They want to strip you of your very humanity. If they get their way, you — you will have domain over nothing. Not even your own family.”
“In 56 days, this November, the choice will be very simple,” he concluded. “You can vote for Democrats who believe America is fundamentally evil and want to humble and humiliate the American people, or you can vote for liberty, freedom Republicans, albeit many Republicans, far from perfect, but they're not DSA members. And by the way, they believe in lifting everybody up through the concepts of liberty and freedom and safety and security and opportunity.”
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From the September 8, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters similarly touted Trump’s leadership and emphasized that the midterm elections will be a referendum on his performance on their Tuesday broadcasts.
“Tomorrow in Dallas, Republicans kick off that first-ever midterm convention, and gavel to gavel, the Angle will be there,” Ingraham said. “We'll broadcast live from the American Airlines Center. Cannot wait. President Trump will headline both nights. Now, what's the goal? To fire up the base with his vision, the Republican vision for continued economic growth and rigorous border enforcement.”
While she spoke, on-screen text read, “History in the making in Dallas.”
Ingraham later claimed that “we always take these polls with a grain of salt … I mean, at this point, you don't even know what's what with the polls, but there does seem to be some pro-GOP movement in some of these polls, especially the ones that came out today.”
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From the September 8, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Watters launched his own broadcast with fulsome praise for the convention and the president at the top of his show the following hour.
“We're less than 24 hours from Trump-a-palooza where the Republicans are going to hold their first ever midterm convention right in the heart of Texas,” he said. “President Trump will be there, so will JD Vance, Bobby Kennedy, and a long list of big-name Republicans. The goal of the convention: You make this election between communism and common sense, and the commies are making it too easy.”
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From the September 8, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
Watters then offered a paean to what he portrayed as a laundry list of Trump accomplishments — over a chyron that read, “Republicans have a record to show off.” The host’s litany included that “jobs market has never been hotter for people with just a high school diploma”; “people took home big refund checks and realized if you start a family and open Trump accounts, your children will retire as millionaires”; “we just captured the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela”; “the border sealed, crime all-time low, and doctors aren't giving sex change surgeries to kids anymore”; and “MAHA is cleansing what we eat.”
He went on to praise the Iran war, saying, “Republicans will have to tackle high gas prices but they'll argue that President Trump stopped Iran from nuking up, killed the ayatollah, took out the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror, and our Navy in the strait [is] bringing prices down.”
“So the election is going to come down to Republican results and whether voters are going to buy what Democrats are selling,” Watters concluded. “They have no record to run on, no new ideas, just a mix of TDS with a whiff of communism. Republicans have to lock in these gains because there's a lot at stake.”
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Watters and his Fox colleagues will be doing everything they can over the next few days — and weeks, and months — to ensure that happens.
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A guide to Sean Hannity’s role as Trump’s chief White House propagandist
- 01/22/25 12:56 PM EST
Fox hosts say Iran victory is imminent — or already happened. Trump has reportedly been told it could last into 2029.
- 09/10/26 10:54 AM EDT
Peter Navarro claims that Sean Hannity “fought hard” to get Fox News to air Trump's address on election security
- 09/09/26 3:36 PM EDT
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The delusional right-wing media figures declaring victory in Iran
The Trump administration’s war of aggression against Iran has failed to achieve its stated objectives. Just don’t tell that to its most die-hard sycophants.
Written by John Knefel
Published 08/28/26
By any objective metric, the Trump administration has failed in its war of aggression against Iran. Once maximalist goals of destroying Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program have been tabled. In the United States, energy costs — especially diesel fuel — are skyrocketing, while missile stockpiles are dwindling. Iran has exerted control over the Strait of Hormuz, an outcome U.S. war planners had long predicted in the event of an extended conflict. Reports that the U.S. military has wrested control of the waterway should be taken with a shipping-freighter-sized grain of salt, as recent data shows that traffic through the strait dwindled on Thursday, and even days with the most activity only reached to about half of pre-war levels.
But what if all of that wasn’t the case? What if President Donald Trump had already won the war, and the only thing that was missing, geopolitically speaking, was the recognition of that fact? That would really be something. And, thanks to a set of especially sycophantic pundits aligned with the White House, that alternate reality is just one livestream or TV show away.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity, as reliable a hack for the Trump administration as you can find on cable news, argued on August 19 that the president hadn’t gotten enough “credit” for stopping Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb. (Of course, an obvious consequence of bombing a country, assassinating its leadership, and threatening to destroy its entire civilization is that the new government, entirely rationally, is more interested than ever in developing a nuclear deterrent to avoid such attacks being repeated.)
Hannity also claimed that Iran was “breaking financially,” though close observers believe it is well-positioned to withstand even escalated U.S. sanctions.
The next day, CNN contributor Scott Jennings — currently auditioning for the role of White House press secretary — was even more obsequious.
“It may be time for the president to declare victory in this war because it's obvious that we've won,” Jennings said on his YouTube show.
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From the August 19, 2026, edition of The Scott Jennings Show, streamed on YouTube
MAGA media influencer Benny Johnson was similarly shameless, titling an August 21 segment: “Iran's President SURRENDERS | Calls To 'End The War' With America Immediately As US CONQUERS Hormuz.” Then, on August 22: “Iran Thought They Won…Now It’s All OVER | How Trump Secretly DESTROYED Them Without a Single Bomb.”
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From BennyJohnson.com, posted on August 21, 2026.
On August 24, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a series of punishing sanctions on Iran — a so-called “economic D-Day” — and much of the right-wing media coverage framed it as the latest sign of victory.
That morning, Fox News’ Lawrence Jones, echoing a recurring theme in right-wing media, argued, “You know what’s worse that no new wars — and this is not a new war, this has been going on 47-plus years — is losing. And we're winning right now."
The chyron referenced a New York Post editorial headlined: “Trump is winning the Iran war— stay the course.”
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From the official website of the New York Post, published August 23, 2026.
Citing Bessent’s comments, Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty claimed, “Despite what they’re saying about this war on CNN or MS NOW or in The New York Times, this war's about to end and America is about to win.”
Back on his YouTube show, Jennings offered a list of accomplishments the United States had not in fact accomplished.
“The United States has won the war against Iran,” Jennings said, arguing that “many in our political class refuse to acknowledge” this fact.
“Iran entered this war with four great pillars of strength: its nuclear program, its missiles and drones, its regional terror network, and its ability to hold the world economy hostage through the Strait of Hormuz,” Jennings said. “Every one of those pillars has been severely damaged or outright destroyed.”
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From the August 24, 2026, edition of The Scott Jennings Show, streamed on YouTube
On August 26, Trump posted an image on Truth Social reading, in part, “Mission Accomplished 2026.”
Like with Bessent’s announcement, the administration’s media allies ran with it.
Johnson once again painted a rosy picture of the conflict. “Iran is effectively admitting defeat,” he said. “The Iranian leadership is saying what we all know to be true, which is that you cannot fight a war if you cannot feed your army.”
Hannity boasted that “we have a nuclear-free Iran” among a list of Trump’s supposed successes — a thin accomplishment given that Iran has never had a nuclear weapon and U.S. intelligence agencies determined as recently as last summer it was not pursuing one.
Within the first few days after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, right-wing media figures were eager to declare victory. Half a year later, that outcome remains easier said than done.
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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.
Methodology...
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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
Sean Hannity covers Iran war for the first time in weeks, complains Trump isn’t getting “credit” for it
- 08/20/26
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mma
Has Sean Hannity given up on the Iran war?
8 26
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Tudor Dixon tells Sean Hannity that Hasan Piker is “a birthright citizenship baby”: “People mistakenly believe that he is also an American”
- 08/07/26
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MMA
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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With Todd Blanche, MAGA media is finally getting its dream AG
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 07/14/26
President Donald Trump’s goal for the Department of Justice is to eliminate its traditional independence in favor of a gangster government in which he and his allies can do what they wish without fear of legal consequences while his enemies face zealous pretextual prosecution. He has been aided every step of the way by MAGA media that demand his federal law enforcement officials privilege personal loyalty to the president over any other ethical or moral standard, and seek their removal when they fail to live up to it.
Trump and his propagandists seem to have finally gotten their man in Todd Blanche, whose attorney general confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee begin Wednesday.
Blanche’s view is that the president — not the United States — should be seen as the Justice Department’s client. In a June interview on Trump shill Sean Hannity’s podcast, he criticized DOJ officials during Trump’s first term for “actively working against” the president by investigating him, saying, “They work for him, and make no mistake, everybody in the executive works for the president of the United States.” And his own record bears that out.
A MAGA made man who established his bona fides representing cronies like Paul Manafort and Boris Epshteyn, Blanche became principal lawyer for Trump himself between his presidential terms. As other Trump attorneys quit in the face of the then-former president’s numerous federal and state prosecutions, Blanche stayed loyal, took on more responsibility, and ultimately helped Trump avoid accountability. Trump, upon his return to the White House, rewarded his personal lawyer by appointing him deputy attorney general and, in April, acting attorney general.
At the DOJ, Blanche oversaw some of the most notoriously political prosecutions of the era. His installment as acting attorney general was followed by the spurious indictments of longtime MAGA targets, including James Comey and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the appointment of MAGA media fixture Joe diGenova at the helm of a sprawling “Grand Conspiracy” inquiry into Trump’s political enemies.
He’s also served as Trump’s all-purpose fixer. It was Blanche who got the call to interview Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in prison; after Maxwell asserted that she never saw Trump “in any inappropriate setting,” she was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp where she reportedly receives special privileges (former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who drew condemnations from MAGA media figures over the Justice Department's Epstein disclosures, later testified that Blanche had overseen their release). And it was Blanche who became the point man for Trump’s scheme to have the DOJ establish a $1.8 billion slush fund that could be used to pay off January 6 insurrectionists.
Blanche and Hannity use the same playbook to target Trump's perceived enemies
As he ascended within the Trump orbit, Blanche became a Fox News regular — with 23 appearances on its weekday programs since the start of the second Trump presidency — and a favorite of MAGA media stars like Hannity, who is now on the cusp of getting the attorney general of his dreams.
The Fox star has spent the last decade leading furious dual efforts by MAGA media to A) defend Trump from federal probes related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, and his retention of government documents at Mar-a-Lago, and B) seek retaliatory criminal probes of prominent Democrats and law enforcement officials tied in some way to those investigations.
Hannity’s buddy-buddy podcast interview with Blanche featured him asking about the “grand conspiracy, which goes back 11 years of whether or not you had powerful, high-ranking government officials conspiring to take down Donald Trump,” and the would-be attorney general agreeing that such a conspiracy existed and the question is simply whether it was “just a deep state actor who is working within the system that we've created for destruction, or is there a crime that's being committed.”
“We're investigating,” he assured Hannity. “We have a bunch of guys investigating. Anybody, honestly, any prosecutor in this government that raises their hand and says, I want to find out what happened. I want to investigate. We have the tools in place to get them where they need to be to do it.”
The “grand conspiracy” probe is rooted in right-wing media fantasies and will likely fizzle — even Blanche stressed to Hannity that “we know everything you're talking about is true” but “we have to have prosecutors” prove a crime was committed with evidence and “it’s not easy to do that.” But it won’t be for lack of effort from Blanche or his team.
The episode concluded with this disclaimer, presumably written by Fox lawyers nervous about the vast array of figures discussed during the podcast as potential criminal targets:\
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Fox blames climate policy for Europe’s climate-exacerbated heat deaths
Fox News and Fox Business figures applied that same framing to U.S. heat coverage to make fossil fuels look like the answer to deadly heat
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Evlondo Cooper
Published 07/09/26
As Europe reeled from a deadly heat wave, coverage on Fox News and Fox Business made air conditioning the story, claiming that climate policy had made it harder and more expensive for Europeans to survive the heat.
However, extreme heat is becoming more dangerous because of fossil fuel-driven warming, which makes climate policy more necessary. Fox networks instead used Europe’s deaths to argue against climate action, doubling down on the fossil fuel economy that is exacerbating dangerous climate impacts.
That argument is already being adapted to U.S. heat coverage. As American heat waves expose the strain on infrastructure built for a less dangerous climate, Fox figures blamed climate policy for making cooling more expensive, attacked climate mitigation and resilience planning, and defended more fossil fuel infrastructure. It is a convenient reversal: Fox casts fossil fuels as the answer to deadly heat, while eliding their role in making extreme heat worse.
Europe and the U.S. are both facing deadly heat made worse by climate change
- Extreme heat is killing people on both sides of the Atlantic, and scientists have connected both events to fossil-fueled warming.
Reuters reported at least 3,700 excess deaths during the June 20-28 heat wave that gripped France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. World Weather Attribution found that climate change made the European heat wave hotter and more likely, with a similar weather pattern now producing temperatures that would have been “virtually impossible” in June 1976 and still “highly unlikely at any time of the year.”
Europe’s lack of widespread air conditioning — which is shaped by its historically cooler climate, higher energy costs, and concerns about rising power demand from cooling — helps explain the death toll, but not in the way right-wing media suggest.
Much of Europe was built for a cooler climate baseline that no longer exists. As Mark O’Connell wrote in The Irish Times, “Our societies are not built, either figuratively or literally, for the world we now inhabit.” Europe is now the fastest-warming continent, warming more than twice as fast as the global average, and extreme heat is exposing the gap between the climate its systems were designed for and the climate people are now living in.
The American heat wave showed why the story cannot stop at air conditioning. Even though the U.S. has far more air conditioning than Europe, deadly heat is still outpacing the energy infrastructure that keeps people safe.
The New York Times reported that World Weather Attribution scientists also determined that the recent heat and humidity across the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada would have also been “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming, while Axios reported the event killed at least two dozen people, including 22 heat-related deaths in New Jersey.
Air conditioning saves lives during extreme heat, and more people will need it as heat waves become more frequent and deadly. However it does not solve the underlying danger. Instead, it moves part of the risk onto the power system, which is already being stressed by hotter summers, higher cooling demand, and climate-driven disruptions. During the recent heat wave, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order for PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, as extreme heat pushed electricity demand toward possible shortfalls.
In addition, widespread air conditioning cannot protect people working outside, people without stable housing, people who cannot afford reliable indoor relief, or people who lose power when demand peaks. The scale of the risk is already visible in the American Southwest. In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, heat killed at least 579 people in 2023, the county’s deadliest year on record. As United Nations climate assessments link rising extreme heat to worsening health risks in the region, more of daily life is becoming harder to sustain safely without major adaptation.
Right-wing media coverage strips this context away. Global warming is making dangerous heat more frequent, but their answer is to attack climate policy while directing people back to the fossil fuel economy that has already made extreme heat worse. More cooling will be essential, but expanding air conditioning alone is not the solution. It will need to be paired with clean power, more energy efficiency, and heat adaptation to mitigate stress on fragile grids and reduce the burning of fossil fuels that are driving these harmful impacts.
- ## Fox claimed Europe’s heat deaths were caused by climate policies that limited access to air conditioning
- Fox’s coverage turned Europe’s heat wave into a story about air conditioning, energy restrictions, and green ideology.
- Climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg pitted air conditioning against climate action during an appearance onAmerica’s Newsroom. After anchor Dana Perino asked whether “government policies have failed the people,” Lomborg argued that Europe needed “much more air conditioning,” questioning whether governments wanted to help vulnerable people “a tiny bit in 100 years” or help “old and vulnerable people right now.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [6/26/26; DeSmog, accessed 7/7/26]
- The Ingraham Anglecalled European heat deaths “the true cost of the green energy scam.” Over a chyron that read “Sweating the green agenda,” guest host Charlie Hurt said “Europe spent years treating air conditioning as the problem and now we’re having a reality check,” while guest Lawrence Newport, co-founder of U.K.-based group Looking for Growth, claimed air conditioning is “essentially banned” in “a vast number of homes across this country.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/26/26]
- Fox News host Sean Hannity used Europe’s heat wave to attack “climate alarmism” and European climate politics. Hannity said Europe was blaming U.S. emissions for the heat wave after embracing “socialism” and “radical climate alarmism,” while his guest, Outnumberedco-host Emily Compagno, argued that Europe was making “a ridiculous stance against climate change” rather than protecting elderly people from deadly heat. Fox News, *Hannity*, [6/29/26]
- Discussing heat deaths in Europe onThe Five, Fox’s Greg Gutfeld suggested “this is a way for Europeans to unload the elderly and blame it on climate change.” Co-host Dana Perino argued that the “so-called science” has been “debunked” and said European officials had a “tool” that could alleviate the problem but “would rather their people suffer and die.” Fox News, *The Five*, [6/30/26]
- Hannity blamed Europe’s deaths on “climate alarmism” and an “anti-air conditioner crusade.” He said the “brutal heat wave now gripping Europe” had caused more than 1,300 deaths, “which by the way is all thanks to the climate alarmism and the anti-air conditioner crusade that’s taken place in Europe.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [6/30/26]
- ## Fox is also turning American heat waves into an argument against climate policy
- Fox figures treated the burden of surviving extreme heat as proof that Americans need fewer climate rules, not stronger climate actions to mitigate worsening heat.
- Discussing the European heat wave on Fox News, Environmental Protection Administration head Lee Zeldin portrayed climate policy as a threat to Americans’ access to air conditioning. On America Reports, Zeldin dismissed the idea that Americans should feel “guilt or shame” over air conditioning use and attacked new environmental rules that could leave “grandma” without a working air conditioner during the summer. He added, “There’s no more hoax where we are saying that the world is about to end.” Zeldin ended by claiming Europeans were “seeing the implementation of their standards, and it’s destroying their economy.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [6/30/26]
- On Fox Business’Mornings with Maria, Energy Secretary Chris Wright framed extreme heat-driven stress on power grids as a reason to loosen climate constraints on utilities. Wright said peak demand would test the PJM grid, blamed “the previous administration” for leaving too little capacity, and argued that the Trump administration was “letting utilities run their business” to prioritize reliability and ratepayers over “climate cult gods.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [7/2/26]
- Perino connected New York City’s thermostat guidance to Europe’s lack of air conditioning and blamed “liberals” for weakening the grid. After co-host Greg Gutfeld said New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was “coming for your thermostat,” Perino pointed to Europe’s heat wave and said that at an European Union building, lower floors “were not allowed to have air conditioning” while “all the fancy people” above them could keep air conditioning. “You start rationing things,” she said, before blaming New York’s vulnerability on “liberals who took away Indian Point” nuclear facility and “only want renewables.” Fox News, *The Five*, [7/2/26]
- Hannity defended fossil fuels as the source of lifesaving air conditioning during heat waves. The Fox host attacked New York City’s thermostat guidance as “a small taste of socialism,” saying “the same fossil fuel industry” Democrats want to challenge provides the electricity for “the very air conditioning systems that are protecting all of us from heat waves.” He warned that “new regulations will make everything a struggle” and drive energy bills “through the roof.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/2/26]
- OnJesse Watters Primetime, longtime climate contrarian Marc Morano recast New York City’s heat wave and air conditioning guidance as “climate communism.” After guest host Charlie Hurt mocked New York City’s 78-degree air conditioning guidance and referenced a New York Times report linking the heat wave to fossil fuels, Morano claimed “climate communists” were relying on “scientifically fabricated fears” to “control every aspect of our lives.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/6/26; DeSmog, accessed 7/8/26]
- ## Deadly heat is exposing the lie at the center of right-wing climate politics
- The recent heat waves in Europe and the U.S. show the contradiction in right-wing media's response to deadly heat. They defend the fossil fuel system that is making extreme heat more dangerous, then cast fossil fuel energy as the only practical way to survive it. Their coverage gives audiences a simpler story: The real danger is climate policy, not the fossil fuels driving the heat. But each devastating heat wave makes that story harder to sustain because the crisis they blame on climate action is the crisis climate action is meant to contain.
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Right-wing media react to Trump's slush fund for allies with unquestioning loyalty — and some vague skepticism
Written by Sophie Lawton
:{Published 05/21/26
Some right-wing media figures are jumping on board with the Trump administration's newest effort to support MAGA allies despite numerous questions about its legality; a few are voicing light skepticism of the plan.
This week, the Department of Justice announced that the Trump family had agreed to drop a legally questionable $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the fund's intended recipients are “victims of lawfare and weaponization” by the federal government. Critics of the move are calling the idea a “slush fund,” and The New York Times called the deal “highly unusual” and wrote that the fund is “a pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to President Trump’s allies.”
Some right-wing media figures have been praising the fund, calling it a great idea and complementing Trump for his “patriotic” use of the number 1776 while ignoring the more problematic details of the fund.
Newsmax host Carl Higbie staunchly defended the fund, claiming that Trump has “dropped — he dropped — his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for a $1.776 — 1776 — billion-dollar fund set up for truth and justice compensation for people who were victims of Biden's weaponization of government” and that “Trump and his family will get $0 in exchange for just simply an apology from the IRS and a fund set up for every other person who Biden targeted.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
Fox's Sean Hannity said the Department of Justice “rightly agreed to set aside the patriotic amount of $1.76 billion to settle other claims like this.”
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From the May 19, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Trump's former co-deputy director of the FBI Dan Bogino praised the fund and the Trump administration on his podcast, saying that “things are happening all over the place, good, positive things.”
Another right-wing podcaster, Vince Coglianese, said on his show that the fund “sounds like justice” and said, “I think it's perfectly wonderful.”
Coglianese also suggested a few people and groups who could benefit from the fund, including anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, other “conservatives who stood outside of abortion mills” and who faced charges, “parents at school board meetings” complaining about curricula and gender-neutral bathrooms who he said were attacked by the FBI and left-wing groups, and “traditional Catholics” who he claimed were targeted by Biden's FBI.
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From the May 19, 2026, edition of VINCEstreamed on Rumble
Greg Kelly took to his Newsmax show to make specific claims about the legal precedent for the fund, stating, “The US government gets sued all the time, and they make settlements. This is not an outlandish arrangement. It actually makes a lot of sense.”
Kelly also claimed that the announcement of the fund came after he sat down with Trump and proposed a “compensation fund for the January 6ers.”
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From the May 19, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
The DOJ also claims there is precedent for this type of fund, saying it’s similar to the Obama-era "Keepseagle" case. In reality, the fund seems to have little legal basis.
As Mike Masnick wrote for Techdirt, the fund was created as a settlement offer because “Trump needed to drop that lawsuit in order to end it before a judge called bullshit on the fact that he was negotiating with himself to take $10 billion from American taxpayers.”
Masknick also refuted the DOJ claims of legal precedent, writing, “The Keepseagle settlement was approved by a court in response to a class action lawsuit. Here, this fund, is being created in a manner deliberately to avoid having the court review it.”
A New York Times piece reported that “legal experts struggled to make sense of this week’s developments, saying tentatively that it was unlikely anyone could sue to stop the moves.” The article noted nevertheless that the fund’s creation is a “jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system.”
Reuters quoted Tax Law Center policy director Brandon DeBot calling the fund a “breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system" and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) calling it a “slush fund” that represented “a stunning act of corruption.”
Some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against the fund, such as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said he doesn't “see a purpose” for it, and others seem bothered by the lack of details surrounding where the money might go. “I’ve got more questions than I’ve heard answers for,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
January 6 Capitol Police Officers have sued to block the fund on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment's prohibition on using federal funds for “any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
Even a few right-wing media voices have been lightly skeptical of the move.
On Fox's Special Report, guest anchor Trace Gallagher admitted that “who gets the money and where it comes from is a bit unclear.”
Special Report's reporting on the topic also included clips of Sens. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) asking for clarity on where the money is coming from and “the legality of creating a fund that Congress hasn't had anything to say about.”
The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro touched on the matter, saying on his show, “I'm generally against slush funds, to be clear. I do not like them. I think there are other ways of pursuing redress for grievances in this fashion. However, many of the myths that you're hearing about it are overstated.”
Megyn Kelly said on her podcast about the fund, “I don't like it,” explaining that she'd rather see individual suits. But she also made false correlations between this move and Obama's Keepseagle fund, saying, “This was created by Barack Obama,” and, “The same media that's now ripping Trump to shreds for doing it said nothing, nothing when Barack Obama started it. … So I really have no tolerance for their cries and protestations about what Trump is doing.”
Already, January 6 rioters, election deniers, and Trump allies are lining up for a chance at the taxpayer money.
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- ### True the Vote founder hopes “we will see some level of compensation” from Trump's weaponization fund
05/21/26 11:50 AM EDT
05/20/26 5:26 PM EDT
- ### Newsmax's Greg Kelly defends Trump “weaponization” fund: “This is not an outlandish arrangement”
05/20/26
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Trump retreats to the Fox-Trump feedback loop as his polling craters
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 05/07/26
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.”
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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
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03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
10/09/20
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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.
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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.
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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.
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03/19/26 12:56 PM EDT
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Sean Hannity questions the Pope’s knowledge of the Bible | Media Matters for America
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Apr. 11, 2026,
By Matt Gertz
Fox News programs that fixated on the international business interests of Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, are utterly uninterested in the voluminous conflicts of interest between President Donald Trump and his family members and the Persian Gulf states affected by his strategically disastrous war of choice against Iran.
The president, his eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are enmeshed in a sprawling set of business deals in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. Those deals often involve members of the royal families of those states or the entities they control.
But since just before the beginning of the year, as Trump’s saber-rattling led to U.S. military deployments and became the war launched by American and Israeli forces on Feb. 28, through April 8, Fox’s evening programs that air from 5 p.m. to midnight ET have referenced such Trump family conflicts of interest only twice — both of which were passing mentions, and neither of which came during a discussion of the Iran conflict — according to a Media Matters review of the Nexis transcript database.
No substantive evidence ever emerged that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Many of the network’s highest-rated hosts carried out a yearslong obsession with what Fox host Sean Hannity described as the “Biden Crime Family,” mentioning Biden’s son at least 13,440 times over a period of less than 16 months of Biden’s presidency. Their feverish conspiracy theory postulated that Hunter Biden had served as a “bag man” for his father, soaking up money funneled from foreign entities and kicking a share back to Joe Biden, who would then use his elected office to help his son’s business partners.
No substantive evidence ever emerged that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The dealings in question largely occurred when Joe Biden was a private citizen, and the primary instance the conspiracy theorists have cited as evidence of him taking state action on behalf of one of his son’s clients — that he, as vice president, pushed for the removal of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in order to benefit one of his son’s clients — was manifestly bogus.
But Trump and his family members appear to have adopted influence-dealing on a dramatically larger scale than the Biden family was ever accused of. And the Trumps’ sprawling set of business deals with Gulf state royals and the sovereign wealth funds they control cannot be disentangled from the president’s decision-making in launching and continuing a war of choice against Iran.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE reportedly urged Trump to launch the war against Iran, and both states reportedly pressed the U.S. to protect them by escalating the conflict “until Iran is decisively defeated.” Qatar, meanwhile, traditionally serves as the regional intermediary between the Iranian regime and Western governments, and has pushed for negotiations.
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Former MAGA allies push back on Trump as Iran war fractures the rightMarch 25, 2026 / 10:27
Those states aren’t just U.S. allies whose views must be weighed by American leaders — their leaders have spent the past few years enriching the president’s family.
In perhaps the most noxious of the myriad entanglements, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — an Abu Dhabi prince known as the “spy sheikh” for his leadership of the UAE’s intelligence service — secretly agreed to buy a huge stake in a crypto company partially owned by the president and his family, paying $500 million in what The Wall Street Journal described as a “hugely profitable” deal for its founders.
The dealing is so egregious that it even raised eyebrows in Trump-friendly circles. “You know what the difference is between the Biden family business and the Trump family business?” Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy asked in a February piece for National Review. “You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE.”
But that’s just one of numerous business deals in the Gulf involving the president’s family.
The network’s evening programs have mentioned the Trump family’s myriad Gulf state conflicts just twice since late last year.
The Trump Organization, which the president owns and Eric and Don Jr. oversee, is partnering with a developer who has ties to the Saudi government on a series of Trump-branded real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman — including a $7 billion development deal financed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, whose board of directors is headed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Kushner’s private equity fund received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi PIF — reportedly forced through by bin Salman over the board’s objection — as well as $200 million from the UAE.
The Qatari royal family gave Trump a $400 million “super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet” to serve as Air Force One.
The Associated Press reports that Powerus, a Florida-based drone manufacturer partly owned by Don Jr. and Eric, is reportedly “trying to sell” defensive drone interceptors “to Gulf countries while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.” (Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich told the AP that the company “is doing many demos across the Middle East right now” but did not name the specific countries.)
In December 2024, Eric said of potential conflicts of interest, “I have no interaction with Washington, D.C. I want no interaction with Washington, D.C.” Don Jr. denied trading on his father’s name in a May 2025 statement to The New York Times, saying, “It’s laughable that the left-wing media thinks that I should lock myself in a padded room while my father is president and cease doing what I’ve been doing for over 25 years to earn a living and provide for my five children.” In an October 2025 CBS News interview alongside Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff, Kushner brushed off ethical concerns, saying, “What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.” And in November 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the president and his family are compromised by business interests, insisting it is “frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.”
For Fox News, their word is apparently sufficient. The network’s evening programs have mentioned the Trump family’s myriad Gulf state conflicts just twice since late last year.
In the first instance, Jessica Tarlov, the Democratic co-host of the panel show “The Five,” raised the issue of “Donald Trump and his family, their corruption” while discussing the president’s poor polling performance during a Feb. 10 segment about the midterm elections.
“This story [Fox contributor] Andy McCarthy is doing a series for the National Review on it,” she said. “All the crypto money that they’re taking in from the [United Arab Emirates] and others is a really big deal.”
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Fox News pushing Trump’s Iran war agenda, while support for the war plummetsMarch 25, 2026 / 10:27
The only other Fox News mention of the Trump family’s conflicts of interest in the Gulf that our study found came during a segment on Trump’s planned presidential library-hotel that aired on the network’s flagship, ostensibly straight news broadcast, “Special Report.”
“Guests will be welcomed into the lobby by Air Force One, presumably the Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar,” Fox correspondent Aishah Hasnie said during the March 31 news package.
When an interviewer asked “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier last year if the news media should provide the business dealings of Trump’s sons with the same scrutiny they gave those of Hunter Biden, he replied, “100%.”
“If you’re going to play it one way, you’ve got to play it another way and you’ve got to cover all of those things,” he said.
But that’s not how things have played out on Baier’s network, even with the alleged corruption far more direct, the sums vastly larger and the potential consequences far more dire.
Matt Gertz
Matt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media. His work focuses on the relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party, media ethics and news coverage of politics and elections.
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04/09/26 4:46 PM EDT
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Critics aghast after Fetterman tells Fox’s Hannity Trump has 'made the world safer' - Alternet.org
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Right-wing media’s heinous rhetoric against people experiencing homelessness
From calling for homeless people to be sent to “internment camps” to fantasizing about making them “fight like gladiators,” right-wing media’s crusade against people without housing continues
Written by Sage Hodil
Published 04/03/26
Right-wing media have a long history of attacking homeless people, and so far 2026 has seen a continuation of that trend. Pundits have called for sending homeless people to different countries, “internment camps,” and institutions. Right-wing media figures have also pushed dehumanizing rhetoric by referring to homeless people as “bums,” “blighty,” “junkies,” “mentally deranged,” and even joking about their deaths.
- ## Right-wing media have consistently demonized and mischaracterized homelessness, sometimes advocating for aggressive solutions
- Research shows that homelessness is driven primarily by economic factors, and the belief that it’s a personal choice is largely a myth.From October 2021 to November 2022, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, conducted the “largest representative study of homelessness since the mid-1990s” and found homelessness was mainly determined by “high housing costs and low income.” Margot Kushel, who led the study, has criticized the media for “misdiagnosing the problem” when they “blame homelessness on substance abuse,” arguing, it “simply isn’t true” that homeless people “refuse housing or that their problems make them impossible to house.” University of California San Francisco, The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, [6/2023; Truthout, 11/6/23]
- Experts from the Legal Defense Fund say that punitive approaches, such as forced displacement and criminalization, “will not end homelessness or address its root causes.” As The Legal Defense Fund stated, “Study after study show that the best way to address homelessness is to provide people with safe, affordable housing and to offer additional supports and services if needed.” Legal Defense Fund, [8/1/25]
- Yet right-wing figures like Fox host Jesse Watters have spent years calling homeless people “a virus,” a “contagion,” and an “invasive species” and proposing carceral solutions.Watters, for example, has fantasized about sending homeless people to a “mega prison,” advocated for “bulldoz[ing]” homeless encampments and “institutionaliz[ing] everybody,” argued “it was more civilized when we banished them to asylums and put them in strait jackets,” and proposed “federally funded opium dens where the homeless can kill each other.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [8/21/23, 9/22/22, 9/22/22; Fox News, The Five, 3/24/25, 6/3/19, 9/15/22]
- ## In 2026 alone, right-wing media figures have called for detaining homeless people in jails and even sending them to other countries
- On Fox News, billionaire CEO John Catsimatidis suggested homeless people should “live in Uganda.”Catsimatidis claimed the homeless should “live in Uganda for $8.13 a day. We'll give them the check for $8.13 a day, let them live somewhere else.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [3/19/26]
- Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said we could “annex Greenland,” “send the homeless there,” and “call it homeless island.”Gutfeld continued, “You send them to a cold place, they've got to build shelter. Pretty soon they start to evolve towards normal living.” Fox News, *Gutfeld!*,[1/15/26]
- Newsmax host Michael Savage proposed “internment camps” for “homeless bums.”Savage said homeless people “shouldn't have the freedom to live in the streets” and we should “take the freedom away from them, put them in internment camps 100 miles away from cities, and give them the care that they need.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie: Frontline*, [3/16/26]
- Podcaster Tim Pool said if Democrats were serious about fixing homelessness they would “forcefully detain them and bring them to a facility” because “the only way to remove the homeless is by force.”Pool went on to say people are not homeless “because they fell on hard times” but “because of substance abuse issues and choice.” YouTube, *The Culture War with Tim Pool*, [2/16/26]
- Daily Wire host Matt Walsh called for homeless people to be “forcefully and permanently” moved into jails or mental institutions.Walsh stated, “They should be jailed or they should be institutionalized. You remove them from the street forcefully and permanently.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [2/4/26]
- On Newsmax, Citizens Alliance CEO Cliff Maloney complained about “mentally deranged” people on the streets and said, “I'm not trying to be harsh when I say this, but some people, you got to just lock them up and throw away the key.”Newsmax host Carl Higbie also endorsed bringing back mental institutions and insane asylums, saying, “Make asylums great again.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [1/21/26]
- Fox host Todd Piro advocated for rounding up “every single homeless person” and putting them “in one location.”Piro stated, “I feel like you can take every single homeless person in a city, put them in one location, and pay security to keep everybody safe.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [3/26/26]
- ## Right-wing media have dehumanized people experiencing homelessness as “bad people” who are “repulsive” and embody “third world criminal blight”
- Jesse Watters said billionaires should “make the homeless people in skid row fight like gladiators.”Watters also proposed for billionaires to “buy maybe everybody in skid row a one-way ticket to Thailand.” Fox News, *The Five*, [2/19/26]
- Fox News contributor Lisa Kennedy Montgomery joked about homeless people freezing to death in New York City, referring to them as “corpsicles.”Her comment came after actor Rob Schneider joked, “As soon as they freeze to death you don't have to call them homeless. You just call them frozen dead people.” Fox News, *Gutfeld!*, [2/6/26]
- Fox News host Sean Hannity cited New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free bus proposal and said if he really wants to “get rid of their homeless problem” he should “offer free booze, hookers, and drugs and nobody will ever leave the bus.”Prior to Hannity’s comment, guest Jeff Dye made a joke about “bums” urinating and defecating on buses and claimed they will “end up living” there if public transit is made free. Fox News, *Hannity*, [1/19/26]
- Greg Gutfeld claimed, “Homeless people do not have the ability to make decisions for themselves. We all know that.”Gutfeld blamed Mamdani for the deaths of 16 people during New York’s freezing weather and argued, “If they had allowed to take down the encampments and required them in shelters, all of those people would be alive.” Fox News, *The Five*, [2/3/26]
- Matt Walsh characterized homeless people as “junkies” and “for the most part bad people.”Walsh went on to say, “The only solution is to round them up by force and put them in jail. … Treat drug use as a crime. Treat homelessness as a crime.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [1/6/26]
- In January, right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson referred to homeless people as “vagrants” who are “sickening,” “blighty,” and “repulsive and dangerous.”Johnson also said homeless encampments in California represent “third world criminal blight.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [1/16/26, 1/13/26]
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Fox News’ knives are out for NATO as Trump’s Iran war deteriorates
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 04/02/26
Fox News’ MAGA stars, unable to acknowledge that the war in Iran that President Donald Trump launched with their support is spiralling into a strategic defeat, have landed on a scapegoat: NATO and its member states, which were not consulted by the United States before it joined Israel in starting the war and have since refused participation.
Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity respectively denounced NATO on Wednesday as “kind of a meaningless ally” that “we’ve had it with” for purportedly “abandoning us.” Hannity and Ingraham each suggested that Trump should withdraw the U.S. from the alliance (which he is barred from doing unilaterally under a bill Secretary of State Marco Rubio cosponsored in the Senate that became law in 2023).
Trump has spent the last several weeks raging over the refusal by U.S. allies to send their navies into the active war zone to escort oil tankers and other commercial ships after Iran, in an obvious strategic countermeasure to the U.S. attack, closed the Strait of Hormuz. Over the weekend, Spain, Italy, and France refused to allow their military bases or airspace to be used by U.S. or Israeli aircraft involved in the war, triggering a new wave of vitriol from the president and his top aides.
Trump claimed in a Wednesday interview to be “beyond reconsideration” of the U.S. role in NATO after “they weren’t there for us” in Iran. (NATO is a defensive alliance — in response to the 9/11 attacks, its members deployed forces alongside the U.S. military in Afghanistan but are not bound by the treaty to participate in offensive wars.) In an address from the White House that night, the president urged the “countries of the world” to “build up some delayed courage. … Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.”
The looming strategic failure of the U.S. war in Iran — its regime is intact and in control of its uranium stockpile and the strait, and altering those circumstances that would likely require a risky escalation involving American ground troops — has placed Fox’s hosts in a bind. They have assured their viewers that the war is an historic success and appear unable to break with Trump due to his support among their viewers. That makes our NATO allies an appealing target as the war grinds on.
The president regularly tunes in to Fox to guide his communication and policy decisions. If he was watching before or after his speech on Wednesday, he heard vigorous support for pivoting from his inability to defeat America’s foes to punishing its friends.
Hannity: NATO is “a one-sided alliance,” by leaving “we'll probably save a lot of money”
Hannity, of the network’s three major evening hosts, is the one most committed to the U.S. war in Iran (which he had demanded for decades), the closest personally to Trump, and the loudest voice currently denouncing NATO.
Following Trump’s speech, he panned NATO as “a one-sided alliance where we only go and protect Europe” and suggested its member states had become too culturally Muslim. In response, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) uncorked a screed in which he called for the redeployment of U.S. forces from Europe because “when we needed them the most and when the world needed them the most to stop a religious Nazi regime from having a nuclear breakout, they took a pass.”
“I think that there's going to be a reevaluation and I believe America's contribution just went down dramatically, and we'll know more in the weeks ahead as this now begins to wrap up,” Hannity replied.
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From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Later in the broadcast, the host said it was “unimaginable to me that the NATO alliance would shatter” thanks to the purported refusal by its members to agree to what “should not be a controversial assist on their part.”
“I've got to imagine the ramifications of them abandoning us in this effort is going to — this is going to be deep, profound, and long-lasting,” he added.
Fox contributor Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in Trump’s first administration, characterized NATO as “feckless, not to be able to convince their own people” of the importance of the Iran war, while retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, another former Trump administration figure, said the U.S. should withdraw from the alliance and form a new one.
“Yeah, I think you're right and we'll probably save a lot of money,” Hannity replied to Kellogg. “But the fact that they did not have a moral clarity when you're dealing with the No. 1 state sponsor of terror potentially this close to acquiring nuclear weapons is breathtaking to me. And this will have reverberations, I believe, going on for decades to come.”
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From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Ingraham: NATO is “kind of a meaningless ally” due to “weakness in Europe”
Ingraham had recently warned about potential downsides of the war, but quickly pivoted back in line with her colleagues. While previewing Trump’s speech on Wednesday’s broadcast, she claimed that “NATO turned out, in this case at least, to be what Donald Trump had predicted: kind of a meaningless ally, if allies at all.”
Her guest, the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano, responded with the evening’s most vigorous defense of the alliance. “I don't think NATO is the problem,” he said, instead pointing to “some very weak leaders inside NATO who have made some very cowardly decisions” and “look like complete yahoos.”
“What we're going to see is not NATO disbanded,” Carafano. “That's nuts. But what we're more likely to see is NATO step back up to the plate under pressure from Donald Trump, and countries throw out their own leaders because they’re weak-kneed yahoos.”
But Ingraham responded by saying that disbanding NATO should be on the table.
“Well, I'm not sure I agree with that,” she replied. “I think there's just a lot of weakness in Europe, period. Period, there's weakness. … We're so lucky we have Donald Trump as president of the United States.”
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From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Watters: “We’ve had it with these people”
Watters joined in the NATO criticism on Wednesday, albeit in a somewhat less aggressive tone than his colleagues.
“The NATO allies, I put allies in quotes,” he said. “I mean, it's been a great alliance over the years. It's really kept the Russians off the continent until the Ukraine invasion. But it's been really one-sided, and now a lot of people are looking around at them saying no, you can't use the airspace. You can't use the base.”
“They've had it,” he added. “We've had it with these people. We love them, but we've had it.”
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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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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.”
:{Video
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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.”
:{Video
Citation
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.”
:{Video
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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.
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.”
:{Video
Citation
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.”
:{Video
Citation
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.”
:{Video
Citation
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
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.
//
03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
03/12/26 1:57 PM EDT
02/28/XX
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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.
//
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02/28/26
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MMA
The North Koreans do a more nuanced show than Sean Hannity’s take on Trump’s State of the Union
The Fox host raved about Trump’s “iconic,” “uplifting,” “patriotic,” “glowing,” “powerful,” “very unique” speech
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 02/25/26
The Wall Street Journal published a report from Korea Bureau Chief Timothy W. Martin early Wednesday morning detailing how the “unbridled flattery” North Korean state media provides Kim Jong Un “underscores the dictator’s need to establish cult-of-personality supremacy as a smokescreen for his nation’s woes.”
That also happens to serve as a handy description of the role performed by the Journal’s corporate cousins at Fox News, the propaganda outlet whose servile treatment of President Donald Trump helps the deeply and increasingly unpopular American leader rally his core supporters.
Martin wrote that Kim had received “lavish praise in the regime’s largest newspaper” for a meaningless accomplishment, citing an editorial which called the dictator “the greatest person in the world,” praised his “unimaginable achievements,” and stated, “Our future is infinitely bright and promising!”
Such language, while overwrought, frankly pales in comparison to the unabashed sycophancy Fox star and Trumpist operative Sean Hannity provided in response to Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday. His coverage was
with that of his fellow Fox propagandists, but serves as an instructive window into how the network works to “establish cult-of-personality supremacy,” as Martin put it in the North Korean context.
Hannity launched his post-speech show by declaring that “moments ago, President Trump wrapped up yet another iconic, uplifting, patriotic State of the Union,” and devoted the rest of his broadcast to lavishing the president with praise and hosting others to do the same.
In a monologue interspersed with lengthy clips from the president’s speech, the Fox host said Trump had “championed our country and the achievements of you, the American people.”
“Now clearly tonight was not about the Democratic Party, in fact it wasn’t about either party,” Hannity claimed of a speech in which Trump called Democrats “sick” and “crazy” and accused them of “destroying our country.”
“Instead,” the host continued, “President Trump delivered a glowing speech highlighting the triumphs, the struggles, the bravery of so many American people.”
Hannity concluded his monologue by declaring, “Now, under President Trump’s leadership, America's full potential is on lock, and the state of our union, thankfully, is strong.”
Video
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From the Feburary 24, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
The Fox host kept laying it on thick during a series of interviews with Republican leaders, who likewise showered the president with accolades.
“Let's go to some observations,” he told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). “The president said the nation is back, bigger, stronger than ever before, golden age of America, that he inherited a nation in crisis, a turnaround for the ages, talked about the border, talked about inflation, talked about interest rates, talked about gas prices, talk about mortgage rates, talked about safety and security around the globe.”
“This was not your typical laundry list that you often get at a State of the Union. This was deep, impactful, profound success stories and he took the time to tell all of them in a very different manner,” he continued. “I thought it was very unique tonight.”
Johnson replied, “I thought it was unique. I think it was the best State of the Union speech I’ve seen.”
“What made tonight so powerful is he did everything he said he was going to do and then some,” Hannity later marveled to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). “A lot of politicians use words, he’s actions.”
Like Johnson, Jordan told Hannity that Trump’s “amazing” State of the Union had been “by far the best one” he’d seen.
Hannity closed out his coverage with more fawning over the president’s address from a panel of former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (“one of Trump's best speeches”), Fox host Trey Gowdy (“it was almost like our 250th birthday party started tonight”), and former Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus (“one of the greatest, most triumphant speeches ever given by a president").
Hannity has taken over the role played in Trump’s first term by then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who told viewers that Trump’s White House featured “sunlight beaming throughout the place, and on almost every face” and at one point signed off, “Have a great weekend. The president makes such a thing possible for us all.”
As Fox News President Jay Wallace said of Dobbs at the time, “The North Koreans do a more nuanced show.”
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02/24/26
01/22/25 12:56 PM EST
11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
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MMA
02/19/26
02/19/26
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MMA
New report highlights systemic failures behind DC plane crash that right-wing media blamed on DEI
The incident illustrated how right-wing media rush to establish a political narrative before facts emerge in the wake of tragedy
Written by Courtney Hagle
:{Published 02/18/26
In January 2025, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump kicked off his presidency by attributing a deadly midair collision in Washington, D.C., to diversity policies. Right-wing media quickly followed suit, offering an early glimpse of how the administration and its allies would confront tragedies on their watch: by pushing politically charged narratives ahead of verified information. Now, a new report highlights how “multiple failures across different parts of the government” were responsible for the crash, citing eight main factors none of which included DEI initiatives.
The day after the crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people, Trump and his administration pointed to DEI policies as part of the cause, claiming that a group within the FAA had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white” and signing an executive order ”aimed at undoing all of that damage" from “Biden administration's DEI and woke policies.” Trump further claimed, “We want the most competent people. We don't care what race they are,” even as he admitted that “we don’t know” what caused the crash but that “common sense” helped him reach his conclusion.
Right-wing media fell in line with the Trump administration’s effort to essentially blame the crash on the hiring of women, nonwhite, and disabled people through diversity policies. Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that the crash “is why DEI can be dangerous.” Fox News host Will Cain claimed, “DEI is a policy that exacerbates human error.” Fox News host Jesse Watters used the tragedy to say people should be “suspicious” that DEI plays a role in disasters. He continued, “When DEI is in place, which it was at the FAA, standards get lowered, staffing's affected.”
Scapegoating DEI was not a new tactic for right-wing media, which had previously blamed DEI for the 2024 Baltimore bridge collapse, the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, and ongoing issues with Boeing planes.
Now, a new report highlights how “multiple failures across different parts of the government” were responsible for the crash, citing eight main factors, none of which included DEI.
The attempts to cynically exploit the crash were just a preview for how MAGA would handle tragedies in Trump’s second term. In the past year, conservative media lied about the ideological profile of a man who killed Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband; covered for the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated immigration abuses that included the killing of two Minnesotans; and baselessly targeted an innocent Palestinian student after a shooting at Brown University.
In each of these incidents, the Trump administration and its media allies moved quickly to establish a political narrative before facts were established, which often takes time and investigation. The result was a cycle in which speculation hardened into talking points, shaping public perception before a full and careful accounting of the truth could take place. By the time the actual facts came to light, the narrative was set and right-wing media had already moved on to the next outrage cycle.
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Written by Matt Gertz
Research contributions from Pete Tsipis, Isabella Corrao, Jane Lee & Helena Hind
Published 02/11/26
“We have a president of the United States who was potentially involved in all of those entanglements with foreign entities,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “which could lead to complications or compromise as the president now.”
Hegeth’s comment serves as a searing indictment of his current boss, President Donald Trump, whose “entanglements with foreign entities" deepen with each new investigative report on his family’s sprawling business interests and attempts to cash in on the presidency.
But of course, Hegseth wasn’t talking about the recent Wall Street Journal investigation revealing an apparent quid pro quo in which a Trump family company received a half-billion dollar investment from an Emirati prince days before the president took office, then the Trump administration funneled AI chips to the prince’s firm. The quote is actually from July 2023, and it shows Hegseth using his prior role as Fox News host to denounce then-President Joe Biden.
It is not an overstatement to say that arguing against foreign money influence on the White House was a defining principle for right-wing media during the Biden years. But their arguments were based in fantasy, and the Trump family’s corruption is both much more straightforward and involves sums of money that are larger by orders of magnitude.
Thanks to Trump’s propensity to hire the people he saw on his television, many of those who loudly complained about the purported corruption of the Biden family — and even called for the criminal prosecution of President Biden — are now working within the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Fox smear machine that once went into overdrive promoting conspiracy theories about presidential corruption has gone quiet.
The Trump family’s corruption is orders of magnitude worse than the Biden allegations
Fox’s effort to turn Hunter Biden’s foreign business interests into a political liability for his father dates to Trump’s first administration, but became an obsession once Joe Biden took office in 2021. While the network’s narratives were never credible — and some even appeared to be the result of a Russian disinformation campaign — the pressure of its all-consuming coverage and its media power within the GOP eventually goaded congressional Republicans into an ill-fated impeachment effort, at which point the whole edifice collapsed.
But the Fox conspiracy-mongering takes on a new light given that some of the people who pushed it now work for a president who embarked on self-enrichment schemes of staggering scale and eye-popping corruption in his first year back in office.
While feverish claims of a “Biden Crime Family” involved a total of less than $7.5 million paid to Biden family members over the years — and nothing to Joe Biden — Trump had already “used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion,” the editorial board of The New York Times reported on the anniversary of his second inauguration.
Trump and his adult children oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign and includes international real estate deals through the Trump Organization; his social media company and its parent, “which trades like a meme stock”; immense holdings in cryptocurrency; and an array of consulting and venture capital positions held by his sons that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency even as they frequently conflict with U.S. policy (by contrast, the right’s core allegation of Joe Biden aiding his son’s foreign business interests involved him carrying out U.S. policy as vice president).
Reporters and researchers who examine the various Trump tentacles are constantly uncovering new scandals and conflicts of interest. But perhaps the most nakedly corrupt involve the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, which was founded shortly before his 2024 election and has since driven a huge increase in his personal wealth. The Wall Street Journal reported last month:
- Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi prince known as the “spy sheikh” for his leadership of the United Arab Emirates’ intelligence service, secretly agreed to purchase 49% of WLF just days before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration for $500 million, in a “hugely profitable” deal for its founders.
- In May, WLF’s CEO “announced that the sheikh’s investment firm, MGX, would use World Liberty’s stablecoin, USD1, to complete its $2 billion investment in [the crypto exchange] Binance,” a move that “rocketed USD1 up the rankings of largest stablecoins, enhancing its financial credibility.”
- Weeks later, the Trump administration approved sales of “around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year” to the UAE, one-fifth of which would go to Tahnoon’s company. Such sales had been sought by Tahnoon but blocked by the Biden administration out of concern that China might acquire the chips, with Tahnoon’s company “of particular concern” due to its “close ties to the sanctioned tech giant Huawei and other Chinese firms.”
- Trump also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of Binance, following “months of efforts by Zhao to boost” WLF. (Trump has denied even knowing who Zhao is.)
- Tying it all together, Zhao is an Emirati citizen who is “close” to Tahnoon, Binance is based in the UAE and counts Tahnoon as a major investor, and “people close to the royal family urged the Trump administration to pardon Zhao.”
Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy, while accusing the Bidens of “corruptly profiteering off Joe Biden’s political power and influence,” nonetheless noted that the Trumps’ actions were worse by orders of magnitude.
“You know what the difference is between the Biden family business and the Trump family business?” he asked in a Saturday piece for National Review. “You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE.”
Fox News’ rants about the “Biden crime family” perfectly describe Trumpian corruption
Hegseth is just one of several top Trump administration officials who participated in Fox’s yearslong campaign to turn conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings into a political corruption scandal for his father.
“The real story here though is all of the nasty work that he [Hunter Biden] has done across the world, how much money he has made, and the fact that he was able to make, what, $80,000 a month from Burisma in Ukraine because his dad was the vice president — it calls into question Joe Biden's motives,” Treasury Secretary Sean Duffy said back in 2022, when he was a Fox Business host. “Is Joe Biden looking out for the American people or is Joe Biden looking out for Hunter Biden's interests?”
As a Fox host, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro railed against “the corruption that was going on in the Biden crime family” and Joe Biden’s purported efforts to “enrich his family.” And when she was asked about whether there was any “comparison” between what the Bidens did and Donald Trump’s businesses receiving millions of dollars from China while he was serving as president, Pirro stressed that there was not.
“Donald Trump wasn't involved in the business once he became president,” she explained. “The bottom line is he had properties. He was entitled to have someone else monitor those properties and make money from those properties.”
For then-Fox contributor Leo Terrell, now a top Justice Department official, Joe Biden was “the meal ticket for the family” who “makes the money for the Biden family,” and the lack of DOJ attention to Hunter Biden’s purported crimes indicated “favorable treatment because his father is in the White House.”
And when Pam Bondi was merely a lawyer and lobbyist who frequently appeared on Fox instead of an attorney general who frequently appeared on Fox, she argued that the foreign business dealings of the president’s son were “a matter of national security” that was “so important” that it required the appointment of a special prosecutor to ensure the Justice Department acted properly in the case.
They called for Biden’s prosecution; now they run the DOJ under Trump
Several Fox pundits who joined the Trump administration — including some who now serve in senior Justice Department posts — even argued at the time that Joe Biden’s actions warranted a criminal probe.
Fox host Sean Hannity asked Bondi — then a frequent Fox guest and now Trump’s attorney general — during an August 2023 segment whether anything would “ultimately happen to Joe and Hunter Biden.” Bondi replied that “when we have a new administration, absolutely Sean, it has to,” adding that a criminal investigation “must be opened” and that the Bidens would be “prosecuted” under a future Trump presidency.
Bondi also stressed in 2022 that if Trump had been president under the same circumstances, he would have “right away, recused himself” and had “a special prosecutor take over.”
Duffy argued that the FBI and Justice Department should be investigating the “shady” dealings to determine whether Joe Biden is “corrupt” and has “made money off of this.” But he claimed that “they won't do a forensic audit because they know that the money goes from foreign countries to Hunter Biden into Joe Biden's pocket.”
“There was a major scandal with this administration and it starts of course with Joe Biden and his involvement with Hunter,” Pirro said in 2023. Citing what she claimed was a ream of evidence that “just goes on and on,” she concluded, “You don't need any more than what we have now to convict them.”
And Terrell claimed in 2023 that an aspect of the pseudoscandal was “sinister and criminal,” adding that the “totality of all the evidence” showed that “the walls have fallen on Joe Biden.” He added that prosecutors were ignoring Hunter Biden’s crimes because if “you prosecute Hunter Biden, you prosecute Joe Biden,” and “everyone knows that the Department of Justice, the FBI is in bed with the Democratic Party and they have weaponized the departments.”
When media ignoring presidential corruption was a sign of “propaganda”
In his piece for National Review, McCarthy wrote, “Now that self-dealing has achieved heights so astronomical that $27 million would barely be a rounding error, Republicans have lost interest.” The same is true of his colleagues at Fox, who barely discussed Trump pardoning Zhao and still have yet to provide substantive coverage of the UAE’s “spy sheikh” purchasing a huge stake in the president’s company.
Why might that be? Hannity asked Pirro a similar question about coverage of the Bidens back in 2023. After she claimed that the Bidens were running an “organized criminal enterprise” in which “Joe Biden is the front man, Hunter Biden is the bag man,” he asked her why “the media” wouldn’t follow up on the story.
“Because they are Democrats,” she replied at the time. “We are now living in a country that is changed. These are crimes not just by the Bidens, these are crimes against America. This is what is going on in this country — and the truth is that they don't care anymore.”
Pirro is now the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Some of her colleagues in the Trump administration offered similar critiques of coverage of the Biden family back when they worked at Fox.
“When will the media ramp up their scrutiny of Joe, of Hunter, of these payments, of these associations, of the whistleblowers, of the 1023s, of the WhatsApp messages, of the bank exchanges?” Hegseth asked in 2023. “We only know of this because of the House Republicans for a year and a half. What if the media actually examined it, too?”
The Bidens, Hegseth told Hannity, “are counting on a complicit press, which we’ve almost seen universal besides your show and this channel and a few others willing to dig into all the smoke that’s there.”
That purported lack of coverage, Duffy claimed, ensures that “people don’t look to mainstream media as a news source — they’re a propaganda source.”
MMA //
02/03/26 11:00 AM EST
09/16/25 12:15 PM EDT
01/04/24
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MMA
02/05/26
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OMFG ANTI-COMMIE WATERS INGRA HANTY BEFORE SEE BAD TRINITY
MMA
MAGA media demand Trump put down the Minnesota “revolution”
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 01/30/26
A week after Border Patrol officers gunned down nurse Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis, MAGA media’s biggest stars are portraying locals who oppose immigration enforcement officers’ brutal tactics as China-backed “revolutionaries” seeking “the complete overthrow of Western civilization” which they are urging President Donald Trump to put down at all costs.
Horrific videos of Pretti’s killing by masked agents of the state whose activities he had been filming spurred a backlash against the Trump administration’s immigration policy, with polls showing eroding support and some Republican officeholders and right-leaning streamers expressing dismay.
Even some commentators on Fox News, which initially plowed ahead in depraved service of the administration’s absurd argument that Pretti was a terrorist threatening the officers’ lives, backed down a bit. After Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade urged the president to send former Fox contributor and White House “border czar” Tom Homan to take control of the situation on Monday, Trump took Kilmeade’s advice, spurring premature media claims of a “pivot.”
But in this tug-of-war over the president’s brainbox, MAGA stars quickly regrouped and urged Trump not to back down, reverting to the language of war that has characterized right-wing media discussions of Minneapolis for weeks. And the tenor of their coverage has only become more disturbing over the course of the week.
Fox host Laura Ingraham, in her opening monologue Thursday night, claimed that the “mobs you've witnessed in Minnesota and in other far-left-wing pockets of America” are composed of “revolutionaries” who “smear and dehumanize as a prelude to the executions.”
Ingraham went on to argue that “behind all this” is “a national network of socialists, communists, and Marxist-Leninists” whose “goal is to destabilize the West and undermine trust in our institutions and eventually dismantle capitalism and replace it with a Marxist communist framework that eliminates private property in favor of state-owned enterprises.”
“So how do you defeat these well-funded, well-organized revolutionaries?” Ingraham asked. She replied to her own question, claiming, “We defeat the revolution by staying the course, by prosecuting criminal conspiracies to impede ICE and also their funding networks, and by reminding Americans that their safety and U.S. sovereignty will not be negotiated away, not now, not ever.”
Video
Citation
From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Ingraham further argued that the anti-ICE movement has “Chinese fingerprints all over it.”
The following hour, Fox’s Jesse Watters described Minneapolis as “antifa’s new favorite city” and local protesters as an “ICE watch mafia” with its “own socialist supply lines, logistics, and financial benefactors.”
“They're calling Minnesota a testing ground for a domestic revolution,” he added. “This is more than just about immigration. It's about the complete overthrow of Western civilization.”
Democrats want “more Renee Goods and Alex Prettis,” he added. “They think if they can stack enough bodies, Trump's going to back off.”
Video
Citation
From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
Watters later hosted MAGA streamer Tim Pool, who argued that “the terrifying thing about Minnesota” is not that federal officers keep killing civilians, but that “we're looking at a leftist base in this country that are being radicalized.”
“My concern is that there's, there's a bloodlust” among the protesters “that's not going to be satisfied,” he added.
Watters went on to say that “there's a certain faction of the left that wants the violence” and suggested that the media “has a little bit more responsibility in situations like this to calm things down.”
Then on Sean Hannity’s program, the host likewise denounced what he termed “the well-coordinated, well-funded, quote, resistance to ICE investigations in Minnesota,” which he claimed is engaged in “an attack on our very system.”
He went on to describe Democrats’ “current anti-ICE outrage” as “pure political theater,” adding that “ultimately, they want to dissolve our borders and fundamentally transform a country and the people that they despise.”
Video
Citation
From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
The vitriol on Fox’s evening shows is somehow less ominous than that coming from right-wing figures off its airways, though.
Tucker Carlson, who hosts one of the nation’s most popular podcasts, argued on Wednesday’s installment that in
, “we are watching the destruction of the social fabric of the government and potentially of the nation.” He explained that the video of Pretti’s killing “represents chaos” and added: “Chaos is worse than illegal immigration. Chaos is worse than police brutality. Chaos is worse than anything. Chaos equals death. The death of people, the death of the weak, the death of countries.”
Carlson
that Minnesota activists “want the chaos,” adding: “This is proof that what you're watching is not a series of protests about immigration. What you're watching are the beginnings of a color revolution, of a kind of insurrection against federal authority.” He further claimed that if that revolution is not stopped, the result will be “civil war” and “killing at scale.”
“We have to hold the line,” Steve Bannon likewise argued on Wednesday. “There can be no de-escalation at all. You don't need to bring down the temperature. Raise the temperature. Put them under pressure. They're the ones that are cracking.”
“This is an inflection point,” he added. “You blink now and you're going to blink forever. You bend the knee now, you'll bend the knee forever. If we stand in the breach and say, screw you, we're fighting for the country, right?”
And Nick Fuentes, the increasingly prominent white nationalist streamer, argued that if the “radical intervention” Trump is overseeing does not succeed, “all of white civilization just collapses.”
“You have to put yourself in the position of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the year 2100 and look around at your majority-minority country that looks like South Africa, where it's just trash and graffiti and filth and homeless people and vagabonds and criminals,” Fuentes explained. “And then you have to go back in time to now when we can prevent it. And then think about what you're willing to do to stop this. And then killing a stupid fat lesbian and a male nurse doesn't seem so bad, does it?”
“Do you know what 'Sieg Heil’ even means?” he concluded. “It means ‘hail victory.’ And not to go like full Nazi or something, but there is no substitute for victory. We have to win; they have to lose.”
//
:{:{01/26/26}:
:{:{01/25/26}:
01/27/26
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MMA
January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Peter, you wrote a whole book about how China is infiltrating the United States, the silent coup. And this has Chinese fingerprints all over it in my view, and it's not like you're going to have a direct line to the CCP. But given what you've witnessed and the revolutionary goals on the websites of some of these organizations, what's your sense?
PETER SCHWEIZER (GUEST): Yeah, there's no question there's an international component to it and China's involved. There is an organization linked to the CCP in China called the Center for the Study of Marxist Parties in Foreign Countries. And what they do is they track these political activities. And they've been running articles, analyses on their website in China, which is restricted, talking about color revolutions in the United States and how it might happen. They cover groups like the Party for Socialism and Liberation. They cover groups like the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, both who are neck deep in this action in Minneapolis and have been involved in many other protests.
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization has pledged its allegiance to the CCP. They have fraternal party ties, which means they're very close. And the political director of that party, Mick Kelly, lives in Minneapolis. He's been investigated in the past by the FBI for possible involvement for direct terrorism. He was never charged. But these are radical groups, same thing with PSL, sympathetic, tied to China. Its members have flown to China. So, this is part of something that China directly encourages, wants to see happening. And they are monitoring the situation in the United States as it relates to all kinds of social unrest like this.
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mma
Fox News’ biggest stars are desperately trying to turn the Trump administration’s execution and subsequent smearing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis into a story about how the political left is out of control.
Video analyses conducted by several news outlets show masked Border Patrol agents engaging, assaulting, restraining, and gunning down Pretti (who had been recording their activities on his phone) over a matter of seconds on Saturday morning. High-ranking administration officials subsequently branded him a “domestic terrorist” who had intended to “massacre” the agents, citing Pretti’s possession of a legally carried handgun that he never drew during the altercation.
Fox initially ran with and even went beyond the administration’s justifications for killing Pretti. But the network pivoted beginning Sunday evening as burgeoning outrage made their arguments untenable, with some commentators conceding that videos disproved the official statements and suggesting the administration shift tactics.
Monday night’s Fox programming provided a synthesis of the two narrative threads. Network hosts suggested that more investigation was necessary to determine what had happened to Pretti, and called for a retrenchment of sorts. But much of their focus was on attacking what they deemed a Democratic “insurgency” against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
Fox host Jesse Watters condemned Gov. Tim Walz, telling viewers that he “has not made any effort to chill out his citizens” and has instead “been in open rebellion against the federal government” and “activated a Minnesota insurgency.”
“This insurgency is more sophisticated than you think, and it relies on a supportive population,” Watters added, claiming that “these people are giving aid and comfort to foreign criminals” and that “like jihadists, their leaders don’t care if they die.”
“This movement is lethal to the country,” Watters concluded. “Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if Minnesota would stop attacking the Trump administration for doing what voters put him in to do.”
:{Video
Citation
From the January 26, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
Laura Ingraham described immigration enforcement protesters as an “open-borders mafia” who “prattle on how they are protecting their neighbors, but they don't bat an eye when their neighbors' daughters are raped by an illegal or run over by an illegal with, you know, his second DWI.”
She added that “the hard-core communists who give the octane to these mobs have one overriding goal … to destabilize America by frustrating a key pillar of the Trump agenda. Now, of course, that's border enforcement.”
Ingraham went on to say that “certain elements” in Minneapolis were “hoping to provoke ICE” and “some, not all, hope to witness, I think, a violent response, then they would clip it for social media and then they can blast it out.”
“So the more tragic, in this warped mindset, the better,” she added. “The more fodder for their demand that ICE withdraw from the city and immigration arrests end immediately. They think they have that, this image, in the death of Alex Pretti.”
:{Video
Citation
From the January 26, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
And Sean Hannity insinuated that the media and “the left” were engaged in a “rush to judgement” regarding Pretti’s killers. Then, interviewing FBI Director Kash Patel, Hannity sought assurances that the administration was keeping its investigative resources focused not on Pretti’s killers, but on targeting his fellow activists.
“What do we know about this encrypted message group?” Hannity asked, referencing Signal chats used by Minneapolis activists to track immigration enforcement operations. He added, “When you have well-organized groups like those that are going after law enforcement, I would imagine that will fall under the purview of the FBI.”
Patel, who had previously divulged launching a probe of the messaging groups in response to a MAGA influencer’s post, replied that “this Signal chat is something that we, the FBI, are looking at and spearheading.”
:{Video
Citation
From the January 26, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
This rhetoric, intended to dehumanize and criminalize Minneapolis activists, echoes years of demagoguery on Fox and throughout the right-wing media about the violent threat purportedly posed by the left — most recently following the killing of Renee Good by ICE agents on January 7.
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01/25/26 11:50 AM EST
01/26/26 12:40 PM EST
01/16/26
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// JRNL Fail
The Trump administration’s chum cycle
Media allies are fed bogus information they use to promise prosecutions of the president’s enemies
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 12/18/25 11:39 AM EST
The promise of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to his MAGA media allies, was that Trump loyalists installed at the heads of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies would finally reveal the “deep state” corruption behind the myriad investigations into his misdeeds and bring his political enemies to justice. While the administration’s actual document releases have proven little, its strategy of chumming the water with red meat for the MAGA base has worked on the Trumpist propaganda corps, which has taken the bait and used it to demand a wave of arrests and prosecutions.
In the latest such salvo, Fox News Digital reported Tuesday morning that “the FBI did not believe it had probable cause to raid President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, but moved forward amid pressure from the Biden Justice Department,” citing “newly declassified documents” to which the outlet apparently received exclusive access. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and FBI Director Kash Patel quickly promoted Fox’s story; so did Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who said he had received the “shocking new docs” that day and alleged they proved that the FBI’s search of the president’s home had been a “miscarriage of justice.”
But as legal reporters who had followed the Trump documents case swiftly noted, the GOP’s spin was nonsense.
- The FBI agents’ worries about probable cause, documented in the emails Fox News Digital reviewed, predated the acquisition of Mar-a-Lago surveillance video showing “Trump aides secretly removing boxes of records,” which convinced the bureau’s leaders that probable cause had been reached.
- Even Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon rejected the Trump legal team’s argument that “the dissenting views” by FBI agents would have “altered the evidentiary calculus in support of probable cause.”
- And concerns aside, a magistrate judge signed off on the search warrant — and when FBI agents executed it, they found reams of unsecured classified material in various rooms of Trump’s home/private club.
The right’s propaganda apparatus nonetheless sprang into action.
MAGA slop artists like Benny Johnson rushed to social media to hype the “massive” story and demand “charges and arrests” in response.
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon discussed the “blockbuster” story during his December 16 show with right-wing propaganda magnate John Solomon, who suggested the documents were “the most important document to date” and “could lead” to criminal charges or a civil suit from Trump.
That night, Solomon was on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show telling millions of viewers that the news, which Hannity termed “a bombshell revelation,” could trigger “legal consequences.” (Trump himself subsequently posted a clip of the segment on social media, then denounced “the FBI’s CRIMINAL RAID.”)
On Newsmax, host Greg Kelly even declared that “Jack Smith belongs in jail” over the Mar-a-Lago search, a bizarre conclusion given that Smith was prosecuting war crimes in Europe at the time and would not become special counsel until two months later.
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Citation
From the December 17, 2025, edition of Newsmax'sGreg Kelly Reports
We’ve been seeing iterations of this pattern throughout this first year of Trump’s second term: The Trump administration chums the waters by handing over documents related to one of the myriad past investigations into the president’s actions; the president, top Trump officials, and Republican officeholders say they show a massive scandal; and mainstream reporters point out their narrative is farcical while MAGA media stars call for the indictment, arrest, prosecution, jailing, and perhaps execution of their political enemies.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard triggered a firestorm in July with her bogus claim that former President Barack Obama directed a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump in 2016. While the documents she cited as evidence, originally provided to Fox, proved nothing of the sort, her claim was nonetheless accepted as gospel by MAGA media figures who spent weeks regurgitating her claims and demanding arrests of a litany of purported culprits. The president himself even posted to Truth Social an AI video featuring Obama being arrested and imprisoned.
In August, the purported “Clinton Plan” emails in a newly declassified annex to special counsel John Durham’s 2023 report supposedly unveiled a “plot” against Trump, leading to calls for Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment (Durham had assessed that the emails in question were forgeries created by Russian intelligence).
Two months later, it was FBI documents purporting to show that special counsel Jack Smith had been “spying” on GOP senators that led to right-wing outrage and calls for his arrest (the FBI had reviewed the toll records of senators in order to establish who Trump and his alleged co-conspirators were trying to contact before and during the January 6 insurrection).
And now it’s the Mar-a-Lago search coming under scrutiny based on similarly dishonest readings of documents the administration has released.
Maybe this is all part of the Plan B that DOJ “Weaponization Working Group” head Ed Martin laid out in May — to “name” and “shame” people who the Justice Department proved unable to indict. If that’s the case, a rude awakening may be in store for the right-wing media figures who predicted “justice” was coming — and for the audiences who believed them.
But one can’t put anything past an authoritarian president who has installed loyalists who treat the Justice Department as his personal law firm, purged the law enforcement apparatus of anyone who thinks otherwise, and frequently demands probes into his political foes that his underlings scuttle to carry out.
The constant right-wing celebrations for Trump’s revenge tour can only increase the pressure on law enforcement to try to somehow bring cases against his foes. Indeed, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a grand jury probe into Gabbard’s nonsensical accusations in August; three months later, Reuters reported that prosecutors were drafting grand jury subpoenas “to investigate Obama-era intelligence officials.”
We’ll see where that goes in 2026.
// MMA
08/06/25 12:43 PM EDT
08/01/25 4:44 PM EDT
10/07/25
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12/10/25
CANDACE VS ERIKA K?
12/10/25
MMA
12/08/25 7:39 PM EST
12/08/25
12/08/25
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MMA 11 25 POST ELECTION
// ELIMINALIST
In response to reports that women were embracing the 4B movement, Fox host Sean Hannity declared, “The hysteria on the left, it’s only getting worse.” Guest Adam Carolla remarked, “As far as the sterilization thing, I wish these women’s moms had thought about sterilizing themselves before they hatched out these little demon seeds.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [12/2/24]
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October 29, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
CALLER (GUEST): I understand all the people that are trying to leave states like New York, California, Illinois. I'm just hoping that they don't bring their politics with them.
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I say that all the time. If you're going to move to Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, don't bring your idiotic left-wing radicalized policies with you and destroy the state you're moving to. There ought to be a political litmus test, seriously, because those states are thriving.
My free state of Florida is thriving. I mean, now they're going to put a referendum on the ballot to reduce property taxes because they've gone up exponentially since Covid, and if they cap that, forget it. I mean, Florida is golden, good to go. They've dealt with the insurance issue that's been a problem down here, and that's going to get better. So, you know, every state has their issues, but law and order is real down here.
MMA
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mma
Bret Baier touts CBS News’ move toward “more balance” and “coverage that’s fair”
In an interview with Sean Hannity, Baier denounced the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” of mainstream reporters
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/24/25
Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier — who is reportedly under consideration to take over CBS Evening News — spent part of Thursday afternoon praising CBS News’ rightward shift and his Trumpist colleague Sean Hannity’s coverage of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” panning mainstream reporters for purportedly demonstrating “Trump derangement syndrome” in an interview on Hannity’s radio show.
Oliver Darcy reported Thursday for his Status newsletter that Bari Weiss, the CBS News editor-in-chief recently installed to move the network to the right, “has spoken to associates about bringing Baier into the CBS News fold, potentially for the ‘CBS Evening News’ anchor chair.” Darcy stressed that Baier is only “one of several names that have been discussed internally” and that he is under contract at Fox through 2028 with a salary of $14 million.
But Darcy noted that “the fact that he has been considered signals where the network is headed under” the new ownership of David Ellison, the son of Trumpy billionaire and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who took over CBS parent company Paramount in July (after President Donald Trump leveraged regulatory power to extract millions of dollars).
Ellison has since hired a Trump supporter and right-wing think-tanker with no apparent newsroom experience as CBS News’ ombudsman; installed Weiss, whose Free Press outlet fixates on left-wing excesses while ignoring Trumpian abuses of power in an apparent effort to convert centrists to MAGA supporters, as its editor-in-chief; and won praise from the president himself as “a great man” who is going to “do the right thing with” CBS.
Hannity and Baier discussed the changes at CBS News and the broader media landscape during an interview to promote Baier’s new book. Hannity began the conversation by saying, “I believe that legacy media is dead. I think it died in this election. I think that Donald Trump has forever tattooed the words ‘fake’ and ‘news’ into the forehead of CNN, MSDNC, and the three major networks, I think people are more skeptical than ever before.”
Hannity then asked Baier: “Do you have an assessment of where they've gone wrong? I thought it was interesting, Bari Weiss asking the 60 Minutes team, Why does the country think you're all biased? That's an interesting question because most people I know believe they're very biased.”
Baier responded by praising the Trump-directed strong-arming of CBS News currently underway — with an allusion to his own network’s old “fair and balanced” motto, nonetheless. “Yeah, and clearly the Paramount purchase is interested in finding more balance and an effort to get back to some semblance of coverage that's fair,” he said.
Sean Hannity and Bret Baier discuss the media and President Trump
October 23, 2025
Audio
Citation
From the October 23, 2025, edition of Premiere Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
“Listen,” he continued. “We've talked about this, Sean, you and I, and, you know, I'm not where you are as far as giving up. I think that there are still some good reporters out there and some good folks, but I do think that President Trump, in the first term and the second term, broke the minds of some reporters that were normal, straight down the middle guys and women.”
“And the emotion that came with their pushback became Trump derangement syndrome, and it showed in almost every story that they did, and so then we got years of Russia, Russia, Russia.” Baier added.
Baier went on to praise Hannity’s coverage of Trump’s ties to Russia and the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that was the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
“To your credit, you, you know, you really pushed back with substance, and were one of the leading people on, you know, pushing back on all the narratives,” Baier said of Hannity’s work. “Eventually, it all came in much like your election night predictions, came to be. And, you know, the coverage of that was not to be seen around the country.”
In fact, Hannity had described Mueller’s probe — which ultimately detailed Russia’s systematic and sophisticated campaign to help Trump win that election and led to the imprisonment of numerous Trump allies for an array of crimes — as a “soft coup,” as well as “the biggest abuse of power corruption case in American history” and “a direct threat to this American republic.” The Fox host’s commentary ultimately helped trigger a four-year Justice Department probe of the origins of the Mueller investigation which provided him with lots of material but garnered three indictments, two acquittals, and a guilty plea that was punished with probation.
Baier concluded by tooting his own horn.
“So I think people got fed up and looked at a lot of this and said, I'm sick of it,” he said. Baier said that on Special Report, “We're trying to do all sides, and we're trying to give it, you know, that people have a sense of what's happening in the U.S. and around the world with some analysis at the end.”
“It's a different animal, you know, than an opinion show, but, I think it's one of the only places left that is kinda trying to do it,” Baier concluded.
Hannity responded by praising his colleague's show, saying: “I'll be honest. I think it's it. I don't see it anywhere else. I just don't, which is a credit to you and Fox in my view.”
It’s difficult to imagine anything more damning to one’s journalistic reputation than being touted by Hannity, the network’s chief MAGA propagandist who has demolished anything resembling ethical standards at Fox in service of Trump.
Baier gets undeserved praise as a “straight news” anchor because his show bears a surface-level resemblance to a traditional news program and he occasionally provides feisty interviews with Republicans. Special Reportwill often provide brief mentions of stories that are damaging to the Trump administration which the majority of the network completely ignores.
But Baier is also the guy who produced a bombshell story in the waning days of the 2016 campaign that Hillary Clinton was on the verge of being indicted; urged network executives to stop Fox from calling states for Joe Biden to forestall viewer outrage after the 2020 election; got caught airing a deceptive clip during an interview with Kamala Harris before the 2024 vote; and reupped his network contract while many of his news-side colleagues left the network as it transformed into a Trumpist propaganda network.
At Weiss’ new MAGA-friendly CBS News, those attributes appear to be features, not bugs.
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mma
Fox viewers were told “there is no violence from the right” hours after arraignment of Jan 6 rioter for allegedly threatening to kill top Democrat
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/22/25
Just hours after New York prosecutors charged a pardoned January 6 rioter with threatening to kill House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Donald Trump Jr. told Sean Hannity’s Fox News audience that “there is no violence from the right,” adding, “It is not both sides — it is from one side, and it was from the left alone.”
Fox viewers, however, probably did not experience any cognitive dissonance. The network all but ignored the threats against Jeffries, with its coverage on Tuesday consisting of a single largely nonspecific 36-second news read on its Special Report program, according to a Media Matters review.
CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane reported early Tuesday morning that Christopher Moynihan “was arrested Sunday after saying in text messages that he planned to ‘eliminate’ Jeffries when the top House Democrat spoke at an event in New York City on Monday” and charged with making a terroristic threat. Prosecutors noted in a court filing that Moynihan texted “Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” and “Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated, I will kill him for the future." He was arraigned later that day.
Prosecutors previously said Moynihan was one of the first Trumpists to storm the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 insurrection and among those who occupied the Senate chamber that day. He pleaded guilty to five misdemeanors and was sentenced to 21 months in prison but was among the roughly 1,500 January 6 participants to receive a pardon from President Donald Trump on his first day in office.
Political violence does, in fact, target “both sides”
Donald Trump Jr.’s Tuesday night comments reflect a talking point frequently heard in right-wing spaces. In the wake of the shocking murder of Republican activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk, many in MAGA media and President Trump himself baselessly declared the case symptomatic of a terroristic left targeting a nonviolent right.
This argument flies in the face of what we’ve seen the last several years, as right-wing extremists have violently attacked not just the U.S. Capitol but also Democratic politicians and their families as well as Black, Hispanic, and Jewish Americans. Denying that reality derails any hope of a genuine conversation about political violence, a genuine scourge in this country, in favor of what appears to be a Trump administration plan to use Kirk’s death as a pretext to wield state power against its political enemies in a broad crackdown on dissent.
A Trump supporter who rioted against democracy and received a presidential pardon subsequently threatening to murder a leading Democratic politician hammers home the absurdity of the MAGA talking point.
And so Fox is hiding that news from its audience as part of its frequently deployed strategy to downplay or ignore stories that undermine its narratives. The network’s hosts and executives seem to prefer keeping viewers ignorant in order to maintain their fearfulness and fury at their fellow Americans.
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troll? an 10 25
Fox News host Sean Hannity that President Donald Trump should forget Canada and make Venezuela America's 51st state, according to The Daily Beast.
This suggestion comes after the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, dedicated it to Trump and “the suffering people of Venezuela." Trump and his supporters relentlessly campaigned for him to win the prize.
“I dedicated this award to the Venezuelan people and President Trump because I believe that’s absolutely fair,” Machado, a Trump supporter, said. “We, the Venezuelan people, are absolutely grateful to President Trump for the way he has supported democracy and freedom in the Americas.”
“This opposition leader in Venezuela that won the Nobel Prize, and said it really deserved to go to Donald Trump, sounds like a pretty good leader to me for the people of Venezuela, and the end of narcoterrorism, and a better relationship with the U.S.,” Hannity said to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “Or, if they choose, maybe the 51st state.”
“Sounds good to me!” Graham exclaimed.
While Trump may not 'get' Venezeula as the 51st state, he does think he still has a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize.
"So the person who actually got the Nobel prize called today, called me and said, I’m accepting this in honor of you because you really deserved it,” he said at a press conference. “I didn’t say, ‘Then give it to me,’ though. I could have. I think she might have.”
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MMA
Sean Hannity attempts to scare radio listeners away from No Kings protests}:
10/15/25
October 15, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Now they can't do a thing until this -- what is this called? The kings -- No Kings rally that they're having around the country, all over the country on Saturday. By the way, wherever you live, find out where these rallies are and stay and keep your family as far away as possible. That is my tip of the week. Don't go to those rallies. Don't have anything to do with it.
Now, if you want to report on it, just know you're putting yourself into a hostile area, and God only knows what some of these lunatics on the left are capable of.
MMA}:
10/08/25
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MMA SEE BAD TRINITY
Calls for retaliatory prosecutions are the next phase in the right’s rewriting of January 6
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/08/25
The MAGA right’s cynical effort to rewrite the history of January 6 reached a new but seemingly inevitable low this week, as right-wing media figures, the GOP, and the Trump administration teamed up to demand retribution against those who attempted to impose consequences on the perpetrators of the event.
In late 2020, President Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party and right-wing media attempted to overturn the results of the election that he had lost, using false claims of widespread voter fraud. That campaign’s final phase relied on Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral count based on a nonsensical legal theory. When it became clear Pence would not cooperate, a mob of Trumpists — summoned to Washington, D.C., by the president who told them “we will never concede” — assaulted scores of law enforcement officers as they stormed the U.S. Capitol, sending Pence and the assembled Congress into hiding and delaying the counting of electoral votes.
This January 6 insurrection faced widespread public condemnation in its immediate aftermath. But right-wing propagandists, led by then-Fox star Tucker Carlson, went to work dismantling what turned out to be a fragile consensus. In the insidious counternarrative they created, January 6 was either righteous or something of a nothingburger, and the true scandal was the subsequent efforts to punish its perpetrators. Four years later, that version of events is the dominant one on the right, with special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over his role treated as part of a Democratic plot. And as a result, efforts to achieve accountability for the crimes of January 6 have become partisan almost by definition.
Fox News star host Jesse Watters said the day after the storming of the U.S. Capitol that “people that think it wasn't that big of a deal” were wrong. “You can't smash windows, spray police with chemical agents, assault police officers, loot, and vandalize.”
But this week, Watters declared that “the Democrat reaction to January 6 was worse than January 6.” Watters pointed to the new revelation served up by Trump law enforcement appointees that Smith had received the phone records of several Republican senators from the period around January 6 as part of his criminal investigation of the events and baselessly concluded that “what they were probably trying to do is cast this wide net to create some grand criminal conspiracy and indict the entire Republican Party.”
Watters then demanded retribution against Smith and other federal law enforcement figures involved in the January 6 investigations. “This guy should be in prison,” he said. “And what they need to do is either appoint a special counsel or have some sort of Senate select committee to go up, do hearings, put Wray, put Garland, put Smith under oath, and if they lie, you throw them in prison.”
Video
Citation
From the October 7, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five
Legal reporters and experts have noted that seeking phone records of Republican officials who might have been in communication with Trump around the time of January 6 was an obvious step for the investigators, who ultimately indicted the president over what they alleged were attempts to use “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” But that conclusion presumes that investigators should have been investigating at all, and the current position of the Trumpist right is exactly as Watters pitched it: After Trump’s return to the presidency, he pardoned January 6 perpetrators and purged law enforcement who helped prosecute them.
On Tuesday night, Fox hosts and the Republican guests they hosted pushed falsehoods about Smith’s probe in order to justify retaliatory investigations into his effort. The sequence of events is roughly analogous to the crusade by Trump, congressional Republicans, and propaganda outlets like Fox to secure investigations into special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. That resulted in years of content for Fox’s stars — but the resulting four-year probe failed to garner prison time for a single person.
Here we go again.
Jack Smith did not “spy” on Republican senators in a scandal “worse than Watergate”
Fox stars Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all used the same false characterization on Tuesday as they sought to stir up outrage about Smith’s January 6 probe.
Watters claimed that the “big story” was “that Joe Biden's FBI was spying on top Republican senators”; Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the senators whose records were included, subsequently told the host that the FBI “got wiretaps essentially” against them. Ingraham claimed the senators “were all spied on” in “an attempt at partisan surveillance.” According to Hannity, Smith had been “using the federal government to spy on several U.S. senators.”
Hannity and Ingraham also ran with with Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) absurd characterization of the report as “WORSE THAN WATERGATE”: Ingraham termed it “arguably worse than Watergate,” while Hannity claimed more definitively that the report was “worse than anything alleged against Richard Nixon during Watergate.”
These claims are baseless and absurd.
The Watergate scandal featured operatives associated with Nixon’s reelection campaign attempting to break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee on the orders of a White House official, most likely in an effort to place equipment to actively surveil the president’s partisan opposition for explicitly political purposes. This is obviously very different from legitimate investigative steps taken as part of a duly promulgated criminal investigation.
And the FBI document at the root of the claim does not say anything about active or real-time surveillance — it references only a “preliminary toll analysis on limited toll records associated with” nine members of Congress.
The records were reportedly obtained from major telephone providers responding to a subpoena Smith obtained. And according to Grassley, the record the FBI reviewed “shows when and to whom a call is made, as well as the duration and general location data of the call” but “does not include the content of the call.”
Fox uses false premises to call for criminal investigations
All three shows featured calls for further investigations into Smith’s probe.
“It's time Pam Bondi appoint a special counsel to investigate Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, and Chris Wray,” Watters declared. “At the very least, we should have a Senate special select committee hold hearings and have these goons testify under oath, and if they lie to Congress, off to prison. As they said, no one is above the law.”
Hawley, in his interview with Watters, likewise called for “a special prosecutor who's going to go at this hard,” adding, “We need hearings in public. Put these people under oath. Start with Jack Smith. Let's hear from Merrick Garland. Let's hear from Christopher Wray -- and anybody who broke the law needs to be prosecuted.”
“I think the time has come for criminal prosecutions,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) told Ingraham. “I think indictments should be coming here. We can't tolerate this and the Democrats try to act like President Trump's weaponizing. It's not what's happening.”
And on Hannity’s show, FBI Director Kash Patel declared that such probes were ongoing.
“We're just warming up,” he said. “But we are running our investigations to the ground. We are finding every single person involved. We will not leave a single room locked.”
“This is what Donald Trump was put in place to do,” he concluded. “And I'm honored to be his FBI director to lead this charge. And the men and women at the FBI, we're all in on this mission.”
That doesn’t include, of course, the FBI agents fired or reassigned because they worked January 6 cases. Because for this administration and the propagandists who support it, those who tried to get accountability for January 6 are the saga’s true villains.
//
They did it and will do it again – if no one stops them
07/22/22 11:12 AM EDT
01/03/24 8:57 AM EST
10/07/2
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MMA
Why the right-wing media apparatus is suddenly yelling about Jack Smith supposedly spying on GOP senators
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/07/25
Republicans and their right-wing media allies yesterday spun out frothy allegations about former special counsel Jack Smith purportedly “spying on Republican senators” in order to forestall tough questions about the state of the Justice Department. But their dark conspiracy theory immediately collapses under scrutiny.
Attorney General Pam Bondi was slated to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for what seemed fated to be a grueling hearing. Potential avenues for congressional oversight could include the unprecedented weaponization of her department as an extension of President Donald Trump’s will; the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein saga, including the location of the Epstein “client list” she once claimed to possess and a potential presidential pardon for the notorious sex offender’s chief accomplice; and the legal authority for the deployment of the U.S. military on American streets.
But FBI Director Kash Patel, his deputy Dan Bongino, and the stenographers at Fox News were happy to try to help her out of that tough spot. On the afternoon before the hearing, Fox News Digital reported that “former Special Counsel Jack Smith was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of nearly a dozen Republican Senators as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.” The October 6 article was based on a document “recently discovered by FBI Director Kash Patel and exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital,” which states that an FBI special agent “‘conducted preliminary toll analysis’ on the toll records associated with” eight senators and one member of the House as part of Smith’s probe, which at the time was called Arctic Frost. The story also included quotes from Bongino, whom the report said would be meeting with the affected members of Congress that day.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, subsequently posted the document on social media, saying that it “shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues.” He added, “BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”
Their allegations were quickly promoted by MAGA media outlets and on Tuesday morning were highlighted by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as they sought to shield Bondi from criticism.
But legal reporters explained that there’s not much to the story — the FBI needed to review the toll records of senators in order to establish who Trump and his alleged co-conspirators were trying to contact before and during the January 6 insurrection.
Smith’s final report cites such toll records in a footnote for its statement that “at around the same time as he issued his 6:01 p.m. Tweet [telling his supporters occupying the U.S. Capitol to leave], Mr. Trump tried to reach two U.S. Senators, and he also directed Co-Conspirator 1 to call Members of Congress and attempt to enlist them to further delay the certification” of the electoral votes, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported.
“It actually seems sort of obvious that if you’re investigating a former president of the United States for trying to subvert an election, you’d probe some of contacts he and alleged co-conspirators had with people he was trying to enlist/pressure to overturn the results,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted.
“In other words, if you start from the premise that the entire probe was political, then seeking lawmakers’ toll records would be inherently bad,” Cheney added. “But if you view the probe as righteous or justified, then it’s not hard to see why those records would be pertinent.”
You won’t have trouble guessing which side the MAGAsphere came down on. Trump gave clemency to all the January 6 defendants, including those convicted of assaulting police and seditious conspiracy, still falsely claims to have won the 2020 election, and clearly believes that the only thing wrong with his election subversion plot was that it was unsuccessful. On Monday, his loyal propagandists at Fox and Newsmax leaped into action to promote the purported FBI bombshell.
On Fox, Newsmax, “stunning” story shows Smith conducted an “enemies list investigation,” is “going to go to jail
Just minutes after Fox News Digital published its story, Fox host Will Cain declared it “pretty stunning.” He went on to claim that Democrats had engaged in “projection when it comes to authoritarianism. But if this doesn't fit the bill, this doesn't fit the definition, what is the definition of authoritarianism?”
His guest, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX), replied, “This is the quintessential definition of it.”
Later that night, Fox host Jesse Watters claimed that the story shows that “Biden's FBI was spying on Republican senators.”
His prime-time colleague Sean Hannity hosted right-wing journalist John Solomon, who declared that “Arctic Frost is starting to look like an enemies list investigation” and “a really troubling diagram of how the deep state was working under Joe Biden. The FBI, the DOJ working hand and glove to spy, pry, into the lives, the conversations, and the data of Republicans.”
Solomon went on — somehow maintaining a straight face — to accuse the FBI of potentially “intruding on a constitutionally protected event” because, in the time period for which the bureau sought the toll records, Congress had been certifying the election (except when they were evacuated in the face of a violent mob of Trumpists).
Video
Citation
From the October 6, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity
The rhetoric was similarly over-the-top in the prime-time hours of Fox competitor Newsmax.
“Jack Smith, bad guy, and I think he's just been busted in something really bad,” host Greg Kelly said at the top of his segment on the report. He described the FBI’s actions as “illegal,” adding, “Jack Smith, I think you’re going to go to jail.”
Fellow host Rob Schmitt didn’t seem to understand what the story was actually about, even as he promoted it to his audience. He told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), “You had your phone tapped by Jack Smith,” and asked the senator to “illustrate to us how big a deal this is.” Johnson gently corrected Schmitt, saying that investigators had only obtained “metadata,” before claiming that the report “should shock and outrage every American.”
(Newsmax quickly updated its chyron from “FBI: JACK SMITH TAPPED PHONES OF GOP SENATORS” to “FBI: JACK SMITH SNOOPED ON GOP PHONES.”)
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BAD TRINITY
A Trump-appointed judge just demolished right-wing fearmongering about Portland
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/06/25 MMA
Fox News propagandists cheered last month when President Donald Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to send 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, claiming the move was necessary because, in host Jesse Watters’ words, the entire city “has been under siege by antifa for four months.” But a Trump-nominated federal judge blocked the deployment on Saturday, noting that protests in the city have been “small and uneventful” for months and writing that the president’s order “was simply untethered to the facts.”
After Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., in August and suggested he would do the same in other U.S. cities, right-wing media spent September trying to turn Portland into the president’s next target. They created and fed the narrative that Portland is a “chaotic city” consumed by “civil insurrection” in which “every weekend is war.” While news reports from the city portrayed the protests as minor, MAGA pundit Steve Bannon told his audience, “Antifa's burning down Portland every night. … They've taken control of Portland.”
The president responded to the overheated commentary of his most zealous supporters. In a September 27 post to Truth Social, Trump ordered Hegseth to send troops to protect “War ravaged Portland” from “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” and claimed he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
But after Hegseth directed 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to the city over the objection of Gov. Tina Kotek, the state of Oregon and the city of Portland sued in federal court, arguing that the president had exceeded his legal and constitutional authority.
District Court Judge Karin Immergut — a stalwart of the GOP legal community who worked on Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton, served as a U.S. attorney under President George W. Bush, and was nominated to the bench by Trump himself — agreed. On October 4, she issued a temporary restraining order which blocked the deployment.
Trump-appointed judge: Portland protests “were small and uneventful”
Immergut wrote in her ruling that Trump had not met the standard under the statutory authority he invoked, which only allows the president to federalize National Guard units in cases of invasion, rebellion, or when the federal government has been rendered otherwise unable to execute the law.
She explained that contrary to Trump’s depiction of the situation in Portland, her review determined: “As of September 27, 2025, it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in Portland. During this time frame, there were sporadic events requiring either PPB monitoring or federal law enforcement intervention, but overall, the protests were small and uneventful.”
The judge added that the federal government produced “only four incidents of protesters clashing with federal officers in the month of September preceding the federalization order,” calling these “inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces.”
She further wrote that the standard the federal government tried to set “would allow the President to call in the National Guard whenever one law enforcement office receives support from another office, which is a routine aspect of law enforcement activity. If the President could equate diversion of federal resources with his inability to execute federal law, then the President could send military troops virtually anywhere at any time.”
Immergut concluded that Trump lacked the statutory authority to federalize the guard in this case “because the situation on the ground belied an inability of federal law enforcement officers to execute federal law,” adding: “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
That’s not how Fox presented Portland to its viewers
Fox hosts pulled out the stops to present the city as a violent hellhole crying out for the federal intervention the president had ordered.
“Left-wing terror is at record highs,” Watters declared on his September 29 broadcast. “They're shooting at Teslas, Trump, Charlie, and ICE. After sending in the Guard into L.A. and D.C., Trump is going for round three — Portland.”
“This weekend, he directed the secretary of war to send 200 National Guardsmen to protect war-ravaged Portland, and he is authorizing them to use full force if necessary, because federal facilities in Portland have been under siege since the start of the summer,” Watters continued, adding, “Every weekend, antifa has been on the warpath.”
Watters claimed two nights later: “Portland has been under siege by antifa for four months. The Guard is there to get things under control, but Portland Democrats say they want to deport the Guard because the protests are mostly peaceful.”
On September 29, host Laura Ingraham similarly claimed that Portland was “getting a dose of Trump-style safety” because an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and “the areas around it have been under siege regularly in Oregon, and it continued this past weekend.” She added that Oregon was “rushing to court siding with criminals and against public safety.”
The same night, host Sean Hannity accused Oregon and Portland of “typical radical, predictable left-wing sanctuary state and city lies” because officials there supposedly won’t acknowledge that the “city’s on fire” and consumed by “a whole lot … of violence, lawlessness if you ask me.”
Their arguments are wildly overstated on the facts. But there’s so much more at stake, as Immergut pointed out in her ruling.
“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” she wrote. “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.”
Fox’s star hosts apparently disagree, and are standing with Trump as he tries to send the nation hurtling toward martial law.
//
08/14/25 10:52 AM EDT
- ### Right-wing media’s dystopian Portland coverage feeds into Trump’s threats to deploy National Guard
09/29/25 5:48 PM EDT
10/06/2
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10/02/25 MMA
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MMA
Right-wing media run wild with the blatantly false claim that Democrats are shutting down the government to secure “health care for illegals”
The New York Times noted a “misleading” Republican talking point on the looming shutdown. That talking point is all over right-wing media.
Written by Gideon Taaffe, Isabella Sherk & Pete Tsipis
Published 09/30/25
Right-wing media are pushing a lie that Democrats are threatening to shut down the government over “free health care for illegal immigrants” and want to “blow up the budget” for “illegal aliens” even though undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded health benefits.
The Democrats are actually pushing to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act without which millions of Americans could face significantly higher health care premiums and lose access to health care. Additionally, Democrats are pushing to reverse cuts to federally funded health care that were passed under Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill” in July.
- ## As the government faces a shutdown, conservatives lie about Democrats’ funding priorities
- The U.S. government may face a shutdown on October 1 if Congress does not pass a short-term funding bill, and currently the two main points of contention are Democrats’ call to extend enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act coverage that are set to expire this year and reverse cuts to health care, including Medicaid, passed in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”CNN, [9/30/25]
- Democrats have proposed to continue the ACA subsidies, which would help “22 million Americans lower their health insurance costs” and save health care for an estimated 4 million.According to the nonpartisan health policy research group KFF, the result of letting the subsidies end would be “an increase of more than 75% in premiums on average for enrollees; a 90% increase in many rural areas.” Subsequently, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people will lose health insurance. CBS News, [9/30/25; KFF, 9/3/25; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/22/25]
- Several prominent Republicans have falsely claimed that Democrats are trying to use a government shutdown to demand health care for undocumented immigrants.President Donald Trump posted a deepfake video to Truth Social of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in a sombrero and a mustache and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claiming, “If we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.” Vice President JD Vance posted, “Democrats are about to shutdown the government because they demand we fund healthcare for illegal aliens.” And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) put out a press release that claimed “Democrats are Choosing Health Care for Illegal Aliens over American Troop Pay.” Truth Social, [9/29/25; Politico, 9/30/25; Twitter/X, 9/25/25; MikeJohnson.house.gov, 9/28/25]
- NY Times: The Democrats’ budget proposal “does not provide free health care for unauthorized immigrants.”Undocumented immigrants are “largely barred from federally funded health care,” as the Times reports, and while the Democrats’ proposal would restore eligibility for certain groups of “lawfully present” immigrants, it would not make unauthorized immigrants eligible. The Times adds: “There is no uniform definition for ‘lawful presence,’ a term typically used by federal and state health care and social welfare programs to determine eligibility. Most groups of ‘lawfully present’ noncitizens have authorized or legal immigration status like refugees and asylum recipients.” The New York Times, [9/29/25]
- ## Right-wing media falsely claim Democrats are shutting down the government over health care for undocumented immigrants
- Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt claimed Democrats say “we want health care for all Americans, but that would include the illegals.”Co-host Lawrence Jones replied, “They’re still fighting for illegals. You just lost the election over it.” He said the Democrats don’t have political support on this: “You lost on it. Move forward.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*,[9/30/25]
- Teasing a segment, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher said, “A government shutdown now 25 hours away and it appears Democrats are still pushing free health care for illegal immigrants.” Fox News, *Fox News @ Night*, [9/29/25]
- Fox host Sean Hannity said, “Schumer and his Democratic friends … want free health care for illegals as part of that deal.” He said it is “interesting because Democrats used to be totally against free health care benefits for illegals” and played clips of Schumer and then-first lady Hillary Clinton opposing the idea. Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/29/25]
- On his radio show, Hannity said Schumer won’t get what he wants because “we're not going to pay for health care for illegal immigrants by virtue of the fact they don't deserve benefits that are supposed to be reserved for the American people.” Premier Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [9/29/25]
- Fox host Mark Levin posted that Democrats “want to give their biggest constituency, illegal aliens, free healthcare at your expense, and blow up the budget.” He added that they will shut down the government if Republicans don’t “go along and spend another $1 trillion plus!” Twitter/X, [9/27/25]
- Hannity claimed that “if there is a government shutdown, it will be on the Democrats,” saying, “Democrats are fighting for, you know, for services for illegal immigrants. They're fighting for more DEI programs.” Hannity stated this to a caller who criticized Hannity for saying federal employees would “go home for two weeks, sit on the couch, and then come back and get back pay.” Premier Radio Networks,*The Sean Hannity Show*, [9/26/25]
- Hannity also claimed that Democrat demands “include things like over a trillion dollars in new spending for health care for illegals, taxpayer-funded gender swap surgeries for minors, open borders, men in women’s sports.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/23/25]
- Right-wing podcast host Laura Loomer wrote, “Democrats are threatening to shut down the government unless they get taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegals.” She added, “They really do hate America.” Twitter/X, [9/26/25]
- Right-wing talk show host and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that “access to health care” is “code for taxpayer financed healthcare for illegals.” Twitter/X, [9/30/25]
- Right-wing influencer Catturd posted, “Imagine shutting down the government because you want illegals to have free healthcare, and then thinking it’s gonna be popular with the American people.” Twitter/X, [9/30/25]
//
09/30/25 12:35 PM EDT
09/30/25 12:13 PM EDT
09/30/25
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WATTERS CLEARLY JOKING ABOUT VIOLENCE /BOMB BUT WHAT MAKES A LEGIT TARGET FOR JOKE?
09/23/25
RAMBLED, LIED? NOBEL PRIZE 7 WARS, 4X TIME LIMIT
09/23/25
MMA
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rfk looks bad in senate hearings 9 25 on msnbc yt anyway
mma
How right-wing media sow distrust and confusion around vaccines and science
As Florida ends school vaccine requirements and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership comes under fire, the right has repackaged anti-science talking points as well-meaning skepticism
Written by Gideon Taaffe, Isabella Sherk, Jack Wheatley & Jack Winstanley
Published 09/18/25
Amid the rise of the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement, right-wing media figures have employed a variety of tactics that sow doubt and confusion around vaccine efficacy and science more broadly. These efforts to capitalize on existing distrust of public health institutions and pharmaceutical companies have gained renewed momentum following Florida’s elimination of vaccine requirements for schools and comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a contentious Senate hearing.
MAHA acolytes have challenged well-studied topics by “just asking questions,” described vaccination requirements as impediments to freedom and parental choice, and exploited post-pandemic mistrust of public health infrastructure and pharmaceutical companies.
The MAHA movement is fueling mistrust in medicine amid a CDC leadership shake-up and Florida's elimination of vaccine requirements
- In early September, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced the state is working to eliminate all vaccine requirements for children in public schools, an announcement which quickly came under fire by doctors and public health experts. In his statement to the public, Ladapo said of vaccines, “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” The American Medical Association released a statement opposing the move, stating: “This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death.” NBC News, [9/3/25; The American Medical Association, 9/3/25]
- After the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced scrutiny from both sides of the aisle at a contentious Senate hearing where many called for his resignation.Monarez’s firing spurred other top CDC officials to step down and caution the public over the state of the organization’s scientific independence. This, along with criticism for canceling $500 million in funding for mRNA research that produced the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine, contributed to a dramatic hearing where senators sparred with Kennedy. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who voted for Kennedy’s confirmation, said the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation that only people at high risk for complications and those over 65 need the vaccine effectively denies people access to the shot. NPR, [9/4/25; BBC News, 8/5/25; CBS News,8/28/25]
- At a September 17 Senate hearing, Monarez testified that Kennedy had told her “that the ‘childhood vaccine schedule would be changing starting in September’ and that she ‘needed to be on board with it.’” According to NPR, Monarez told the senators that Kennedy “just wanted blanket approval” adding, “Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology.” NPR, [9/17/25]
- The New York Times used AI to analyze 38 MAHA figures and organizations featured in around 12,000 videos and podcasts, concluding that these influencers amplify frustration with the health care system to reel viewers in “using wellness content as a trojan horse for conspiracy theories.” The Times noted that some of these figures are using these platforms to sell a product rather than to meaningfully address public health problems like poverty or lack of access to nutritious food and health care. One interviewee who got pulled down the MAHA rabbit hole said, “I thought if my daughter got vaccinated, she would die in her sleep that night.” The New York Times, [9/9/25]
- ## Tactic 1: “Just asking questions” about established science as a means to sow doubt
- Right-wing media figures have presented uninformed, speculative questions about the safety of vaccines as legitimate criticism of the science, saying there’s nothing wrong with “wanting to ask questions” and often presenting their own queries as evidence that established bodies of research should be approached skeptically. In an essay for Big Think, Warren Berger argued that people falsely equate “questioning with critical thinking” and added that conspiracy theorists “act as if their uninformed, speculative questions demand that someone else provide answers.” Kelly Weirich, professor of philosophy at Pierce College, also stated that “while questions technically don’t make claims, they do affirm claims in a subtler way through the assumptions embedded in them.” University of Dayton lecturer Megan Donelson noted that the right’s tactic of “just asking questions” in this way “serves to undermine public trust in science and medicine.”
- Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones attacked Democrats questioning Kennedy, saying, “I guess the most frustrating thing about the entire hearing is there seems to be zero curiosity on why we're such a sick nation.” Jones continued, “I do have some genuine curiosity about the science about each vaccine. And it didn't seem like they were trying to get to the bottom of that or even hear him out.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/5/25]
- Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade asked, “When do you give the vaccines? Are you giving them all at once? Does that play into autism?” He claimed that in a few weeks, Kennedy “will announce the cause of autism, or the likely cause, which I think is extremely beneficial for us.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/5/25]
- Jones later said that “there is something wrong with some of the vaccines,” adding that “not all of them are bad, but there are questions that Americans have about it.” He continued, “They should be able to give us answers. But we're not conducting our own studies. We depend on foreign people to do the studies, and there’s questions there.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/8/25]
- OnThe Five, co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery claimed, “I disagree with him [Kennedy] on a lot of stuff but at least he makes me think about vaccines.” She added, “I think that is the best thing we can do as a society. And have these honest discussions about how we look and what we are putting in our bodies, and the solutions we are giving our children when we are failing them — when all of these institutions are failing them.” Fox News, *The Five*, [9/4/25]
- Fox host and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she doesn’t agree with everything Kennedy says but likes his “healthy skepticism for the science, wanting to ask questions about your children, what we are putting in their bodies.” Fox News, *The Five*, [9/5/25]
- Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked MAHA podcaster Gary Brecka, “Are we overprescribing generally as a society and overvaccinating?” Brecka responded, “We are the most over-medicalized nation in the world,” describing the U.S. as “the sickest, fattest, most disease-ridden nation in the world.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/4/25]
- Newsmax host Rob Finnerty asked if it's possible that former President Joe Biden is “vaccine-injured” and suggested vaccination caused his cancer. Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [9/2/25]
- Fox News host Laura Ingraham noted that “Kennedy and others have raised questions about the number of new vaccines added to the recommended pediatric schedule.” Citing the supposedly “staggering” increase in recommended vaccinations, Ingraham argued that it “makes total sense” to change COVID vaccine approvals. Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [9/4/25]
- ## Tactic 2: Presenting vaccine requirements as impediments to freedom and parental choice
- Criticisms against public health policy surged at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and rhetoric equating vaccine mandates to government overreach has persisted within the right-wing media ecosystem. The Nations Health, an outlet of the American Public Health Association, has highlighted several recent examples of the “medical freedom movement” undermining public health by removing fluoride from tap water and promoting alternative medicines. Additionally, the new CDC recommendations will make it more difficult for those who wish to get vaccinated for COVID-19, as the vaccines may no longer be covered by insurance companies.
- On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity celebrated the Florida mandate rescission, which he claimed was “giving people freedom and giving people choice, which I think is great.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [9/4/25]
- Hannity: “Masks may be coming back to California while the free state of Florida is moving to end draconian vaccine mandates for your children in school.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/4/25]
- Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson wrote that “vaccine mandates are wrong” and “Florida is absolutely right to remove them,” adding, “Parents should have the final say over kids’ health, not the government.” Twitter/X, [9/4/25]
- Dr. Simone Gold, an anti-vaccine activist and January 6 participant, celebrated the FDA’s move to end Emergency Use Authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine, stating, “Mandates are dead. Freedom wins.” Twitter/X, [8/27/25, ABC News, 6/12/22]
- Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt emphasized parental choice while talking about COVID vaccines, saying, “As a mom, I’m going to decide what my child gets.”Earhardt: “There were a handful of us that didn't want our kids to have the COVID vaccine. That was my choice as a mom, because we interviewed so many kids — the kid who played soccer out on Long Island, who fell and had a heart problem, can’t play anymore, and his parents thought it was because of the vaccine. I just heard so many stories like that, I made the decision for myself.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/5/25]
- ## Tactic 3: Exploiting distrust of public health organizations, experts, and pharmaceutical manufacturers
- The MAHA movement and Kennedy — who according to NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin “seems to assume bad intent among experts” and who has accused public health agencies of “deliberately manipulating the truth” — have seized on a wider sense of mistrust and confusion following the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a report from Politico, “An increasing number of families are projecting their attitudes toward the Covid-19 vaccine onto shots for measles, chickenpox, meningitis and other diseases,” and “parents who were hesitant to vaccinate their children before the pandemic have now been joined by people who think the government mishandled the crisis.” Now, despite evidence suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccine saved millions of lives, Kennedy and his MAHA acolytes are exploiting this distrust in public health institutions to appeal to a base that “felt angered by a lot of early pandemic policies” and “felt betrayed by the government.”
- Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier claimed, “The CDC lost all credibility throughout the COVID pandemic when they continued to universally recommend the COVID vaccine, even after the science changed.” She continued, “The problem here we have is that all of these vaccines are being lumped as though that they are created equally and they have the same benefit, and the reality is that's not true. So while removing all vaccine mandates for school-aged children is swinging that pendulum from one extreme to the other extreme, truly Americans — and especially our children — deserve more of a nuanced discussion about this.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/4/25]
- Right-wing podcaster Liz Wheeler wrote that fewer people now believe the government should “forcibly vaxx kids” because “70+ shots added to the schedule, an insane epidemic of autism, ADHD, cancer, neurological issues, & autoimmune diseases among CHILDREN.” She continued, “A generation of children have been hurt, and we all know it. If you think Bobby Kennedy doesn’t have America’s support, you’re crazy.” Twitter/X, [9/4/25]
- Wheeler reposted a video of Kennedy onFox & Friendsclaiming the CDC was hiding vaccine safety data from him. She wrote, “I wonder why?” Twitter/X, [9/7/25]
- The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles claimed the CDC “lost their credibility during COVID,” adding, “They lied to us about vaccines.” He continued, “They lied to us about the efficacy of the vaccine. They lied to us about the safety of the vaccine. They lied to us about everything regarding the vaccine.” The Daily Wire, *The Michael Knowles Show*, [9/2/25]
- Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty claimed, “Hundreds of millions of people were forced to get the vaccine” during the COVID pandemic, adding, “People have had adverse reactions to this vaccine we were told was safe that was forced upon us.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [9/4/25]
- TownHall writer Scott Morefield shared a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump in which he asked pharmaceutical companies to “justify the success of their various Covid Drugs,” adding, “This kind of spotlight on the efficacy of the mRNA jabs could cause the whole house of cards to come crashing down.” Morefield celebrated Trump’s post, stating, “I didn’t think Trump’s ego would ever allow him to do this, but he continues to pleasantly surprise me,” and ending with “Bravo!” Twitter/X, [9/1/25]
- Fox News host Jesse Watters questioned the vaccine recommendations for children, saying the “people at the CDC recommending it are at the CDC because the vaccine industry put them there,” and he accused senators of “blindly defending vaccine companies like it's their job.” Watters: “Why does a baby get 18 shots before they are 18 months old? It used to be eight — now it's 18. Why does a kid have 76 shots before they are old enough to vote? We never used to get that many, but the CDC recommends this. And the people at the CDC recommending it are at the CDC because the vaccine industry put them there. Maybe 76 is the right amount. Maybe it could be a little less or a lot less. We don't know. RFK is just trying to get a fresh set of eyes on it and look at the data. And senators are blindly defending vaccine companies like it's their job.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/4/25]
- Watters suggested that people advocating for vaccinations are doing so to keep getting “pharma cash.” Watters: “If Kennedy isn’t recommending healthy 18-year-olds get COVID boosters, then there's less pharma cash to spread around to the politicians. If a baby gets eight vaccines instead of 18, less cash to spread around to the politicians. If doctors tell patients to eat healthy and exercise instead of get the fat shot, less cash to the politicians. Same thing with sex changes, diabetes medication, and antidepressants. Did you know that the American Academy of Pediatrics, some of their biggest donors — vaccine makers? Take the COVID vaccine. Nothing they said about the COVID vaccine turned out to be true.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/4/25]
- Newsmax's Rob Schmitt described comments from senators questioning Kennedy as “enraged insults from politicians who have either been bribed to protect Big Pharma or those who have fully drunk their Kool-Aid.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [9/4/25]
//
09/09/25 10:09 AM EDT
- ### Fox News championed anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. Now he’s killing research into next-generation vaccines.
08/11/25 9:56 AM EDT
07/09/25
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mma
Jimmy Kimmel and the MAGA strong-arming of American media
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published09/18/25
As with so many of the Trump administration’s excesses, a simple recitation of the events leading to Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension sounds like something out of dystopian fiction. ABC’s Wednesday night announcement that it was putting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus in the face of White House threats is the latest sign that U.S. media are increasingly coming under the control of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.
Trump had been targeting Kimmel and ABC for months. In the wake of frequent administration critic Stephen Colbert’s July announcement that his late-night show was ending, the president gloated that Kimmel would be “NEXT to go.” Last month, Trump argued that the Federal Communications Commission should revoke the licenses of ABC stations because it broadcasts too many “BAD STORIES” about him and provides “unfair coverage of Republicans.” And on Monday morning, he threatened ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, saying that Attorney General Pam Bondi might target him and his network for purportedly airing anti-Trump “hate speech.”
Kimmel inaccurately suggested during his Monday night monologue that the alleged killer of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk was part of “the MAGA gang.” Under ordinary circumstances, such a statement could result in a correction and apology. But Kimmel’s remarks occurred in an environment in which Trump and his administration are eager to punish political speech they dislike.
Brendan Carr, the FCC’s Trumpy chair, wielded Kimmel’s monologue as a cudgel against his network during a Tuesday appearance on right-wing influencer Benny Johnson’s show. Carr accused Kimmel of “an intentional effort to mislead the American people” and threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliates with regulatory retribution in response, saying: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
He specifically suggested that affiliate networks should tell Disney that they would not run Kimmel’s show “until you straighten this out” and insinuated that they could face “license revocation from the FCC” if they did not.
Carr’s threats appear to be a clear violation of the First Amendment — but that matters only if Disney and the affiliate networks are willing to fight to uphold those rights in court.
Instead, Nexstar Media Group, which needs FCC approval for its proposed purchase of the stations owned by media company Tegna, said its affiliates would immediately preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! Shortly after, Disney announced that it was putting the show on hiatus. And Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owned by the pro-Trump Smith family, said it would not return Kimmel’s show to its airwaves until ABC committed to “appropriate steps” and called for the late-night host to make a “meaningful personal donation” to Kirk's right-wing political group.
Carr subsequently joined Fox News’ Sean Hannity to take a curtain call and praise Nexstar and Sinclair for following his dictates.
It’s worth pointing out that neither Johnson nor Hannity could operate under Carr’s stated standard — but they had no objections to his statements because they understand that his actual goal is enforcing MAGA political correctness norms by which they already abide.
This capitulation is only the latest sign of increasing MAGA control over the free press
Trump has long benefited from a massive parallel right-wing ecosystem, from Fox News to talk radio to a host of MAGA streamers and influencers. But since Trump won election last fall, more and more of the corporate titans who control the U.S. media have come under his thumb.
When Trump attempted similar extortion tactics during his first term, the heads of media companies and owners of news outlets were willing to fight him in court. But since his election in November, executives at companies like Disney have proved far more willing to bend to his will.
Other news outlets either are owned by businessmen who have become more Trump-friendly (perhaps due to fears of retribution), like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, or have been taken over by businessmen with close ties to the president, like CBS News’ new Trump approved-owner David Ellison. More such consolidation is under way, with Ellison seeking to take over CNN and the Trump White House effectively nullifying the law as it tries to broker a deal in which TikTok would be sold to a coalition including companies controlled by his father, Larry Ellison, and fellow pro-Trump magnate Marc Andreessen.
Reporters at those outlets can and have continued to do vital reporting about the Trump administration under those circumstances. But they do so with knowledge that their ultimate bosses will not stand behind them in a pinch.
Other potential corporate targets like Comcast, which Trump has previously threatened over the coverage of NBC and MSNBC, have not yet faced the same level of retaliatory scrutiny. But their day will inevitably come, particularly after Trump and Carr saw how quickly Disney folded in the face of their Kimmel attack.
The New York Times is among the few major news outlets that has no choice but to stand up for its output and a free press because its ownership does not have other substantial business interests. But Trump is targeting them in a different way — this week, he launched a $15 billion defamation lawsuit over reporting that questioned his business acumen.
And in a sign that even regime-aligned owners will face punishment for critical reporting, Trump filed a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its corporate parent’s chairman, Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, seeking $10 billion in damages over the paper’s coverage of his ties to disgraced financier and deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump’s endgame is clear. He wants to ensure that media outlets don’t produce coverage that criticizes him or his administration, but instead convey an endless stream of propaganda about his accomplishments.
He wants every outlet to be Fox News. And at this rate, he may get it.
//
08/25/25 12:40 PM EDT
10/29/24 9:09 AM EDT
09/09/25
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mma
August 26, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks'The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Did you say to my call screener that sending Kilmar to Uganda is terrible?
CALLER: No, I said that was criminal.
HANNITY: Criminal? Now, you do know that Kilmar's wife, Mr. Abrego's wife, accused him of being a wife beater? You do know that?
CALLER: Hey, hey.
HANNITY: Do you or do you not know that fact?
CALLER: Hey, that has nothing to do with it. So, don't --
HANNITY: I'm asking a question. Do you or do you not know that fact?
CALLER: Yeah. I know the story, and I also know that she --
HANNITY: Okay, now, I have another question. Do you know for a fact that Kilmar Abrego Garcia entered this country illegally? He did not respect the country's laws, our borders, and our sovereignty.
...
HANNITY: So the symbols that are tattooed into his hands that every expert that I have read says it's MS-13 tattooed all over him. Now, do you want an MS-13 illegal immigrant in your town, in your city? You want them to move in next door to you?
CALLER: No. Wait. Wait. Now, you're lying about those tattoos.
HANNITY: Oh, I'm not lying about the tattoos. I'm telling you, I've read it everywhere.
CALLER: You are.
HANNITY: And it's been confirmed by our own government unless you think the government's lying and law enforcement's lying.
CALLER: They were going to kick him out of the country and was lying about it. Yeah, okay.
HANNITY: Why are you so angry? Why are you so defensive of somebody that really had no business being in the country?
CALLER: Why are you so vindictive?
HANNITY: I'm not. I'm just a believer in the rule of law.
MMA
Eight damning new revelations about Fox’s 2020 election lies from the Smartmatic filings
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 08/21/25
Newly available filings in the election technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News provide fresh insights into the network’s egregious and irresponsible promotion of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies — four and a half years after Fox’s propaganda helped trigger a violent insurrection in which enraged Trumpists sacked the U.S. Capitol.
The documents, which support Smartmatic’s motion for summary judgment and were originally filed in April, were first reported by The Washington Post after a judicial hearing officer removed many of the redactions.
The documents feature numerous previously unseen text messages and internal communications between Fox hosts, executives, producers, and other employees as Trump attempted to use false claims about the 2020 election to subvert the results of the election he lost and remain in power.
Fox’s internal machinations during this period were previously made public through the lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, another election technology company which accused the network of defamation over its post-election coverage. Fox ultimately settled that suit as it went to trial in 2023 for a record $787.5 million.
The contours of Smartmatic’s story are broadly similar to — if no less damning than — the one Dominion told: Fox hosts and executives knew that Trump lost the 2020 election and that the claims of widespread election fraud he and his supporters pushed were false, but they nonetheless pivoted in the days following the election to promote such conspiracy theories -– including falsehoods about the company — because they were taking heat from viewers overcalling Arizona for Joe Biden and feared losing market share to more aggressive competitors like Newsmax
But the Smartmatic filings provide new evidence that helps flesh out the tale of Fox’s cowardice and corruption.
Maria Bartiromo leveraged her status at Fox to try to overturn the election: “I am news”
Maria Bartiromo was once a respected business reporter, but reinvented herself as a hardcore MAGA propagandist during the first Trump administration. But even as she went further and further down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, Bartiromo has retained her position on Fox’s “news” side, anchoring Fox Business’ three-hour weekday program Mornings with Maria as well as the weekend show Sunday Morning Futures,which is simulcast on Fox News.
Smartmatic’s filings show Bartiromo leveraged that position as she tried to get Sidney Powell, the MAGA attorney notorious for her far-fetched election claims, to come on her Fox Business show in mid-November 2020. (Bartiromo hosted Powell on her Fox News show earlier that month to push election lies after Powell sent her an email featuring fraud hypotheses from someone who also claimed that “the Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it.”)
“Sidney we must keep you out there,” Bartiromo wrote in a November 17, 2020, Signal message.
She contrasted her own role at the network with that of then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, another avid promoter of election fraud lies, and suggested she could provide more helpful treatment, saying, “Dobbs is considered very opinionated. I am news. How about Friday?”
Bartiromo later suggested to Powell that her own goal was to reverse the election results and keep Trump in power. “I am very worried,” she wrote. “Please please please overturn this. Bring the evidence. I know you can.”
Bartiromo still has both of her “news” shows.
- ### Jeanine Pirro explicitly declared her loyalty to Trump and the GOP
The filings show then-Fox host Jeanine Pirro texted Ronna McDaniel, then the chair of the Republican National Committee, the following on September 21, 2020: “I work so hard for the party across the country… I’m the # 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and the party.”
It’s not precisely news that Pirro viewed her work at the network as an extension of Trump’s campaign — it would in fact have been difficult to come away with a different conclusion after watching her commentary over the years.
Nonetheless, it’s helpful to have that confirmed explicitly in writing.
- ### CEO Suzanne Scott ordered promotion of Fox prime-timers in “news” hours
In mid-November 2020, I reported that Fox appeared to be trying to stave off its competitors by heavily promoting its prime-time “opinion” stars during its purported “news” hours. This campaign included the “news” programs running ads hyping the hosts casting doubt on the election results, airing on-screen bugs promoting their shows, and playing lengthy clips from the “opinion” shows.
The Smartmatic filings reveal that Fox CEO Suzanne Scott apparently ordered this breach of the purported wall the network maintained existed between its “news” and opinion divisions. She emailed top Fox executives on November 9, 2020, demanding that the “news” hours increase its promotion of “opinion” talent like Pirro and the prime-time hosts. She wrote (emphasis added):
On the website – its 345p and I still dont see our opinion folks being promoted on .com – I’m seeing a ton of FOX nation – need that changed asap for the next few weeks. Same for FOX News channel – not seeing nearly enough promotion of primetime talent other than the little bug. And we should get a Pirro promo in as well. This is something I called around about first thing this morning. I’m traveling next four days and expect this to be handled well.
- ### Sean Hannity hosted Rudy Giuliani despite complaining he was “insane”: “I’m not redpill78”
Sean Hannity went from considering Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani an “insane” person he could not conceive of hosting to welcoming him back onto his program in 10 days.
The Fox host functioned as an extension of Trump’s White House and regularly hosted Giuliani to spin Ukraine conspiracy theories that Fox’s research team said were not credible. But the former New York City mayor turned Trump lawyer was apparently going too far for even Hannity in the early days of Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the 2020 election results.
The filings show Hannity texted associates on November 10, 2020, to say of Giuliani: “He is going nuts. We canceled the guy. Read what’s wrong…. He’s insane.” He told producers the following day that Giuliani is “acting like an insane person. I’m not redpill78.” (According to the Smartmatic filing, “Hannity testified that his reference to ‘redpill78’” — a streaming program associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory — “indicated that he was skeptical” of Giuliani.)
On November 19, 2020, Hannity interviewed Giuliani about his election fraud claims.
Hannity subsequently testified that he had hosted Giuliani because he was a “top newsmaker.”
He retains his Fox prime-time show.
- ### Jeanine Pirro’s path back into the Murdoch network’s good graces
The Dominion filings show that a Fox executive took Pirro off the air the weekend after Election Day, preempting her November 7, 2020, broadcast because he did not “trust her to be responsible.” They also reveal that after Pirro’s show returned the following weekend, her executive producer struggled in vain to prevent her from promoting what he termed her election “conspiracy theories.”
Those filings, however, do not fully explain why Pirro returned to the air in the first place. Smartmatic’s filings fill in that gap: They show that Pirro’s removal sparked a backlash from the MAGA faithful that Fox’s CEO, at Fox prime-time star Sean Hannity’s urging, sought to quell by increasing Pirro’s profile and allowing her to comment without “being censored.”
According to the filings, Hannity told Pirro via text message on November 10, 2020, that he had already reached out to Scott to talk about issues including Pirro’s treatment by the network. When Pirro vented to her colleague, “I’M TIRED OF THE CENSORSHIP AND I’M EMBARRASSED BY HOW THEY CALLED THIS ELECTION,” he further explained that he was “looking for changes” including “to leave u alone.”
Hannity may have already been getting results: Scott’s email the previous day ordering more promotion of Fox’s opinion hosts included Pirro along with the prime-time hosts. A few days later, promos for Pirro’s upcoming show were running and being distributed through right-wing channels.
A flurry of communications about Pirro’s show followed between Scott and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and between Scott and Fox executive vice president of primetime programming Meade Cooper the day before Pirro’s next broadcast.
“Has anyone spoken to Judge Jeanine before her show this weekend?” Murdoch asked Scott. “It would be good if she corrects the record and clears up the schedule change last week.”
Scott passed the request on to Cooper, who replied that they weren’t planning to make a statement about that and added, “David Clark is reviewing all scripts and working with her on her open. She is very into not being censored but he is working with her closely on it.”
“We don’t want to censor her,” Scott replied.
According to the filing, Scott “had a conversation with Pirro related to coverage of election fraud claims before Pirro’s November 14 show.” The same day, when Hannity texted her to crow about all the promos she was getting, Pirro replied, “I gave 3 demands. New producer. No censorship. 9 pretapes. Suzanne [Scott] promised me NOT overruled by Meade cooper.”
The newly unleashed Pirro used the opportunity the cowed Fox executive team gave her to promote election conspiracy theories that ultimately proved very expensive for Fox.
But it’s hard to get disciplined at Fox for being too supportive of Trump — she was subsequently promoted to the weekday panel show The Five and recently left Fox to become U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
- ### Fox exec: “It’s not the talents call” to cut away from White House press conference pushing election lies
Scott’s handling of Pirro shows how willing Fox was to bend over backward to provide editorial independence to its conspiratorial opinion hosts. But “news-side” personalities at the network who tried to shut down such claims weren’t so lucky.
The Smartmatic filings show top Fox executives expressing dismay after anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a November 9, 2020, White House press conference featuring press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and told viewers, “She’s charging the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can't in good countenance continue showing you this."
Tom Lowell, Fox’s vice president and managing editor of news, subsequently told other top Fox executives that anchors like Cavuto should not have the authority to cut away from live events, writing: “Needs to be a chain of command here considering the environment we are in. It’s not the talents call and [t]he EP [Executive Producer] needs approval from you [Mitchell] or Jay [Wallace] in the handling of pressers.”
- ### Fox’s CEO on airing election fraud “witnesses” live: “This is BUSINESS”
When GOP state legislators put on a series of sham election fraud “hearings” in late November and early December 2020, which featured Trump’s legal team and discredited “witnesses” with unverified or debunked claims, Trump praised Fox’s right-wing competitors for airing the hearings live — and criticized Fox for failing to do so.
Scott responded to the pressure by urging her network to start taking such hearings live in a December 2, 2020, email to Lowell. She suggested that the “witness testimony” at the events constituted the “evidence that the news division has been saying doesn’t exist,” and concluded, “This is BUSINESS. RIGHT NOW BAD BUSINESS.” From her email:
The entire impeachment was about one anonymous hearsay whistleblower. We ran the Schiff Nadler show wall to wall. If we wanted to send a strong message to the audience, run the witness testimony. That’s called evidence that the news division has been saying doesn’t exist. Now will the results ever change. Odds are next to zero. This is BUSINESS. RIGHT NOW BAD BUSINESS.
Lowell admitted that the network had featured witness testimony in stories about the hearings without fact-checking them but warned Scott that airing the events live was not a good news practice.
“It is one thing for us to give a platform to the Presidents Attorneys and surrogates, or people like this guy on with Sean [Hannity] right now who signed an affidavit, but we need to be skeptical of some of these supporters who just wander in to make statements about things they think they saw,” he wrote in an email to Scott.
- ### Jesse Watters was told not to push election fraud lies, did it anyway
The Smartmatic filings provide new details about what Fox’s Jesse Watters was told and what he did during this period, while he was the host of the weekend evening program Watters’ World.
Watters was explicitly warned not to promote election fraud claims immediately after the 2020 election, according to the filings.
“On November 6, Watters texted Fox host Pete Hegseth, ‘By the way, did you get the memo about not saying fraud?’” the filing states.
Watters testified that this was a reference to instructions relayed by his producer, Megan Albano. In a text message the same day, Albano told Watters, “If we call the race, you cannot, under any circumstances, cast doubt on” the election because “the powers that be are not having any of it.”
This message did not stick, the filing shows: “On November 21, 2020, an original television broadcast of Watters’ World aired at 8:00 p.m. on Fox News. Dobbs appeared as a guest, discussing a ‘cyber-attack’ using voting machines to steal the 2020 election, and Watters presented an ‘investigation’ into Dominion and Smartmatic.”
The filing further states that in a text to The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld, Watters wrote: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.”
Fox has since given Watters two promotions — he gained his own weekday evening show in January 2022, and that program took over the network’s “pivotal” 8 p.m. timeslot in June 2023.
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AN 8 25
The Atlantic reports courts will not likely let President Donald Trump destroy mail-in voting, but that won’t stop him from gumming up elections.
The president appears to have taken his most recent idea for ending mail-in voting from Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin, who told him “you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” according to a Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity.
Days later, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would ban “MAIL-IN BALLOTS” in an “EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He later said in an Oval Office press conference that: “We’re going to end mail-in voting. It’s a fraud.”
READ MORE: Trump just crossed a line no other president ever dared to
Such an order would have little legal power, writes Atlantic reporter Quinta Jurecic. “The American system for administering elections is highly decentralized: The work of deciding how people should vote and of helping them do so is largely carried out at the state and local levels, with the federal government playing only a minor role.”
Banning mail-in ballots is a presidential power that doesn’t exist, but Jurecic said Trump can still make an “enormous mess” by “MacGyvering” a clumsy workaround. The Justice Department could threaten state and local election officials with “baseless investigations” in an effort at intimidation.
“Prosecutors would encounter the small problem that no criminal statutes obviously apply to an election official legally handing out mail-in ballots. But the risk of a criminal investigation, even a meritless one, could still frighten election administrators,” Jurecic said.
READ MORE: This bootlicking concession to Trump is simply stunning
Trump’s “hatred of mail-in ballots dates back to 2016,” said Jurecic, when he complained of Colorado’s shift to all-mail voting. He also tried to claim that “fraudulent” mail-in votes stole his presidency — an idea that become a key claim of the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.
But his animosity is knocking up against Republican voters’ increasing use of mail-in voting in their own elections, and Jurecic, adding that Trump’s advisors “may have to struggle to contain him.”
“The risk created by Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots is less that Trump will actually succeed in limiting access to the franchise and that such limitations will actually tilt the playing field toward Republicans, and more that the president will … kick up enough doubt and confusion that a significant number of Americans no longer trust an election’s results,” Jurecic said.
Read the full Atlantic report at this link.
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08/07/25
MMA EPSTEIN DEFECTORS? 8 25
August 5, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Network's The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): There's such vitriol and hate. I think it's almost cancerous, some of the back and forth that goes on online. And I, you know, for me, this goes back to the Free Republic days. This goes back to me supporting Trump in 2015 ahead of so many other people, and the heat and the never-ending attacks that I took from, quote, "known conservatives" that said I wasn't a real conservative.
Then you've got this other group now of super MAGA people. That's how I would describe them. They think they're more MAGA than anybody else out there. And it cracks me up, because they don't even interpret Donald Trump's actions and words accurately, for example, on foreign policy. They would have you think no forever wars means isolationism. I was talking a little bit about this yesterday, but that does not match Donald Trump's actions from his first term when he took out the ISIS caliphate, and he took out Soleimani on that tarmac, and when he took out Baghdadi and associates, and he dropped the Mother of All Bombs on Afghanistan.
Alleged QAnon-inspired murderer was obsessed with Fox News
killed mafia deep state; want to arrest schiff and _)
many pix twt no lnx
Alleged QAnon-inspired murderer was obsessed with Fox News
Special Programs
Guns & Public Safety
Written by Timothy Johnson
Published 07/22/19
A man facing charges for allegedly carrying out a QAnon-inspired killing also appears to have had his worldview significantly shaped by Fox News, as is evident from his social media account.
On March 13, Anthony Comello allegedly shot and killed Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali in Staten Island, NY. Cali was reportedly a member of the Gambino crime family. During a court appearance following his arrest, Comello was photographed with a “Q” on his hand, a reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The New York Times followed up on this angle in a July 21 article, reporting that Comello’s lawyer claimed “Comello had become convinced that Mr. Cali was part of the so-called deep state, a cabal of criminals that conspiracy theorists claim controls the United States government.” The Times reported that Comello’s attorney says the murder was carried out because Comello “believed he was a chosen vigilante of President [Donald] Trump.”
The Times reported that court filings list the handle of Comello’s Instagram account and that Comello was “posting and sharing conspiracy theories online that are associated with the far-right.” According to the paper, Comello was “engaging with other QAnon believers on the internet”:
Mr. Gottlieb identified one of Mr. Comello’s accounts, RealAmericasVoice_ on Instagram, in his filing. The page has dozens of memes and written screeds, some that are difficult to decipher, including several posted days before Mr. Cali’s death.
One post accuses Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, of being a fascist. “Patriot sleeper cells are awake,” he wrote in another. Yet another refers to Bill and Hillary Clinton as “The Clinton Crime Family.”
What the Times declined to include in its reporting is that in addition to posting conspiracy theories, the RealAmericasVoice_ Instagram account heavily focused on promoting Fox News. For example, the post about “The Clinton Crime Family” referenced by the Times shows that the Comello’s claim was partly sourced from Fox News host Sean Hannity:
Hannity’s conspiratorial “Clinton Crime Family” claims are an area where Fox News programming overlaps with the QAnon conspiracy theory -- both push the notion that Trump is waging war against a “deep state” operated by criminal elites.
In the months leading up to the killing, Comello frequently made posts on Instagram with videos or photos of his TV playing Fox News. In another post, Comello praised Hannity for “spreading the truth” and wrote that “the real news is @foxnews”:
On October 18, Comello posted a screenshot of a video from Fox News host Tucker Carlson and wrote that Fox News is his “favorite network.” Comello’s post tagged and praised the network alongside Hannity, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox & Friends, Fox Business Network, Fox Nation:
Comello uploaded a video of Carlson’s show on November 15 and wrote, “Now that right there is a news monologue”:
On January 7, Comello posted a video of Carlson attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY):
Comello, who would later use a gun to shoot his victim, praised Carlson multiple times for attacking gun violence prevention laws. He also praised the NRA in one of those posts.
On January 5, Comello uploaded a video of Fox News host Jeanine Pirro attacking Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on her Fox News show. In a comment, Comello told Tlaib to “go back to Iran”:
Comello shared other Fox netowork content from:
Fox Nation:
Fox & Friends:
Fox News Radio:
A Fox News special on Ronald Reagan:
And FoxNews.com:
Other right-wing media figures and outlets promoted by Comello include Fox News contributor Sara Carter, cartoonist Ben Garrison (who was recently invited and then disinvited to the White House), One America News Network, Jim Hoft, and Turning Point USA.
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mma
Right-wing media push Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill as estimates find over 11,000 could die annually from loss of Medicaid
When all aspects of the bill are considered, one study estimated it could lead to 51,000 excess deaths per year
Written by John Knefel
Published 06/24/25
Two analyses of the House of Representatives’ version of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” found that its deep Medicaid cuts — which right-wing media figures have supported for months — would result in more than 11,000 preventable deaths annually. When all aspects of the legislation are included, according to one of the analyses, the bill could cause an estimated 51,000 preventable deaths per year.
Right-wing media figures, however, have repeatedly claimed that people who “deserve” to be on Medicaid won’t be affected by the bill. Instead, they falsely argue that Medicaid will be strengthened for “the people that actually need it,” as Fox News’ Sean Hannity put it recently.
It remains to be seen exactly how much congressional Republicans will end up slashing Medicaid, as the House legislation passed on May 22 and the Senate is currently finalizing its own version.
The House version of the bill finances massive tax benefits for the extremely wealthy with its steep Medicaid cuts, which include the harshest Medicaid work requirements Congress has ever put forward.
The bill would also limit states’ ability to access federal funding by freezing what’s known as provider taxes, and punish states that use their own money to offer health insurance to immigrants.
The Senate’s proposed Medicaid cuts are even deeper than those in the House bill.
Researchers estimate Medicaid cuts in GOP bill could result in over 11,000 deaths annually
The two studies that examined the House’s legislation came to similar conclusions, though one focused primarily on the bill’s Medicaid provisions while the other took a look at the legislation as a whole.
The more recent study, from the Annals of Internal Medicine, was published June 17 and examined the House GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts.
“Enactment of the House bill advanced in May would increase the number of uninsured persons by 7.6 million and the number of deaths by 16 642 annually, according to a mid-range estimate,” the authors write.
The authors stress that even this estimate could be an undercount, as their figures “exclude harms from lowering provider payments and shrinking benefits, as well as possible repercussions from states increasing taxes or shifting expenditures from other needs to make up for shortfalls in federal Medicaid funding.”
They also acknowledge that they and the Congressional Budget Office — which offers analysis of federal spending — made an “assumption that many of those losing Medicaid coverage would find alternative coverage,” which “may be overly optimistic.”
Conservative pundits have frequently pushed the false narrative that the Republican legislation won’t harm people who “deserve” health insurance
Previously, analysis from KFF found that the proposed bill would decimate hospitals that provide care to large numbers of Medicaid recipients, especially in rural areas, which would likely compound the harms of the legislation.
The other research into the Big Beautiful Bill’s effects, published June 3, was conducted by experts at the Yale School of Public Health, and was commissioned by two Senate committees working on their chambers’ version of the bill.
The Yale experts estimated that 7.7 million people would lose insurance as a result of the House bill, which would “result in an estimated 11,300 additional deaths annually due to lost access to Medicaid or ACA Marketplace coverage.”
The stark number increases dramatically when other aspects of the bill are included. The proposed legislation would end support for Medicare Savings Programs — cost sharing programs that allow Medicaid to pay Medicare premiums — leading to an estimated 1.38 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries losing their coverage. The authors write that the bill “would increase mortality by 18,200 per year due to reduced access to subsidized prescriptions.”
The House version also repeals nursing home staffing standards — which could lead to an estimated 13,000 deaths annually — and fails to extend the Affordable Care Act premium tax credit, which the authors write “is expected to push another 5 million Americans into uninsurance, resulting in 8,811 more deaths each year.”
In all, the authors estimate that the Big Beautiful Bill could result in more than 51,000 preventable deaths every year.
Right-wing media insists those who “deserve” coverage won’t be affected by the bill
These credible estimates are virtually absent from right-wing media coverage of the bill. To the contrary, conservative pundits have supported many of the most draconian aspects of the Big Beautiful Bill, including its burdensome and unnecessary work requirements — one of the key mechanisms in the legislation to kick people off of Medicaid.
Conservative pundits have also frequently pushed the false narrative that the Republican legislation won’t harm people who “deserve” health insurance, whether that’s Medicaid or private plans purchased through the ACA.
- Fox News host Sean Hannity dismissed the Yale study’s conclusions, repeating that the cuts to Medicaid were “nonexistent.” He added that his reading of the bill was that “the only thing that would be cut are those people that don't belong on the rolls that have given fraudulent information that will be weeded out of services they never deserved in the first place.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [6/5/25]
- On his radio show, Hannity said the bill’s so-called Medicaid reforms would only target “able-bodied” people running “scams,” who “are sources of legitimate savings without reducing benefits to the people that actually need it.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [6/6/25]
- The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles claimed that the bill “is not taking health care funding away from the people who deserve it,” but rather, “it’s taking Medicaid funding away from the 1.4 million illegals who are on Medicaid.” Knowles added, “It's taking Medicaid funding away from people who are abusing the system, who are not legally entitled to it, people who refuse to work, people who don't meet even basic requirements to avail themselves of health care and welfare.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 6/4/25]
- On Hannity, former House speaker and current Fox contributor Newt Gingrich argued that the proposed Medicaid cuts will not “take anybody deserving of help off the Medicaid rolls,” but will impact “illegal immigrants … people who refuse to work and … people who are crooks.” He went on, saying, “Why the Democratic party would want to be the party of illegal immigrants, crooks, and people who refuse to work is beyond me.” [Fox News, Hannity, 6/3/25]
- Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum said that Medicaid “expanded greatly over Covid — people got used to a lot of these benefits and they don’t want to give them up,” but that cuts are necessary so “that people who deserve these benefits can get them.” Her guest, Fox Business host Charles Payne, previously said, “Those who can work and are getting these benefits, they should work.” Fox News, *The Story With Martha MacCallum*, [5/20/25]
- On hisWar Roompodcast, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said that “we don’t want to cut Medicaid to the folks that need it” adding that “25% of MAGA is on Medicaid … but it’s got to be very restrictive.” He continued: “Two and a half million illegal aliens have all to go,” and suggested that work requirements should be for “80 hours a week,” rather than 80 hours a month, as the House bill mandates. Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [5/19/25; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 6/12/25]
- On Fox News, former congressional adviser Emily Domenech said, “When it comes to Medicaid, we’re looking at opportunities to cut back on the waste, fraud, and abuse that make the programs cost too much and take away from the people who really deserve them.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [5/16/25]
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MMA
Fox let chief Trump propagandist Hannity lead special coverage of the US strikes on Iran
Hannity said the attack “will go down in history as one of the greatest military victories”
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 06/23/25
Fox News turned to Sean Hannity, the Donald Trump political operative who hosts a weekday prime-time show, to help the president sell his new war with Iran, airing two hours of special coverage after Trump’s Saturday night announcement that the U.S. military had struck three Iranian nuclear strikes. The wildly unethical choice emphasized Fox’s role as a Trumpist outlet whose primary mission is propagandizing its audience to support the president’s actions.
Bret Baier, Fox’s chief political anchor, broke the news on the network’s airwaves at 7:52 p.m. ET, minutes after Trump posted about what he deemed the “very successful attack.” Baier and his guests provided overly credulous coverage that nonetheless resembled a normal news broadcast. But just under an hour into that coverage, an on-screen bug revealed that Hannity would be taking over the network’s coverage live beginning at 9.
Fox executives, knowing that Trump intended to speak at the White House at 10 p.m., made the conscious decision to ensure that for the hour before and after those remarks, the network’s coverage would be guided by Hannity, not its “news side” team.
Hannity spent the last decade shattering every possible ethical norm on Trump’s behalf: He has appeared in and even scripted his campaign ads, spoken at a campaign rally, and advised presidential decisions on staffing, communications, and policy — all while regularly interviewing Trump himself on his Fox show. He has also advocated for a U.S. military strike on Iranian nuclear sites for more than a decade.
Hannity predictably used the opportunity on Saturday to shower Trump with praise and host a parade of shills who touted the president’s decision to bomb Iran.
“I just spoke to the president of the United States,” Hannity said at the top of his broadcast. “I have some new information and breaking details to share about tonight's, what is [an] historic air campaign. Now tonight, Iran's nuclear ambitions, they are officially dead. It appears the United States just completely obliterated Iran's top secret Fordo nuclear facility.” Hannity added that two other Iranian nuclear sites had been “wiped out.”
“This is a huge development tonight, and I believe the world is a much safer place,” he concluded.
Video
Citation
From Fox News's June 21, 2025, special coverage
“Maybe it's a little early to go there, but this will go down in history as one of the greatest military victories — taking out the No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Hannity later added. “They've been responsible for hundreds of thousands of missiles between themselves and their proxies being fired into Israel. They have threatened to wipe Israel and the U.S. off the map, and that threat has been removed tonight.”
“There is no doubt we are watching history tonight,” Hannity said after Trump’s address. “There's no doubt that — I agree with the president — this is one of the most skilled, important, imperative peacekeeping, peace-through-strength-keeping operations in the last 40 years, and certainly the reign of terror in Iran, whether they know it or not, is coming to a quick end.”
Hannity turned to Mark Levin, the hawkish Fox weekend host who reportedly counseled Trump to back Israel’s strikes on Iran over lunch at the White House earlier this month, during both hours of coverage.
Levin praised Trump as “a historic figure” and screamed at Fox’s audience that they could now “go to bed peacefully tonight” because Trump had stopped “these Islamo-Nazis [who] were building nuclear weapons to attack us with ballistic missiles.”
“This mission was never going to fail under this commander in chief,” he ranted. “This is historic, he is historic, the United States military is historic,” Levin continued, comparing the strikes to those of “Reagan and Thatcher defeating the Soviet Union.”
Video
Citation
From Fox News' June 21, 2025, special coverage
“It's about time we rally around this president, rally around our United States military, [and] accept the fact that this is a high point in American history and world history,” he later added, claiming Trump “protected the entire Earth from these barbarians” and “prevented World War III.”
Fox viewers also heard from Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (“I commend President Trump for his resolute and strong action”), Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin (“peace through strength is what President Trump has been talking about from Day 1”), Fox contributor Katie Pavlich (“God bless President Trump, God bless the U.S. military, and God bless the Israelis for paving the way so the mission could be as successful as it was tonight”), and Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (“the world heard the president speak tonight and that’s what leadership looks like, that’s what commander in chief looks like”).
Hannity returned to Levin for the “last word” of the night. Levin took some credit for the strikes, praised Trump for going through with them, and engaged in score-settling with unnamed figures who had opposed them.
“To be perfectly honest about this, there were a handful of us who encouraged this night, who said that we needed to take military action to bring about this result. It is not so much that we had to convince President Trump — he knew what to do, he instinctively knows what to do, he is a brilliant, brilliant man,” Levin said. “But there are other people. I was laughing because they are now believers, and they are now talking about what a fantastic night this is.”
In the hours since Hannity signed off, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine effectively contradicted Trump’s Saturday night statement that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely and fully obliterated,” saying it was still too soon to fully assess the damage; U.S. officials acknowledged that Iran had may have moved its supply of enriched uranium to an unknown location before the attack; Trump floated a goal of “regime change”; and The New York Times detailed how “the president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved,” in the days leading up to the strike.
If Trump tuned in to his favorite network on Saturday night, he heard a host who functions as his chief propagandist showering him with praise for following through. That’s apparently exactly what the Fox executives wanted. And that bodes ill for how the network will handle a war against Iran based on obvious lies and featuring rapidly shifting aims.
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06/18/25 2:03 PM EDT
01/22/25 12:56 PM EST
11/19/2
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MMA
PARROT TRUMP? RUBBER MAGA TAKEOVER
June 16, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I watched some of it, there's only so much I can take, but one thing that is clear is the left in America has absolutely, positively lost it. And you can see the attacks on John Fetterman just get louder and louder and louder, and "How dare that he take on the radicals in his own party?"
So, you have the "No Kings" protests over the weekend. They claim millions of people showed up all around the country. Okay. You have the radical left-wing lunatics, but the bigger part of the equation is they've taken over the Democratic Party.
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06/11/25 MMA
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MANDATORY MIL SERVICE
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still saying 300 yr get SS but now fixed!
raw 625
Late-night Trump brag shattered by 'damning' report issued just hours later
// an 6 25
An analysis by Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler shows the Trump administration is still wheeling out lies months after they’ve been outed.
“This is an example of how, even after falsehoods are exposed, the spin machine keeps working,” wrote Kessler, referring to a March 4 post by President Donald Trump that “government databases list … 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129, 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them.”
In February, the Washington Post published an article documenting the truth of the matter, that Social Security databases rely on an almost 70-year-old computer programming language called COBOL, which doesn’t have a standardized way to store dates.
READ MORE: 'Stop the foolishness': Susan Collins in the hot seat as she navigates Trump's second term
This means ancient programmers assigned a default date, such as 1875, to people lacking birth information, many of them seniors born before a reliable federal birth recording program was in place. But when Musk’s DOGE team scanned Social Security systems, “they were shocked to find people listed in the system with absurd ages because of the limitations of an old programming language,” writes Kessler.
People familiar with Social Security’s systems were already aware of the issue, of course. The Social Security Administration has automatically terminated the benefits of people once they reach age 115 since 2015. Kessler reports the U.S. Office of Inspector General had recommended a cleanup of the system in 2023, but Social Security deferred the project because it would “divert resources” from other important work and “would have limited or no benefit to the administration.” A 2023 IG report found the vast majority of beneficiaries who lacked a birth date had already died and been purged from the system anyhow. Plus, any major overhaul could introduce new errors to the system.
Still, the notion of wrongdoers scamming Social Security was “an irresistible talking point,” says Kessler, so much so that DOGE bragged of fixing the “problem” late last month on social media: “After 11 weeks, Social Security has finished this major cleanup initiative: ~12.3M individuals aged 120+ have now been marked as deceased.”
“The post was carefully worded,” said Kessler. “It did not claim that 12 million people had received improper payments. Instead, it said that these people had been marked as deceased. In other words, DOGE appears to have implemented the plan suggested by the IG two years ago.”
READ MORE:Swing state voters beg their Republican senator to protect them from the Trump grift-ocracy
Despite that, Kessler said Trump supporters eagerly greeted the news and used it to justify the president's “original false claim.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was one of many cheerleaders jumping aboard a non-moving train, claiming: "No more 300-year-olds getting Social Security checks because of Elon Musk. Thank God President Trump had the wisdom to put Elon in place."
The train included other personalities such as right-wing entertainer Sean Hannity, and Speaker Mike Johnson.
“… [W]ithin the echo chamber of the pro-Trump universe, a problem that never existed now has been fixed,” Kessler said.
READ MORE: MAGA rhetoric backfires as far-right activist suggests violence against trump admin officials
Read the original Washington Post report at this link.
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MMA
May 30, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): If you can believe you had a federal district judge on Wednesday say that the Trump administration's effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil may be unconstitutional, but I'm sorry, conservative legal experts are not buying -- you're not from this country. Why do you think you have constitutional rights?
This guy was leading these pro-Palestine, anti-Israel activists and protests at Columbia University. An immigration judge said he could be deported, but then a US district judge for New Jersey said that the order is likely to be dismissed as unconstitutionally vague. Again, judge shopping, judicial activism.
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mma
Sean Hannity calls Medicare “a cancer that has metastasized”
05/28/25
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realclear
- Anti-War Rant -- 'Chicken Hawk!'
RealClearPolitics
https://www.realclearpolitics.com › articles › 2006/09](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/09/antiwar_rant_chicken_hawk.html)
Sep 7, 2006 — An e-mail going around the Internet purports to list "chicken hawks," including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Vice President Dick Cheney and ...
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MMA
Sean Hannity has a lot to say about the “stupid flu shot” all of a sudden
Sean Hannity used to tell his audience about getting the flu shot every year and how much it helped him. Now, he’s calling it a “stupid flu shot.”
Written by Helena Hind
Research contributions from Alicia Sadowski & Isabella Corrao
Published 05/29/25
Citation
Fox News, 9/16/2020
After years of assuring his audience that he regularly gets his yearly flu vaccination, Sean Hannity has suddenly changed his tune, casting doubt on the efficacy of the “stupid flu shot” during the May 28 edition of his radio show.
The MAGA propagandist’s comments come as harmful anti-vaccine policy takes root in the Trump administration, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bucking the normal scientific review process and removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the CDC’s recommended immunizations for children and those who are pregnant.
During the May 28 edition of The Sean Hannity Show, guest Dr. Brian Tyson claimed that COVID-19 booster vaccines are “negative effective, just like last year's flu shot.” Hannity jumped in: “Well, people don't understand that. Every year, they will start producing a flu virus. They're guessing what flu is likely to hit. They don't know for sure”
The Fox News host continued: “My understanding is they're wrong 75% of the time, and people, you know, annually go get the stupid flu shot anyway.”
Sean Hannity attacks COVID vaccines and the “stupid flu shot”
May 28, 2025
Audio file
Audio
Citation
From the May 28, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): And even the creator, who I know you're familiar with, Dr. Robert Malone, was very outspoken, and he came on this program often. And he said that mRNA technology has not been perfected. He did support emergency authorization vaccinations for people over 65 that had preexisting conditions and comorbidities because they were the ones that were more likely to be -- their lives would be put in jeopardy by the virus. He absolutely was crystal clear. It was not designed for healthy people that were younger, meaning below the age of 65, and it's absolutely not designed for children.
Now, he's the one that created the technology that allowed for the creation of this, and he's saying this. And then he gets excoriated like you got excoriated for trying alternative treatment, which, by the way, studies, since that time have proven that you were right about things like hydroxychloroquine taken early, mitigating circumstances.
How many studies now have come out confirming that? How many studies have come out showing that masks really didn't help? How many studies came out, you know, showing that your protocols actually worked? How many patients' lives did you save, and how many patients did you lose in the process?
DR. BRIAN TYSON (GUEST): Yeah. I mean, it's -- so you're 100% correct. If you go to the website c19.org, you'll be able to pull up all the different treatments and all of the studies that are listed underneath those. There's over 400 studies on hydroxychloroquine, there's over 300 studies on ivermectin.
What we found was early treatment is the key. It's not about vaccines at this point because these vaccines are not effective. Actually, they're negative effective, just like last year's flu shot. Last year's flu shot had a negative efficacy of 26%, meaning those who got the flu shot were more likely to get the flu. It's the same thing with these COVID vaccine boosters.
HANNITY: Well, people don't understand that. Every year, they will start producing a flu virus. They're guessing what flu is likely to hit. They don't know for sure. And my understanding is that they're wrong 75% of the time, and people, you know, annually go get the stupid flu shot anyway.
TYSON: Yeah. But they made $6 billion off of it last year. And that's the problem. When you continuously approve vaccines without data and without research -- this is where you know the MAHA movement is -- hopefully it's going to make some ground -- you can't continue to produce vaccines without seeing the results. And you have to start holding the pharmaceutical companies accountable.
Once upon a time, Hannity was among those who chose to “go get the stupid flu shot” every year. In April 2020, the Fox host told his radio listeners it was “my choice” to “get a flu shot every year.” Months later, he said his choice to get his annual shot is “what freedom’s all about."
That November, in an attempt to assure his listeners that the COVID-19 vaccine was safe, he said he has “taken the flu shot for many, many years with no side effects at all whatsoever… it’s helped me."
Hannity also proclaimed his dedication to regular flu immunization to his Fox News audience: “I choose to get the flu shot every year and some of my friends think I’m nuts."
Video
Citation
From the September 16, 2020, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Hannity’s sudden reversal on the “stupid flu shot” is hardly surprising, considering his yearslong assault on the COVID-19 vaccine, his network’s dedication to pushing anti-vaccine narratives, and the Trump administration’s adoption of vaccine skepticism as policy.
Meanwhile, the American Medical Association recommends on its website that “everyone aged six months or older should receive an annual flu shot.” The AMA has more on the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine here. On its YouTube page, the AMA also
its
for the flu and COVID vaccine in 2024.
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enforcer?
MMA
May 20, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): This bill is so critical. Now, I may need to deputize many of you. We did this during the election, and we put up the Kamala files and the Walz files, and we asked you, you know, to send it to your friends and your family and your neighbors and your coworkers and anybody that you knew, and put it up on social media. And many of you responded. We only had 106 days to vet Kamala Harris. It was critical that so many of you get involved.
And if we are getting the names of people that might be getting in the way, because again, this bill will help build out the next generation of weaponry. This bill will provide for border security and deportations. This bill will make the tax cuts permanent. It will eliminate taxes on tips, Social Security, and overtime. This bill will also begin the process of moving America towards energy dominance, which will help make this country rich, on top of the $10 trillion in commitments of manufacturing, especially in areas that we need for national security reasons, like pharmaceuticals and semiconductors and automobiles. I mean, this will be hopefully the golden age.
//
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mma
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Five ways MAGA media are spinning Trump’s poll collapse
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 04/29/25
President Donald Trump’s zealous propagandists have been unable to come to terms with his increasing unpopularity, instead offering a range of pathetic excuses for his cratering poll numbers.
Surveys conducted for The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and other news organizations in preparation for the 100th day of Trump’s administration show his support in freefall. The president’s overall job approval numbers are dropping into the low 40s and even high 30s, levels several pollsters found to be historic lows for presidents at this point in their administration.
Trump is underwater with the public on nearly every issue, with particular warning signs on the economy — ABC’s poll found a majority said Trump had made the economy worse and nearly three-quarters of Americans say his policies are likely to cause a recession.
But the audience of MAGA media outlets largely consists of Trump’s most loyal supporters — the ones who would be the last to abandon him, if at all.
That gives the right-wing stars at Fox News and similar outlets every incentive to deny the reality that the American public has quickly become disenchanted with Trump’s actions and behavior and come up with alternate explanations for his slide.
The polls are fake
Trump himself responded to the collapse in support by denouncing what he termed “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS.”
“The New York Times has only 37% Trump 2024 voters, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll has only 34% Trump Voters, unheard of numbers unless looking for a negative result, which they are,” he wrote, citing his pollster John McLaughlin in a Monday morning Truth Social post. “These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it.”
Partner Jim McLaughlin reiterated the point in a Monday night appearance on Newsmax.
“These are propaganda polls,” he said. “That's what they are. They're trying to lie to the American people. They're trying to sway public opinion.”
Host Rob Finnerty responded by suggesting it was a “coordinated takedown” of the president with “all five of these ridiculous polls coming out in the same day as the media continue to cheerlead against Trump.”
Pollster Matt Towery offered a similar analysis that night on Fox’s The Ingraham Angle.
“Now, last time I checked, Donald Trump got almost 50% of the vote,” Towery said. “So how in the world can that poll be correct? There’s no possible way.”
“He’s not in free fall,” Towery added. “He’s had a little bit of slippage because he’s doing a lot. He’s breaking a lot of eggs to make an omelet, but he is not dropping in any significant way. I can guarantee you, and I’m just not paying any attention to this nonsense.”
The polls are a “psyop”
Steve Bannon turned to Rasmussen Reports pollster Mark Mitchell to explain Trump’s polls on Monday.
“All day, Mitchell, they’re going to be bombarding us on the hundredth day that Trump is the most unpopular president in 100 years,” Bannon prompted him.
Mitchell responded by claiming that “there is a psychological operation going on.” According to him, numerous recent polls showing Trump’s polling swoon “all look the same” and large numbers of Google searches for “Trump approval” are “how I know it's a psyop. People are getting these stories shoved down their throats.”
The polls are only bad for now because Trump’s “agenda is not built for 100 days”
On Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade rejected the premise of looking at Trump’s poll numbers at this point in his administration.
“When you look at the hundred days of Trump, the problem with the hundred days and looking at the polls, this format and his agenda is not built for 100 days,” he said on Monday’s show. “He's redoing the base. He is framing out the house. A lot of it was rotted, and now he is replacing it. There’s not a lot of glory in framing out a house.”
Kilmeade added that Trump “is rebuilding and he has got a plan,” urging viewers to look ahead to potential trade deals and passage of Trump’s tax agenda.
Actually, the polls are “not bad”
Fox contributor Ari Fleischer highlighted Trump’s continued support from his political base and downplayed his low job approval numbers from the overall public.
“The base will not crack,” he told Ingraham on Monday. “The base is solid for Donald Trump, and they understand that he's got a lot of high hurdles because he's put high hurdles in front of himself because he's taking on consequential big issues that have been neglected for so long.”
Fleischer went on to claim that “the average of all the polls … shows that Trump has a 45% job approval. That is not bad. In our modern polarized era, a 45% job approval is middling, but it is not the stuff of doom, gloom, negativity, or decline. It's just the way modern politics is.”
It’s impossible to not see this administration is a “huge success”
Asked Tuesday about Trump’s “soft numbers” on Fox’s America’s Newsroom, Fox Business host and Trumpist shill Maria Bartiromo responded, “There's no other way to look at this first 100 days other than a huge success.”
The majority of Americans who disagree in Fox’s own poll are apparently just delusional.
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- ### Sean Hannity on Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “It is so obvious to me that this guy deserves what he got”
04/25/25
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mma
- ### Sean Hannity on Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “It is so obvious to me that this guy deserves what he got”
04/25/25
goes quiet on hegs w other bad trinity
Sean Hannity justifies Trump’s peace proposal that sharply favors Russia
04/24/25
04/24/25
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Fox anchors appeared at Tea Party rallies in 2010 election. Hannity did a Trump ad in 2016; Hannity 2018 midterm rally appearance with Pirro.
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AH THE CLASSICS
MMA 4 25
April 22, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Make no mistake, at the end of the day, this has nothing to do with the Earth cooling, global warming, which has evolved into the generic climate change, so if it gets warm, they have a name for it. If it gets cold, they have a name for it. If it snows, they've got a name for it. If it doesn't snow, they have a name for it.
Look at this list. It's the Green New Deal. Look, everything on this list has nothing to do really with climate. Climate warming, climate cooling, climate changing is the left's mechanism for Marxism, statism as represented by that list, to each according to their need, from each according to their ability. The only thing Democrats really care actually is political power and you being dependent on them.
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ggl 4 25 2016 election
Sean Hannity}:
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Sean_Hannity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Hannity)
Sean Patrick Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an American conservative television presenter, broadcaster and writer. He hosts The Sean Hannity Show, ...
The Sean Hannity Show · Hannity & Colmes · Ainsley Earhardt · Alan Colmes
[### Sean Hannity: I'm not Donald Trump's foil
Politico
https://www.politico.com › story › 2016/04 › sean-han...](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/sean-hannity-donald-trump-221923)
Apr 13, 2016 — Sean Hannity wants to make one thing clear: He's not propping up Donald Trump. The conservative media host shot down a recent ThinkProgress story.
[### Hannity apparently asked what to say on Election Day. ...
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com › politics › 2022/04/25](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/25/hannity-apparently-asked-what-say-election-day-then-he-said-it/)
Apr 25, 2022 — ... Fox News host Sean Hannity on the day of the 2020 election. ... Hannity had endorsed Trump before the 2016 election, an odd act for ...
[### Has Sean Hannity's Trump support crossed the line?
The Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com › USA › Politics › 2016](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0921/Has-Sean-Hannity-s-Trump-support-crossed-the-line)
Sep 23, 2016 — Conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity has been a vocal supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but critics, ...
[### Sean Hannity cites misleading Obama quote in coverage ...
PolitiFact
https://www.politifact.com › factchecks › jul › sean-han...](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jul/17/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-cites-misleading-obama-quote-coverage/)
Claim: "In 2016, when Hillary Clinton appeared to have a firm lead in the polls — oh, just before the election, it was President Obama who laughed off any notion...
Claimed by: Sean Hannity
Fact check by PolitiFact: Mostly False
[### Hannity: I'm voting for Trump
Politico
https://www.politico.com › story › 2016/06 › sean-han...](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/sean-hannity-supports-trump-223763)
Jun 1, 2016 — Donald Trump on Tuesday sat down for an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, who made his support of Trump explicit.
[### US election 2016 daily briefing: Fox News stars in feud ...
BBC
https://www.bbc.com › election-us-2016-37570387](https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37570387)
Oct 6, 2016 — Two of the conservative news channel's biggest stars have turned their sharp tongues on one another after Sean Hannity accused Megyn Kelly of being in league ...
[### Trump and Sean Hannity Promote Ukraine-Clinton Theory
Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com › donald-trump-sean-hanni...](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-sean-hannity-theory-ukraine-colluded-hillary-clinton-1376867)
Mar 27, 2019 — How Donald Trump and Sean Hannity Are Promoting Theory Ukraine Interfered in 2016 Election to Help Hillary Clinton. Published Mar 27, 2019 at ...
[### Sean Hannity campaigns on stage at Trump's Missouri rally ...
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2018/11/06 › media › trump-ral...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/06/media/trump-rally-missouri-hannity/index.html)
Nov 6, 2018 — Sean Hannity defied his own words on Monday, appearing on stage at President Donald Trump's final election rally after having said he ...
[### How Sean Hannity Became Influential In Conservative ...
Texas Public Radio | TPR
https://www.tpr.org › 2016-12-19 › how-sean-hannity-...](https://www.tpr.org/2016-12-19/how-sean-hannity-became-influential-in-conservative-media-and-politics)
Dec 19, 2016 — Sean Hannity, host of the Fox News show “Hannity” and a syndicated talk radio show, helped rally conservative support for Donald Trump.
How Sean Hannity Became Influential In Conservative Media And Politics
During the presidential campaign, Sean Hannity, host of the Fox News show “Hannity” and a syndicated talk radio show, helped rally conservative support for Donald Trump. That trend will most likely continue throughout the Trump presidency.
But how did Hannity become so influential in conservative media and Republican politics? Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Brian Rosenwald ( @brianros1), a media historian and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who is writing a book about the rise of talk radio and its influence on public policy.
Interview Highlights
On Hannity’s talk radio background
“One thing that people sometimes forget in the political world is, TV might be sexier, but radio can often reach more listeners, and the audiences are intensely loyal. And Sean Hannity, his background is radio. Before he was doing TV, he was doing radio in Huntsville, Alabama, in Atlanta, Georgia, and a lot of these guys who do both will tell you they like radio more, they reach more people, they have more time, they like the medium better.
:{:{“He started out, he actually flopped on a college radio station in Santa Barbara, that was way to the left, where he went out there after he dropped out of college, and he admittedly says, ‘Look, I was terrible.’ And then he ended up starting his rise in Huntsville, Alabama, and he migrated to Atlanta, and he was doing morning drive on a talk station down there, and then he did some TV work, and Roger Ailes discovered him. And he comes to New York to do ‘Hannity & Colmes,’ and joins the powerhouse station on WABC.}:
And he’s there for a few years, and they decide in 2001… they’re looking for syndicated stars, especially conservative ones. ABC Radio decided to syndicate Hannity, and they have him set up to go in a bunch of major markets, and he has the, sort of, fortune to have his national debut be Sept. 10, 2001. And obviously the next day, sort of changes the face of the country, and the ratings for talk radio across the board skyrocket — people want to talk about it, they want to hear what other people are saying, it becomes kind of a virtual community, and people who had never heard Sean Hannity start to hear him, they like what they’re hearing, and he sort of goes from there to become the No. 2 guy in talk radio.”}:
Array
On Hannity’s relationship with his radio listeners
“I’ve heard callers say, ‘Thank God you’re out there Sean, we have a voice now.’ There are some people who spend more time with their favorite talk radio host than they do with their spouses. People who were driving a truck all day, or out on a tractor, or doing some other job where they can listen three hours a day, five days a week, 48, 50 weeks a year, to the same person, they feel like they get to know that person, and that person reflects their views. And then in a lot of cases, for conservatives, that person punches back at people who they feel like are maligning them and scorning them and mistreating them.”
On Hannity’s impact on the 2016 presidential election
“I think that, in the primary election, had people like Sean Hannity really been hardcore against Donald Trump, from day one — we’re going back to 2015 here — they might have been able to knock him off in the primary. In terms of a general election, people were bombarded on all sides with information, and usually, I don’t think talk radio has a huge influence in presidential general elections for that reason, but in this case, insomuch as the key to the election, or one of the keys, was getting conservatives who had misgivings about either Trump’s morals or his qualifications, or some of what he said, or some of the policies he supported, to go out and vote for him.
“I think talk radio’s kind of drumbeat of, ‘Hillary is worse,’ and attacking her and keeping her emails front and center from day one for a year and a half, that helped drive those conservatives with misgivings back onto the reservation, and this is what Hannity and other talk radio hosts do at election time, which is, they frame tings in such a way, and they keep their audience kind of understanding the stakes, and why Republicans — whatever misgivings you might have — Republicans are still the best way to go.”
2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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mma tariff BS
04/10/25 2:52 PM EDT
- ### Ben Shapiro: “If you wanna see a real bull market, the president should fire Peter Navarro today”
04/10/25 12:32 PM EDT
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“Art of the Deal”: Fox propagandists spin wildly for Trump’s “huge” tariff “win”
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 04/10/25
Fox News’ propagandists cheered President Donald Trump’s tariff climbdown as a “huge win” that shows he was playing “3D chess” and executing the “Art of the Deal.” Meanwhile, reporters at outlets including Fox pointed out that Trump had “capitulated” out of fear that his unilateral imposition of massive taxes on all of our trading partners was triggering a collapse in the bond market.
Trump announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on the massive tariffs he had proposed the previous week on dozens of countries and farcically described as “reciprocal,” with the countries instead subject to a still-high 10% tariff during bilateral trade negotiations. At the same time, he increased tariffs on China, the largest U.S. trading partner, to a total of a whopping 145%, and left unchanged sectoral tariffs he has proposed or implemented on steel, aluminum, and cars (he also proposed this week additional tariffs on lumber and pharmaceuticals).
The president and his top advisers had repeatedly said that no pause was being contemplated, and the abrupt reversal reportedly took even some close aides by surprise. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who had been defending the planned tariffs in a House hearing when Trump announced the pause, said he had not been informed of the policy change beforehand.
North Korean state TV anchors would blush at the fervor with which Fox’s hosts announced their support for the move on their programs that night.
“We begin with the art of the deal -- told you this was going to happen,” Fox host and Trump political operative Sean Hannity crowed at the top of his show. “It was inevitable. Donald Trump's in a perpetual state of negotiation. A huge win for the president. A huge win for the country. His biggest accomplishment of the second term and there have been many.”
:{Video
Citation
From the April 9, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Laura Ingraham trumpeted the tariff shift as “Trump’s 3D chess move,” claiming that the president was “on a roll” and “thinking three steps ahead” while his “naysayers” were left “grasping at straws.”
“Trump created maximum leverage for himself, and now his team’s sitting pretty, taking meetings and doing deals that put America first. And if we don't like how the negotiation is going, our partners have seen the kind of pain we can cause, and they're motivated to do what we want, or else we'll make them feel the same pain,” offered Jesse Watters.
Their narrative that Trump is cooly executing a deliberate plan is total nonsense — he was responding to “a mass sale of bonds” the night before which indicated that “people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy” and could have triggered a financial crisis, as Fox Business’ own senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino reported earlier that day.
“I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world,” Gasparino said on Fox after Trump’s announcement. “Trust me. I'm an American, I support my president. But that's not really what happened here from what I understand.”
“It's the bond market and the sort of lending markets that's the plumbing of the economy. And those markets were imploding last night and that's why we have a 90-day freeze,” he explained.
“It is the White House who capitulated, based on everything I hear, and all of my sources,” Gasparino reported in a second segment. “And the reason why is because of the bond market and what happened last night.”
Gasparino’s reporting is consistent with that from outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN.
Indeed, Trump himself publicly acknowledged on Wednesday afternoon that his reversal came because people “were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” and in particular were “queasy” over the bond market.
That reality is apparently toxic for Fox’s Trump shills.
When Watters’ Democratic co-host Jessica Tarlov pointed to the bond market gyrations on Wednesday’s edition of The Five, he told her, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know what a bond is.”
Likewise, Hannity mocked the “stupid people” who deny that “this was the [Trump’s] plan all along,” which he claimed to have “pretty much understood because I know the guy so well.”
Rather than a brilliant plan carefully executed, we are left with a trade agenda that has unclear goals, will cripple small businesses, and will raise prices for American consumers on everything from coffee to cars — and could change at any time based on the whims of one mercurial man.
But that man is the focus of Fox’s cult, and so its high priests are genuflecting and offering sacrifices.
:{many vids?]
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mma
Sean Hannity claims clips of outraged constituents at GOP town halls are “fake videos”
03/21/25
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3 25 schumer caves to keep them from having total control?! ~ aoc
03/13/25
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MMA
March 6, 2025, edition of MSNBC's *Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): I mean, Angelo, I wanna come back to something that you have really put in the front of my mind, and that's narrative dominance. And I think it is clear after November's election that Donald Trump always had and maintained and, probably did today, maintains narrative dominance. I think the speech was about dominance, right?
And I think that you can want that to change. You can hate that that is, but the narrative dominance will only change when the credibility is restored on the part of all the people that were right about all of this stuff. And I wonder if you can sort of speak about -- I mean, it seems like lived experience and the pain that people are going to feel because of what Trump is doing that's deeply unpopular helps restore credibility of the folks were that were warning.
I mean, the most unsurprised people are the pro-democracy coalition, the people that were on the front lines and many of the Democratic politicians who were saying this is exactly what he's going to do. The surprised people are the Trump-voting federal workers, the Trump-voting farmers, the Trump-voting small business owners for whom the tariffs, the firings, and the cuts are devastating.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean and even to your point about the most surprised people -- and I said the last time I was here, and it remains true. If you really want to hear the truth about how people are feeling right now, you have to listen to the callers and to right-wing talk radio because it's only gotten more intense in the last few days because they are calling into the show that they typically listen to and have been for years. And they are saying I'm a listener and yet I've now been affected by this thing. And I didn't think it was going to happen to me.
And they are appealing to people like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and these other prominent right-wing talkers to sort of go to someone in the Trump orbit and say to them, "Wait. You made a mistake. It actually is hurting me. I didn't -- I wasn't supposed to lose my job. This grant wasn't supposed to get affected. This rule that is affecting my local community was not supposed to happen. You just need to explain to them." And then, of course, they won't do it. And that's, to me, really significant because we are only at the very, very early stages of the types of actions that they're going to continue to take, and we're already seeing the consequences of it.
The other part that's really interesting about the narrative side of it is that one thing that -- you know they offset this right-wing echo chamber, but it's not one monolith. It's not just Fox News anymore. Fox News is a laggard. They used to be the vanguard. They used to be like the assignment editor for the rest of the right-wing media. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were the centers of gravity. And if they talked about it, it would reverberate through that echo chamber.
That's not really the case anymore. It's a real loose coalition of sort of like right-wing edge lords, frustrated manosphere people, the traditional right-wing media. There's massive disparity. And that echo chamber sort of has been functioning because Trump has been at the center of it and the vibes have been so good, but it's a real loose coalition.
And one place where you see a big separation is around Social Security. In the more traditional right-wing media, there's a lot of, "Woah. Don't break Social Security. Careful. Be careful. That's going to get us backlash."
But in the younger parts of the right-wing media, they're excited for this because 50% of young people didn't expect to get Social Security in the first place, so they don't care if it breaks. And so that's the part that's really interesting is that putting aside anything that the Democrats do and the rest of the media, there is real vulnerabilities already within the right-wing space, both that they're beginning to internalize the truth, as we're seeing with the right-wing talkers and their ability to maintain an echo, is already starting to show some fracture points.
So what does that mean in the grand scheme of things and to your point about restoring credibility? That's the target. That's where both the rest of the meeting -- and I'm so grateful for Alex's reporting on this -- that to elevate those stories, in a way that helps really connect the dots between the harms that are being experienced right now and the actions and the policies that the administration are taking, either because they're reckless as John has said or because they're intentional and deliberate because they're just cruel and callous and because they're trying to reshape our culture. That is going to help restore the credibility. Don't tell people that you have to be credible. Show them that.
They'll get there.
WALLACE: And the point of the credibility is that that is sort of the doorway through which you walk to regain narrative dominance. And then once it is built on the true real lived experiences of people, again -- Democrats, Republicans, farmers, teachers, workers, Social Security recipients -- then it is unshakable.
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AA MAN W CAN STOOD UP TO TRUMP LIES YOU HAVE NO MANDATE
'Understood the assignment': Support for Al Green pours in after Trump speech disruption
at censure joined by 2 doz to sing we shall overcome
//
mma
Sean Hannity compares Democrats' reaction to censure of Rep. Al Green to January 6
03/06/25
March 6, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Earlier today, when they did have the censure of Al Green, the Democratic Party's reaction, we'll play it for you, was to sing, "We Can Overcome." This is their answer.
...
So, you have , basically, you know, this woke, angry, visionless mob of angry Democrats hijacking the official proceeding of censure of Al Green. They refused to obey the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and his order to end their congressional temper tantrum. Johnson was then forced to call a recess before he could read the text of Green's formal censure resolution to the rest of the chamber. Haven't Democrats been telling us the last four years that disrupting an official proceeding of Congress the way Trump supporters did constitutes an insurrection?
MMA // FALSE FLAG PaID PROTESTOR
Sean Hannity suggests the “uptick in callers” to his radio show that are angry with Donald Trump are staged
03/04/25
https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-suggests-uptick-callers-his-radio-show-are-angry-donald-trump-are-staged)
March 4, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): So, we now have a whopping, oh, 20-some-odd -- I don't know what the final tally is at this moment -- Democratic senators uploading videos of themselves reading the same identical cringey script bashing Trump and Musk. The same thing. I don't know if they didn't think they'd get caught. I have no idea. I mean -- but they're all reading the same script as if this is an organic moment by each and every one. It's not.
Now, Rush used to talk about seminar callers to talk radio shows. We have seen an uptick in callers that I promise you are scripted and on-message. "What about DOGE and what about my friend, the veteran, who lost their job?" Which, by the way, there are people losing their jobs, and my heart does go out to them, but these are jobs that nobody should have been hired for in the first place. I have a bigger problem with that.
But, the good news is is there will be huge opportunities. We have this Taiwan chip company now is going to spend 100 billion dollars, 500 billion by Apple, Nissan, Honda, plans to build plants in Mexico have now decided to move them to the US, thanks to Donald Trump. You know, I know the stock market is skittish as it is, which is fine with me, and I've always said the stock market's not my barometer of the economy. We have other economic news indicating that just Trump's presence, it's not his economy yet, is causing inflation to be driven down, but it's going to take time. And that's why Republicans need to get moving on that. But there are over 20 senators, you know, 20-some-odd senators now. It's cringey, it's bizarre, and it's weird.
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mma
People are calling into right-wing radio shows to voice frustrations with the Trump administration
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 02/26/25
Backlash to President Donald Trump’s early actions and statements is starting to erupt at Republican town halls, local and national protests — and on the phone lines of right-wing talk radio shows.
- ## Listeners are calling into right-wing talk radio shows to voice their frustrations
- Following Trump’s first month in office, many right-wing talk radio hosts are having to face callers who, regardless of their personal politics, are voicing their frustrations with the Trump administration’s impact on their own lives.
- Fox host and loyal Trump ally Sean Hannity told a listener who was pleading for the jobs of military vets in the federal government that “there will be other opportunities.” The caller elaborated on their experience: “One of our tenants just recently got laid off from the USDA, and he's a stable vet, multiple deployments overseas. And yeah, the guy is without a job now, and I'm just afraid that, you know, stuff like this is going to get out there.” The caller noted Hannity’s “soft spot for military and police and EMS and all those guys” and said that it’s “just a little concerning that we don't let these guys, you know, fall off the wagon here and get neglected, because they've done so much for our country.” Premiere Radio Networks' *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/21/25]
- Another caller to Hannity’s show asked him to stand up for “rank and file” agents: “This appears to be a misstep in the wrong direction.” Hannity responded by saying, “There are going to have to be hard questions for rank and file members in terms of their priority and whether or not they challenged some of the higher-ups.” Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, [2/5/25]
- A listener called into The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show to say that they are “not happy with his [Trump’s] recent comments on Ukraine.”Travis appeared to cut the caller off, asking of Russia’s war with Ukraine, “How do you think this should end?” OutKick, *The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show*, [2/21/25]
- A caller into Hannity’s show who described themselves as a “strong supporter of this administration” pleaded for advice with the firings: “How do you make life decisions?”Hannity responded by saying, “The main focus is going to be on limiting the bureaucracy. How many of these jobs are redundant? … Just make yourself as essential as possible.” The caller elaborated: “Mr. Musk talks about cutting, you know, $2 trillion. Well, that's beyond what the entire discretionary budget every year is, you know, roughly 1.7, 1.8 for discretionary. You would have to eliminate everything, the entire federal government to hit that.” Premiere Radio Networks' *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/6/25]
- A caller toThe Alex Jones Showaccused Trump of “lying” about birthright citizenship: “If they want to pass this, we're going to get rid of 150 million U.S. citizens.” Jones responded by asking the caller if they like the “Chinese flying here one week before they have their baby, getting all their health care paid for?” The caller expressed that their “concern is I was born in this country.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show,*[2/20/25]
- A Canadian listener called into Hannity’s radio show to discuss boycotts there against the U.S.: “You've disrespected us to this point, and we have to respond.”The caller told Hannity that Canadians are “buying Canadian” and are not going to Florida for vacation, concluding that the “boycott’s already begun.” Hannity retorted: “Who would be hurt worse by” a “boycott war” between the U.S. and Canada? Premier Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/25/25]
- A caller told Hannity, “I cannot agree with you on the Gaza situation.”They continued, “As far as making those people leave their land and not being able to return, that's just totally wrong.” Hannity defended Trump’s plan as “rebuilding Gaza, creating jobs, [and] building innovation,” to which the caller responded “that's not innovative. That's racist,” because “the president said those people cannot return” and “most of these people don't have anything to do with Hamas.” When Hannity claimed that “the people in Gaza voted in Hamas’ leadership,” the caller told him that “what you're saying is that everybody there is a terrorist, and that's racist.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/13/25]
- A listener called into Hannity’s show to discuss their child’s cancer diagnosis and advocate for cancer research funding: “With the lack of funding, basically, all you get is parents like me who have had a kid with this, starting organizations and coming up with money to carry on the research for them. So that's why I wanted to call and … advocate for research.” Hannity responded by arguing that “most of the solutions for cancer are going to be found in the private sector, not with public money.” The caller noted that “with such a small number of kids getting this [cancer diagnosis], yeah, it's definitely something that doesn't get looked at as much.” Hannity responded that “even if the government spent … $300 million on this particular cancer tomorrow, it's not going to be your answer.” [Premiere Radio Networks,The Sean Hannity Show, 2/12/25]
- Chris Stigall, host ofThe Chris Stigall Podcast, noted that he’s received “quite a bit of outreach from you federal workers.” He read one email from a listener who remarked that “it’s difficult to get beyond your disrespect and disregard for federal employees.” Stigall noted that the email is “not the only one of these that I got on both X and in email.” Stigall responded to the reader's email: “I'm going to talk to you like an adult here for a minute. Grow up. Grow up. If you work for the federal government, you need to grow up, respectfully.” *The Chris Stigall Podcast*, [2/24/25]
- A caller to Fox host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show accused Trump of trying to “bribe” people with DOGE dividends.The caller noted, “The last tax break that Trump gave was $1.9 trillion and 65% with the people making over a $130,000 a year. … If you're going to get after the excess spending, you have to go after a military waste and the rich — make the rich pay. Instead, he's trying out for a $5,000 bribe to people." Fox News Radio, *Brian Kilmeade Show,*[2/21/25]
- A caller to Fox host Mark Levin's radio show makes impassioned plea concerning the legal status of his fiancé: “We've been planning on getting married now for a few months. And it seems like I've read on the news now that, if you were paroled into the United States, you can't file any forms, for immigration.” The caller also expressed concern with people turning against Ukraine, where his fiancé and her family are from. Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [2/19/25]
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SOFTBALL W TRUMP D MUSK?
MMA
February 21, 2025, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Ouch. That was awesome. That was so good. That was epic, and you know what? The president's right, and I don't even think in Maine -- and Maine is pretty liberal -- I don't think even in Maine, the people of Maine want biological men playing in women's sports.
And, again, this goes back to the argument that we've been making that if this is -- these are the hills that the left in America wants to die on. They want be the party that is defending the right of men to play in women's sports and taxpayer funded sex change operations and, you know, funding, you know, free housing, food, health care, education, and even college education if Tim Walz has his way, for illegal immigrants and then putting the rights of illegal immigrants over the safety of American citizens after Biden and Harris allowed in known terrorists, murderers, rapists, cartel members, and gang members. If this is their agenda, I'm perfectly fine with them staying there, and I really don't see, you know, any hope for them.
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MMA
Sean Hannity says everything USAID does is “radical DEI, woke, transgender, you know, leftist, Green New Deal madness”
02/04/25
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gaza bs and
Sean Hannity once celebrated the FBI “rank and file.” Now he’s touting Trump’s purge.}:
02/05/25
02/05/25
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MMA
Sean Hannity on the United Nations: “Let's let China be in charge of all of it”
02/03/25
Sean Hannity celebrates Donald Trump's “purge” of the FBI
02/03/25
Accident investigator refuses to take the bait as Sean Hannity pesters him to connect DC plane crash to DEI
01/31/25 5:10 PM EST](https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/accident-investigator-refuses-take-bait-sean-hannity-pesters-him-connect-washington-dc)
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an 1 25
// budde?
During a late January appearance on Fox News, Vice President JD Vance tried to make a Christian argument in favor of President Donald Trump's MAGA/America First ideology. But his comments are getting some pushback from theologian Joash Thomas.
Vance is popular among Christian nationalists and far-right white evangelicals because of his extreme social conservatism, including his attacks on women who don't have biological children. The vice president, however, is not an evangelical Protestant, but a convert to Catholicism. And on Fox News, he claimed that MAGA Republicans have a better understanding of Christianity than the left.
Vance told Fox News' Sean Hannity, "I think it's a very Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor — and then, you love your community. And then you love your fellow citizens and your own country. And then, after that, focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that."
READ MORE:[Inside Trump's scheme to concentrate power
The vice president continued, "They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to ruin a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is a simple concept: America first."
But Thomas argued that Vance's thinking is flawed.
In a Thursday, January 30 thread on X, formerly Twitter, Thomas wrote, "I am a theologian trained at one of America's top conservative evangelical theological seminaries. This is *not* a Christian concept; it's a western individualistic one."
Thomas continued, "I've studied Augustine. He was right on some stuff and way off on others. According to your logic, executing our theological enemies for heresy is 'Christian' too. If it doesn't look like Christ, it shouldn't be called 'Christian.' The Jesus I worship taught us to love enemy…. And he showed us how to love our enemies by laying down his life for his enemies. Don't like my definition of Christian? Your beef isn't with me. It's with Jesus. So take it up with him."
READ MORE:['Heinous personality': Internet unleashes on 'psychopath' Trump after he jokes about crash
*Watch the JD Vance interview below or at this link.
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mma
A guide to Sean Hannity’s role as Trump’s chief White House propagandist
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 01/22/25
Fox News host Sean Hannity — President Donald Trump’s pick to provide his first Oval Office interview, which airs tonight — shattered every imaginable ethical standard during Trump’s first term as he transformed his program into a nonstop White House propagandafest.
Hannity, long a consistent mouthpiece for GOP talking points and naked partisan cheerleading, became the sitting president’s confidant and adviser. The Fox star became known within the West Wing as Trump’s “unofficial chief of staff,” shaping policy outcomes and widespread conspiracy-minded counternarratives through both his private conversations with the president and his public program, which Trump regularly watched. Hannity’s on-air propaganda and unethical actions drew outrage from his colleagues, but his bosses were largely unconcerned with his dual role as network host and Trump political operative.
Hannity didn’t stop propagandizing on Trump’s behalf when he left the White House in disgrace in 2021. The host worked tirelessly to help the president fend off his legal problems, return to power within the GOP, smear Democrats, reposition for the general election, defuse potentially damaging critiques, and ultimately win the presidency again.
Trump theoretically crossed a red line for Hannity with Tuesday’s pardons of hundreds of January 6 insurrectionists charged with violent offenses such as assaulting law enforcement during Trump’s 2021 coup attempt — a decision Trump claims to have made after determining that some of them “love our country.” But knowing the Trump/Hannity relationship means understanding that the Fox host will either ignore the move or do everything in his power to help Trump sell it.
Below is a timeline of the Trump-Hannity relationship during the president’s first term — including a sequence of ethical morasses that would lead to the termination of a host at any remotely credible news outlet.
2016}:
- Hannity “provided a private jet” for Fox contributor Newt Gingrich “to fly to Indianapolis to meet with Donald Trump about being vice president on the Republican ticket.”
- Trump and onetime campaign chair Paul Manafort “talked to Sean Hannity in their offices often” during the campaign, Rick Gates, Manafort’s former deputy, later told the FBI.
- Hannity endorsed Trump in an official Trump campaign video, drawing a Fox statement that he “will not be doing anything along these lines for the remainder of the election.”
- ### 2017
- Hannity reportedly “strategized with the Trumps about how to keep” news of Donald Trump Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting with Russians offering “dirt” about Hillary Clinton “from coming out, and what to say if it did.” He then hosted Trump Jr. for a softball interview about the incident.
- Trump reportedly backed off a deal with Democrats that would have secured legal status to “Dreamers” after “Hannity made clear in a phone call and on his show that Trump must draw a harder line on broader immigration enforcement as his price” and “Trump sided with Hannity” over his then-chief of staff, John Kelly.
- Conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow agreed to join Trump’s legal team responding to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, reportedly due in part to Sekulow’s “relationship” with Hannity, who had previously retained Sekulow and regularly hosted him on his show.
- While using his show to regularly denounce Mueller’s probe, Hannity began serving as a “back channel” between Trump and associates like Manafort whom Mueller was investigating, according to text messages released later. After the FBI raided Manafort’s home, Hannity privately urged him to “stay strong.”
- ### 2018
- Hannity became “so close to Trump that some White House aides have dubbed him the unofficial chief of staff,” The Washington Post reported. The Post further reported that “Trump is known to cite Hannity when he talks with White House advisers” and that in regular phone calls several times a week, the pair “discuss ideas for Hannity’s show, Trump’s frustration with the ongoing special counsel probe and even, at times, what the president should tweet.”
- Hannity was revealed as a secret client of Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, a fact the Fox host had not disclosed in his commentary on Cohen’s case.
- Hannity convinced Trump to hire his longtime friend and former producer Bill Shine as White House deputy communications director. Shine’s exit the next year for a campaign role reportedly came in part because Trump “feels he was sold a bill of goods by Hannity.”
- Hannity appeared on stage and spoke at a Trump political rally on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections — after Fox and the host had both said he would not be attending to campaign for Trump. Both responded to the ensuing firestorm by neither admitting fault nor promising that it wouldn’t happen again.
- ### 2019
- Trump reportedly sought strategic advice from Hannity after shutting down the government in a ploy to garner funding for a border wall in December 2018, and subsequently cited Hannity's influence in declaring a border “emergency” to obtain the money.
- According to a pool report chronicling Trump’s January 2019 border tour: “Sean Hannity has special access here. He huddled with Bill Shine and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kirstjen] Nielsen and is following along on Trump’s tour, only standing with the staff and federal officials as opposed to the press corps.”
- Trump’s campaign credited Hannity after the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the Mueller probe in pursuit of the Fox host’s “deep state” conspiracy theories.
- Hannity was a central figure in the Ukraine disinformation plot that triggered Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.
- ### 2020
- After Trump “briefed” a vacationing Hannity on the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Hannity then “called in to his own show to recite what Trump had told him.” Hannity regularly served as a mouthpiece for Trump in this way, attributing the sitting president’s statements to “sources.”
- Hannity’s claim that the emerging COVID-19 pandemic was a “hoax” by the media and Democrats aimed at the president became a Trump talking point early in the response.
- Hannity reportedly scripted an ad for Trump’s reelection campaign. (It aired only once, on his Fox program.)
- Hannity sought, received, and carried out marching orders from the Trump White House on what to say on Election Day 2020, text messages with then-chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed.
- ### 2021
- Hannity, who zealously supported Trump’s lies that the 2020 election had been stolen, texted Meadows a warning in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection: “I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told.”
- Hannity texted Meadows during the January 6 insurrection, urging Trump to make a statement asking his supporters to leave the Capitol.
- Hannity texted with White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany after the insurrection, providing what McEnany called a “playbook” for how to manage Trump and prevent more “stolen election talk.”
- In January 10, 2021, texts with Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Hannity said, “We have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can’t mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say, and I don’t like not knowing if it’s truly understood.”
//
01/21/20 4:08 PM EST
11/06/18 10:25 AM EST
04/26/22
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MMA
CNN’s Daniel Dale fact-checks Trump’s claims that CA water policy exacerbated LA fires
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Allison Fisher
Published 01/24/25
On January 20, as part of his day one executive orders, President Donald Trump directed several U.S. agencies to restart a policy from his first term that reroutes water from Northern California to Southern California. The order ties Trump’s policy to the devastating fires in California that are so far responsible for 28 deaths and more than $250 billion in damages, effectively canonizing the false right-wing media claim that current California water policy impeded efforts to contain the LA fires.
Right-wing media wildfire misinformation underpins Trump’s executive order on California water policy
At the outset of the LA fires, the most costly in California history, Trump blamed “federal and state protections for California’s endangered delta smelt fish. He falsely claimed that those regulations led to inadequate water availability for firefighting efforts.”
As The New York Times explained at the time:
> Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a California research organization that focuses on water, said Mr. Trump was spouting “complete nonsense.”
“There’s no link between California’s water policies and efforts to protect endangered species and water availability for firefighters,” Mr. Gleick said. “They’re completely unrelated."
He noted that Southern California reservoir levels, including ones that feed Los Angeles, are above normal for this time of year. “There’s no water shortage,” he said. “The real issue is that urban water systems are not built or designed to fight massive, urban wildfires.”
Despite this and other fact-checks confirming Trump’s claims are inaccurate, right-wing media elevated this misinformation while firefighters raced to suppress the fires. As firefighters continue their battle to contain the blazes, Trump and right-wing media have continued to spread this falsehood, undeterred by the facts.
During Trump’s first sit-down interview since his swearing in, the president and Fox host Sean Hannity continued to push falsehoods about the LA fires, saying they were caused by poor forest management and lack of water due to California’s water policies. During the interview, Hannity asked Trump whether aid to the state would “be contingent on them practicing the science of forestry.” In response Trump said, “I don't think we should give California anything until they let water flow down.”
Video
Citation
From the January 22, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Most recently, Trump repeated the false claims while visiting North Carolina (and hours before visiting California):
But much more importantly, in California, just to revert to it for a second, millions of gallons of water are waiting to be poured down through, already, the halfpipes that are already built. … And about 20 years ago they turned off the water. And it is the water that comes from the Pacific Northwest, some of it comes out of Canada. And it flows there and it probably has flowed there for a million years and they turned it off and they route it out to the Pacific. And in the meantime, you don't have water in the hydrants, you don’t have water in the sprinkler systems. … Everyone is trying to figure out, “Why aren't they turning it back” — they say it’s the delta smelt, it’s a fish. But I find that hard to believe.
Moments after Trump’s comments, which aired live on Fox News and CNN, CNN’s Daniel Dale fact-checked the claim that water policy played a role in the LA fires:
The fact is that whatever happened in Los Angeles has nothing to do with a little fish in Northern California, like President Trump keeps saying. He keeps saying or suggesting that there was insufficient water in Los Angeles. You know, those dry hydrants we heard about in Pacific Palisades because the state didn't send enough water down from Northern California to L.A., instead was doing environmental protection like protecting the delta smelt. I've talked to a bunch of experts in California water policy. Complicated stuff. But on this subject, it's not complicated. Those two things have nothing to do with each other. If you look at California water data, it's available online. You'll see that there is no shortage of water in the Los Angeles area.
Trump’s January 22 interview with Hannity and his visit to California on January 24 came just days after the president signed an executive order that directs U.S. agencies to restart work “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.” The order reads: “The recent deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply and sound vegetation management practices in order to provide water desperately needed there, and why this plan must immediately be reimplemented.”