benny johnson tpusa

2ND 10 25 NOEM RIDE-ALONG? ERIC TRUMP ANTI-COMMIE 10 25

SADLY PRIMARY 11 25 SHEER # MANOSPHERE? 14 tags 12 25

POSTER BOY FOR INFLUENCER? WHOLE PKG?

SEE CONSPIRACY EG SETH RICH REBOOT 7 26

SEE JDV ILHAN OMAR

FAIL 3 4 5 EREC SCHM JACK SMITH 9 26

poster? for?no incubator? sorta pol op?

Johnson, who interviewed Flynn on his show, was recently employed by a media company alleged by federal prosecutors to be a front for a Russian influence operation. Johnson and other conservative influencers linked to the company have said they were victims of the scheme

freq mma 2 23 but no tag yet} :TRIFECTA

ALL PHOBE BUT ISLAM?

HE STARTED AT TPUSA?! SOFT PWR SCALP KIMMEL CARR FCC 925

MERRI OK

SEE CRM

BIG LIE --> GOP STEAL

SEE NOEM portlaND ANTIFA BS lied about sniper fire into ice

SEE RENEE GOOD MINNE ALEX PRETTI

tenet media russia

SEE BIG LIE ILLEGAL VOTE --> 2026 VOTER SUPPRESS

~ SOC SAFETY NET

SEE FAKE VICTIM arson

sorta neglected, just links

xian natl eric trump douglas wilson rev

ATTACKS WOMEN

see tariffs

wingnuttery demons

SEE KIRK LOOMER

ANTI-COMMIE ~ acb CUBA VENEZ WAR

ISLAMOPHOBE

ANTI-IMMIGRANT // RACISM

hugo chavez ghost reboot 12 25 --> VENEZ 3

plagiarism mult times

embed ridealong cosplay noem

TARIFFS ~ SCOTUS

AGITATOR reboot, meld w paid protestor soros BS // antifa 4 terror 3 BS

BAK

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what flavor xian? when?

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mma

Benny Johnson: If Republicans win the midterms “we will have a red kingdom”

10/27/26

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MMA

While lamenting a suspected arson at Hitler's mountain vacation home, Benny Johnson says “in our modern era” Barack Obama “is the worst leader in human history — no one has caused more damage to the earth”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 10/26/26

Video file

Video

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Little by little, the past will be destroyed by those who don't understand it, and don't want you to have any connection to it because they wish to rule over you.

Ladies and gentlemen, a relic of World War II, but an incredibly historic location, Hitler's Eagle's Nest was burnt to ashes, damaged beyond repair last night. I, you know, I think I would compare this perhaps to the melting down of the Confederate monuments, right? Like, you don't you don't have to agree with the Confederacy, you don't have to love Hitler or anything like that to understand that this is part of history. This is part of world history.

Perhaps you could like appreciate this place because it's a place where American troops set up shop in fact, when we conquered Germany and won World War II. It's where American troops actually carved their names into the banisters, into the walls, in the rock. You could see it as an Allied conquest. You could see it as a world con- — you could see it as many things. Certainly historic locations where Hitler held many historic meetings, right, throughout the Third Reich, and a symbol to the world of what that era in history meant, much like the Confederate statues.

I mean, I don't want, for instance, I don't like Barack Obama at all. I think there's never been a more damaging president and never will be. Please God, never will be a more damaging president in American history. I don't want his presidential library to burn to the ground. Maybe the people of Chicago do, you know, because it's a massive eyesore, but I wouldn't be in favor of burning it to the ground in spite of the fact that I — that in our modern era, he is the worst leader in human history — no one has caused more damage to the earth than Barack Obama.

Anyways, it's awful to see because it's history lost and a fire has ripped through the Eagle's Nest in Bavaria. German police have detained a suspected arsonist. What do you bet? What do you bet the arsonist is going to either be a criminal alien migrant, be a Muslim, or is going to be a communist, right? The communists want to start at year zero. The communists can't have you connected to anything in the past. Crews saw flames rising high in the air as they approached. They found the building completely ablaze.

The suspected person was taken into temporary custody. Nobody was injured and it was hard to contain the fire because it's a high altitude. There's wind. The building is only accessible with a heavy breathing apparatus. She said authorities were alerted of the fire. No potential reason for the fire was given. The German police reported, you can see here the fire. The place is a blaze. And now you can see that it is a a total loss, a total ruin. Oh, it's awful. Again, this is the retreat for Hitler, but also a location of some of the most significant moments of World War II. For that sake alone, it should be preserved and should be an opportunity for people to go and see history, learn history, and whatever they want to take from it, that's on them.

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10 26 PAYWALL

How Trump’s ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Investigation Failed to Become the New QAnon

by Mike Rothschild

10.19.26 |

In Rough Edges, Mike Rothschild writes about fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

People love a grand conspiracy. The bigger the scheme is, the more people get drawn into it. And the more details and players that are involved, the more believable it seemingly becomes. After all, who would go to the trouble of making up something so complicated? It must be true.

And nobody loves a conspiracy more than President Trump. He and his inner circle especially seem to have fallen in love with what has literally been dubbed “The Grand Conspiracy.” It’s a hopelessly complex, entirely unevidenced theory claiming that a high-ranking group of political figures have been plotting in the shadows for years to stop Donald Trump from making America great again through investigations, indictments and impeachments. It has all the hallmarks of the type of grandiose schemes that Trump supporters especially fall for: countless players, sprawling plots, intricate secrets, and a total lack of evidence that it actually took place.

Despite lacking cogent answers to foundational questions such as “what it is” and “who is doing it,” revenge for the Grand Conspiracy has been a driving force in the administration, prompting an investigation that has trundled along over the last year and a half, involving dozens of officials looking for some reason to indict the president’s enemies.

And there are many, many enemies. They include a greatest hits of Trump’s obsessions and grievances, from former special counsel Jack Smith to minor players like former FBI agent Peter Strzok, and even former President Barack Obama himself. According to Grand Conspiracy believers, they are all powerful Deep State figures who supposedly worked together in a single, years-long scheme to destroy Trump and undo the will of the people.

Precisely what these conspirators have actually done remains unclear — even, seemingly, to the prosecutors themselves, who, per the Wall Street Journal, complained to the Justice Department that they weren’t getting much guidance from the local U.S. attorney. The probe is now being run out of Washington, where it continues to baffle those assigned to move it forward.

In the last few weeks, there have been a host of indications that DOJ efforts to prosecute these figures — and tie them all together into one grand scheme — are falling apart. And, as the Grand Conspiracy prosecution flails at DOJ, the claims also aren’t doing much in the court of public opinion, where Republicans are looking for anything they can find to shore up their crumbling midterm prospects.

Trump has, in the past, excelled at turning his personal grievances and enemies into Republican grievances and enemies. But people aren’t especially interested anymore, at least not if one looks at the Republican Party’s numbers in 2026 midterm polling and beyond. Trump voters seem to now be wondering how Trump’s beefs and feuds impact their own lives. They continue to express their disappointment that the president hasn’t curbed inflation, went to war in Iran despite explicit promises of no new wars, and has failed to bring closure to the Jeffrey Epstein debacle.

With the GOP’s midterms prospects looking bleak, Trump’s most loyal influencers are nonetheless leaning into the Grand Conspiracy narrative to present the illusion that everything is going to work out if they just hang on a little longer and vote Republican. Over and over during the past year, everyone from mainstream pundits like Sean Hannity and Dan Bongino to candidates like Mike Lindell and a host of anonymous conspiracy theorists have played up the Grand Conspiracy as the investigation that will finally bring down the Deep State and bring Trump the vindication he has always deserved.

“John Brennan and Jack Smith have some real, major explaining to do, and that they’re probably going to be under some major indictments in the Grand Conspiracy hearing,” declared Benny Johnson in an October interview with Roger Stone where the two traded speculation about the activities of the “seditious cabal” that’s tried to ruin Trump’s life.

“If Jack Smith is not held accountable, you are going to have a very angry base,” conservative writer Julie Kelly declared on Trump stalwart Mark Levin’s radio show a day earlier. “We already saw the Russiagate perps get off. Hopefully, we’ll have some accountability in Florida and the Grand Conspiracy investigation.”

Like so many other past Trump-world conspiracy theories and “investigations that will reveal everything,” Grand Conspiracy believers are setting themselves up not for triumph, but for more disappointment.

What Does the Grand Conspiracy Involve?

Like many conspiracy theories with countless components and players to track, the intricacies of every allegation in the “Grand Conspiracy” are too complicated to cover in full. They are also irrelevant to understanding the greater gist of the theory, because many either don’t exist in a way that can be proven, or are not crimes at all. The more you examine the details, the more you drift away from the bigger picture.

The short version of the supposed scheme involves everyone from Barack Obama and Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton and James Comey. Glimpses of the conspiracy can, its proponents hold, be seen in in countless forms: Jack Smith’s probe into Jan. 6; the Steele Dossier that gave us infamous allegations like the “pee tape”; Trump’s impeachments; the Biden-era Jan. 6 and classified documents indictments; the New York hush money case involving Stormy Daniels; and the numerous FBI probes into Russian interference in 2016 and Trump’s ties to Moscow.

All of the above was done to subvert Trump’s landslide victories, and to take Trump off the board because he was a threat to the Deep State’s control over global politics, the conspiracy theory holds. Despite failing in 2016, the conspiracy plotters continued to make his life miserable while he was in office through impeachments and probes, then they tried to put him in prison after the 2020 election was stolen from him. Even after he won again, the legal warfare and persecution have never stopped.

But now Trump is taking action. The “Grand Conspiracy” investigation is how the investigators will be investigated, and how the persecutors will be persecuted. Running for a time out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida, the sprawling probe has involved major Justice Department figures, countless prosecutors and agents, and untold millions of dollars spent running down something that continues to elude basic understanding or evidence, all the while trying to turn it into something that a jury might be able to make heads or tails of. It’s not going well so far.

The Grand Conspiracy and QAnon

If all of this is starting to sound like a more official version of QAnon, there’s a reason. It’s a more official version of QAnon.

Like the “Grand Conspiracy,” QAnon — which began in October 2017 with a series of cryptic 4chan posts about Hillary Clinton’s imminent “arrest” — revolves around Trump’s enemies being brought to justice in a secret, yet satisfying way. In thousands of cryptic riddles meant for followers to decode, Q promised military tribunals for supposed Deep State luminaries like Obama, the Clintons, George Soros, and countless others.

The conspiracies it alleged became hopelessly complicated, virtually impossible for anyone to fully understand. Many, in fact, were contradictory and nonsensical, based on phony “evidence” or vague predictions. And nothing Q “predicted,” from Clinton’s arrest to public executions of Democrats to the revealing of secret new technologies and cures for disease, ever happened.

Trump, of course, is the focal point of both movements. In the “Grand Conspiracy,” he is the target of the Deep State, fighting for his freedom and his very life. Meanwhile in QAnon, the Deep State is Trump’s target, with the president personally posting on 4chan when he needs to communicate with his followers.

But while the context is different, they share a similar devotion to fantastical stories over facts, to compelling narratives over actual ones. And they share many of the same characters. Kash Patel promoted QAnon on numerous occasions, while “Grand Conspiracy” figures like DOJ special prosecutor John Durham and former FBI director James Comey also had prominent places in Q’s narrative, as both heroes and villains.

Ultimately, QAnon wasn’t started by Trump’s inner circle, but they found it useful to exploit its tenets. The “Grand Conspiracy,” of course, comes directly from Trump and his allies. But not only is it floundering legally, it’s not clear if the plot is proving useful to keeping the base engaged and, ultimately, to the GOP’s electoral chances.

The issue with the “Grand Conspiracy” is not the prospect of its targets being hauled off to prison. It seems unlikely to ever get that far. It’s that government-endorsed conspiracy theories like it, when they find an audience, are remarkably durable and excel at driving anger toward enemies of the state. They can move people toward violence, unhinged hatred, and even betraying their own country; all in service of a paranoid plot that doesn’t exist and nobody can prove.

Revolutionary France was full of bloody acts of revenge against supposed plots by foreign and domestic enemies working in vast spheres of influence that could never quite be proven. During the leadup to the Civil War, countless citizens of both the North and South believed the other side was plotting with foreign agents and secret societies to take over their states. And the rise of Nazism was fueled by relentless propaganda accusing a web of international Jewish financiers of “backstabbing” an undefeated Germany at the end World War I as part of a communist conspiracy that needed to be violently destroyed to save the Reich.

Fortunately, the Grand Conspiracy does not seem to be enjoying the same success as those historical precedents. Even QAnon managed to keep generating discussion and speculation for years, gaining new followers even as it recycled its plots and descended into inscrutable riddles. It created a narrative that has stubbornly lodged itself into mainstream conservatism. The “Grand Conspiracy,” meanwhile, is quietly flopping, as prosecutors fail to bring the investigation to fruition, and Republican voters worry more about gas prices and food costs than who might have committed minor infractions a decade ago.

But like Revolutionary France and Nazi Germany, even the grandest conspiracy outlives its usefulness when people figure out they’re being had. And the “Grand Conspiracy” might have already hit that point. It’s not moving the needle with voters, and it’s not actually getting anyone convicted.

When it fails, it will require yet another new conspiracy theory to explain how it all went wrong.

Mike Rothschild writes Rough Edges for TPM, covering fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. He is a journalist and expert in the growth and impact of conspiracy theories. He is the author of the first complete book on the QAnon conspiracy movement, 2021’s The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything; as well as Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories in 2023.

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MAGA media figures demanded and even teased immigration action against Rep. Ilhan Omar — and then DHS raided her home

Written by Reed McMaster & Ben Van Bloem

Published 10/14/26 11:03 AM EDT

Updated 10/14/26

Right-wing media figures have long spread conspiracy theories against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). During the second Trump administration, this has manifested in calls to deport Omar, an American citizen, citing as supposed evidence the conspiracy theories that have spread for years. In September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson that Omar was under investigation, months after Vice President JD Vance told Johnson a similar story. When Mullin made his comments, right-wing media erupted in objection, demanding action instead of investigations.

Roughly a month later, DHS raided the congresswoman’s home. Right-wing media figures celebrated the raid, with podcast host Katie Miller reportedly even posting “promises made, promises kept” — the exact line Fox host Tomi Lahren had used to concerning Mullin’s remarks earlier to demand federal government action against Omar — while Johnson took credit: “This will be our crowning achievement for life.”

• Federal agents searched the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar
  • Right-wing figures have long spread conspiracy theories about Omar, including one “based on some of the least credible evidence ever put forward in right-wing media” that she married her brother. According to The Bulwark, the claims “certainly wouldn’t stand up in court. The whole thing, in fact, boils down to a single anonymous post on a Somali-American web forum.” Furthermore, an investigation into Omar’s financial disclosures was dismissed earlier this year, and previous federal investigations into these topics have also ended without any charges. [Media Matters, 7/25/19; CBS News, 9/9/26; The Bulwark, 9/14/26]

• • On October 12, agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a subsection of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, executed a warrant on Omar’s D.C. home. The New York Times reported, “The search warrant, executed 22 days before Election Day, lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge, according to a person familiar with the document.”
  • The search by DHS agents broke with longstanding Justice Department policy to avoid similar investigative steps against candidates within 60 days of an election that could affect the results. Donald Trump cited this policy during the 2024 elections to claim that the DOJ was acting improperly in investigating him. Omar denies the allegations and has criticized the raid on her home by DHS agents as an attempt by the Trump administration “to target political enemies and weaponize law enforcement.” [The Guardian, 10/12/26; The New York Times, 10/12/26]

• • In March, Vice President JD Vance told MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, “We think Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America.” Vance said, “That’s the thing that we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud — how do you go after her, how do you investigate her, how do you actually do the thing, how do you build a case necessary to get some justice for the American people?” Discussing Omar again during a White House press conference in May, Vance reiterated that “it certainly seems like something fishy is there.” [Fox News, 3/29/26; CBS News, 5/19/26]
  • In September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Johnson that there is an “ongoing investigation” into Omar and raised the possibility of deportation. Around the same time, White House “border czar” Tom Homan also said that “things are going on” with Omar but refused to give details about the “ongoing criminal investigation.” Homan told Fox News, “If someone committed an immigration violation, if someone committed marriage fraud or anything like that, regardless if they're a congressman or not, no one's above the law. So, I'll leave it at that. We'll let HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, continue the investigation.” [The Associated Press, 10/12/26; Fox News, 9/13/26]
  • Mullin’s remarks sparked backlash to the administration in right-wing media for taking insufficient action against Omar. According to The Bulwark, “Like many of the pledges that people in Trump world make to prosecute and deport the president’s political enemies, this pledge has also run into legal hurdles and an actual reality that is not very accommodating to their goals. And it appears that Mullin is now set to take the blame for the absence of any action. Right-wing media influencer Laura Loomer, who once traveled to Minneapolis in her own fruitless attempt to prove Omar married her brother, fumed after the Mullin interview that Omar was somehow being protected from deportation. … Perhaps no one was angrier with Mullin than Fox News host Tomi Lahren. On Saturday, Lahren devoted much of her show to claiming the DHS secretary was using Omar’s case as a sideshow to distract from the perceived lack of larger-scale deportations. ‘If they want to do an investigation, do an investigation,’ she said. But whether Omar married her brother wouldn’t ‘get people out to vote,’ Lahren said. ‘What’s going to get people out to vote for Republicans is promises made, promises kept.’” [The Bulwark, 9/14/26]

Right-wing media figures have cryptically referred to “something happening” to Omar for months

• • On September 1, Johnson said that he had been hearing “rumblings” about Omar and said, “The vice president has told me on the record that something’s about to happen.” Johnson said, “I'm hearing a lot of rumblings about Ilhan Omar. She's grown suspiciously silent on social media. The vice president has told me on the record that something's about to happen. So has Tom Homan. … And we've been sort of, like, asking around and doing our best to use our sources, and we are assured that something is about to happen with Ilhan Omar and her family.” He also asked his guest, Sean Davis of The Federalist, “What would that mean to the political zeitgeist — the Third World parasitic ecosystem that lives on the underbelly of America — what kind of message would that send to denaturalize, deport, or even just criminally charge Ilhan Omar?” Davis responded that “she needs to be sent back” and added, “That whole community needs to go back — Somalianism is incompatible with America.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 9/1/26]

• • In May, The Charlie Kirk Show co-host Andrew Kolvet argued there are “bad things” in Omar's future and claimed she “probably engaged in immigration fraud.” He said, “She's got no good answers for it because Ilhan Omar is legitimately a scourge on our Congress. That's exactly right. She is a disgrace to the city of Washington, D.C., and to the American people. She probably engaged in immigration fraud. She's engaged in some other issues that are causing her complaints with the ethics complaints within the House. So Ilhan Omar has got, I think, some bad things in her future.” [Rumble, The Charlie Kirk Show, 5/21/26]

• • In August, host of conspiracy theory podcast X22 Report David Marc Fishman insisted there's an investigation into Omar and said, “I do believe” they will have enough evidence to indict her. He said, “They're investigating Ilhan Omar. They're collecting the evidence. And if they have enough evidence, which I do believe they will, they will then forward this on and there'll be an investigation into Ilhan Omar. There'll be a grand jury that will be looking at this and there will be an indictment as time goes on, just like with everybody else.” [Rumble, X22 Report, 8/13/26]

• • On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity told a caller that an investigation into Omar was underway in July, months before the September announcement. He said, “I can tell you this: There is an investigation going on. I don’t know why it’s being slow-walked. You're raising a fair and good question, and it’s irritating to me too.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/23/26]

• • Podcaster Tim Pool suggested “something is happening” regarding an investigation into Omar weeks before Mullin admitted to it. He said, “They are not going to release information which will compromise any investigation. And this, my friends, is the disappointing part for so many that want there to be some kind of enforcement action against Ilhan Omar. This does not confirm it. Something is happening, which I would say is good, but we don't know for sure.” [YouTube, Timcast, 8/24/26]

After the DHS raid on Omar’s home, right-wing media celebrated and Benny Johnson took credit

• • Podcaster Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, reportedly wrote “promises made, promises kept” above an article on the DHS raid of Omar's home before reportedly deleting the post. [Bluesky, 10/12/26]

• • Benny Johnson opened a show after the raid by asking his audience “Are you excited? To send Ilhan Omar back to her indigenous peoples? That is what's about to happen. We were right. Forgive us. We're going to gloat just a bit today. It's going to be insufferable, I’m so sorry, but we’ve been waiting for this.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 10/12/26]

• • Newsmax host Carl Higbie opened his October 12 show by celebrating the DHS raid on Omar's home, saying, “I hope they were blasting Creed while they did it.” He later added that it “couldn't happen to a better person.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 10/12/26]

• • The Charlie Kirk Show co-host Blake Neff said it would “be tremendous” if the government could “strip the citizenship from Ilhan Omar,” while co-host Andrew Kolvet referred to the raid as “Christmas in October” and said her denaturalization would be “great for the whole country.” Neff said, “If you could actually denaturalize, strip the citizenship from Ilhan Omar because her arrival here was fraudulent from the start. … It would be tremendous.” Kolvet followed up, “It was like Christmas in October, or was it Halloween? You know, with Ilhan Omar, let's go with Halloween. … Anyways, that's the breaking news. She's getting raided. We think it's about a paperwork issue, which could lead to a denaturalization process being pursued with her, which I think would be great for the whole country.” [Rumble, The Charlie Kirk Show, 10/12/26, 10/12/26]

• • Reacting to a Fox News report on the search of Omar’s home, conservative podcaster Dave Rubin said, “This is not a woman who loves America. This is not a woman who should be in America. … This is a bad lady, and finally it appears that we’re going to do something about it.” Holding a box with Omar’s picture on his desk, he said, “You know, it's funny, we have this as the Ilhan Omar puke bucket, but this story is — I may put tequila in it and just drink out of this thing.” [YouTube, The Rubin Report, 10/12/26]

• • Johnson called the administration's actions against Omar his “crowning achievement for life.” He said, “Today is Wednesday, October 14, 2026. Are you celebrating with us? Are you going to celebrate, Omar-mas? I will. Ilhan Omar scandal breaks wide open, and we were part of it, and that's exciting for us. This is our — we tried — we did get Jimmy Kimmel ripped off air. We view that as a massive success for this program. This will be our crowning achievement for life. We may hang it up. We may have to hang it up after this. You're not going to get better than this.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 10/14/26]

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GUK 10 26

Trump administration

Ilhan Omar says she will not be silenced after federal agents raid her home

Trump and key allies have accused Omar of immigration fraud, and have called to expel her from the country

Matt Shuham

Mon 12 Oct 2026

Federal agents searched Representative Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday morning as part of a criminal investigation, according to the Department of Justice and reports in the Associated Press and Fox News.

In a social media post later on Monday, Omar criticized the raid as an attempt by the Trump administration “to target political enemies and weaponize law enforcement” and said she would “not be silenced”.

A video posted by Fox showed what appeared to be law enforcement in HSI jackets at what Fox News said was Omar’s Washington DC residence.

“Today in the Washington DC area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” a DoJ spokesperson said.

It was unclear what the nature of the warrant was. Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House and Department of Homeland Security referred comment to DoJ. Citing two unnamed sources “close to the investigation”, Fox News reported that the search was related to a criminal fraud investigation concerning Omar’s immigration paperwork, which her late father filled out when she was a child.

View image in fullscreen

HSI agents outside the residence of Representative Ilhan Omar in Washington DC on Monday. Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/Reuters

Donald Trump and key allies have accused Omar of fraud related to her family’s immigration history, fantasizing openly about denaturalizing her and expelling her from the country.

The congresswoman has consistently denied the accusations, though Trump has repeatedly made them national news with gratuitous attacks against Omar, who along with Representative Rashida Tlaib became the United States’s first Muslim congresswoman in 2019.

But even amid a presidency known for political and legal retribution against his critics, the search of Omar’s DC home just three weeks before a crucial midterm election day will surely lead to new accusations that Trump was using the government for his own political ends.

Administration officials, and the president himself, have long hinted at a federal investigation into Omar. “Let’s see what happens,” Trump said at a rally on Saturday after attacking Omar by name, adding that Vice-President JD Vance “and our people are looking at it very strongly”.

It was just the latest in months of talk about investigating Omar. Trump in December accused her of having “married her brother” and said she “should be thrown the hell out of our country”, a reference to a years-old but unsubstantiated claim that Omar sought to help her ex-husband – who they allege is really her brother – obtain immigration papers via a sham marriage.

Days later, his “border czar” Tom Homan said: “We’re pulling the records now,” referring to Omar, and said a fraud investigator in Homeland Security Investigations, the ICE division that historically has been tasked with investigative work, would look into the matter.

View image in fullscreen

Homeland security officers carry boxes from the Washington residence of Ilhan Omar as yellow cordon tape can be seen in the distance. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

In March , Vance told rightwing media personality Benny Johnson: “We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud” and that he had recently spoken to top Trump aide Stephen Miller about “what the remedies are”. Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin told Johnson last month that there was an ongoing investigation and “something’s going to happen”.

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,” Mullin said. “We know he lives now in London. We feel that there may be more to this, the whole family migration, and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with. But all of us, we’re investigating.”

Soon after, Homan said he could not “comment on an ongoing criminal investigation.

“We’ll let HSI, Homeland Security Investigations continue to do their investigation,” he added.

Omar’s social media post after the raid on Monday said: “I’m OK. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”

The congresswoman also said Trump had spent years targeting her “with baseless lies and smear campaigns”.

“This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”

Omar has for years denied unsubstantiated rumors from Trump and others about herself and her family, including the accusation that her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is in fact her brother, and that the marriage was part of an effort to earn him immigration status. Marriage fraud is a felony, though it has a five-year statute of limitations. Omar and Elmi formally divorced in 2017 after separating in a religious divorce years earlier.

View image in fullscreen

Officers during an investigation at the residence of Ilhan Omar on Monday. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

The New York Post last month also quoted an unnamed “top immigration official” who said “the Trump administration could initiate a denaturalization process” against Omar if there is sufficient evidence that she or her father lied on immigration applications. The story noted accusations that Omar was older than her recorded age of 17 when she was naturalized, which could be relevant because she received citizenship via her parents. The report also raised questions about Omar’s father, who reportedly claimed to be an educator, though his obituary later described a military career.

As the most prominent Somali-American in the United States, Omar has faced years of racist attacks from the president and his supporters.

At his rally Saturday, Trump said of Somalia: “All they have is crime and squalor” and suggested that “our” US constitution did not belong to Omar. Two days earlier, he had written that Minnesota “is being taken over by Somali Immigrants”, even though the vast majority of Somali-Americans in the state are US citizens.

“The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing,” Trump wrote, urging supporters in the state to “fight back!”

Somali-Americans, especially, have borne relentless insult from the White House in Trump’s second term. In December, the president referred to them as “garbage” who “come from hell, and they complain, and do nothing but bitch”.

“Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” he added.

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AN 9 26

Writer Emily Zanotti thinks that Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt (Mo.) sent out his talking points and press availability about his conspiracy theory about former special counsel Jack Smith before he made them in the hearing and was fact-checked to his face. She's not the only one who appears to have noticed that Schmitt's false claim suddenly appeared online via influencers quickly.

Zanotti noted that she was seeing right-wing media folks already pushing out talking points alleging perjury by Smith.

"Oh man, the influencer instruction emails went out BEFORE the testimony," she said, showing a post from Benny Johnson.

In the screen capture, Johnson appears to accuse Smith of perjuring himself.

Schmitt mistakenly claimed that Smith was in Atlanta, Georgia, the day after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis revealed she'd dated a consultant her office later hired. As Schmitt told it, Smith was in Atlanta for an NBA game, seeing the Atlanta Hawks, and it raised suspicions about whether he was working with Willis.

Smith made it clear he'd never met Willis and wasn't in Atlanta for an NBA game. Schmitt smirked, reminding Smith he's "under oath." Smith made it clear he'd never been to an NBA game in Atlanta.

Schmitt flashed a blown-up poster board of text exchanges showing Willis with Smith and the text messages about Smith's seats for the game. Smith asked if he could see it again. He said that they'd removed it so quickly he didn't get a chance to see who was alleging what.

Schmitt even sneered, "It's ok. I think you've already perjured yourself."

That's when it became clear that the "Hawks" game that was being discussed was, in fact, the Iowa Hawkeyes playing the University of Maryland. Smith said he wanted to see Caitlin Clark play.

It appeared TPUSA got them too, as Schmitt went on Charlie Kirk's old show after the hearing, where they also repeated the conspiracy theory but then revealed that Schmitt was proven false.

Schmitt has attempted to save himself from what critics are calling a "humiliating" moment on national television by saying that it was his job "to ask the questions."

Former New York Daily News reporter Helen Kennedy thinks that this was clearly part of a broader effort by Republicans for a big "gotcha."

"I may need to go get my tinfoil hat, but I really think there was a big right-wing campaign ready to go based on the assumption that Schmitt was going to pull a splashy gotcha moment," she said on BlueSky. "The Axios story and all of these right wingers immediately crowing that Smith got got. And then not following up."

The Axios story she is referencing is a piece that dropped Tuesday morning before the hearing claiming that Schmitt's name is being passed around as a vice presidential running mate.

Litigator Dilan Esper commented, "It's nice to see the sausage being made every once in a while. Yes, there are plenty of people who simply repeat whatever talking points they are given. They have no intellectual honesty and don't confirm things or think for themselves. And something like this can expose them."

Even local Missouri news reporters made the same observation.

Mark Maxwell, political editor of KSDK News in St. Louis, quipped, "This is what it looks like when pre-rehearsed coordinated talking points go out to a goober host with zero knowledge or curiosity about what actually happened in the real world. Just deeply embarrassing for everyone involved. Back in Missouri, we still await return calls/emails."

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September 1, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, uploaded to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): But this is the fundamental question of our time, and it's a curse on us, and it makes me so angry at older generations. And I love y'all. This is not gonna be some boomer hate screed. But you don't understand what was destroyed. And it's impossible because it's so hard for — this is why, like, the whole victimhood stuff is such trash — so impossible to put yourself in somebody else's position. It really is very hard for somebody to do this. So I'm not going to ask you to do it, but, like, think about what's been destroyed.

I have to homeschool my kids. Because I can't trust that they're not going to be indoctrinated or abused inside of the public school or killed, you know, right? Obviously, like, killed by a gang of like Third World miscreants that want to scalp a white kid. That didn't exist when I was growing up, when the boomers were raising their kids, except maybe the worst conceivable schools in the worst conceivable parts of the most downtrodden bombed out cities in America. Maybe you could find a public school like that. Now it's every public school, every one. Institutional trust is at absolute zero. That's why homeschooling is exploding.

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The MAGA media fixation on the “red-green alliance” is an attempt to hold a fracturing coalition together

Written by John Knefel

Published 08/19/26

My new piece at MS NOW argues that amid cratering approval ratings for President Donald Trump and a shaky economy, MAGA media is going all in on Islamophobia and the threat of socialism as a way of binding their fracturing coalition together.

If you’ve spent any time over the past few weeks listening to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast, you’ve likely heard the term “Marxist jihadist.” MAGA influencer Benny Johnson prefers the term “jihadist communist.” Other right-wing media programs have chosen the phrase “red-green alliance” — that is, a supposed pact between communists and Islamists.

Overt Islamophobia is not a new phenomenon in right-wing media. It has been deployed for years alongside broader nativist and xenophobic narratives. But a trio of factors is driving more openly politicized Islamophobia in right-wing media. All three are expressions of Muslims exerting their constitutionally protected political rights, especially when pursuing progressive policy goals.

Read the whole thing here.

//

Newsmax host: “I am calling on all Christian teachers to just go ahead and baptize Muslim students, see how you like that one, Allah”

1. 08/18/26 11:24 AM EDT

Timcast IRL panel discusses putting “all the Chinese Americans” in internment camps in a hypothetical war with China

1. 08/17/26 1:34 PM EDT

Benny Johnson: “Islam is here to kill us and convert us”

1. 08/17/26

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Benny Johnson: “Islam is here to kill us and convert us”

1. 08/17/26

Trump ally Laura Loomer calls for using “military force” to round up Muslims

08/17/26

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John Solomon is spreading another flimsy election fraud claim

Solomon, a right-wing media personality and the leader of a Trump White House task force, is reviving a closed case from Arizona in 2020

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 08/07/26

After another failed scramble to prove President Donald Trump’s claims that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, White House task force leader and right-wing media personality John Solomon is now attempting to retry a Maricopa County, Arizona, election website hacking case that was investigated, reported on, and closed years ago. NBC News reported that the case was highlighted by the White House yet “did not offer any evidence that any election was stolen or affected by widespread fraud.”

Solomon has been leading the effort declassifying intelligence documents the Trump administration is using to claim the U.S. election system is not secure. On July 16, Trump delivered a much-hyped primetime speech fearmongering about what those documents had uncovered. Afterward, Lawfare wrote that the speech “was most notable for what it did not contain: evidence that any malign activity affected the result. Much of what he described was already known. None of it showed that votes were changed, fraudulent ballots were counted, or the election was stolen. None of it showed that intelligence officials had concealed such evidence."

On August 6, Solomon published a story to his website, Just The News, on a “hack” of the Maricopa County voter records just before the 2020 election, writing that the Department of Justice under then-President Joe Biden had failed to prosecute the alleged hacker “even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the White House.”

MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson summarized the story during an interview with Solomon, saying, “More than 600,000 voter files ripped off Arizona site in 2020 by hacker — the DOJ caught him, the hacker confessed, and then nothing happened.”

Video

Share

Citation

From the August 6, 2026, edition of The Benny Johnson Show streamed on YouTube.

While speaking with Johnson, Solomon spun up hypothetical scenarios of election interference that did not occur in 2020, suggesting “a foreign power or a bad actor” could alter voter registration data or cast fraudulent absentee ballots. Solomon also claimed that “until Donald Trump finally made it public, we were kept in the dark” about voter files being hacked.

In an interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Solomon spun the story further claiming it was proof “that great, giant sugar pill we were force-fed at the end of the November 2020 election that we had just endured the most secure election in U.S. history … was absolutely not true.” Solomon told Bannon “Today, we learned that in Maricopa County — where we were told don’t look here, nothing to see in Maricopa County — on the eve of the election, the United States intelligence community … detected a major breach in Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona. It indicated that 600,000-plus voter files were stolen by a hacker.”

“There were some concerns that those hacks may have gone through foreign locations,” Solomon continued. “The FBI jumped on the case — the FBI proved exactly what the intelligence community believed happened.”

Video

Citation

From the August 6, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

In reality, the case was reported by the media in 2021, after Trump began spreading false claims about the Arizona election results — including suggesting “the election server was hacked” and “the voting system was breached.”

FactCheck.org explained that “the county said there was no hack, and it isn’t possible for hackers to change votes because the ballot tabulation equipment is a ‘closed air gapped system,’ meaning it isn’t connected to the internet.” The July 2021 report also shared a Maricopa County social media post that claimed, “The event in question involved an individual inappropriately accessing and downloading publicly available info. The website is in no way connected to the Election Management System.”

That same month, the Arizona Daily Star reported that a subcontractor working on the state Senate's audit of Arizona's election administration spoke about “problems” that were “related to a breach of the voter registration system the county itself reported,” claiming “that shows that at least one element of the county’s election system had been ‘hacked.’” The article went on to explain that “county election officials said all that was accessed was a site where people could register to vote, not the actual server where voter registration records are stored. All that anyone obtained was someone’s voter registration number, with no access to personal information, they said.” (The audit ultimately confirmed Biden’s victory in Maricopa County and “found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.”)

The FBI's official record when the case was closed in 2023, which was uploaded by Solomon’s Just the News, stated:

On November 2, 2020, Maricopa County Recorder's Office (MCRO) notified FBI Phoenix that an intruder that had scraped approximately 633,000 voter records, including 930 sensitive voter records, from the MCRO's website. … [The individual] admitted to developing a PowerShell script to scrape voter data after discovering the vulnerability in the MCRO website. After MCRO fixed the vulnerability, [the individual] got scared and deleted the data he'd scraped.

The FBI concluded that “investigators did not find indications of a domestic or foreign influence on [the individual]'s actions,” and the investigation was closed after “federal, state, and local prosecuting offices” all declined the case.

Even Solomon's own story noted that “voter registration files do not include ballots, and there's no evidence votes were changed in the incident,” before creating hypothetical scenarios that “if bad actors gained access to such files they could hamper the ability of voters to cast ballots in the future.”

Despite Solomon's claims that “today, we learned” about this supposed election interference, his latest story looks like just another desperate rehashing of old information to fearmonger about the upcoming midterms.

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On Steve Bannon’s War Room, John Solomon scrambles to substantiate Trump’s claims of Chinese election interference

07/31/26 3:35 PM EDT

What you need to know about John Solomon, the man driving Trump's latest election fraud nonsense

07/16/26 6:00 PM EDT

Misinformer John Solomon, who reportedly pushed for Trump’s prime-time speech, has spent months claiming China interfered in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden

07/16/26

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Right-wing media's unhinged response to Fauci's diary and congressional testimony

Right-wing media obsessed over Fauci, mentioning him relentlessly on cable news and podcasts

Written by Helena Hind, Reed McMaster, Jane Lee & Isabella Corrao

Research contributions from Rob Savillo

Published 07/30/26

Right-wing media have gone into overdrive to denigrate Dr. Anthony Fauci following the release of his private diary by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), accusing him of being a “mass murderer” whose “body count is higher than Hitler” and claiming he “deserves to be in prison.”

Right-wing media revived their anti-Fauci coverage after Republicans published pages from Fauci's journal

• • On July 25, Rand Paul published over 1,100 pages of COVID-19-era journal entries from former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci in an attempt to claim that he had covered up the origin of the virus. Paul also released records ranging from 2001 to 2015, which he dubbed the “prequel” to Fauci’s diary. These releases are Paul’s latest effort in his yearslong investigation into claims that COVID-19 leaked from a lab. Despite Paul's claims, the diary does not provide any “smoking gun”; rather, as New York Times notes, “It echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientists’ views evolved.” [NPR, 7/27/26, 7/29/26; New York Times, 7/27/26]

• • On July 29, Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to the committee’s questions. With Fauci making it clear he was going to plead the Fifth, Paul used the hearing to repeatedly accuse him of lying, suggesting “that while Fauci said publicly that Covid originated naturally, he privately believed the virus originated in a medical lab.” [NPR, 7/29/26; AP, 7/29/26; BBC, 7/29/26]

• • Right-wing media have long used Fauci as a pandemic scapegoat. Conservative media personalities started attacking Fauci in 2020, with Fox News programs portraying him as power-mad and using his influence to “favor what the Democrats want.” In 2022, then-Fox host Tucker Carlson called Fauci a “dangerous fraud, a man who has done things that in most countries, at most times in history, would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” [Media Matters, 8/23/22, 3/24/20]

Following the diary release, right-wing media devoted significant coverage to Fauci

• Right-wing media went all-in on covering the Fauci story. From Monday through noon on Thursday, Fox News mentioned Fauci 687 times, while on Newsmax, Fauci was mentioned 740 times (this includes mentions when the networks aired live coverage or clips of the hearing). In the online media space, Megyn Kelly said Fauci at least 75 times on her podcast across 3 episodes; The Charlie Kirk Show mentioned Fauci at least 87 times across 3 episodes, and Steve Bannon devoted significant attention during the July 29 edition of War Room to airing live portions of the hearing, with Bannon himself saying Fauci at least 26 times.

Right-wing media accused Fauci of being a “mass murderer” and called for his imprisonment

• • Podcaster Benny Johnson claimed Fauci's “body count” is higher than Adolf Hitler’s. He said Fauci is the “single greatest mass murderer in modern history, who has a body count much higher than Hitler.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 7/30/26]

• • Radio show host Megyn Kelly claimed “Fauci hurt a lot more people than Epstein did.” [SiriusXM, The Megyn Kelly Show, 7/27/26]

• • TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet claimed Fauci “deserves to be in prison.” [Rumble, The Charlie Kirk Show, 7/29/26]

• • Podcaster Tim Pool suggested that the Trump administration should attempt to charge and jail Fauci in El Salvador. He said, “Go to El Salvador, calculate what was their — how many deaths. Criminally charge Fauci under Salvadoran law; El Salvador can then file for extradition and we can send him on his way.” [Youtube, Timcast, 7/29/26]

• • Pool also claimed, “If Fauci doesn’t go to prison, you have no country.” He added, ”The American people come to realize you can murder millions of people. You can massacre en masse at the institutional international level and you will never face accountability. And then what happens? Confidence in the system breaks down and you get chaos." [YouTube, Timcast, 7/29/26]

• • Fox News contributor Clay Travis claimed that “Fauci belongs in prison for the rest of his life.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/28/26]

• • Newsmax host Carl Higbie argued that “Anthony Fauci should just be in jail, full stop.” He later added, ”I hope they find the deepest prison on earth to bury this guy in." [Newsmax, Carl Higbie: Frontline, 7/29/26]

• • Article III Founder Mike Davis called Fauci “one of the worst criminals in our history.” Davis claimed Fauci “got this pardon from Biden because he's a monster and he needed a pardon because he's one of the worst criminals in our history, a mass murderer.” Host Megyn Kelly agreed with him, saying, “You state your opinion that he's a mass murderer. Maybe some who are thinking that's too harsh. I'm not one of them.” [SiriusXM, The Megyn Kelly Show, 7/29/26]

• • Podcaster Steve Bannon claimed, “Fauci's a mass murderer. A mass murderer.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 7/29/26]

• • PBD Podcast panelist Vincent Oshana called Fauci “a freaking mass murderer.” He added, “If you think about it, Pat, he's been killing people for how long?” [PBD Podcast, 7/27/26]

• • Fox News @ Night guest and Moms for Liberty chapter leader Becky Grosskreutz said she hoped Fauci would experience “consequences both here on Earth, and beyond.” Talking about Fauci's testimony, she said, “I saw his smug face today and all the times that he pleaded the Fifth, and I honestly just want, you know, something to happen, and I want to have him to have consequences both here on Earth, and beyond.” [Fox News, Fox News @ Night, 7/29/26]
  • Newsmax host Rob Finnerty claimed Fauci is a “sociopath” who deserves to be alone. [Newsmax, Finnerty, 7/29/26]

Methodology

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Right-wing ghouls revive the Seth Rich conspiracy theory 10 years after his murder

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 07/09/26

It's 2026 and MAGA lickspittle Benny Johnson is hosting a discussion of whether Hillary Clinton had former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich killed in 2016.

“This is why it's called a conspiracy theory,” former American Conservative contributing editor Chris Brunet told Johnson during a lengthy interview about Rich’s tragic murder on Johnson’s show Wednesday. “It's because it's a conspiracy of top DNC officials, including Hillary Clinton, to essentially murder Seth Rich in cold blood, is the conspiracy theory. And I believe that's what happened. I don’t believe he was the victim of a random mugging.”

Brunet added that President Donald Trump “should open a new investigation into the murder of Seth Rich to try to find his killers.”

“I would love for there to be a full investigation into this,” Johnson replied, later telling his audience to subscribe to Brunet’s Substack and “send tips if you know anything about this.”

Video

Citation

From the July 8, 2026, edition of The Benny Show as aired on YouTube

These ghouls are reviving the Seth Rich conspiracy theory nearly a decade after it first became a cause célèbre for the online right, which baselessly linked Rich’s tragic murder on July 10, 2016, in what police determined was an unsolved botched robbery while he was walking home late at night in Washington, D.C., to WikiLeaks’ release 12 days later of thousands of internal DNC emails whose contents damaged Clinton’s presidential campaign.

News accounts citing intelligence sources quickly suggested that Russian hackers had stolen the emails and provided them to WikiLeaks; the U.S. intelligence community publicly stated in October 2016that Russia had hacked the DNC; and the final report from then-special counsel Robert Mueller, who secured indictments against 12 Russian intelligence officers for the DNC hack, concluded that the emails were stolen and released through WikiLeaks as part of a Kremlin plot to undermine Clinton’s campaign. But right-wing conspiracy theorists, seeking to undermine arguments that Trump was too close to the Kremlin, claimed based on just about nothing that Rich had been the true source of the emails, and that he had been murdered — perhaps on Clinton’s order — in retaliation for their release.

The conspiracy theory was relegated to far-right fever swamps at first. But the story burst into the mainstream 10 months after Rich’s death, after Fox News published a thinly sourced online article and aired a series of on-air segments that bought into the far-right narrative.

Veteran Fox host Sean Hannity became the conspiracy theory’s biggest champion, arguing that it debunked “the whole Russia collusion narrative.” Meanwhile, Rich’s anguished family begged him and the rest of the conspiracy theorists to stop. “With every conspiratorial flare-up, we are forced to relive Seth’s murder and a small piece of us dies as more of Seth’s memory is torn away from us,” his parents wrote in The Washington Post. Ultimately, Fox retracted its article, claiming that it had not met the network’s standards, and Hannity stopped talking about the story.

This was perhaps the saddest and most grotesque saga I’ve seen come out of the right-wing media in my 19 years at Media Matters. And as the 10th anniversary of Rich’s murder approaches, the conspiracy theorists are back.

The hook for Brunet’s appearance on Johnson’s show is an allegation from attorney Ty Clevenger, posted online Monday and boosted the next day by the conspiracy theory site Gateway Pundit, claiming that “an attorney for the government told me that I would soon be getting confirmation that several hundred pages of documents related to Seth Rich were found in a previously-hidden room at FBI headquarters” where they were supposedly “among the files designated for destruction.”

Jim Hoft, an endless font of credulity and stupidity, explained in his post why this is supposed to matter:

This is the same FBI that originally told Clevenger back in 2017 it had zero records on Seth Rich because the bureau “was not involved” in the investigation of his death. They claimed it was nothing more than a “botched robbery” handled solely by local D.C. police.

Over the years, through relentless FOIA litigation and court pressure, the FBI has been forced to admit it actually possesses thousands of pages of Seth Rich documents, including his work laptop, an image of his personal laptop, and a DVD. Yet they continue to fight tooth and nail to keep the full truth hidden.

One possible explanation for this alleged disparity is that while the FBI did say in May 2017 that it was not involved in the investigation of Rich’s death, Mueller’s April 2019 final report suggests that some investigation did subsequently take place: It specifically confirms that Rich was not the source that provided the DNC emails to WikiLeaks. The records, in other words, could have been created while the FBI was knocking down the online right’s conspiracy theory.

The fever-swamp explanation, however, is that the FBI was in on the conspiracy in which Clinton had Rich killed for leaking the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, covered it up, kept all the evidence through the four years of the first Trump administration and the four years of the Biden administration and only decided to destroy them when Trump came back into power, but waited too long and his minions found it.

Dabbling in this particular insanity is not without risk. While Fox did not hold its employees accountable for their repulsive behavior, the network paid what was reportedly “a lucrative seven figure payment to the Rich family” to get them to settle a lawsuit. But the story offers Johnson’s ilk a priceless opportunity to talk about FBI documents that aren’t the Epstein files that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is illegally withholding.

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1. ### How the murder of a DNC staffer turned into a right-wing conspiracy

05/24/17 4:15 PM EDT

2. ### Fox News' Seth Rich conspiracy theory, two years later: A timeline

05/17/19 8:33 AM EDT

3. ### Fox News paid up to complete its reprehensible Seth Rich cover-up

11/30/20

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3. Benny Johnson: “These are the Kamala Harris states and every single one of them was a rigged election”

06/25/26

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Right-wing media’s response to results of LA mayoral primary race is a preview of their midterm playbook

Right-wing media have been using footage from an emerging group of right-wing influencers to allege fraud during CA primary elections

Written by Kayla Gogarty

Research contributions from Hanne MacDonald, Isabella Sherk, Gideon Taaffe & Jack Winstanley

Published 06/18/26

Following Nithya Raman's late surge over Spencer Pratt in the primary results for Los Angeles mayor, right-wing media and the Trump administration leveraged often misleading videos from an emerging group of right-wing influencers to undermine the results.

This tactic fuels election misinformation narratives among the right-wing media and serves to provide so-called “proof” of their conspiracy theories to dispute election results, even though their “proof” is often exaggerated or misleading and voter fraud is extremely rare.

An emerging group of right-wing influencers are mirroring James O'Keefe's tactics

As MAGA-aligned influencers try to make a name for themselves in a crowded field, there is an emerging group of right-wing influencers who describe themselves as “independent journalists” and post on-the-ground, documentary-style videos that spread right-wing narratives on social media. These influencers are using James O’Keefe’s template for undercover sting-style and often misleading videos meant to expose and embarrass liberal organizations and causes.

Among these influencers are Nick Shirley, who gained prominence in recent months following his so-called investigation into fraud in Minneapolis day care centers; Muckraker's Anthony Rubin (who describes himself as a “guerrilla journalist”); and several influencers affiliated with Turning Point USA's Frontlines, including Cam Higby, Savanah Hernandez, and Jonathan Choe. O'Keefe also entered the fold in March, launching Citizen Justice League — a self-described “network of citizen journalists” — and descending into California along with Choe and other Frontlines influencers.

• ### In March, right-wing influencers descended on Skid Row, claiming to uncover voter registration fraud

In March, several right-wing influencers including, Rubin, Cam Higby,, Savanah Hernandez descended on Skid Row — a 50-block neighborhood in Los Angeles that is officially called Central City East. These self-described “independent journalists” published content alleging a voter registration fraud scheme on Skid Row that involves canvassers registering people to vote and sign ballot initiatives in exchange for cash, cigarettes, and marijuana. Most of the videos appear to be in collaboration with O'Keefe's Citizen Justice League.

Citation

Screenshots via YouTube and Instagram / Media Matters

O'Keefe and others from O'Keefe Media Group “went undercover on Skid Row, posing as homeless individuals,” and they claimed that they captured “28 Instances Of Cash Changing Hands For Ballot Signatures & Voter Registration Forms” on hidden cameras, including footage of a petitioner, Brenda Brown. In the video, O'Keefe alleged that Brown “hands cash money to the homeless person, not only for signing the California ballot initiative, but also as payment for them to register to vote.”

Video

Citation

From a March 17, 2026, YouTube video from O’Keefe Media Group and Citizen Justice League

On March 24, O'Keefe published a second video, alleging that homeless individuals were being paid “to forge the signatures and addresses of current registered voters on ballot measure petitions.”

Following the publication of the Skid Row videos, right-wing media outlets and personalities — including Sinclair’s The National News Desk and, the New York Post,, and — spread the videos and their claims of bribes. O’Keefe, in particular, was interviewed on several programs — including, The Charlie Kirk Show, The Alex Jones Show, and Steve Bannon's *War Room* — where he made unfounded claims that this alleged fraud has occurred potentially of times.

• ### After the California primaries, right-wing media leveraged content from right-wing influencers and suggested fraud in Nithya Raman late surge in votes

When the votes started to be counted in the jungle primary race, current mayor Karen Bass quickly qualified for the runoff; for the second spot, Spencer Pratt had an early lead, but as Nithya Raman surged ahead of him in the following days, right-wing media's election denial machine went into action, asserting that the election was rigged without pointing to any specific instances of voting fraud.

As Cam Higby noted during a discussion of the California primaries, “To be clear, we don't know for sure that the crimes that we caught people committing in our investigation are directly linked to the mayoral primary or the gubernatorial primary. We're just pointing out, ‘Hey, seems a little bit weird that they're doing a ballot scam just a couple months before the election.’”

Regardless, right-wing media are still using O'Keefe's and other right-wing influencers’ claims about unhoused people registering to vote at homeless shelters on Skid Row to make vague assertions about the Los Angeles primary. On The Benny Show, California Post's Joel Pollak said, “I think the evidence is starting to point us toward a vote harvesting operation that probably targeted Skid Row and other areas where there were many homeless people who could be registered to vote and could be encouraged either to sign their ballots in favor of Nithya Raman or to give them to people who would collect the ballots for them.”

On his show, The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles questioned Raman's second-place win, claiming, “What that implies is that Democrat activists went around and harvested ballots and perhaps forged ballots or bought ballots to beef up Nithya Raman, who nobody likes, to make sure that Spencer Pratt was not in the runoff.” Minutes later, Knowles praised O'Keefe: “Thankfully, we have James O'Keefe who has come out, done an undercover investigation to actually film these ballot harvesters paying people to register.”

On War Room, Election Integrity Network’s Cleta Mitchell — whom The Guardian called “a rising star of Republican election denialism” in 2024 — similarly invoked O'Keefe during a discussion of the California primaries with Bannon. Mitchell alleged that O'Keefe has recently published videos “showing the political hacks going to the homeless, who are the predominant constituency I suppose in LA now, and offering them drugs and money for ballots. … They knew as of election night how many votes the third-place finisher needed and they just gone out and gotten those votes.”

• ### The Trump administration picked up right-wing influencers’ videos to cast doubt on the California primaries

The Skid Row videos came amid Trump and his right-wing media allies’ push for the passage of the SAVE America Act, which aims to rewrite election laws nationwide and would, if passed, create new barriers for people attempting to register to vote. On March 24, the same day O'Keefe released his second Skid Row video, Trump posted to Truth Social a screenshot of and link to O’Keefe’s social media post promoting the video, adding, “Terrible!”

In his March 17 video, O’Keefe specifically claimed, “The Department of Justice has been sent these tapes of election fraud cash exchange for voter registration happening in broad daylight, and we have informed the Department of Justice there are more tapes coming.”

Two months later, the DOJ announced that petitioner Brenda Brown, who had been featured in O'Keefe's video, was “charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.” Following the charges, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli credited O'Keefe's undercover video for leading to the charges: “I think that was widely reported and it was all over the press and as a result of that, initiated and opened up a criminal investigation with the FBI.” Essayli also said that Brown is “simply the first person that we are announcing charges for in this investigation resulting from some undercover videos that took place at Skid Row.”

O'Keefe and other right-wing influencers have boasted about their role in these investigations, and after the California primaries, Essayli went on a right-wing media tour, claiming to have evidence of election fraud in California that will lead to prosecutions and encouraging people to send in tips to help the DOJ investigate the supposed election rigging.

• ### This California playbook is a preview of what the right-wing media and the Trump administration will do to undermine the midterm elections results

As the 2026 midterms approach, right-wing media and the Trump administration appear to have ramped up their efforts to undermine the midterm elections – often invoking existing and repeatedly debunked conspiracy theoriesabout widespread election fraud in the U.S. and typically relying on one-off incidents and hypotheticals that are often exaggerated or misleading.

Content from right-wing influencers serves to provide the so-called “proof” of election conspiracy theories and fuels election misinformation narratives throughout right-wing media. It also gives the administration an excuse to argue for policies or actions that would restrict voter access.

While the March content focuses on Skid Row, it dovetails with other videos from these creators that misleadingly claim to show widespread voter fraud in other places, as well as previous content with now-debunked accusations about homelessness services in California.

In January, Benny Johnson was on the ground in California, including on Skid Row, claiming that he would help American taxpayers “see first-hand how criminal California fraud is robbing our nation blind.” In February, Nick Shirley published alleging voter fraud in California. According to Shirley, he went “to locations from California’s public voter rolls from the Secretary of State, and not a single location could verify the voter rolls.”

All of this content claiming fraud in California has been fodder for vague claims of widespread election fraud for those unhappy with the results of the California primaries — and it is all a preview of how this playbook can be used to undermine the upcoming midterm elections.

//

1. ### Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience

02/18/26 4:25 PM EST

2. ### The Flaws In The O'Keefe “Voter Fraud” Scheme

01/11/12 4:54 PM EST

3. ### The right enters a post-proof era of election denial

06/10/26

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MMA

Benny Johnson on negotiations with Iran: "I don't understand people like Mark Levin. I don't understand Roger Wicker in the Senate, Ted Cruz, and these people are all lashing out at the president" | Media Matters for America

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SAME DAY AS WATTERS SAYS AA LOSE FRANCHISE BC NOT ENOUGH BABIES THE BLACKS AS PIRRO SAYS

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PROJECTION

MMA 5 26

May 15, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, who is a perfect representative of the intelligence of Fulton County and the quality of people there with her disgraced career. She might even be disbarred.

She oversees Atlanta, which is just hell on earth. Have you ever been to Atlanta? It's one of the worst cities in America. I would perfectly be happy to deport the entire city. It's trash, but that city contributes four different congressional districts. They carve up Atlanta into these little districts in a ruby red state of Georgia, and then they hand over a DEI district down here also to Democrats. These are the old maps, ladies and gentlemen. These are the maps that were drawn by racists who are trying to pack as many Black people into congressional districts as possible in order to steal votes for the Democrat Party, in order to get as much section eight, as much high density housing into one tight compacted area so that they can shove more Democrat representatives into the House of Representatives. This con has been going on since the Civil Rights Act, which is really what this all was about. A power grab for Democrats stealing at least 40 different Republican seats. We've been living in a fake country. Thankfully, the Supreme Court ended this entire charade, and now this little pocket right here, this is the Fani -- this, let's just call this big Faniville, has got to go.

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2$ GAS MIDTERMS MMA 5 26

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mma hanta wuhan BS

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Why the Right-Wing’s Online Media Ecosystem is Dying

The Humanist Report

union safety commies

bari w cbs paid ty trans benny bee ai slop

May 5, 2026 #HumanistReport #TheDailyWire #BenShapiro

With The Daily Wire facing another round of layoffs and Bari Weiss’ media ventures struggling to attract eyeballs, it’s safe to say online conservative media is in a really bad spot after years of dominance. In fact, the only conservative outlets doing well are the ones attacking Donald Trump. After taking over the country and implementing the radical right-wing reforms conservatives have been wanting for decades, it turns out conservative viewers don’t like the vision of the country that was sold to them. In this video Mike shares his theory as to why some conservative media outlets are seemingly imploding.

Sources: The Wrap - https://www.thewrap.com/media-platfor...IndieWire - https://www.indiewire.com/features/ge...Deadline - https://deadline.com/2026/04/jonathan...RawStory - https://www.rawstory.com/bari-weiss-2...

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mma

After VRA ruling, Benny Johnson suggests the Trump administration “should go full speed ahead in bringing the full force of the federal government against these DEI districts”

05/04/26

After VRA ruling, Benny Johnson suggests the Trump administration “should go full speed ahead in bringing the full force of the federal government against these DEI districts”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 05/04/26

Video

Citation

From the May 4, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Harmeet Dhillon, who, of course, is a favorite of our show ... she said that she is going to be suing in order to ensure that there are reparations for hard-working Americans who have been disenfranchised through Eric Holder and Barack Obama's racism in creating congressional ghettos and DEI districts. Your take on that, how should Harmeet Dhillon ensure that maps are as fair and equitable as possible for the 2026 elections?

MIKE DAVIS (GUEST): I love Harmeet Dhillon, and I always say this: my favorite Americans are women and minority conservatives because they are absolutely the most bold and fearless people on the planet. They're great -- whether it's Byron Donalds or Harmeet Dhillon -- these are the types of people who I want in these offices. People who are going to fight every day for America, for the West, for our way of life, for our Judeo-Christian traditions. Harmeet is phenomenal.

...

The best thing about Harmeet, the best thing about this new version of the Trump administration, is prior Republicans, George W. Bush Republicans — and I worked in the George W. Bush White House — we were, those Republicans who were so scared of being labeled as racists or sexist or homophobe or transphobe or whatever phobe the Democrats come out with. And my response to those Republicans is to say to those Democrats, ‘Go to hell. You're not going to be able to use your Marxist division and cow us like you've done in the past.' We are the party of opportunity for poor Black people trapped in these Democrat ghettos and these DEI districts. Democrats want to keep minorities trapped in intergenerational poverty. They want victims. They want misery. Because that's the Marxist playbook. So, people like Harmeet Dhillon, people like Byron Donalds, they are the all-stars.

JOHNSON: So, Harmeet should go full speed ahead in bringing the full force of the federal government against these DEI districts and lawfare Democrats who want to sue in order to create these congressional ghettos?

DAVIS: Absolutely. The Supreme Court just ruled that we, you can have political gerrymandering, but you cannot have racial gerrymandering. It was a brilliant opinion by Justice Sam Alito, and Harmeet can go after every one of these districts, these House districts where these Democrats in these blue states intentionally sliced and diced the population to have a DEI district, to have some loser Democrat minority be the House representative and go grift and make millions of dollars and do nothing for their poor Black or poor Hispanic constituents.

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benny maj rept alien breeding pgm

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mma

April 16, 2026, edition ofThe Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): You know that our take on Iran has been pragmatic. Not light ourselves on fire. Don't burn your MAGA hats. But I don't like the distraction. It's too far away, and the distraction is, like, burning up political capital that should be spent on lowering prices for America.

The economic numbers are underwater for our side, and they need to be flipped. And you can flip them quick. How do you flip them? Cheap gas. Plow gas directly back down to $2 a gallon, which is where it was. Home prices. You must fix affordable housing in this country. How do you do that? Well, first thing is you deport 20 million criminal aliens. Free up 20 million houses, right? Especially the starter homes, the homes that they occupy. The starter homes get people started with the American dream. Free up those houses, more supply that will reduce the prices.

And then you got to get grocery prices down. How do you fix that? Well, 40% of the groceries are free to the parasitic class. Many of them criminal aliens. Many of them people who need to have their benefits cut, to be quite honest. People who are engaging in welfare and SNAP fraud.

And that was ubiquitous on the old block — I used to live in the ghetto in Washington DC. Everybody would trade their SNAP cards for cash. Ubiquitous — is like literally probably the largest scale fraud in the country is SNAP fraud. And so crack down on that. Make it so that all — like, we're not subsidizing with our groceries, so every time you buy a steak for $22 a pound, you're subsidizing some jackrabbit on SNAP who's buying the same steak for free off the government that you're paying for. Anyway, that's how you reduce — so that you get rid of fraud, I think, and you get rid of dependency on those systems, prices lower.

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March 23, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): With every passing moment, the apocalypse grows nearer. I'm not trying to be glib here. We literally watched a massive ballistic missile take out a massive chunk of the Old Wall in Jerusalem in the shadow of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall, the Dome on the Rock, the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre. Look at this. This could have killed a lot of people if they were worshiping there, Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Obviously, this is the most holy site in all of the world. You can see the damage that was done, how it just took out a huge chunk of the wall, the roadway. And if this was the — I mean, like, the mosque is, like, thousands of years old. Right? I think it was built in, like, 600. Dude, they would be toast. Iran could have, like, actually bombed one of the holiest places in all of Islam. Of course, they would have, blamed, I guess, everyone but themselves, like, uniting the Muslim world, I guess, would be the idea here.

Anyway, this is something that's been happening all throughout Israel. But of course throughout Jerusalem, where you can see puffs of smoke and debris on this, without question, well, you know, the site of Solomon's old temple. And you can see, I mean, that's, you know, the ballistics flying just right over the top of these holy sites. It just makes you nervous because, you know, it's what they say in Revelation. It's what said in Revelation — right? — that there's gonna be a third temple built. It's gonna be desecrated by the antichrist. And so it has all — you know, all religions sort of like looking at these holy sites and these holy spots. Of course, as Christians, we should care about these things mainly because we should care about, you know, peace at least in our time. You can see the, Dome on the Rock on fire. And so I don't know.

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MMA

1. ### Ben Shapiro: “Making sure illegal immigrants do not show up at polling sites is not a horrible use of ICE”

03/24/26

2. ### Benny Johnson: “Can we deploy ICE to every voting booth in America? Would that fix the fraud? Of course, it would.”

03/24/26

3. ### Benny Johnson: “With every passing moment, the apocalypse grows nearer”

03/24/26

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JO 3 26 USAID NO 1 SELFIE SPOT DC

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// BOEBERT HILLARY PIX?

MMA

Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress

Benny Johnson and Brian Kilmeade appear to have more information than just about any elected representative

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Sophie Lawton

Published 03/02/26

A defining feature of President Donald Trump’s second term is its symbiotic relationship with media allies, both at traditional right-wing outlets like Fox News and among the newer cohort of MAGA podcasters and online influencers — in some cases, these figures know more about Trump’s upcoming policy decisions than members of Congress. That dynamic was fully on display in the lead-up to the unprovoked bombing campaign the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February 28.

Prior to Trump’s initiation of the war, MAGA streamer Benny Johnson and Newsmax host Greg Kelly appeared to have insider information about when the first round of strikes would occur. Beyond them, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and contributor Jack Keane claimed to have been involved in high-level briefings on the campaign.

Johnson, who was fired by Buzzfeed for plagiarism in 2014 and later disciplined by the Independent Journal Review for publishing false information, appears to have had unusually close access to officials in the Trump administration responsible for the decision to go to war.

On February 21, Johnson told his audience, “We are going to war with Iran. … I've been asking — I think that the cake's been baked.” It was unclear at the time whether he had inside information or was speculating, as he later added, referring to the publicly reported military build up, “the maps don't lie, OK? It’s happening.”

Johnson returned to the subject on February 27, just hours before the U.S.-Israeli campaign began. He began his show saying he’d just been “on the phone with top-level — let’s just say very high-level administration officials — moments ago to discuss what the plan is” for attacking Iran. Later in the same episode, Johnson claimed that he’d been talking with someone who is at the “top, top level of the administration, and we were yelling at each other — not yelling, but having polite conversation — about, like, what’s about to pop off in the Mid East.”

Ultimately, Johnson told his audience, “This is not a drill. It is actually happening,” adding: “I think in the next 24 hours we are going to see the world change. It may be the next 24 minutes, we're not exactly certain."

Newsmax host Kelly was even more precise. “A very well-informed person told me” the attack on Iran will happen Friday “after Wall Street closes,” Kelly said February 26.

By contrast, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on both the Senate committees on intelligence and on foreign relations, told reporters on February 28 that he was “learning like you are as the news unfolds exactly what's happening." The Trump administration reportedly briefed some congressional staff the following day, with a full briefing to Congress scheduled for March 3.

Johnson and Kelly weren’t the only right-wing media figures enjoying extraordinary access to high-level information. Over at Fox, Kilmeade — a weekday Fox & Friends host who came in to cover a weekend shift — said on March 1 that he “was fortunate enough to be in a briefing with high-ranking Trump officials” a day earlier.

The same morning, Keane offered more granular detail, implying a high degree of insider information. “The [Persian] Gulf states are adequately defending themselves,” said Keane, a retired general and former Army vice chief of staff. “Three of them are preparing for combat, offensive operations. One has already started and two others are about to get going. I'm not going to talk about who they are, but that is being coordinated with Adm. Cooper and Central Command. These will be coordinated, selected targets, and they will contribute to the offensive nature of what’s taken place."

Keane’s comments on Fox the next day suggested he’d been provided with high-level briefings that everything is going smoothly. “The military has got a plan here that I have been privy to understand and it is very comprehensive,” Keane said. “And we're going to stick with that plan until the conditions of these military objectives are met. So far, the plan is exceeding all expectations."

The access to White House war plans that Johnson, Kelly, Kilmeade, and Keane appear to have is even more noteworthy given that the Pentagon tightly controlled its first press briefing of the war on March 2 — having already largely replaced the traditional Pentagon press corps with a series of lackeys, grifters, conspiracists, and cranks. According to CNN’s Brian Stelter, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — formerly of Fox News — “only answered questions from his chosen outlets” and had a “pre-selected list of questioners.” Those approved outlets didn’t include Hegseth’s former employer, whose correspondent was relegated to the back row and not called on for a question.

All administrations leak and try to manage public opinion through press operations. But the alignment of messaging and interests between the Trump White House and its media allies is unlike anything the United States has seen in recent memory. Sometimes that looks like providing right-wing influencers with embeds alongside Trump’s deportation agents; other times it looks like inviting MAGA media trolls to the White House to discuss antifa. Now, it looks like some of the most slavish voices in right-wing media are getting better information more quickly than members of Congress as the United States and Israel unleash yet more destruction in the Middle East.

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an 2 26

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aide spoke to the press on Thursday while she was giving a statement to the House Oversight and Reform Committee about the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

The deposition was paused after Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co.) sent an unauthorized photo of Sec. Clinton to a right-wing influencer, NBC News reporter Ryan Nobles posted on X. He did not clarify if that unauthorized photo included anyone else in the picture.

The photo was sent to Benny Johnson, who has an online streaming show.

Johnson then posted the photo on X.

The Clintons both asked for their hearings to be public. However, the Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) only agreed to release video and transcript of the hearing.

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MMA Benny Johnson on Steve Bannon's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein: “Steve Bannon needs to answer for all of this”

02/26/26 11:39 AM EST

2. ### Benny Johnson: “Are we going to war with Cuba? Yes, most likely.”

02/26/26 11:10 AM EST

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MMA

1. ### Steve Bannon calls the Supreme Court ruling against Trump's tariffs “wrong” and “terrible”

02/20/26

1. ### Benny Johnson: “The US Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump on tariffs. That's not good. This is a big no no. ... Yikes.”

02/20/26

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mma

Right-wing influencers pushed the Trump admin to ignore judges. New reporting shows that's what's happening — especially in immigration cases.

Since the beginning of Trump’s second administration, right-wing media have encouraged an “all-out war” on judges and dismissed the “so-called rights of illegals”

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Jack Winstanley

Published 02/18/26

Recent reporting shows how the Trump administration — particularly the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — “has slow-walked or outright defied” numerous court orders as it continues its nationwide crackdown against immigrants.

Politico highlighted several instances of judges speaking against the Trump administration over its defiance of judges and efforts to undermine due process for immigrants. The New York Times reported in January that ICE has violated nearly 100 court orders, and last summer, The Washington Post examined over a hundred cases on various matters and found “the administration is accused of defying or frustrating court oversight in 57.”

Meanwhile, since the beginning of Trump’s second administration, right-wing media figures have repeatedly encouraged a hostile approach to the courts, attacking judges who challenge Trump’s actions, calling for judges to be impeached, and encouraging the administration to deny noncitizens their due process rights.

• ## Recent reporting shows the Trump administration’s continued defiance of judges and efforts to undermine due process

• • Politico reported that ICE officials have “slow-walked or outright defied judges’ orders,” including some demanding the release of people detained by the agency, and The New York Times reported that one judge says ICE has violated nearly 100 court orders.One Minnesota judge said that ICE’s delay in releasing people from custody is a “constitutional injury,” adding, “The individuals affected are people. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds seen by this Court have been found to be lawfully present as of now in the country. They live in their communities. Some are separated from their families.” Politico had previously reported the allegation that ICE officials “simply don’t respond” to Department of Justice requests to cooperate with investigations and ongoing legal proceedings. Politico, [2/10/26, 2/4/26; The New York Times, 1/28/26]

• • ICE also undermines due process for detainees by shuffling them around the country to make it difficult for them to sue the government for their release, according to Politico. Detainees generally need to sue from the district where they are held in order to be released, but as Politico notes, “that gets complicated when ICE rushes detainees out of state and bounces them around the country while they’re attempting to hire lawyers or decide where to file lawsuits.” The Vera Institute has reported that the Trump administration also undermined due process by detaining people as they appear for their legal obligations while attending court hearings and check-ins with ICE. Politico, [2/10/26; The Vera Institute, 1/20/26]

• • Politico reported that judges have called the administration’s actions a “pattern of obfuscation” and an effort “to frustrate judicial review” and identified at least 347 judges “who have rejected the administration’s detention policy.”One judge rebuked the administration’s movement of a detainee, saying, “There is something particularly craven about transferring a nursing refugee mother out-of-state.” Politico, [2/10/26, 1/26/26]

• • The Washington Post reported on the Trump administration defying judges on topics outside of immigration too, examining 165 lawsuits and finding “the administration is accused of defying or frustrating court oversight in 57 of those cases — almost 35 percent.” The Post identified cases where the Trump administration defied judges by continuing to lay off federal employees, refusing to unfreeze appropriated funds, and targeting transgender people in the military. The Washington Post, [7/21/25]

• ## Right-wing media figures have continually called for the Trump administration to defy “activist judges” and ignore “lawless and dangerous” court orders

• • The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh declared that there “needs to be an all-out war at this point against activist judges” opposing Trump’s actions. Walsh additionally argued that “unelected judges” were “trying to override, not just the president, but the will of the people.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [3/19/25]

• • SiriusXM radio host Megyn Kelly claimed that “the Trump administration is not going to have a choice” but to ignore the courts. She added: “They're trying to create a constitutional crisis is, I guess, the point I'm making.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [2/13/25]

• • Right-wing commentator Dan Bongino, who served as co-deputy director of the FBI under Trump, argued that the Trump administration “should ignore” federal district Judge John McConnell’s court order to restore frozen federal funds.Bongino, who mistakenly said McConnell is from New York rather than Rhode Island, said, “This judge is clearly making up powers he does not have,” adding, “He does not have power to demand the president spend money.” McConnell had issued a permanent injunction barring Trump from dismantling several federal agencies and gutting staff from others and had blocked a separate move by the administration to peg funds for road and highway maintenance to state compliance with immigration demands. Rumble, *The Dan Bongino Show*, [2/11/25; Rhode Island Current, 11/24/25; Politico, 11/4/25]

• • On CNN, conservative contributor Scott Jennings suggested the president may need to “defy” judges who order his administration to comply with the law. He asked: “Should the president, the singular president, should he have to share the presidency with 300 district court judges? No. Absolutely not.” CNN, *NewsNight with Abby Phillip*, [2/10/25]

• • Right-wing influencer account “Amuse” wrote of McConnell’s ruling, “The Trump Administration should treat this for what it is—an unconstitutional usurpation—and consider defying it outright.” Media Matters, [2/13/25]

• • Fox News host Mark Levin cited controversial federal court rulings from the past — includingPlessy v. Fergusonand the Dred Scott decision — to argue for the administration to defy court orders. Levin justified rejecting court decisions, saying, “Some of the worst human rights violations and crises occurred in this country as a result of our courts.” Fox News, *Life, Liberty, & Levin*, [2/15/25]

• • Article III Project President Mike Davis argued onThe Charlie Kirk Showthat if “activist judges” keep pushing back on Trump’s actions then “the president is just going to ignore these lawless and dangerous orders.”He continued, “When they overstep, the commander-in-chief has a constitutional duty to ignore clearly lawless orders.” Real America’s Voice, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [4/15/25]

• • OnThe Benny Show, Davis said he hoped “President Trump said ‘F you’ to Judge Boasberg” and said Boasberg was trying to order “the most dangerous thing imaginable.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [3/17/25; NPR, 3/25/25]

• ## Some right-wing media figures have criticized the judiciary’s oversight and called for judges to be impeached

• • Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn argued that “the conversation really should start shifting to the constitutionality of the judiciary.” She added that the judiciary is “blocking a co-equal branch’s function.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [2/11/25]

• • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt called for federal judges to be impeached: “You can’t have people like this on the bench.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [2/12/25]

• • Right-wing commentator Steve Bannon called on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to impeach a federal judge, saying, “You put one through the process, they’re all going to be sheep.” He advised Johnson, “Just don't back off. All gas, no brake.” Real America’s Voice,*War Room*, [3/24/25]

• • Then-Fox News host and current U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro called Boasberg “stupid” and questioned his authority to rule on deportation flights because he is “a local judge.”Pirro stated, “A local judge — make no mistake, this is a local judge, folks, who is a trial judge, he’s not even an appellate judge — thinks he can stop international diplomacy for national security issues that involve the American people because he’s a local federal judge. He’s stupid.” Fox News, *The Five*, [3/17/25]

• • Urbahn said Boasberg has no oversight “over matters pertaining to immigration” because he’s not president.Urbahn stated, “Really, what’s his oversight at all? Because last time I checked, this judge was not elected president of the United States and therefore doesn’t have authority over matters pertaining to immigration, national security, and foreign policy.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/18/25]

• • The Gateway Pundit posted instructions on how to advocate for impeachment of “crazed leftists” like Boasberg. It described the judge as “a very, very dangerous and lawless lunatic” and “America-hating.” Media Matters, [3/18/25]

• ## Right-wing media figures have also suggested that due process shouldn’t apply to noncitizens, with some calling for a suspension of habeas corpus

• • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt claimed undocumented immigrants and Democrats “have exploited the good nature of this country” and that “due process … allows illegals to break into the country, rape and kill an American, and then be given a free attorney to defend themselves.”Schmitt continued, “Those are vulnerabilities that are now being exploited every day in this country.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [3/17/25]

• • On the right-wing social media platform GETTR, Steve Bannon posted: “Alien Criminal Invaders DON’T Get ‘Due Process’—They Get the Boot.” GETTR, [3/17/25]

• • OnFox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade questioned whether migrants have the right to due process, saying, “Really? They deserve due process? We have to give all these guys due process?” Later, co-host Lawrence Jones mocked questions about the process, saying, “So we’re going to do vetting when we deport, but we’re not going to do any vetting when they come across the border?” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/21/25, 3/21/25]

• • Kilmeade also claimed, “It’s not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people.”Shortly after, he continued: “We cannot give every illegal immigrant due process, because we’ve got 22 million minimum, 8 million that came over the last four years.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/24/25, 3/24/25]

• • Jones said we should “revisit” due process for alleged undocumented migrants. Jones: “The president is saying under the act that you don’t have to show, you don’t have to do this due process. So you have a constitutional right that is actually — they are afforded to illegals in this country. We should revisit that. But then you have a competing act that is saying, hey, if someone is a part of a foreign terrorist organization that you don’t have to give them due process and they can be deported.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/24/25]

• • Right-wing podcaster and Trump ally Laura Loomer asked, “Who on earth thought that illegal aliens should be entitled to legal representation and rights? These people are not entitled to due process in our country.”Loomer continued, “I don’t even give a shit about all these illegal alien kids.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [4/30/25]

• • YouTuber Zack Hoyt said, “I don’t really think that illegals deserve due process, by the way. I don’t think the Constitution applies to illegals.” Hoyt, who goes by Asmongold, acknowledged that the government could “get it wrong” when detaining immigrants but said: “There’s people in jail for murder that didn’t commit murder. … Does that mean we shouldn’t put people in jail for murder? … It just doesn’t make any sense.” Asmongold, Asmongold TV, [6/9/25]

• • Fox host Sean Hannity asked, “Why do people have this belief system that you enter the country illegally and then you, quote, ‘automatically have constitutional rights’? You do not, in my view.”Hannity also said, “Why do so many federal judges believe that the safety and security of all of you comes second to the so-called due process rights of illegal immigrants that broke into this country illegally, broke the law, committed serious crimes?” Hannity has repeatedly referred to the “so-called rights of illegals.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [5/21/25, 7/14/25, 7/15/25, 7/22/25; Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/1/25, 7/24/25]

• • :{:{Jeanine Pirro said, “The only due process I believe in is a legal way to enter this country.”}:Pirro said of Trump’s deportation of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members to a megaprison in El Salvador: “They are illegal. They are committing crimes, OK? We do not have to have them convicted of a crime to remove them.” Pirro later said the Fifth Amendment, which confers the right to due process, “says nothing about illegals” and “the Supreme Court never said in Abrego Garcia case that due process is required for illegals.” Fox News, *The Five*,[3/17/25,3/17/25,5/5/25]

• • Newsmax host Greg Kelly said, “Habeas corpus is great, but I don’t think it applies to an illegal alien.”Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [7/8/25]

• • Bannon argued that Trump is “going to have to” suspend habeas corpus, “because these courts are going to continue to try to jam him up.” And later Bannon hailed himself and right-wing commentator Rogan O’Handley as “the biggest advocates of just do what Lincoln did: Start suspending the writ of habeas corpus, put them on an aircraft, and get them the hell out of here.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [5/16/25, 5/30/25]

• • Rogan O’Handley argued that “we should consider suspending the writ of habeas” so that “we can start to take more drastic actions to deport illegals, especially the cartels, without judicial overview, without the courts getting involved.”Handley, who goes by DC Draino, explained to Bannon, “I would say 10 to 20 million illegal aliens coming into this country counts as an invasion, especially when many of the illegal aliens are coming from hostile adversaries like China, like Ukraine, like … Venezuela, the Tren de Aragua. They’re being sent by these governments.” Real America’s Voice,*War Room*, [4/22/25]

• • Fox host Emily Compagno criticized those who have called for due process for the deportees, saying, “I think it’s rich that all of a sudden we have some kind of, you know, voiced protection of due process and questioning of making sure all of the work is shown.”Compagno then questioned, “Where was that when, for example, President Trump was being prosecuted, ridiculously, right here in this very city? Where was that commitment to due process for those peaceful abortion activists and the elderly being put in jail?” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [3/19/25]

• • Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton mocked those questioning whether alleged criminals should be sent to a Salvadoran prison and said, “Democrats are going to the mat to make sure they have maximum due process rights,” but “had no problem with nonviolent J6 Americans rotting away.”According to Sexton, “The same Democrats — and I mean the same individuals in some cases in the media and the Democrat party — who had no problem with nonviolent J6 Americans rotting away in a DC gulag for a year without trial are now really concerned about Tren de Aragua members.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show*, [3/21/25]

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MMA

1. ### Benny Johnson on Jesse Jackson: “What his ideology was is evil.”

02/17/26

2. ### Benny Johnson reacts to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez remarks in Munich: “They want white people to be subservient slaves to them. Wouldn't be the first time there was mass white slavery.”

02/17/26

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an 2 26

MMA

1. ### In response to Trump posting a video depicting the Obamas as apes, Ben Shapiro says the president does not have the “attention span” to realize what was in the video

02/06/26

2. ### Benny Johnson calls backlash to Trump posting video showing the Obamas as apes a “hoax”: “Don't expect anybody to understand this nuance”

02/06/26

MMA

1. ### Fox News has completely ignored Trump's since-deleted racist Truth Social post

02/06/26 12:40 PM EST

2. ### Tim Pool reacts to a video Trump posted with the Obamas as apes: “It is not racist”

02/06/26 12:38 PM EST

3. ### Responding to Trump's racist post depicting Obamas as apes, Salem's Mike Gallagher lashes out at the “Truth Social team”

02/06/26 12:29 PM EST

4. ### Fox News anchor Harris Faul

[T IM POOL REACTS TO A VIDEO TRUMP POSTED WITH THE OBAMAS AS APES: “IT IS NOT RACIST” 02/06/26

Trump deletes Obama video after 'Republican lawmakers called him directly': CNN sources

New York Times slammed for 'providing cover' to Trump over racist Obama ape video

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3x 1 day

1. ### Benny Johnson said “sources” have told him Nicolás Maduro was captured partially in relation to the 2020 election

01/30/26

1. ### Benny Johnson: “We were the Grand Central Station for arrest Don Lemon”

01/30/26

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/maga-prophet-claims-god-told-her-jd-vance-pam-bondi-mike-johnson-and-susie-wiles-are)

3. ### Benny Johnson: “I think that would be awesome, in fact, to have, like, a little prison colony out on some ice rock” in Greenland

01/30/26

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MMA SATAN

9. Benny Johnson says there was “dark spiritual energy” during 2020 election: “My wife swears that she saw a demon”

:{:{01/29/26}:

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ICE BARBIE RIDEALONG FANBOY

AGITATOR reboot, meld w paid protestor soros BS // antifa 4 terror 3 BS

MMA

1. ### Sean Hannity says ICE should stop “going into Home Depots and arresting people”

01/26/26 4:56 PM EST

2. ### Fox News contributor: “I was taken back by the White House who initially put out what I defined as misrepresentation of what took place there when you look at the video”

01/26/26 3:52 PM EST

3. ### Megyn Kelly: Minnesota protesters are “terrorists” who must “behave well and submit immediately”

01/26/26 2:16 PM EST

4. ### After 36 hours justifying the killing of Alex Pretti, Fox News suddenly changes its narrative

01/26/26 12:40 PM EST

5. ### Discussing Minnesota, FBI Director Kash Patel says “some of the best reporting” has been through Benny Johnson and Cam Higby: “As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it”

01/26/26 12:25 PM EST

6. ### Right-wing streamer Asmongold on Alex Pretti shooting: “There's literally no excuse for it”

01/26/26 12:19 PM EST

7. ### Benny Johnson on Alex Pretti shooting: “A left-wing protester attempted to pull this Sig Sauer handgun on federal officers and commit a mass murder”

01/26/26 11:27 AM EST

8. ### Fox contributor claims that Alex Pretti pulled a gun on an ICE officer

01/26/26 11:24 AM EST

9. ### Fox’s Trey Gowdy points out double standard of defending Kyle Rittenhouse and criticizing Alex Pretti

01/26/26 11:23 AM EST

11. ### Newsmax's senior judicial analyst on Alex Pretti shooting: “To me, their shooting is indefensible”

01/26/26 10:54 AM EST

12. ### Alex Jones blames Alex Pretti for his own death: “He came with a gun and stuck himself in the middle of a riot”

01/26/26 10:34 AM EST

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MMA

January 24, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): You need to pray for Border Patrol, federal law enforcement, and ICE right now as Minneapolis is about to pop off. Another deadly shooting.

This time, a left-wing protester attempted to pull this Sig Sauer handgun on federal officers and commit a mass murder, potentially killing many of them because there were quite a few around during an arrest situation where a left-wing agitator, probably a professional paid agitator, 51 years-old, was reaching for this firearm.

Federal law enforcement put him down, but a Border Patrol member shot and killed an individual in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the intersection of 26th Street, Nicollet Avenue. This is the same avenue that the Quality Learning center is on. Goodness gracious. What started it all, and now we're learning so much more about what the left is willing to do.

This would be the second time that a leftist paid protester, agitator, terrorist has been killed in self-defense by federal law enforcement for attempting to commit murder. Renee Good tried to run over federal officers, and this individual tried to shoot federal officers. You can see here in this video -- what you'll see is federal officers tussling, attempting to apprehend the agitator and then the individual showed his firearm. And you can hear the discharge of a weapon. And the reactions from inside of whatever establishment was filming this -- again, well, stop resisting arrest. Stop fighting federal law enforcement.

//

1. ### Discussing Minnesota, FBI Director Kash Patel says “some of the best reporting” has been through Benny Johnson and Cam Higby: “As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it”

:{:{01/26/26}:

2. ### Benny Johnson on Greenland: “President Trump ruling an empire. We are an empire once more.”

:{:{01/22/26}:

3. ### Many right-wing media figures fell in line after Trump renewed threat to acquire Greenland

01/21/2

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mma

1. ### Benny Johnson on Greenland: “President Trump ruling an empire. We are an empire once more.”

01/22/26

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:{:{MMA}:

1. ### Fox host Emily Compagno voices support for Trump invoking the Insurrection Act: “There is absolutely ground for that”

01/15/26 1:55 PM EST

2. ### Megyn Kelly on Bari Weiss and Tony Dokoupil: “This is a lesbian's idea of what women want”

01/15/26 1:45 PM EST

3. ### Benny Johnson: “Invoke the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis”

01/15/26 12:58 PM EST

4. ### Steve Bannon: “Insurrection Act first, troops second, mass deportations third.”

01/15/26 12:52 PM EST

5. ### Jeanine Pirro isn’t going rogue. She’s the tip of the spear.

01/15/26 12:51 PM EST

6. ### Laura Loomer advises JD Vance to distance himself from Tucker Carlson

01/15/26 12:36 PM EST

7. ### Tim Pool: “At what point will Trump just do it? Invoke the Insurrection Act. Round these people up.”

01/15/26 10:42 AM EST

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mma

January 7, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): We have some clips, some, like, really cool stuff. I wanna play you this clip of Donald Trump witnessing a exfiltration by Delta Force that happened at Fort Bragg because we were part of the Seal team operation here, and it's something that is kind of remarkable.

I had no idea that I was witnessing history when we were actually riding on the back of these Humvees. Here's President Trump watching these military black op helicopters come rolling in at Fort Bragg. And I'm no hero here. We were simply filming in the back of one of the Humvees, but we got a chance to chill out with the Army Rangers and the Delta Force operators that were running this operation. This happened in the summer.

And as you can see here, the exact same helicopter platforms, the exact same special operators that raided Maduro and his compound — that looks actually eerily like what you have here in Fort Bragg. That's me in the back of the Humvee. You can see that — so we're in the back of that vehicle right there.

And this is the operation. This was happening in July, and I was witnessing from the back of that car right there. Yeah. I just had my camera. Right? Like, they'd let me tag along. President Trump was way over here.

But I witnessed what was about to happen in Venezuela. This was the dry run. It's epic. The details of that raid was remarkable.

Little did I know that I was watching the prep for what was about to happen to Nicolás Maduro, the most famous communist dictator in all of the world, most famous and powerful communist dictator in all the world because he sits ashore America.

Venezuela is not a real place. I want to just, like, talk through really quickly how important this Venezuelan raid was for us, our hemisphere, and the future of America. Something that's near and dear to my heart.

---

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MAGA media link Trump's overthrow of Maduro to 2020 election conspiracy theories | Media Matters for America

MAGA influencers are suggesting that the United States overthrew Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in retaliation for Venezuela, via election technology companies, purportedly rigging the 2020 U.S. election against President Donald Trump — a false conspiracy theory that the president appeared to endorse following Saturday’s military strikes.

Benny Johnson, a MAGA slop artist with close ties to the Trump administration, claimed on Sunday that “Nicolás Maduro might be Trump's final revenge for the election theft of 2020.”

“Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems were the voting systems being used at this time [in 2020] and in these states and all around the world,” he said. “They are Venezuelan by design and by systems, storage facilities and through their actual technology. These systems, I have on extremely good authority, can and do rig elections around the world.”

Johnson claimed to have a source who says that Maduro “told him directly that he has direct hard evidence of the election of 2020 being rigged, that he knows exactly how it was done, that they had a hand in it, but it wasn't really Venezuela running the op. It was probably more likely China. And that he is in possession of all of that evidence.”

Smartmatic and Dominion have sued several right-wing outlets and activists that promoted conspiracy theories tying the companies to the purported 2020 election theft. Fox News, which currently faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, ultimately settled a similar suit from Dominion for a record $787.5 million in 2023; filings in the case show that Fox executives and stars privately acknowledged that the election had not been tainted by large-scale fraud, even as the network broadcast false claims tying Dominion to Venezuela and suggesting it had rigged the 2020 vote.

But both companies may be less willing or able to defend themselves as these conspiracy theories reignite. Dominion settled several other suits against Trump allies during its October 2025 purchase by (and at the reported behest of) Liberty Vote, an election technology company helmed by a former Republican official with ties to Trump Justice Department official Ed Martin. The same month, the DOJ indicted Smartmatic for allegedly bribing a Philippines official.

Trump has repeatedly referenced the purported role Venezuela played in his yearslong derangement over the 2020 election he falsely claims was stolen from him — most recently in the early hours of Monday morning.

Amid a stream of posts and reposts on his Truth Social platform suggesting that the 2020 election had been rigged in Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the president highlighted QAnon influencer Chad Vivas’ claim that “the CIA outsources election rigging technology like Smartmatic and Dominion from Venezuela.” Vivas, known online as “KagDrogo,” suggested it was not “coincidence” that Trump had been promoting claims “about Dominion voting machine fraud” right after Maduro’s capture.

Several right-wing accounts with large followings highlighted Trump’s posts as “confirming” a connection between the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the purportedly rigged 2020 U.S. election.

While Fox hosts largely stayed away from conspiracy theories about election technology companies following the lawsuits, hardcore election deniers like former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell remained fixated on Dominion. In the fall of 2025 — as the Trump administration escalated its pressure on Maduro, surged U.S. Navy ships into the Caribbean Sea, and destroyed boats it alleged were carrying drugs while murdering those onboard — the purported Venezuela connection took on new life.

“There’s never been as necessary a war since the Civil War, that we go down and take care of Venezuela,” Byrne told host Emerald Robinson in an October 7, 2025, appearance on her show on Lindell’s LindellTV network. “It’s more important than World War I or World War II to the viability of the United States. The U.S. was overthrown, and Venezuela’s technology was part of it.”

Allegations of a Venezuelan role in the purported theft of the 2020 U.S. election reportedly jumped from the fever swamp to the hyper-partisan Trump Justice Department. On November 21, 2025, The Guardian reported U.S. attorney for Puerto Rico Stephen Muldrow, “a staunch Republican and Trump supporter,” had been briefed on “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide” by former CIA officer Gary Berntsen (who claims to have first convinced Trumpist lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani that the 2020 election was stolen) and Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil.

Berntsen and author Ralph Pezzullo rehashed the allegations in an interview with far-right podcaster Lara Logan which that same day. And on November 23, 2025, Trump himself reposted Logan’s post about that interview, commenting, “We must focus all of our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!”

With Trump himself apparently convinced by the conspiracy theory, it seems plausible that the federal government will start putting the screws to Maduro, who appeared in a New York courtroom on Monday alongside his wife to plead not guilty to charges of drug trafficking, to get him to confirm it.

Benny Johnson is already telling his viewers that Maduro will “sing like a canary” about his purported accomplices and “how they stole the election.”

“Who will he give up?” Johnson asked Sunday. “Soros? China? Left-wing NGOs? Left-wing billionaires?”

“He'll sing,” Johnson added ominously. “He'll tell them everything. They got his wife. This is why they took him alive. I learned all this from my conversation, and it really checks out, quite frankly. It really checks out.”

MMA

//

1. ### MAGA influencer Benny Johnson’s job is to have no principles. Business is booming.

11/25/25 9:58 AM EST

2. ### It wasn’t just Sidney Powell. Fox repeated the same Dominion lies.

01/21/21 1:40 PM EST

3. ### FLASHBACK: When Pete Hegseth endorsed the military executing captured alleged combatants

12/01/25

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AN 12 25

New York Times writer Alan Feuer says pro-Trump influencers have “always had a lot to say about the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

Several called for the files release before President Donald Trump was re-elected, certain they would “expose a cabal of Democrats who had palled around” with Epstein after he’d been exposed as a convicted sex offender, said Feuer. Several more criticized Trump this year as he sought to block the files’ release, calling them a “Democratic hoax.”

“But many of them were conspicuously quiet on Tuesday, when the Justice Department released a batch of materials that contained hundreds of mentions of Mr. Trump," Feuer said. “Their silence contrasted with the uproar made over the weekend when the department’s first release focused on former President Bill Clinton, including an image, stripped of context, showing him reclining in a hot tub. MAGA influencer Laura Loomer – also known as Trump's unofficial "loyalty enforcer" — mocked Clinton on social media after the photos emerged.

“On Tuesday, however, Ms. Loomer said nothing about the newly released materials, which showed, among other things, that federal prosecutors had determined that Mr. Trump had flown on Mr. Epstein’s private plane more times than they originally knew,” Feuer noted. “Instead, Ms. Loomer seemed to post about everything except the Epstein files: immigrant work visas; ‘anti-white racism’; next year’s midterm elections; and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York.”

Feuer identified similar silence with conservative influencer Rogan O’Handley, who posts on X under the handle DC Draino. On Friday, O’Handley was also berating Clinton, writing how the Epstein files had depicted him “shirtless in a hot tub with a female that is not his wife.”

“But on Tuesday, Mr. O’Handley had nothing at all to say about the files,” said Feuer.

The same went for pro-Trump podcaster and “The Benny Show,” host Benny Johnson, who Feuer said much preferred posting about fired transgender instructors rather than Epstein.

“One Trump-friendly account did, however, post about the newly released files: the one run by the Justice Department,” said Feuer, adding that the department quickly jumped to defend the president as if they were his personal troupe of lawyers.

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MOJO

December 17, 2025

How Benny Johnson Went From BuzzFeed Plagiarist to MAGA’s Chief Content Creator

He says he did “some very bad things.” But in Trumpworld, that’s a plus.

{}:

Anna Merlan

Senior ReporterBio

Not long ago, plagiarist-turned-MAGA-influencer Benny Johnson stood in a parking garage underneath Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem emerged; the two embraced, then loaded into SUVs to drive outside the city to ICE’s Broadview detainment facility. Johnson filmed the road in front of him for a video, which he posted to his 6 million subscriber YouTube channel, snapping his fingers in excitement. Upon arriving, demonstrators—whom Johnson referred to as “left-wing orcs”—were being watched by armed, masked agents who looked, he said admiringly, “ready to conquer Baghdad.”

Johnson seamlessly blends fawning Trump coverage, PR, rage-bait, and apologism.

When the cut to a group of handcuffed protesters, looking glum, Johnson beamed: “These are exactly the kind of people we want to be pissing off.”

Johnson trailed Noem through the building as she spoke to underlings at their desks, “raising the esprit de corps,” he declared. Throughout his tour, Johnson repeatedly claimed that the facility had been “attacked” so many times that it had been necessary to install a “sniper’s nest.” A rooftop shot shows Noem, her mouth stretched into a deep frown, gazing at a turret-mounted gun aimed at the street. “These are very dangerous times,” Johnson added.

“What’s going on homie?” Johnson asked, turning to an ICE agent in a black balaclava and orange sunglasses, his face completely hidden. He shook the officer’s hand vigorously. “We’re here to support you guys.”

Johnson’s role that early October day was somewhere between adoring observer and fringe participant, as captured in a video in his typical style: reasonably professionally produced, with the jumpy, fast-talking, quick cuts beloved by influencers; studiously provocative; and slavishly devoted to the Trump administration.

In the journalism world, Johnson is best known for leaving two publications in disgrace after his plagiarism was discovered, and for taking—inadvertently, he has said—money from a Kremlin-backed media organization, and for being a hard partier, a difficult boss and colleague, and an almost surreally dedicated self-promoter. (“I met him once at a party,” says a colleague of mine. “His whole vibe is so weird that I thought at first he might be fucking with me.”)

Now, he’s something like the administration’s propagandist and content creator in chief, with his work seamlessly blending fawning coverage, PR, rage-bait, and apologism. While ostensibly an independent vlogger and podcaster, Johnson’s role is premised on access to—and lavish posts about—both administration initiatives like Noem’s raids or touring Alligator Alcatraz with the president, and more social engagements, like watching UFC fights ringside with Trump, smoking cigars at the vice presidential residence, and a Christmastime tour of the White House with his family. All of this more or less lives up to Johnson’s social media tagline: “Your front seat to the golden era.”

Reporters and others who have watched Johnson’s evolution aren’t exactly surprised by where he’s ended up, describing him as “a charismatic motherfucker,” as one former colleague put it, a political and social chameleon, and someone whose work seems untethered by normal moral and ethical considerations.

“It’s ended at the place where it was inevitable that he would end,” says one person who socialized with him in DC about a decade ago.

His politics then were “sort of a libertarian inflected conservatism,” another person who knew him at the time says, “skeptical of power and government. And it’s absurd to look at him now.”

“The thing you need to know about Benny is he’s a chameleon,” says a former colleague from BuzzFeed News. “Drop him into any environment and he’ll reflect that environment because he wants to be liked.”

Johnson’s particular notoriety is a useful key to understanding a core value of the Trump administration: shamelessness. The president’s circle is full of people with notable—and, in many cases, ongoing—public scandals. For Johnson, like so many others, not running from their past is a feature, not a bug.

“One of the great virtues to have is that you got caught doing bad things and not giving a fuck,” says John Stanton, a former DC bureau chief at BuzzFeed News, who was involved in the outlet’s 2014 decision to fire Johnson. “That’s the definition of Donald Trump’s career. He’s been caught over and over again. I think they value that greatly.”

“His whole vibe is so weird that I thought at first he might be fucking with me.”

Another thing Trump values is intense toadying, and Johnson today has no qualms about being in open alignment with power. He depicts himself as part of a battle for the future of America, one with Trump fearlessly at the helm and his fellow pro-Trump media members manning the guns. Their targets are Democrats, the mainstream media, LGBTQ visibility, political correctness, immigration, and any other object of hate the president might identify on any given week.

“True freedom is a functional, peaceful, orderly society where you can get a piece of the American Dream,” Johnson tweeted recently. “We must protect and fight for it at all costs. This is our generational battle. This is our Normandy and Iwo Jima. The enemy is already inside the gates.”

The results are making themselves felt. Johnson has cast himself as an heir to the throne of his former boss, slain Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. Johnson’s wife, Katelyn Rieley Johnson, has bragged that he got Jimmy Kimmel pulled off the air after the late-night host discussed Kirk’s death. In a podcast within a week of the shooting, Johnson, who has said he was a close friend of Kirk’s, seemed to get FCC Chair Brendan Carr to endorse a claim that Kimmel’s monologue had been a “clear cut violation” of policy against “news distortion.”

“Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” ABC’s suspension soon followed.

Johnson is pushing the boundaries of even what the Trump wing of the Republican Party is willing to say. He’s launched an attack on H-1B visas, those granted to skilled workers in specialty occupations, and called for a halt to legal immigration too. He’s also one of the far-right voices amplifying unproven claims that welfare fraud among Somali immigrants in Minnesota has funded the terrorist group al-Shabaab.

“Your tax dollars are being stolen and shipped over to people who hate us and want us dead,” Johnson tweeted. “You should be furious. This is a direct result of careless immigration policies. We must ramp up mass deportations and halt all legal immigration.”

More and more overtly, Johnson is depicting nonwhite VID] immigrants, an increasingly stark and baldly racist us-or-them approach. And he’s using the tips and tricks of virality and traffic-mongering he learned at places like BuzzFeed to do it.

Johnson, 38, is trim and nondescript, with sandy brown hair, black-rimmed glasses, and an absolutely immobile forehead. His speaking style is usually bland, a mildly incredulous cadence and lowered volume that can be reminiscent of Tucker Carlson under light sedation. In what seems like an effort to sound younger, he sometimes greets his viewers with “yo,” or proclaims things to be “wild.”

Johnson’s company, Benny Media, produces an extraordinary amount of content: His YouTube channel churns out one to four videos a day. His five-day-a-week podcast, The Benny Show, interviews members of Congress, Cabinet members, various Trumps, and conspiracy peddlers back to back, an unbroken stream of boosterism and suspicion. Johnson tweets relentlessly (4 million followers) and posts versions of his YouTube content to Instagram (2 million followers) and TikTok (just over 325,000). The effect is a wall of content, a one-man Fox News.

Johnson’s value to the administration is rooted in his sycophancy; he reliably depicts them in the heroic, tough, battle-ready light they want to be seen. This has led to unintended consequences: In November, a 233-page opinion from Sara Ellis, a Chicago-based federal judge, cited Johnson’s videos eight times while demonstrating that Noem and Greg Bovino, the senior US Border Patrol official who’s become the face of Trump’s anti-migrant crackdown, illegally encouraged force against demonstrators.

“For example,” Ellis wrote, Johnson’s footage captured Noem as she “admonished agents at Broadview to go hard against people for ‘the way that they’re talking, speaking, who they’re affiliated with, who they’re funded with, and what they’re talking about…,’ statements that Bovino then echoed.” Ellis dryly noted that Noem stood for an interview with Johnson with a group of “arrestees as a backdrop,” people who were later released without charges. In a tweet, Johnson dubbed these people, falsely, “Democrat domestic terrorists.”

Johnson puts out videos that appeal to both racist and conspiratorial viewers.

Johnson also puts out videos that would appeal to both racist and more overtly conspiratorial viewers: a video mocking Black EBT recipients upset about losing SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, for instance, or one that expressed support for the baseless theory promoted by Candace Owens that France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, was born male. (The Macrons have sued Owens and others who spread the claim.) Johnson has amplified a similar false story about Michelle Obama, and also is not above making his own pure, grotesque outrage bait: After his visit to Chicago, he posted an AI-generated video of himself in a Batman suit, punching people in sombreros and an Asian woman. (Johnson later deleted the tweet.)

“He’s always on,” says Keith Edwards, a left-leaning YouTuber who has tracked Johnson’s rise. “It’s a superpower. It’s probably a bit of dysfunction as well.”

“He’s able to say and do things that I think are just kind of beyond the pale,” Edwards adds. “Going on ICE raids, saying things that are clearly not true…It’s a level of relationship with the truth that I just think is abysmal. He doesn’t really have one.”

The Trump administration and its allies have backed and promoted Johnson to new heights, and his enemies are also now the enemies of the state. In October, Attorney General Pam Bondi stood aside Johnson and helped announce charges against a 69-year-old San Diego man who allegedly sent him a letter expressing a wish that someone would murder him like Kirk. Bondi cast Johnson as an heir to Kirk’s legacy: “Benny is a well-known media personality carrying a message very similar to Charlie’s, grounded largely in faith and love of country.”

Ever on-message, he explicitly blamed the threat against him on the Democratic Party. “This is what happens when a party abandons faith and morality,” Johnson tweeted that day. “It is the same Godless hatred that threatened my family, murdered Charlie, attacked churches and ICE agents, and tried to assassinate President Trump.”

The White House gave Johnson a place of honor at an August press conference—the briefing room’s daily “new media” seat—from which he falsely claimed his onetime home in Washington, DC, had been set on fire in 2020, seeming to suggest it was a targeted attack. According to the New York Times, Johnson also claimed in a subsequent YouTube video that his house “was burned to the ground.” While there was an “intentionally set” fire on his block, according to DC’s fire department, firefighters contained the “blaze to [the] home of origin,” which was actually his neighbor’s. Johnson sold the supposedly destroyed house in 2021. At the press conference, Johnson also falsely claimed his security camera had captured murders on his block, when none had been recently reported. (There had been a nearby shooting the day before the fire, which left three people with non-life-threatening injuries. A suspect with a long history of drug-related crimes was later arrested for the shooting; his lawyer declined to comment.) Today, Johnson, his wife, and their four young children are based in Tampa. In, he described moving to Florida as a personal escape from the “communist” leadership and lawlessness of East Coast cities.

Johnson fired back at the Times story on Twitter/X, sharing security footage of smoke emanating from a window of his old house and his wife fleeing, their baby in her arms. Johnson called the paper’s reporting “dehumanizing propaganda” and proof of the “Left’s goal…to never grant sympathy to regular Americans, even if they’re innocent children. Evil bastards.”

Alas, Johnson has complained that trouble followed him to Tampa. This month, he tweeted that a man showed up at his door “ranting about me” before going to the house of another Florida-based conservative figure, Phillip Buchanan, who goes by Catturd online. According to federal court records, the man, identified as Andrew Aiyar, has been charged with posting a threatening tweet saying he intended to kill the wife of another conservative podcaster, Matt Walsh, “with a meat cleaver.”

“I don’t like to speak publicly about this kind of stuff because it involves my family and their security. I’m sick over it,” Johnson wrote. “But I have an obligation to amplify this case as it is one of multiple ongoing criminal prosecutions for threats against my family. Over the past year I’ve watched my President get shot in the head and my friend get assassinated. Things are spiraling wildly out of control. There are real-world consequences for psychotic rhetoric and lies amplified online. Enough.” Aiyar’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Johnson was throwing back shots with the same mainstream media he now denounces as evil. Unlike many figures in Trump’s media ecosystem, Johnson’s early career included work at news outlets with track records of real reporting. After beginning as a blogger for The Federalist, in 2012 Johnson, then writing for The Blaze, started courting Ben Smith, BuzzFeed News’ founding editor-in-chief. As a form of flattery, Johnson told Smith during a conversation on the floor of that year’s Republican National Convention that he was, according to Smith’s 2024 memoir Traffic, “religiously copying our work” for The Blaze.

Johnson was active in a hard partying, ideologically diverse, and sexually libertine DC scene.

As Smith writes, he was looking to hire a right-leaning writer who would allow fellow conservatives to “see themselves in BuzzFeed.”

“Benny represented, to me, an untapped new well of traffic,” Smith wrote, “a new identity to plumb.” Smith, now the editor-in-chief of Semafor, writes that he allowed his eyes to “skate over” what he describes as Johnson’s “race-baiting” posts on the New Black Panther Party, an obscure group that Johnson implied had influence over President Obama. “I certainly didn’t run his work through,” Smith admits, “plagiarism-detection software.”

At first, Johnson’s presence at BuzzFeed was a hit. “He was one of the reporters who consistently drove a lot of traffic at a time when that really mattered,” a former DC friend says. “He’d do these buzzy stories,” they added, that didn’t necessarily push any ideology. A particularly popular one from 2013 focused on the “running of the interns,” a Supreme Court coverage ritual where young broadcast news workers sprint freshly issued opinions to on-camera reporters waiting outside the building, vying to be first. The listicle was heavy on photos, light on text, and undeniably charming.

At the time, Johnson was omnipresent on the DC circuit, knocking down drinks with an ideologically diverse group of journalists and political operatives, united in their mission of trying to get into the most exclusive parties. (When only a few people showed up to his 2013 birthday, he was devastated, one person remembers.) The scene was hard partying and sexually libertine, another person from those circles recalls, even among the more politically conservative figures. “There was a lot of sex happening,” they said, including right-leaning people who were somewhat openly bisexual. “A psychoanalyst would have a field day.”

Even then, though, Johnson didn’t let his guard down much, even with people he spent a lot of time drinking with. “He wasn’t a person that it felt possible to get close to,” one journalist who knew him then says.

Johnson was productive, racking up more than 500 stories in a year and a half at BuzzFeed News, earning the title of Viral Politics editor. There was, however, trouble in paradise: “Benny was always the target of progressives on Twitter,” Smith wrote in his book, “who saw him as a dangerous protofascist.” In July 2014, after Johnson accused the Independent Journal Review, a recently formed conservative site, of plagiarizing his work on former President George H.W. Bush’s socks, two pseudonymous Twitter users built a case that Johnson had himself been recycling text from Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers. After their findings were picked up by Gawker’s J.K. Trotter, Smith initially defended him as “one of the web’s deeply original writers.” But BuzzFeed began investigating Johnson’s work and realized that at least 15 stories had been plagiarized, including some that relied on content published by other news outlets. As Stanton recalls, “that’s when it was like, ‘We’re gonna fire him.’” The number of plagiarized stories BuzzFeed uncovered ultimately reached 41.

BuzzFeed suspended Johnson while the investigation took place. “Unbeknownst to us he went to the beach with his girlfriend,” Stanton says, “and turned off his phone.” To deliver the news of his firing, Stanton resorted to calling his girlfriend. When she handed the phone to Johnson, Stanton recalls, he said his detractors were “jealous, and after him, and people didn’t like him because he was conservative.” Then Johnson said “YOLO” and hung up.

“Put aside the moral implications or reasoning that he has for being who he is, he was clearly attempting to make a name for himself and become famous, and he took a bunch of shortcuts to do that knowing that could have bad blowback on his colleagues—and it did. People questioned their reporting,” Stanton, now editor of New Orleans’ altweekly Gambit, says. “He never apologized to his co-workers for putting them in this tough spot.”

“He’s quite talented. He could’ve done good stuff,” says another one of his BuzzFeed editors. “But he was too lazy to do the work.”

Johnson was silent on social media for about a month before announcing that he’d taken a social media editor job at the National Review—one of the places he’d plagiarized from. The ironies compounded, when, within a year, he joined the Independent Journal Review as “content director.” In 2015, Ben Terris described the move in a Washington Post profile as a triumphant comeback, noting that Johnson had escaped what’s usually a journalism career death sentence. “Benny rebounded unusually quickly” after BuzzFeed, Terris wrote, “fielding offers within weeks of his dismissal from media organizations eager to get a piece of the addictive new breed of storytelling perfected by this 29-year-old.”

But by the following year, Johnson had precipitated what media reporter Oliver Darcy, then writing for Business Insider, called “a crisis” at IJR after being accused of plagiarism, again, by his colleagues; he also faced charges that he was mercurial, dictatorial, and verbally abusive to people working under him.

“I hadn’t been screamed at like that since I was probably seven years old on the playground.”

“Johnson—who once compared himself to Walt Disney, two people said—frequently berated the video team over what was characterized as minuscule details,” Darcy wrote. “Multiple sources said Johnson loudly hurled profanity at team members for small mistakes, fostering a distressing work environment. The behavior eventually led to Johnson receiving a formal verbal reprimand from the company’s human-resources department.”

Johnson was demoted after the Business Insider story, and, by 2017, had left IJR too, following his role in a story that baselessly claimed former President Obama was somehow behind a court ruling blocking Trump’s first-term anti-Muslim travel ban. By 2019, he made a clean break from news outlets by signing as chief creative officer at Kirk’s Turning Point USA, and, around 2020, co-founded Arsenal Media, a PR firm to help conservative politicians and media figures go viral. That job also produced bad press, when an investigation from *The Verge* again depicted him as “bullying and humiliating” staffers.

Johnson could be “very abusive, very toxic, screaming at people, like using profanity, vulgarity, making women cry, like pushing them to the edge,” one anonymous worker told The Verge, elaborating that they “hadn’t been screamed at like that since I was probably seven years old on the playground.”

While Arsenal Media still exists, Johnson is no longer part of it or Turning Point USA, relying instead on his own eponymous media company to make money. At least one major source of Johnson’s funding, however, has dried up. In September 2024, two Russian nationals were indicted for allegedly bankrolling Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based company that, as part of a plot to stoke domestic division, funneled nearly $10 million to conservative influencers, including Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern.

The Justice Department said the content creators who had ended up as part of the foreign influence operation hadn’t been told of the company’s Russian funding, and Tenet Media’s talent said they were unaware of the true source of their hefty paychecks. In a statement at the time, Johnson said he and the “other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme. My lawyers will handle anyone who states or suggests otherwise.”

These days, Johnson has fashioned an identity as a conservative dad and devoted husband, a model of traditional values. (“Benny is a man of simple tastes,” his website bio reads, one who “enjoys sitting down with a glass of whiskey and a pipe, preferably after a meal featuring as much meat as he can fit on the grill.”) For the last few years, his wife has made her own efforts to become a social media personality, using her previous career as a registered nurse to rebrand as “Nurse Kate,” “a health and wellness advocate” who also promotes vaccine suspicion and what she’s called a “trad wife” lifestyle; she recently appeared on Fox News to call for an end to infighting in the MAGA movement.

Johnson has become more overtly anti-LGBTQ over VID] time, about Pride Month “shoving rainbow-colored vomit down your throat,” as he put it. This has raised eyebrows, given that a former BuzzFeed colleague of Johnson’s, the author Saeed Jones, has posted online that the two men once “made out” at a booze-soaked 2013 company Christmas party. (Jones did not respond to requests for comment.) “I’m not naming names,” Jones added, but “I wasn’t even the only guy Benny made out with THAT night.”

“I personally believe Benny Johnson should get as much conservative dick as he wants, and I’m happy for him.”

At least two gay men in progressive media have commented on this apparent hypocrisy. In September, Keith Edwards made a video, which has amassed more than 600,000 views, rounding up evidence of Johnson’s bisexuality or homosexuality. In addition to Jones’ tweets, it includes allegations from far-right influencer Milo Yiannopoulos and a 2017 incident where Johnson complained about an ad on Military Times’ site promoting a gay cruise, seeming not to realize it was likely targeted based on his own web browsing history.

“I’m allergic to hypocrisy,” Edwards says. “I personally believe Benny Johnson should get as much conservative dick as he wants, and I’m happy for him. But you have to be truthful about who you are. Otherwise you’re damaging people like you who don’t have the ability to hide.” Progressive talk radio host Michelangelo Signorile, who’s written a book arguing for outing closeted political figures, responded to Edwards’ video on his blog, writing that “if this is true, it’s certainly relevant for the media to confirm it and report on it, as Johnson is part of a movement doing enormous damage to the LGBTQ community and is a powerful player who helped elect a president who is promoting vile hatred against queer people.”

Rumors about Johnson’s sexuality have also become ammunition in a fractious battle, as the MAGA movement has been convulsed by a power struggle kicked off by Kirk’s death, the lack of a clear successor to Trump, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s emerging apostasy. In December, Johnson and his wife appeared to threaten to sue Yiannopoulos—a self-proclaimed “ex-gay” man—for repeatedly tweeting that Johnson is closeted. In return, Yiannopoulos tweeted that “I have receipts, and the truth is a total defense against any claim of defamation or libel.”

For anyone who might wonder about the gap between the stories they’ve heard about Johnson and the image he now presents, Johnson has credited Charlie Kirk with helping personally set him on the straight and narrow.

“I was unmarried,” Johnson said during an October speech at a Moms for Liberty summit that he posted to TikTok. “I was a degenerate. I was every bit addicted to alcohol and some very bad things. And through Charlie’s example in my life, he Christ-centered me.”

As Johnson continues his Trump-and-Kirk-and-Christ-aided comeback, some observers have questioned the authenticity of his social media followings. Progressive YouTuber David Pakman, for instance, accused him in August of using ” to boost his subscriber count far beyond what his videos’ viewership would suggest. (A YouTube spokesperson told the Times it “did not find any evidence of inauthentic traffic, including inauthentic channel subscriptions.”)

But what can be discerned about Johnson’s audience from the comments they leave on his videos is that they skew older—baby boomers who found their way online and eventually into the deeper end of the conspiracy pool. His content is still packaged, more or less, as news, and it is accessible on platforms that they can find; he focuses heavily on issues those viewers care about, like alleged voter fraud and the perceived unfairness of previous prosecutions against Donald Trump.

One of the few times Johnson ever showed signs of going off-message was during the first round of controversy over the Trump administration’s failure to release the Epstein files in full, even as he repeatedly insisted that Trump was not in the files himself. But at the same time he suggested he was unsatisfied by the administration’s lacking disclosure, Johnson was running cover, assuring his audience on July 14, for instance, that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino—who’d threatened to quit over a feud with Bondi over releasing the files—was working hard on something “very important.”

“Trump Team is ‘back together and locking in,’” Johnson wrote, putting his words in quotes without making it clear whose words he was quoting.

But Johnson has mostly worked to echo the administration’s evolving line on the files. When Trump, under growing public pressure, ginned up a new Epstein investigation targeting prominent Democrats and said the House GOP should back a bill demanding their release, Johnson was on-message, writing that “every shred of evidence pointsdirectly at Democrats.”

“He has a ten or 15 year career to make a lot of money, and then you’ll watch him get crazy.”

He’s been rewarded for that loyalty, again, by both the Trump administration and the larger MAGA sphere. Johnson, whose podcast is sponsored by an online home mortgage lender, recently announced that he’ll be partnering with a conservative property developer as a spokesperson for “Make Housing Great Again.” (The Trump-linked America First Policy Institute, sponsor of the initiative, did not respond to a request for comment on whether he will be paid. Johnson also did not respond to a detailed request for comment for this story.) In Johnson’s words, the “fight for homeownership” is a “fight for the survival of our culture and civilization.”

“The average first-time homebuyer in America is now 40-years-old. That is far beyond the optimal age to get married and start a family,” Johnson told Fox News. “This is a generational betrayal, and we must reverse it for our children and for their future. This was the final policy priority of Charlie Kirk. We will deliver and save the American Dream.”

Many people who know Johnson ponder his longevity should the Republican party ever move on from Trump.

“Some of these influencers in DC are getting so close to the administration it’s backfiring on their brands,” a person familiar with conservative media told me while discussing Johnson.

“He has a ten or 15 year career to make a lot of money and then you’ll watch him get crazy,” someone who knew him in conservative media predicts. “At a certain point that becomes useless to people in serious political circles. Assuming that the Trump thing is a blip in history, I don’t see the classic Marco Rubio type using Benny for distribution. The candle burns bright and then it burns out.”

“I don’t know that anybody will have any kind of good reason to be nice to Benny if and when the worm turns and all the authoritarians are out of favor,” agrees Stanton, the former BuzzFeed editor. “I don’t think he’s got that kind of shelf life. But I’m not sure that matters anymore.”

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mma tag Benny Johnson | Media Matters for America

Benny Johnson is a right-wing influencer and podcaster who previously worked for Newsmax, Turning Point USA, and other conservative organizations. He regularly trafficks in conspiracy theories and misinformation. In September 2024, Johnson was revealed to be one of several prominent MAGA influencers who were unwittingly working on behalf of Russia.

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MMA

Benny Johnson: “I have that from the highest possible sources that Venezuela runs election-rigging operations in our country and in others through their electronic voting machines”}:

12/18/25

December 17, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): So that's Tucker saying we are going to war tonight. That's what he's saying.

Now the administration has been ramping up a war on the narco-state Venezuela. I didn't vote for a new war. I don't want a new forever war. However, Venezuela is a very bad actor.

As we have said, the number one precursor to, well, punishing Venezuela would be the fact that they rig our elections. That is a matter of fact. I have that from the highest possible sources that Venezuela runs election-rigging operations in our country and in others through their electronic voting machines. I'm telling you, these are extremely serious people who have told me that because they've done the investigations themselves, and they were on Trump's team that hacked the election in 2024.

So did President Trump — is President Trump going to announce that he is going to war with Venezuela tonight? They've obviously been ratcheting up their activity in and around Venezuela, closing down the airspace, seizing tankers. I don't think that America has really, quite frankly, the stomach or appetite for a new war. It was bad enough, the bombing of Iran. And so, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to pray that that doesn't happen. I don't think this is the time for that. What do you think? I mean, I was like — I like — I'm not — I don't think that anybody in MAGA voted for new forever wars or regime change. Nonetheless, Venezuela is a very, very bad actor. You can see, sort of, the drums of war approaching. So we'll hope that there are ways to do this where it doesn't actually lead to boots on the ground. Nonetheless, it is important for us to dominate our own hemisphere, for us to not have bad actors that are poisoning Americans, rigging our elections, and engaging in terrorism across our borders. So this, ladies and gentlemen, is a positive — the collapse of the Venezuelan regime, just I don't want to do it with boots on the ground. Plus I hate communists.

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mma

December 11, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Mr. Attorney General, thank you so much for being on the show today. Those are, like, we just had Barry Loudermout on. He's running the January 6 committee. It's just like a complete barn burner. I know that you're here serving as our state AG. But if you don't mind, can I ask you about an a national issue, which is some of the concurrent investigations that are going on, whether it be Thomas Crooks, or Tyler Robinson, or the pipe bomber? What would be your advice in order to get the American public read in on so many of these issues that seem to be kind of fraying the country right now? Right?

JAMES UTHMEIER (FLORIDA'S ATTORNEY GENERAL): My advice would be to investigate to the fullest. Ask every question. Thank you, Benny, for continuing to ask these questions. I think the American people have lost faith and credibility in law enforcement. They hear about inquiries, investigations that don't actually go anywhere. Things just get swept up the rug. We stop asking questions. And at the end of the day, we don't give the American people the answers they need. The questions you're asking are the right ones. There's a lot that doesn't make sense. People can call us conspiracy theorists, but I think you're on to something that's massively important, for our country and its history.

JOHNSON: There's no such thing as a conspiracy theory. I mean, that's a slur.

That's a slur that was made up after JFK was shot. And what did we learn just a month ago based on Anna Paulina's investigation here from the great state of Florida? Well, we found out that the CIA has been withholding a document that proves that they bumped into Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico, that they were working — at the very least, they were working in tandem with him on various operations. This has been proven. We have the documents now. And so it's actually — you're a conspiracy theorist if you don't think that there was some type of intel involvement and at least the operation — operability of Lee Harvey Oswald. They've now just completely admitted it. The records are there. The documents are there. And so, yeah, who was right all along? Right?

UTHMEIER: Yeah. The deep state for decades has been hoping that people at home will not ask questions, that they are not smart enough to figure out the truth. And, again, God bless you for digging into it. Representative Luna is doing a great job on many fronts. And, here in Florida, where we see wrongs that need to be righted, we will dig in, and and we will absolutely investigate and prosecute to the fullest. You got my word on that.

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new rep 12 25

The online MAGA-verse were at each other’s throats more than usual this weekend, as right-wing commentators Benny Johnson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Tucker Carlson were all points of controversy.

The first tiff started on Saturday, when Yiannopoulos—who has made a name for himself as an openly gay far-right bigot—accused multiple conservative influencers like Johnson and Charlie Kirk of being closeted gay men on Tim Pool’s podcast with swindler and former MAGA Representative George Santos, who is also gay.

“One of the most distinctive things about the right-wing in this country is its homosexual overtones. Benny Johnson posts pictures of his children every two days—it’s weird. And everybody knows what went on with Benny Johnson in those lobbies and those hotel rooms at SAS. Everybody knows,” said Yiannopoulos.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Santos replied.

“Men, younger men. Not underage, at least I don’t know that. His wife was crying drunk in the lobby three SAS’s in a row about how her husband was upstairs with boys,” Yiannopoulos claimed. “Go ask her.”

“Come on, Milo, aren’t you ever scared of getting sued?” Santos asked.

IFrame Content

Yiannopoulos insisted he was telling the truth, and that he’d never been sued.

On Sunday, Johnson threatened to sue him.

“I am duty bound to take action to protect my family against those who maliciously defame and attack us. More to come on that soon,” he wrote. “Pray for healing for some really sick and delusional people. Jesus is about redemption. The legal system is about justice. Happy Sunday.”

Yiannopoulos responded in a message addressed to Johnson and his wife, Kate:

“I know more about defamation than any lawyer you will hire. Benny is a public figure. Malice is a nonstarter. I have receipts, and the truth is a total defense against any claim of defamation or libel. Do you want to lose a defamation case to MILO YIANNOPOULOS OF ALL PEOPLE about whether or not you are gay? Do you want to even fight one? The people who have poured money into making you a big deal are about to lose their entire investment,” he ranted.

“I know more about your marriage than you think I do,” he continued, “and I have evidence, and I have witnesses. I know who to subpoena. I know what questions to ask. About nocturnal liaisons dangereuses with chaps in assless chaps and about being caught in flagrante delicto at conferences attended by students, some of whom may have been under 18 (I guess we’ll find out!).”

Yiannopoulos also claimed that Turning Point USA may have faked Charlie Kirk’s death.

IFrame Content

Meanwhile, other far-righters—mostly Islamophobes and Zionists—were at pundit Tucker Carlson’s throat for his purchase of a property in Qatar.

“Speaking on stage at the Doha Forum in Qatar, Tucker Carlson told Qatar’s Prime Minister Al Thani that he is buying a place in Qatar this week because he’s an ‘American”; and he will live and go wherever he wants,” MAGA crank Laura Loomer posted on Sunday. “Qatar is the financier of the Muslim Brotherhood and they continue to allow HAMAS officials to live in Doha, where Tucker now wants to buy a place to live.”

“Let me explain the joke: Qatar is a bloodthirsty, terror-supporting slave state, and Tucker Carlson is rubbing it in your face that he’s an unregistered foreign agent for them,” another account wrote.

It’s clear that Trump’s base is fraying at the seams. From those questioning the validity of Trump’s “America First” and our fealty to Israel, like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes, and Tucker Carlson, to those like Yiannopoulos spreading conspiracy theories only Candace Owens would touch, it’s clear that whatever base of hatred Trump still has is fractured.

Edith Olmsted/

:{:{December 8, 2025/}:

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MMA

November 26, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): And here's the final thing I'll say. As I've, like, thought about this, we've covered this for so long.

...

Like, one of our first shows when we started the show was on the pipe bomber. I've been getting so exhausted with it. But here's the deal. So the whole idea here was that this is a MAGA bomber. You know, MAGA's terrorists. They're terrorists. The MAGA bomber. You know?

Ignore the fact that no one in MAGA has ever been violent ever. It's not a violent movement. America first is a movement of love for our nation and the people in it, not hatred. We want to deport all the criminal aliens, but, nonetheless, we don't want to harm anyone. We don't want to hurt anyone. We don't want to take anyone's rights. We certainly don't want to bomb anything or anybody. These are actions exclusively of the left. So run that through the brain stem, will you?

...

I want this bomber found, and I unite, I link arms with my liberal friends in the holiday spirit and the Christmas spirit, and I will say, brethren, unite with me.

Let us find this single January 6 terrorist together.

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MAGA influencer Benny Johnson’s job is to have no principles. Business is booming.

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty

Published 11/25/25

The top tier of the MAGA influencer ecosystem is a clownshow.

:{:{Tucker Carlson is warring with Ben Shapiro over just how much antisemitism right-wing audiences should be willing to tolerate. Candace Owens is being sued (and, she claims without evidence, targeted for death) over her debunked conspiracy theory that the first lady of France is secretly a transgender woman.}:

Laura Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who once handcuffed herself to the doors of Twitter HQ to protest her banning by the service, is now a credentialed member of the Pentagon press corps and keeps getting Trump officials fired for insufficient loyalty. And Megyn Kelly has gone in just a few short years from anchoringa newsmagazine show for NBC to debating whether Jeffrey Epstein’s victims were young enough for him to be described as a pedophile.}:

But Benny Johnson stands out, even among this collection of cranks, grifters, propagandists, and sycophants. He is the Jesse Watters of the streaming set, someone who has parlayed having absolutely nothing to add to any conversation into a lucrative career as a shill for President Donald Trump.

Johnson has had perhaps the best 2025 of any streamer on the right. His YouTube videos have amassed more than 1 billion views in total this year — only Kelly compares among right-wing news and politics hosts, while Joe Rogan garnered 890 million views over the same period. Johnson's YouTube subscriber base grew by nearly 120%, with his 3.3 million new subscribers representing the largest total increase among the 400+ channels we track that are affiliated with right-leaning and left-leaning online shows. (Analysis of new YouTube subscribers and total channel views is based on data collected from Social Blade.)

All the while he hobnobbed with Trump administration power players and GOP elites, flying with Vice President JD Vance, broadcasting from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) office during a joint session of Congress, and boasting of his contacts with White House officials.

Johnson’s rise demonstrates that what drives influence within the MAGAsphere is not diligent reporting or willingness to speak truth to power, but a willingness to loudly say whatever will make the president happy.

The streamer’s backstory is a testament to the complete lack of ethical standards within right-wing media. After getting his start at The Blaze, the right-wing outlet founded by Glenn Beck, Johnson made a foray into mainstream media in 2012 when he joined Buzzfeed News. Though he built a reputation there for viral content, he was fired after two years for serial plagiarism. That journalistic crime is often career-ending in mainstream outlets — but Johnson was swiftly welcomed back to the right-wing ecosystem, with subsequent jobs at National Review, Independent Journal Review (where he again faced plagiarism allegations), The Daily Caller, Turning Point USA, and Newsmax.

Johnson went independent in 2023, focusing on his personal podcast, streaming, and social media platforms. The following year, the Justice Department charged two individuals with covertly channeling $8.7 million from a Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet to the production companies of three U.S.-based right-wing YouTube stars in return for videos prosecutors said supported the Russian government’s goals. One of those beneficiaries of the Kremlin propaganda plot was Johnson, who described himself as an unwitting “victim” of the scheme. He was not charged with wrongdoing.

If Johnson’s conduct was not criminal, it does suggest that he was either stupid or venal enough to take millions of dollars without wondering where it came from. But a year later, it turns out no one on the right cares: He retains a fast-growing viewership and what appears to be a voice at the highest levels of Trump’s regime.

On The Benny Show, no Trump turd goes unpolished

Trump’s right-wing media coalition, united by his cult of personality and their shared hatred of the left, powered his return to the White House. But fissures soon emerged, as commentators split with the president — and each other — over his handling of issues like the Russia-Ukraine war, tariffs, U.S. strikes on Iran, and reforms, and, most of all, the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Johnson tends to stay out of such squabbles. While he has some policy preferences — he hates food stamps, claims that “every single thing you hate about your life right now” could be “fixed by mass deportations,” and wants to “destroy” Social Security, for example — Trump is his top priority.

Any time Trump needs someone to move his bullshit, he can count on Johnson to show up with a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and a smile. There’s no lie too absurd for him to parrot, no corruption he won’t defend, if it will help the president achieve his aims.

Want a rationale to send troops into cities like Portland or Washington? Benny will declare to his audience that the former “has been conquered by antifa” and the latter has “entire neighborhoods” that “need to be bulldozed.”

The stiff tariffs you unilaterally implemented causing chaos in the markets? Benny will explain to his viewers that the economic “pain” is the result of “demonic possession,” and assure them that “losing money costs you absolutely nothing.”

Got a problem with a journalist getting accidentally added to the administration group chat in which your underqualified defense secretary is sharing attack plans? Benny will shift the blame to “a backdoor splinter cell group inside the CIA” and the reporter, who should be arrested.

Taking heat because the Qatari government gave you a jet described as a “flying palace” to replace Air Force One? Fret not — Benny says that is “totally permissible” and “normal.”

Need someone to carry water for your administration’s comically inept claim that President Barack Obama directed a “treasonous conspiracy”? Benny will host a discussion about whether Obama should face a “military tribunal.”

On the rare occasions when Johnson strays, he is quick to return to the MAGA fold. When the Justice Department and FBI triggered a right-wing media meltdown in July by debunking some of its cherished Epstein claims, Johnson initially joined in. But even then, he made clear that his complaint was not with Trump, claiming that his “love” for the president was “without question.”

And when Trump needed someone to clean up after new reporting detailed his own close relationship with the convicted sex offender later that month, Benny reverted to form, claiming that the reporting was “a hoax” and “the scandal is in who wrote the story.”

Johnson’s mutually beneficial relationship with the Trump GOP

Sometimes Republicans who might actually have principles consider acting on them and defying Trump in some way. All year long, when that has happened, Johnson has stepped in to keep them in line. And the Trump administration has rewarded him with access.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine extremism jeopardized his Senate confirmation in January, for example, Johnson warned recalcitrant Republicans that they were courting annihilation. “Senators must confirm RFK or face the absolute whirlwind of some very, very powerful forces of MAHA and MAGA that will absolutely torch them and will destroy their careers because you've proven to us what you actually believe and who you actually are,” he said.

When Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said she would oppose Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s nomination to lead the Pentagon, citing in part the “allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking” that had dogged his nomination, Johnson said that he would make an example of the “vengeful witch.” Declaring a “jihad” against the senator, he said he would “physically travel to Alaska. Expect a massive, well-funded primary challenge for Lisa Murkowski.”

Johnson credited his own work with helping to keep Republicans from abandoning Hegseth amid the Signalgate scandal.

“Well, just like the — just like at the Pentagon, and you saw the same op run against Hegseth — and we think that RFK is going to obviously survive the same way that Hegseth did, and we're going to help him do it, obviously,” he explained in September. “We're going to make sure that we stiffen the backbone of anybody who would come against him.”

The Trump administration and GOP appreciate the existence of a toady with Johnson’s reach.

• In late October, Johnson accompanied JD Vance for the vice president’s appearance at a TPUSA event in Mississippi, flying with him on Air Force Two and getting “one on one time” to “sit and chill” with the vice president.

• In October, Johnson went on a ride-along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as they raided a Walmart and visited a detention facility. He also toured Portland ICE facilities with Noem.

• Brendan Carr, the Trumpy chair of the Federal Communications Committee, issued his threat to ABC and its affiliates over Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes during a September appearance on Johnson’s show.

• Benny kicked off an August White House press briefing from the “new media” seat, at one point asking Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “Will the president consider giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to ‘Big Balls?’’

• He received an invitation to stream about Trump’s March congressional address from Mike Johnson’s office, where he the speaker to celebrate passage of Trump’s signature economic bill.

Johnson also frequently mentions what his “little birdies” in the Trump administration — including the president himself — are telling him about events.

No one has lashed themselves to Trump and his administration more than Johnson. But as the president’s poll numbers circle the drain and his allies launch proxy fights over who will be the GOP’s standard-bearer in 2028, where does that leave Benny?

MMA //

1. ### Benny Johnson: “What are the major irritants of modern society? ... All of it boils down to 20 million criminal aliens who don't belong here.”

11/20/25 12:18 PM EST

2. ### Benny Johnson: “Every single thing you hate about your life right now or American culture is caused by mass immigration and criminal immigration”

11/20/25 12:00 PM EST

3. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, November 21

11/21/25

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November 19, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): So all Democrats vote to protect Stacey Plaskett, and our weak ass Republican leadership cuts a deal in order to protect a Republican that should be able to stand on his own two feet, right, against these allegations. You, the American people, should be outraged by this from both parties, says Marjorie Taylor Greene, and you should be asking many questions. For example, why does Plaskett, who's a nonvoting delegate from The US territory, serve on the House Intelligence Committee, Ways and Means Committee, Budget Committee? Because of the money. Because she literally — because that's where all the money laundering happens, obviously. Those are very powerful influential committees. She can't even vote on the House floor. }:

Corey Mills serves on the House Armed Services Committee, Foreign Affairs, and subcommittees of Intelligence. So why did both sides work together to stop Plaskett and Mills' censure resolutions last night in order to protect both Plaskett and Mills? Members of Congress, like me, never ever receive such protections and never will. Instead of working to pass legislation that supports policies you voted for, passing our appropriation bills and solving real crises like health care, Congress is trapped in the quicksand of the swamp with no intention of getting out.}:

Moving along to Anna Paulina Luna. And I'm well aware that Marjorie Taylor Greene has burned quite a few bridges in MAGA and back and forth, that Trump has rescinded his endorsement of her and so on. So let's move over to Anna Paulina Luna. Maybe you're like, well, that's like — that's not — we don't want to hear from Marjorie. Fine. If that's what you think. She's telling the truth there, by the way. Her and Tim Burchett. Here's Anna Paulina Luna. I refuse to vote to protect a corrupt Republican the same way I will not vote to protect a corrupt Democrat. If a member brings forward a legitimate censure for corruption against another Republican, I will vote for it. Get the house in order at GOP.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. What a nightmare. How can you possibly — how can you possibly say that you are against pedophiles — GOP leadership, House leadership — get me my Mike Johnson clip immediately. We went to the House, and we interviewed Mike Johnson, and he sat as far away as I am from you right now. And by that, I mean, you know, the camera's really close to me, but whatever. You're welcome to come into the studio and watch the show anytime. I sat across from Mike Johnson, and that dude was like, this is despicable. Nobody deserves to be protected. Get it, like, get it out. Get it out. Get it out. OK? Here's what Mike Johnson had to say to me. Here we go.

...

JOHNSON: So, then he goes on to, like, talk about the tributaries and things that had been done. And listen. I'm happy to cheerlead when good things happen, but this is not a good thing.

Dude lied to my face. It makes me pissed off because you can't sit there and say — and I just played you Marjorie Taylor Greene and Anna Paulina Luna's clips. Like, you can't sit there and say, yeah. I'm in favor of punishing the people that were clearly accelerating and creating the conditions for this pedophile to have such heavy control over our body politic and then not censure the member of Congress who did that. You cut a deal to protect the Democrat that works with the pedo — that was in bed with the pedophile trying to get Trump? It's indefensible. How can you do that? What a betrayal of every principle that we have. Do we have any principles?

//

1. ### MAGA media figures are furious over Trump's immigration apostasy

11/14/25 4:21 PM EST

2. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, November 14

11/14/25 10:55 AM EST

3. ### Benny Johnson: “H-1Bs should be banned. There should be no H-1Bs in America.”

11/12/25

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not much talk tenet

Benny Johnson (columnist) - Wikipedia

benny Johnson (born May 27, 1987)^[1][2] is an American conservative political commentator^[3] and YouTuber.^[4] He has contributed to several conservative media outlets such as Breitbart News, TheBlaze, National Review, and The Daily Caller.

Johnson was associated with BuzzFeed but was fired in 2014 due to several instances of plagiarism, where he used text from sources such as Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia without giving due credit.^[5] Johnson has also worked for Turning Point USA and hosted for Newsmax TV.

Career

After attending the University of Iowa,^[6] Johnson began contributing opinion pieces to the website Breitbart in 2010. From 2011 to 2012, Johnson was a full-time worker for conservative website TheBlaze, founded by Glenn Beck.^[7] From 2012 to 2014, Johnson was a staff writer at BuzzFeed, until he was fired for plagiarism.^[8]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benny_Johnson_%2812555523704%29.jpg)Johnson speaking at the 2014 International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C.

In September 2014, Johnson became digital director at National Review (NR). In 2015, Johnson left NR to join the Independent Journal Review (IJR) as a creative content contributor.^[9] A month after his relationship with the IJR was terminated in October 2017,^[10] Johnson joined The Daily Caller.^[11][12][13]

In 2019, he became a chief creative officer at Turning Point USA.^[14] In 2020, Johnson was a host on Newsmax TV.^[15][16] Johnson runs three YouTube channels: "Benny Johnson", "Benny On The Block" and "Benny Brews".^[17] Johnson also hosts a podcast called "The Benny Show". His main YouTube channel, titled "Benny Johnson", has amassed 6.01 million subscribers and 4 billion views as of September 2025.^[17]

Plagiarism and other accusations

In July 2014, Johnson was suspended from BuzzFeed when an online investigation exposed plagiarism in his posts. His writings "periodically lifted text from a variety of sources", including Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia, and U.S. News & World Report, "all without credit".^[5][18] The plagiarized work comprised almost 10 percent of his work; he was subsequently fired from BuzzFeed and apologized for the plagiarism.^[5]

In March 2017, IJR staffers accused Johnson of plagiarizing an article about then-House Republican Conference chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers.^[19] Later in the same month Johnson was suspended by the IJR after his involvement in an article which asserted that judge Derrick Watson's partial blocking of Executive Order 13780 was connected to former president Barack Obama's visit to Hawaii. Johnson had been warned that the IJR could potentially be promoting a conspiracy theory, but assigned the story anyway.^[19][20]

Again in March 2017, Johnson was reported to have been verbally abusive and driven numerous staffers away from the IJR due to his management style;^[20] he was subsequently demoted.^[10]

In August 2017, Johnson wrote an article containing the most controversial tweets of what he thought was the Boston antifa Twitter account, but it was actually a fake account intended to lampoon antifa. Initially an editorial note was added, and the article was later removed.^[21][22][23]

In April 2022, The Verge published an investigation on Arsenal Media, a conservative boutique co-founded by Johnson. Former employees and contractors described dubious corporate practices, including payments delayed for months, contracts with political campaigns rife with self-dealing, and overworked and underpaid jobs. Johnson has been described as "very abusive, very toxic, screaming at people, like using profanity, vulgarity, making women cry, like pushing them to the edge."^[24]

In August 2024, two Russian state media employees were charged with secretly funding almost $10 million to a Tennessee company for the production of political videos to benefit Russia by influencing the United States. The company's description matches that of Tenet Media, which had employed Johnson and other right-wing influencers, with him responding that "myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme", with a request being made for him to produce content for a "media startup", and that he had a "standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated."^[25][26]

In August 2025, Johnson responded to a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump by posting a video on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption: "Here's a mass shooting and murder in my front lawn, followed by my house being set on fire with my wife and infant child inside." The claim was later proven false. A subsequent profile in The New York Times, citing official police and fire department reports, confirmed that the incident had in fact occurred at a neighbor's residence. Johnson had sensationalized details of the episode and falsely presented it as having taken place at his own home.^[27]

Personal life

Johnson is married to Katelyn Rieley,^[7] with whom he has four children as of 2025.^[28][29]

Assassination threat against Johnson

On October 10, 2025, US Attorney General Pam Bondi hosted a press conference featuring Johnson and attended by his wife Katelyn, spotlighting the arrest of a man who sent a letter to Johnson's home threatening his life. The arrested individual described in the letter that he hoped for Johnson's "extermination" and that Johnson should be "strangled with an American flag", among other details. Johnson used the press conference to argue that violence, including assassination, has been mainstreamed by the Democratic Party.^[30][31]

References...

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MMA ANGEL STUDIOS HOODIE

Benny Johnson says if you don't believe in God, then “you're not an American, actually”

11/07/25

https://www.mediamatters.org/benny-johnson/benny-johnson-says-if-you-dont-believe-god-then-youre-not-american-actually)

---

MMA

October 17, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): We are living in the f-aroundest of times and the find-outingest of times.

And, I personally believe that it is the most entertaining thing that has happened over the past nine months, that those communists who accused Donald Trump of crimes are guilty of the crimes in which they are accusing Donald Trump. It is the iron law of wokeism. It is actually part of Saul Alinsky's plan. It is actually part of the Communist Manifesto. Every Bolshevik that has ever lived practiced this. We're against the bourgeois because they're gonna genocide us, and then the Bolsheviks go on to genocide half the population.

Right? Like, we're against the capitalists because they're here to kill you, and then the communist will go and kill half the population. Right? Mao Zedong kills 60 million people. They will accuse you of the crimes of which they are guilty. Now we found this out with Letitia James. Leticia James accused Donald Trump of real estate mortgage crimes, and it turns out that she has now been caught cold committing those exact same crimes, but far worse than Donald Trump ever committed them. She's been indicted for that. James Comey went after General Flynn, Donald Trump for lying to Congress, for lying under oath, for lying to the federal government and FBI. James Comey indicted for that exact same thing.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Brennan and James Clapper, they're in very hot water because of what they did launching the Russia collusion hoax, raiding Donald Trump's house and so on and so forth. It turns out that they've hoaxed themselves directly into some real legal trouble. And we hear that that's going to be heating up quite quickly. Interesting little birdies tell us this.

//

1. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, October 10

10/10/25 10:57 AM EDT

2. ### Benny Johnson: “You shouldn't be allowed to, like, go be a judge here if you were born in another country ... There's a good argument to be made that you shouldn't be allowed to serve in Congress.”

10/09/25 11:53 AM EDT

3. ### Right-wing media have long called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. He's now considering it.

10/09/25

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AN 10 25 RUPAR

Eric Trump’s controversial remarks — declaring that his father is guided by God and praising what he describes as a divinely orchestrated series of events leading America to this moment — are being blasted by a group of hundreds of national security experts.

“I can’t tell you how many things are lining up,” the President’s son told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson.

“I mean, think about the fact that this book came out on Charlie Kirk’s birthday, on the same day as we have peace in the Middle East,” he said, of his new book. “You know, I mean, so many different factors are all coming together at once in the most unthinkable, unbelievable journey.”

“Look how much better humanity and our world is,” under Trump, he claimed.

“You know, we’re saving Christianity. We’re saving God, we’re saving the family unit. We’re saving this nation. I mean, you know, DEI is out the window, Benny. You know, I mean, you no longer have Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem,” Trump continued. “You no longer have Budweiser going, woke as h–, all of this is dead.”

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Trump claimed a resurgence in church attendance, and “a return to people, you know, valuing their children, and valuing society, and believing in the white picket fence, and what the American dream represents, and what the American dream stands for, and American exceptionalism, and peace around the world, and that people can coexist with one another without having to, you know, pick up arms and destroy each other for no reason whatsoever, other than, you know, incompetent, and, you know, and egotistical governments.”

“It’s a beautiful time, and he will go to heaven for all of that,’ he said of his father. “God absolutely guided this journey.”

The Steady State, a group of over 330 former national security officials, slammed the Trump scion’s remarks.

“Eric Trump is not talking politics,” they wrote. “Instead, he’s declaring a new moral order.”

“Framing Trump as God-guided and destined for heaven, he claims America has been ‘saved’ from DEI, protest, and pluralism. This is prophetic, authoritarian language,” they warned.

“Dissent becomes evil, and their victory becomes divine destiny.”

Former Obama head speechwriter turned political commentator Jon Favreau remarked, “We’ve moved rather quickly from ‘God saved Trump’ to ‘Trump is saving God,’ which I guess is the foundation of the new MAGA religion?”

Author Jennifer Erin Valent, winner of a Christian writers’ award commented, “No one ‘saves’ God. Every Christian should know that and be repulsed by the very assertion.”

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no lnx

How Right-Wing Influencers Are Shaping the Guard Fight in Portland

President Trump and his administration are amplifying the voices of pro-White House podcasters and streamers eager to ratify the president’s description of Oregon’s largest city as a “hellscape.”

A group of people stand on the roof of a building next to an American flag. Some of them have cameras and other equipment.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, tours the roof of an ICE detention center in Portland on Tuesday.Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times

By Anna Griffin and Aaron West

Reporting from Portland, Ore.

Oct. 10, 2025

In the fight over deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., Democratic leaders in the city and state have pleaded with President Trump and the courts to trust law enforcement records, both local and federal, that describe the demonstrations as small and comparatively calm.

But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side’s comparative calm is the other’s “hellscape” — as the White House described Portland on Wednesday — and the narrative that the Trump administration has wanted has been supplied by a coterie of right-wing influencers elevated by Mr. Trump himself.

On Thursday, the repercussions of those dueling versions of reality became clear as judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit questioned a district court’s finding that the protests in Portland were likely too minor to justify the National Guard deployment. The appeals court judges instead cited federal reports of demonstrators spitting on federal officers and shining flashlights in their eyes, behavior that has been captured, amplified and sometimes even prompted by pro-Trump personalities eager to counter local police.

“The Portland Police Chief did an interview today attacking independent journalists for exposing the violent terrorists that he allows to run the city,” Benny Johnson, a popular pro-Trump podcaster, wrote Tuesday on social media after accompanying Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Oregon. “He’s humiliated and knows Portland is under siege.”

Image

A group of people stand outside in the dark. Some of them are wearing masks, costumes or scarves.

Protesters gather outside of a federal ICE facility in Portland on Monday.Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times

To some extent, the right’s assertions of chaos in Oregon have been self-fulfilling. The administration’s close ties to a small but well-followed group of influencers and conspiracy theorists has amplified their voices, and they in turn have encouraged administration efforts to crack down on demonstrators. The portrayals of a city on fire have angered protesters.

And sometimes, left-wing activists have risen to the bait, leading to scuffles and injuries conservative streamers then promote on the internet. One right-wing commentator, Katie Daviscourt, said she received a black eye when a demonstrator hit her with a flag pole.

“Certainly over the last 10 days, the energy level has gone up, the amount of conflicting points of view have increased greatly,” Chief Bob Day of the Portland Police Bureau said at a news media briefing Tuesday. “And this has created an environment that’s equally, if not more, challenging for us.”

Pro-Trump provocateurs have gotten more open about their efforts as the stakes in the battle over how to police protests grow. Ms. Noem has threatened to quadruple the number of federal law enforcement agents in Portland if she is not satisfied with the city’s crowd-control efforts. Troops from the Oregon and California National Guards are awaiting deployment. Another group of guardsmen from Texas could be summoned at the president’s request.

Meantime, influencers are seeking to raise the tension. Matt Tardio, a right-wing streamer who was broadcasting to an online audience of 10,000 or so from the ICE building in Portland on Wednesday night, conceded that other streamers were trying to stir up trouble so they could capture it on video.

“They were handing out flags and trying to get antifa folks to burn them, and then claimed that they were going to do physical harm to them if they burned the American flag,” he said. All the while, a videographer was capturing the action.

Mr. Tardio, 41, said he was not sure which side the people involved were supporting.

“In the beginning it looked like people on the right are the ones instigating, but in the following evenings it looked like people on the left,” he said. “People are absorbing information on social media quicker than reality.” Nobody can keep up, he added.

Image

A person in a white hat and black jacket stands in front of a group of people at night. Some are holding up cameras.

“They were handing out flags and trying to get antifa folks to burn them,” the right-wing streamer Matt Tardio, center, said of fellow influencers.Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times

Political messages don’t seem to be the point for some on either side, said Sgt. Daniel DiMatteo while patrolling near the protest Wednesday night.

“It’s a lot more of the, ‘I’m going to get in your face and say something controversial to try to get a response out of you,’” he said.

Trump Administration: Live Updates

Updated

Oct. 12, 2025, 4:51 p.m. ETOct. 12, 2025

Vance says Trump has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the National Guard.}:

Trump is headed to Israel and Egypt.}:

Trump announced Dan Scavino, a longtime aide, as the head of personnel.}:

There are, to be sure, streamers and podcasters on the left who are commenting on the standoff, but conservative provocateurs hold more influence because of their connections to the administration. Ms. Noem did not have any news briefings or public appearances during her trip to Portland this week. Instead, she brought her own media entourage, which chronicled her every move through the prism of their support.

“BREAKING,” Bo Loudon, a 19-year-old influencer and friend of Mr. Trump’s youngest son, Barron, wrote on social media. Ms. Noem “just stared down violently Antifa rioters on the roof of a Portland ICE facility,” he wrote. chicken suit?

The video attached showed Ms. Noem on the roof of the building looking down at a small clutch of protesters far away, one of them in a chicken suit.

The man in the chicken suit, Jack Dickinson, 26, who had been coming to the ICE building to protest federal immigration policies for months, said he was struck by the disconnect. Mr. Dickinson said he watched one of the pro-Trump influencers, Nick Sortor, film outside the ICE building, then heard the narration.

Image

A man in a yellow chicken suit with an American flag draped around him leans against a fence.

Jack Dickinson’s chicken suit has made him stand out amid the small group of protesters that have been staking out the ICE facility in Portland.Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times

“He was talking about this looking like a third-world country,” Mr. Dickinson said as he surveyed a riverfront neighborhood of apartment buildings, coffee shops and an Italian restaurant popular for holiday meals and graduation parties. “It’s just clearly not.”

The influencers with Ms. Noem included major conservative celebrities such as Mr. Johnson, whose YouTube posts regularly draw hundreds of thousands of views, and younger conservative journalists such as David Medina, who lives in Oregon, and Mr. Sortor, who has been producing a steady stream of content this week based on his Oct. 2 arrest at the ICE demonstrations.

Mr. Sortor was initially charged with second-degree disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor in Oregon, after he took a burning American flag from a left-wing demonstrator and a fight ensued. The response from Washington, D.C., was intense and immediate. Attorney General Pam Bondi demanded an investigation into the Portland Police Bureau, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Mr. Sortor had been “ambushed by antifa.”

For his efforts, Mr. Sortor found himself at the White House on Wednesday, as the president praised the actions of right-wing activists and pledged to dismantle antifa, a loose-knit group of anarchists whose presence in Portland has long angered Mr. Trump.

Mr. Sortor had been “assaulted in Portland by a flag-burning mob,” the president declared.

Mr. Sortor responded, “The Portland politicians literally are willing to sacrifice their own citizens just to appease these antifa terrorists.”

Image

A man in a blue suit jacket holds up a damaged American flag as three others look on.

Nick Sortor, a right-wing media personality, turned his arrest in Portland after a scuffle with protesters into an invitation to the White House on Wednesday.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

Nathan Vasquez, the district attorney of Multnomah County, which includes parts of Portland, dropped the charges against Mr. Sortor but planned to take two left-wing demonstrators he scuffled with to trial. Mr. Vasquez said police did have probable cause to arrest Mr. Sortor.

The influencer was engaged in “what I think most people would consider antagonistic behavior,” Mr. Vasquez said. “The hard part is that obnoxious behavior doesn’t amount to you getting to punch him in the face.”

After Ms. Noem’s visit to Portland, Mr. BENNY Johnson appeared live on Newsmax from inside the cordoned-off ICE building. He described the building as being in downtown Portland and said that the windows were blacked out and covered with tarps because “Democrats keep shooting sniper rounds into ICE facilities.”

Police have not reported any incidents of sniper fire, and the ICE building sits about two miles from downtown Portland.

Along with a video of Ms. Noem praying before a fast-food meal with federal workers, Mr. Johnson posted on social media his own photo of her on the roof of the ICE building.

“She stood at the edge and stared down Antifa and a dude in a chicken suit,” Mr. Johnson wrote. “Straight savage.”

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2025, Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Comparative Calm or ‘Hellscape’? In Portland, Depends on the Narrator.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump, Kristi Noem

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opb an 10 25

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports the Trump administration is embracing right-wing media influencers and similar hacks to promote its messages, showing “a deepening alliance between the administration and an online world willing to misrepresent facts if it means furthering political goals.”

“The influencers’ personal content is blended with interviews on Fox News, Newsmax and other outlets, and reposted by federal agencies at times,” said OPB reporter Erik Neumann, adding that many influencers consorting with the administration during its Oregon “ICE tour” later appeared on a panel at the White House with President Trump, where clips were similarly repurposed and spun out to broader conservative media.

“Local media like OPB and The Oregonian/OregonLive have not been given the same access to the ICE building when they requested it,” reports Neumann. “In response to requests to tour the ICE building, DHS officials have asked OPB — a century-old media organization that has covered newsworthy events at the protests since their earliest days — to share links to OPB coverage of the protests before considering access.”

A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor who studies media activism in the University of Alabama’s journalism department, said the Trump administration is using influencers to rationalize the president’s actions.

“The streamers are actually counter-protesters themselves who are going and documenting the protests that they disagree with,” said Bauer. “The government is actually working hand-in-glove with those folks in order to promote the government’s message. That is a new development.”

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While mainstream journalists have always embedded themselves with the government to cover major events, like during the Vietnam or Iraq wars, mainstream reporters are primarily free to produce stories and footage critical of the government. But Bauer said right-wing influencers adhere to no journalistic sense of balance, truth or independence. Instead, he said, they begin with an “ideological vision of the world and then narrate what they see in a way that fits that vision.”

“The consequences are that we have two competing visions of reality,” said Bauer, referencing the fabricated reality that chaos is rampant in Oregon, even carrying that fantasy world back to the White House and reinforcing it in the mind of the president.

“The amazing thing is you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights. I mean, violence, it’s so crazy,” Trump said during the televised round table, according to OPB. “And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal. It’s almost like, are you waking up from a dream or something?”

One X post from MAGA influencer Benny Johnson showed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem standing with on a high rooftop staring down an “army of antifa,” which actually consisted of a smattering of catcallers, media and a guy in a chicken suit.

Read the full OPB story at this link.

ref

Right-wing influencers shape nation and Trump’s understanding of Portland protests

By Erik Neumann (OPB)

Oct. 11, 2025 6 a.m.

Social media personalities, conservative media outlets and the Trump administration itself are blending online content to serve the administration’s policies.

Trump supporters face off with protesters outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.

Benny Johnson, a pro-Trump social media personality from Florida, announced to his followers on X that he had arrived.

“Yo, what’s up!” Johnson said Tuesday as he strolled into the airport. “We are on the ground in Portland, Oregon.”

Johnson was in town to meet with three other social media influencers and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to tour the city’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, where protests had been taking place since June.

“The Trump administration is here today. Follow along. The Trump administration ain’t gonna have any of this,” Johnson said. “This is going to be a rowdy day.”

From there, the influencers packed into SUVs and followed Noem, passing through police lines that had been established around the ICE facility and eventually behind its gates.

Standing on the building’s rooftop, Johnson and the other influencers filmed Noem for their millions of followers online. But the day was less than rowdy.

On the street below, around 20 reporters from local and national outlets stood behind yellow caution tape, along with a handful of protesters. It was a sunny fall day in Portland, far from the burning hellscape portrayed online.

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Still, influencer Nick Sortor warned Noem that she wasn’t seeing the real story.

“This is absolutely nothing as to what it is at night though. It’s really bad at night,” Sortor said. “That sun goes down and it gets totally lawless.”

Social media personalities like those who joined Noem are increasingly shaping the public’s understanding of events in Portland, where the Trump administration has been trying to deploy the National Guard in recent weeks.

While partisan online posting about protests in the Northwest is nothing new, right-wing media influencers are now being welcomed into the federal government to promote its messages. This kind of media access shows a deepening alliance between the administration and an online world willing to misrepresent facts if it means furthering political goals.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stands on the roof of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025.

Eli Imadali / OPB

The influencers’ personal content is blended with interviews on Fox News, Newsmax and other outlets, and reposted by federal agencies at times. Sortor and another media personality on the ICE tour, Katie Daviscourt, appeared on a panel at the White House on Wednesday with President Trump, where clips were similarly repurposed and spun out to broader conservative media.

Local media like OPB and The Oregonian/OregonLive have not been given the same access to the ICE building when they requested it. In response to requests to tour the ICE building, DHS officials have asked OPB – a century-old media organization that has covered newsworthy events at the protests since their earliest days - to share links to OPB coverage of the protests before considering access.

‘Counter-protesters themselves’

The current Trump administration is working with these influencers to justify the president’s actions, according to A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor who studies media activism in the University of Alabama’s journalism department.

“The streamers are actually counter-protesters themselves who are going and documenting the protests that they disagree with. The government is actually working hand-in-glove with those folks in order to promote the government’s message,” Bauer said. “That is a new development.”

Masked-up federal agents confront the protesters outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 28, 2025.

Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

There are many examples over the years of mainstream journalists embedding with the government to cover major events, like during the Vietnam or Iraq wars. But those reporters were largely free to be critical of the government.

Bauer said right-wing influencers don’t follow the journalistic norms of balance, independence and not personally participating in stories. Instead, he said, they start out with an ideological vision of the world and then narrate what they see in a way that fits that vision.

“The consequences are that we have two competing visions of reality,” Bauer said.

There have been almost nightly protests outside of Portland’s ICE facility for months. Since June, the Portland Police Bureau has made at least 47 arrests, and federal officials have arrested dozens more, though not everyone has been charged with a crime.

Still, the protests span just one or two city blocks. Many nights, there are fewer than two dozen people. Dancing and whimsical costumes have been a frequent protest tactic since the Trump administration has expressed a desire to send in military troops to suppress the demonstrations.

Protesters recover after gas is deployed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, Portland, Ore., Oct. 4, 2025.

Alejandro Figueroa / OPB

But these influencers tell a story that chaos is rampant. And now, they are having the biggest impact possible by shaping how President Trump views the protests. They repeated a vision of Portland to him at a White House roundtable on Wednesday that many residents wouldn’t recognize.

“The amazing thing is you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights. I mean, violence, it’s so crazy,” Trump said during the televised round table. “And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal. It’s almost like, are you waking up from a dream or something?”

A history of clashes

Right wing presence at protests in Portland is not a new phenomenon.

During the president’s first term, counter-protesters were a regular presence in the Rose City when residents and left-aligned demonstrators took to the streets. Provocateurs like Joey Gibson would frequently show up at protests between 2015 and 2020 to film and engage in conflicts with what they described as antifa mobs.

At times, those provocations turned violent, with people being shoved, maimed and even killed as dueling political factions took to the streets.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson directs people back to the west side of the Willamette River during demonstrations in Portland, Ore., Saturday, Aug. 17, 2019.

Bradley W. Parks / OPB

Those protests also launched the careers of streamers and media personalities who focused on the conflict with a particular political view, such as Andy Ngo, a former Portland resident who now edits for the Canadian conservative outlet the Post Millennial.

With around 1.7 million X followers, Ngo is an influential voice on the right who appeared at Wednesday’s roundtable with President Trump. He also helped pave the way for the people aligning with the Trump administration against the current Portland protests. That includes Daviscourt, who brands herself on X as an investigative reporter for the Post Millennial.

While activists like Gibson have appeared at the protests outside the ICE building in recent days, the content being produced by the streamers is not restrained to their own feeds and fans, as it largely was during the first Trump administration.

On Thursday, Ngo made a post to his X account warning of an impending attack on federal law enforcement.

“Antifa in Portland have been plastering flyers around the city urging people to try and crash the DHS helicopter flying over ICE,” Ngo wrote just before 9 p.m., sharing an image of a flyer with lasers pointing at a helicopter.

Around three hours later, DHS posted a similar version of the flyer to its X account.

“Antifa domestic terrorists WILL NOT overrun our cities,” the post stated.

Facts on the ground

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and most other state officials have rejected the need for the Trump administration to send the National Guard to the city. But their views seem to have little influence on the White House’s stated plans and rhetoric.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson speaks with Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty at a press conference Monday, Sept. 29 in Portland Ore. Wilson and 10 Oregon mayors spoke against President Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard in Portland.

Saskia Hatvany / OPB

On a recent night outside the ICE facility, conservative podcaster Matt Tardio was live-streaming the Portland protests. Tardio said he’s trying to capture everything that’s going on, not just the clashes between protesters and police.

“I do know that I’ve caught some coming-up streamers or whatever they were, legitimately trying to start problems and having hidden cameramen off to the side trying to capture those problems starting so that they could have their viral clips,” Tardio said. “That’s messed up.”

Tardio, who is a veteran, agrees that the situation on the ground is being exaggerated online.

“I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve said I don’t think the National Guard needs to come out here. I feel that the Portland Police Bureau can handle it,” he said.

But that hasn’t stopped other influencers from repeating the story about a war-ravaged city that gets amplified by Trump officials and repackaged across the media ecosystem.

---

MMA

October 7, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty

ROB FINNERTY (HOST): OK. So I know that Kristi Noem met with that — the police chief, I think his name is Bob Day today. Were you there? Did you ask him about that?

BENNY JOHNSON: Yes. We witnessed Bob Day walk out in total and complete humiliation, profusely sweating, hanging his head low because Bob Day is fully aware of what's happened here in Portland. And it's not just this time around, it happens consistently in this city. I was here in the year 2020, when the Portland courthouse was under constant terrorist attack by the left.

This is a fallen city. And a question to Bob Day — if you're so concerned about the rule of law, why are you arresting Nick Sortor, who is a conservative influencer who is here just doing his job? Why are you violating his First Amendment rights and putting him in prison as left-wing terrorists roam the streets free? If you're so about law and order, where are all the antifa arrests, Bob Day? I think that's a very important question. I hope he answers it one of these days.

But unfortunately, this city has been conquered by antifa. And Bob Day knows it.

FINNERTY: We do too, by the way. And I just think it's always important to remind everybody, I know the audience knows this, but this is all in the name of criminal illegal aliens. That's how far from just reality and norms the Democratic Party has strayed.

---

MMA

1. ### Benny Johnson: “You shouldn't be allowed to, like, go be a judge here if you were born in another country ... There's a good argument to be made that you shouldn't be allowed to serve in Congress.”

10/09/25 11:53 AM EDT

---

// CRM, FASCISM

Right-wing media have long called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, he's now considering it

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Research contributions from Reed McMaster, Jane Lee & Alex Kaplan

Published 10/09/25 MMA

President Donald Trump recently suggested he may be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests continue in Chicago and Portland against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and deployment of National Guard troops.

Right-wing media figures have called on Trump to use the law — which allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement activities — in response to various demonstrations since at least as far back as 2020.

Conservative media figures endorsed using the act to “put down” Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and “restore order” to cities where demonstrations were occurring. Starting in June of this year, right-wing media renewed their support for the act's use over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, and as similar protests broke out in Chicago and Portland, calls to “invoke” the act in Democratic-run cities grew.

Trump once again says he might invoke the Insurrection Act in Democratic-run cities

• • Protests in Chicago and Portland broke out as National Guard members were deployed to aid ICE officers.Authorities have used tear gas, pepper balls and more against protesters at ICE facilities in both cities. Several people were arrested in both cases, with some facing federal charges. PBS News, [10/6/25]

• • On October 6, while talking to reporters about the legal issues with sending in the National Guard to cities around the country, Trump said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act.He stated, “I’d do it if it was necessary. So far it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. … If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that.” He also said, “If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, and that’s insurrection. I mean, that’s pure insurrection." NBC News, [10/6/25]

• • The Insurrection Act allows the military to act as a police force and make arrests.Reuters explained: “The law enables troops to take part in domestic law enforcement activities like making arrests and performing searches, functions they are generally otherwise prohibited from engaging in. The Insurrection Act can be invoked when there are ‘unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages or rebellion’ against the U.S. government's authority. When the president deems those conditions have been met, the law gives the president the power to use the armed forces to take actions ‘to enforce those laws or suppress the rebellion.’” Reuters, [10/7/25]

• • Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles earlier this year and called the protesters “insurrectionists,” saying, in response to a question about whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, “Depends on whether or not there’s an insurrection.”Axios noted, “Without the Insurrection Act, the troops' mission is legally limited to protecting federal agents and property.” Axios, [6/10/25]

• ## Right-wing media figures are calling for Trump to use the Insurrection Act “more liberally” in Democratic-run cities, claiming protesters are “insurrecting”

• • Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe claimed Trump “should look at using the Insurrection Act more liberally in cities like Chicago or in cities like Portland, Oregon.” Boothe also remarked that “Portland is a hellhole. … Homeless everywhere, it’s disgusting.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [10/5/25]

• • Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson discussed his ride-along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Portland and stated, “I hope they invoke the Insurrection Act. I hope that's something that happens here because these people are clearly insurrecting.”Johnson also claimed that Portland “has been conquered by antifa.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [10/7/25]

• • Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Trump “should invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy military assets to protect life and limb and property.”Fitton reacted to protests in Chicago, writing, “This is an insurrection, and @GovPritzker is implicated.” Twitter/X, [10/4/25]

• • On Steve Bannon’sWar Roompodcast, right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec said that “the president has black-letter law, Title X authority to be able to deploy the National Guard” to “suppress an insurrection or a rebellion.”Bannon also claimed California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a “neo-Confederate” and claimed Los Angeles is also in “open defiance of the federal government about immigration laws, Jack. I mean, this is going to come down [to] we control the country, they control these big metropolitan areas.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/6/25]

• • Posobiec also posted, “If Trump were to invoke the insurrection act for reasons like the situation in Portland, Americans would support it.” Twitter/X, [10/6/25]

• • In response to a report of a hit put out on a Border Patrol commander, right-wing podcaster Tim Pool posted, “Insurrection Act.”Twitter/X, [10/6/25]

• • QAnon influencer Clandestine said of whether Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act: “I’d argue that we are already at that point, and this is soft disclosure of what is to come.” Telegram, [10/6/25; Anti-Defamation League, 4/5/22]

• • Fox News contributor Paul Mauro claimed Trump is on “very, very safe ground” to enact the Insurrection Act.Mauro claimed that the Insurrection Act is “a carve-out to posse comitatus. You can use it to protect facilities and you can use it when federal law is being obstructed — that's the operative phrase right there. ICE is trying to enforce federal law. If they’re being obstructed, you can do this. What it means is he’s on very, very safe ground.” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/1/25]

• • Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino said Trump would be “on pretty solid grounds” to invoke the Insurrection Act “if it is to protect the ICE facilities” from protesters.Gasparino added, “I would love to see federal troops in downtown Manhattan — I don’t care.” Fox News, *Fox News Sunday*, [9/29/25]

• ## In June, right-wing media similarly advocated for the Insurrection Act to crack down on anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles

• • Fox News host Laura Ingraham argued it would be Trump’s “right” and “obligation” to invoke the Insurrection Act if he feels the U.S. “is being threatened from within.”She said, “Now Democrats are pretending to be outraged about the prospect of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, which, of course, is his right. I’d say it's his obligation to do if — and it’s his call — if he feels the United States is being threatened from within by violent, seditionary forces.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/10/25]

• • Infowars host Harrison Smith argued for utilizing the act during anti-ICE protests in LA, saying, “The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act.” He stated, “The Constitution is being destroyed by these people making it unsafe, depriving the people of LA of the ability to live their lives and express themselves, pursue happiness, and all the other freedoms that we're supposed to enjoy are being destroyed by these people. The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act. It is shutting down what’s going on with rapidity and aggressiveness to uphold the rights of the American people against this invading foreign force.” [Infowars, American Journal, 6/9/25]

• • Students for Trump National Chairman Ryan Fournier posted, “TIME FOR THE INSURRECTION ACT!” in response to a post by Trump about LA.Twitter/X, [6/9/25]

• • Conservative podcaster Vince Coglianese said the way to crack down on anti–ICE protests in Los Angeles is “the president wielding the Insurrection Act.”Coglianese: “It strikes me that if we're going to crack down on this using law enforcement, it's just going to have to be the president wielding the Insurrection Act. He's going to have to go in and save American cities from the leadership that's betraying them.” Rumble, *Vince*, [6/9/25; RadioLink, 4/17/25]

• • Mackubin T. Owens wrote for Blaze Media that the Insurrection Act empowers the president “to act when mobs attack federal law” and the president “has the duty to restore order.”In a September opinion piece, Owens defended Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to LA, claiming he had the “duty -- and the power -- to act.” Blaze Media, [9/8/25]

• ## Right-wing media hosts and guests also advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests in 2020

• • Ahead of the 2020 election, Fox host Mark Levin shared his hope Trump would win and then utilize the Insurrection Act to “put down” protests.On September 11, 2020, Levin speculated that if Trump wins “he will dust off the Insurrection Act” and “he will have to use it to put down the enemy. The enemy is antifa, the enemy is Black Lives Matter.” On September 15, 2020, Levin said protesters “need to be put down” and claimed, “It's not illegal, it's not unconstitutional, it's not unethical, it's not immoral for the President to use the Insurrection Act to put down insurrections.” On September 23, 2020, Levin stated, “I pray to God Donald Trump is reelected. And I pray to God that he uses the Insurrection Act and puts this down.” And on October 28, Levin said, “These lootings and riotings and arsons need to be put down. God willing the President will be re-elected, and he'll use the Insurrection Act to bring safety, and peace." Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [9/11/20, 9/15/20, 9/23/25, 10/28/20]

• • Writing for the National Review, Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy discussed the Insurrection Act — saying it “expressly” empowers the president “to suppress domestic violence” — and called on Trump to “restore order” to cities where Black Lives Matter protests were underway, “including by deployment of the military where that is necessary.”McCarthy dismissed concerns about federalism, writing: “Although the Constitution calls for a state to request federal assistance to combat domestic violence before the president acts, that condition is more apparent than real. … When it comes to violent uprisings, though, federalism concerns are beside the point. Washington has an express constitutional obligation to protect the people of the states, and the republican form of government, from attack.” National Review, [5/31/20]

• • Conservative lawyer Jeffrey Clark said onWar Roomthat former Attorney General Bill Barr “participated in using the Insurrection Act” in 1992 in LA and asked, “Why wasn’t that same aggressiveness used against the riots that were used all across the country in the summer of 2020?”Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [7/3/23]

• • Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson urged Trump to “invoke the Insurrection Act immediately” during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Twitter/X, [5/31/20]

• • Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro suggested in 2020 that Trump should invoke the act if states failed to get protests under control.He said: “The Insurrection Act is generally invoked when local authorities are not doing their jobs and protecting the civil rights of their citizens. So the president does have the authority to do this sort of stuff. … And the president, by the way, didn’t say he was going to do it. He said if you don’t get your cities and states under control, then I will do it. And guess what? He should. He should. Because guess — because you're an American taxpaying citizen. You have civil rights. Your civil rights are being abridged and violated when you are locked in your home so rioters and looters can roam free.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [6/2/20]

• • Blaze Media senior editor Daniel Horowitz wrote that “Trump should use the Insurrection Act” and “deadly force” against Black Lives Matter protesters.Blaze Media, [6/1/20]

• • Ryan Fournier posted, “President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to stop the terrorism happening in Seattle.”Twitter/X, [6/11/20]

//

1. ### As Trump sends the National Guard into US cities, right-wing media celebrate and call protests “an insurrection”

10/08/25 1:26 PM EDT

2. ### Right-wing streamer calls for arrested protesters to be used for “compelled slave labor”

10/08/25 5:11 PM EDT

3. ### On Newsmax, Benny Johnson claims Portland “has been conquered by antifa”

10/08/25

---

---

NEWSWEEK 9 25

ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show off the air after comments the comedian made about the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, and following pressure from the network's affiliates as well as the nation's TV regulator.

"Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely," a spokesperson for the Disney-owned broadcaster said in a statement shared with various news outlets on Wednesday.

The move has drawn praise from allies and supporters of President Donald Trump, but sparked condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and free expression advocates.

The context of Kimmel's cancellation has led to allegations that business interests—particularly those concerning a delicate merger approval process involving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ABC affiliate Nexstar—may have played a role.

Taken together, some have interpreted this as a form of indirect censorship of the political Left by the Trump administration. Similar concerns were raised following the recent cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

"First Colbert, now Kimmel. Last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump's approval," said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. "Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy."

Newsweek has contacted ABC, Nexstar and the FCC via email for comment.

Why It Matters

In the wake of Kirk's killing, the Trump administration has taken a series of actions critics believe undermine longstanding commitments to free speech in the U.S.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned foreign nationals celebrating his death online to "prepare to be deported," Vice President JD Vance has encouraged people to report those who do so to their employers, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has come under fire for urging a crackdown on "hate speech"—a move many believe clashes with First Amendment protections.

Read moreJimmy Kimmel

Russian State TV Floats Theory Trump Planned Charlie Kirk's Killing

• ### Brendan Carr's 'Censorship' Remarks Resurface After Jimmy Kimmel Suspension

• ### Donald Trump Praises George Orwell Amid Free Speech Crackdown Concerns

• ### Donald Trump Reacts to Jimmy Kimmel Live! ABC Suspension

The administration of President Joe Biden faced similar criticism and accusations of censorship over the pressure it placed on social media companies to remove accounts and posts relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election that were considered misinformation. In June 2024, the Supreme Court rejected cases claiming that these amounted to an unconstitutional violation of free speech.

Why Was Jimmy Kimmel Taken Off the Air?

During his Monday night monologue, Kimmel made remarks about Kirk's death and its aftermath, suggesting that Trump supporters were attempting to capitalize on the murder and distance themselves from the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson.

"We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it," Kimmel said.

Kimmel also mocked President Trump's seemingly uninvolved response to a reporter's question on Kirk's death.

In an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump ally and appointee, called Kimmel's comments "some of the sickest conduct possible," and said that there could be "a path forward for suspension over this."

"This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney," he added. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

Carr also urged other media companies and local broadcasters to "push back" and stop airing the show.

:{:{FCC Chairman Brendan Carr testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.}:

Following Carr's interview, Nexstar Media Group, the owner of several ABC affiliate stations, announced that it would stop airing the show "for the foreseeable future" over Kimmel's remarks.

"Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets," the statement read.

This sequence of events has raised questions about the extent to which this decision was guided by financial motivations rather than genuine outrage over Kimmel's comments.

Nexstar, one of the biggest station owners in the U.S, is currently attempting to complete a merger with fellow TV giant Tegna. The nature of the merger—valued at $6.2 billion—requires the approval of the FCC, and for it to loosen longstanding ownership regulations. These include federal laws barring a single entity from owning TV stations that together reach over 39 percent of American households, and guidelines on the total number of stations that can be owned in a single market.

Sinclair, ABC's largest affiliate group, similarly objected to Kimmel's remarks, and said it would be pulling the late-night show from its stations "indefinitely." Sinclair praised FCC Chairman Carr's comments, and asked Kimmel to issue an apology to Kirk's family, and to make a "meaningful personal donation" to both them and Turning Point USA, the conservative outreach group founded by Kirk.

"Regardless of ABC's plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return Jimmy Kimmel Live! to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform," Sinclair said.

According to CNN, Sinclair—like Nexstar—has matters awaiting approval from the Trump administration.

Newsweekhas contacted Sinclair via email for comment.

After ABC followed suit, Johnson boasted that it was his podcast with Carr that led to Kimmel's show being taken off the air.

"It's called soft power. The Left uses it all the time," he wrote on X. "Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield power as well."

FCC Chairman Carr, meanwhile, responded to CNN's request for a reaction with a GIF taken from The Office,in which the characters Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute are pumping their hands in the air in celebration.

What People Are Saying

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday evening, said that broadcast licenses carry "a unique obligation to operate in the public interest."

Commenting on the decisions by Nexstar and Sinclair to pull the show, Carr added: "I'm very glad to see that American broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of our community."

President Donald Trump reacted to the news on Truth Social, writing:"Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT."

Andrew Alford, President of Nexstar's broadcasting division, said: "Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue."

Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner at the FCC, posted to X: "An inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship and control. This Administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression."

The Writers Guild of America (WGA), a Hollywood labor union, said in a statement:"Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world. The WGA stands with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers."

California Governor Gavin Newsom posted to X: "Corrupt, despicable, & spineless behavior. A coordinated effort to control the media is happening before our eyes & it needs to be called out."

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren posted to X:"First Colbert, now Kimmel. Last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump's approval. Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy. It sure looks like giant media companies are enabling his authoritarianism."

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reacted: "The government pressured ABC—and ABC caved. The timing of ABC's decision, on the heels of the FCC chairman's pledge to the network to "do this the easy way or the hard way," tells the whole story. Another media outlet withered under government pressure, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and exact retribution on broadcasters and publishers who criticize it."

What Happens Next?

Sinclair said that its ABC stations will air a tribute to this Friday, during Jimmy Kimmel Live's usual time slot.

---

---

DEFUND LEFT SOROS PAID PROTESTERS

mma

On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/12/25

Charlie Kirk, a powerful right-wing activist, popular podcaster, and close friend and ally to President Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah on Wednesday. Politicians of both parties and commentators across the spectrum, including myself, have responded with condemnations of the act as both the tragic murder of a young husband and father and an act of political violence that must be anathema if we hope to preserve our country as a liberal democracy.

Rational people on all sides of the political spectrum abhor political violence and want to ratchet down the temperature, but this requires an honest assessment of what is happening: There have been far too many cases of political violence in recent years, and the targets are not limited by party, ideology, or creed.

Yet within the right-wing media bubble, long before there was even a suspect in custody, commentators cited Kirk’s killing as proof the left is at war with them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Thursday called out right-wing pundits who took Kirk’s death “as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this.” He added: “It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement.”

Tillis cited two commentators in particular, but such rhetoric has been a staple throughout the right-wing media ecosystem since news broke that Kirk had been shot. It is what right-wing audiences are hearing right now — and what they have been hearing, to one extent or another, for quite some time.

“They are at war with us!” Fox News star Jesse Watters said on The Five, his network’s most-watched show, shortly after Kirk’s passing was announced.

“Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,” he continued. “And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.”

“THIS IS WAR,” posted Libs of TikTok. “Civil war,” was Andrew Tate’s take. “This is war,” commented Ian Miles Cheong. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones said on his livestream. According to Steve Bannon, “We are at war in this country.” “We’re not supposed to say this,” posted Shaun Maguire. “But the truth is we’re at War.”

Many on the right were Kirk’s friends and are mourning his death. Some of them may fear for their own safety. But the narrative they have constructed relies on ignoring the recent spate of attacks targeting Democrats, the gruesome contemporaneous response to those attacks from some of the most influential voices on the right, and the chorus of Democratic officials who have condemned Kirk’s assassination.

There is no war, no righteous, violent struggle between a “left” and a “right.” A man was killed. His killer deserves to be brought to justice. Turning that into a “war” can only make the situation worse.

Terrorists have targeted political leaders of both parties

It is not true, as Eric Trump and both claimed in right-wing media interviews since Kirk’s slaying, that violence is “only going one way,” or, as right-wing radio host Dana Loesch put it on Watters’ prime-time show, that “it's not the right killing the left, it's the left killing the right.”

It seems both pointless and morally inappropriate to try to weigh attacks against one another to determine who has it “worse,” but it’s impossible to have a conversation if we can’t agree that political violence goes both ways.

The ideology of people who attack political figures doesn’t always map neatly onto a political party, in no small part because the assailant typically suffers from some form of mental illness. But Democrats have certainly been the targets of political violence in recent memory: In October 2022, a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeking to kidnap her, and brutally assaulted her husband, Paul. In June, an assassin allegedly murdered a Democratic state legislator and her husband and wounded a second and his wife in Minnesota. Last month’s lethal attackon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by someone who authorities say “wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines” should also be placed in this category.

It’s worth revisiting how right-wing media covered those domestic terror attacks, as it speaks to how its audience likely interprets them in an increasingly fragmented media landscape in which people can pick and choose news sources that confirm their biases.

After a man broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, MAGA influencers claimed based on effectively no evidence that the attacker, who turned out to be a deranged individual steeped in right-wing fever swamp conspiracy theories, had actually been let into the speaker’s house by her husband for the purposes of sex and subsequently attacked him as part of a lovers’ quarrel.

Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo of a pair of briefs and a hammer on a bed with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

For months afterwards, Fox hosts including Watters alluded to such wild claims on their nationally broadcast programs, undeterred by body camera footage from the scene of the attack or basic human dignity.

Prominent MAGA social media influencers likewise responded to the Minnesota shootings by spinning up a false profile of the killer — in reality a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community — as a far-left supporter of Gov. Tim Walz. Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich even suggested Walz might have orchestrated the attacks as political hits.

Fox’s right-wing propagandists, meanwhile, all but buried that story. There were no soul-searching reflections about political violence targeting the left on the programs of Watters, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Greg Gutfeld — instead, discussion on those shows the week after the attacks was limited to correspondent reports and headline reads. The week after the CDC shooting, those programs didn’t cover it at all.

Looking further back, the leading lights of the right-wing media aggressively sought to minimize and sanitize the Trump mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and they alternatively blamed “incivility” from the left for a Trumpist sending mail bombs to a host of left-wing and Democratic targets and suggested those attacks were a “false flag.” And that’s to say nothing of other attacks apparently fueled by right-wing extremism that targeted Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.

If you downplay right-wing violence against left-wing targets, it’s much easier to convince your viewers that the violence is all going in the other direction.

• ### MAGA wants “the Left” to be “crushed with the power of the state”

While the repeated declarations that they are at “war” with a murderous left are obviously corrosive, there have not been widespread direct calls for retaliatory violence from prominent right-wing media figures. But many are urging President Donald Trump, his administration, and congressional Republicans to respond with widespread political repression of the left and the Democratic Party.

“We can honor him [Kirk] and honor his memory and make it a living thing that we use this to take down the apparatus that's well-funded that is at the core of this anti-Americanism,” Steve Bannon said on his streaming show Friday. “It has to be a all-of-government approach. ... Let's go kick down some doors and perp walk some folks today.”

Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and streamer who has Trump’s ear and regularly gets federal officials fired for insufficient demonstrated fealty to the president, declared Wednesday, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” She later added: “All of the Leftist groups that pay for these radical protests need to be prosecuted. … More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich demanded “congressional hearings now” on Wednesday, which he said should include “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism,” naming George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman. He also called for “massive RICO investigations now” to scrutinize “every dollar” and tagged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Former GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters echoed Cernovich, adding, “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments” violence, “or it will destroy us.”

Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, posted Wednesday that “the Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization” and “terrorist Democrats will not stop. … And until they are stopped—until every single nutjob inciting this madness and cheering it on is held accountable and removed from civil society—it will not stop.” His outlet published a piece which declared that Democrats “need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.”

“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed that “the modern Democrat party is a terrorist organization” and that the left-wing movement must be “ripped root and stem from our American republic and thrown into the fire where it belongs.”

Some are even suggesting that because the threat to the right is so clear, if Republican leaders don’t respond with such steps, the result will be some on the right taking matters into their own hands.

Davis posted on Thursday that if congressional Republicans don’t take “proper action” to protect “a population being hunted for sport,” then the result would be “improper reaction,” which he described as “a response that cannot be contained once it is out.”

Likewise, Cernovich wrote: “I’m choosing my words mindfully, don’t twist them. This is a prediction, not a preference. If Congressional GOP and Trump don’t act swiftly and ferociously, there will be retaliatory actions due to lawful means not being used. This is always what happens. RICO these fucks now!”

Trump appears to be responding to these demands for political retribution.

• ### The elephant in the room

It is impossible to have a rational conversation about topics like lowering the political temperature and pushing back against the spread of political violence when the president of the United States is interested in those issues only as a cudgel against his political opponents.

On Wednesday evening, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal urged Trump, himself the victim of two assassination attempts, to take advantage of “an opportunity for leadership” by seeking to lower the tenor of political rhetoric.

Any other president would not need to hear such advice — but Trump’s previous responses to attacks on Democratic targets demonstrate his lack of interest in bringing the country together. He mocked the brutal assault against Pelosi, said following the Minnesota shooting that it would be a “waste of time” to call Gov. Tim Walz because he is “so whacked out,” and completely ignored the CDC attack.

In an Oval Office address a few hours after Kirk was killed, Trump characteristically ignored the Journal’s counsel. He offered a testament to Kirk’s life and promised that the shooter, who at that point had not been publicly identified or taken into custody, would be brought to justice.

But he also attributed blame far beyond the person who took Kirk’s life, saying that the “rhetoric” of “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He went on to promise that his administration would go after the individuals and organizations he said “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” adding that “radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Trump did not name the targets of the action he promised to carry out. But a “straightforward reading of his rhetoric,” as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait noted, is that “the president of the United States is treating the political opposition as accessories to murder and threatening to use the full power of the government to attack it.”

On Friday, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed to “radicals” on both the right and left and asked the president, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”

Trump’s response made clear that he is uninterested in doing so. He excused “radicals on the right” as people who “don’t want to see crime,” saying, “They don't want these people coming in, we don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they are vicious and they are horrible and they are politically savvy,” he added, before running through a litany of grievances with his critics.

That message is echoing across MAGA media, a powerful information apparatus with a rare and unmediated grasp on its audience. It will fuel more vitriol, making it harder, not easier, to have honest conversations and reduce the threat of political violence in this country.

---

---

Benny Johnson responds to Wall Street Journal reporting about Trump and Epstein: “The scandal is in who wrote the story. Oh, yeah, baby.”

07/18/25 mma

---

2X A DAY MMA EPSTEIN BS

July 21, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): General, your name is mentioned in these documents. You've been on our program for years. You've been writing books. You've been crying out from the wilderness about what they did to you. What a remarkable moment. And the floor is yours. The landscape has been set. General, what do you see happening next?

MICHAEL FLYNN (GUEST): Yeah. Well, a couple of things. I — and I have made this recommendation that I think that all of these people that are involved, starting with Obama on down, they all ought to have their passports revoked, and people need to be checking private airplanes and private airfields for anybody trying to abscond the country and get the heck out of dodge here. So, that's number one.

I do think that just as was done to President Trump, when they when they raided his home at Mar-a- Lago because they thought that there was — and they planted evidence there in that case — but I do think that what the DOJ should be considering, if not getting ready to conduct, is a raid of Barack Obama's home up there at Kalorama, in Washington DC where he's been since he left — you know, physically left the White House. You know, he's been running the White House, you know, all during the Biden regime.

And I do think that there's some other places that need to be raided where there are likely, you know, a lot of evidence, a lot of receipts, so to speak, in many of these people that are part of the Obama White House as well as the Biden White House. I mean, I just heard the great David Schoen talking about the former deputy attorney general of Monaco who also was the homeland security adviser to Barack Obama. So that's number one. That's — those are, you know, things that need to be considered right now. And I'm — I was ready to wake up this morning to hear about some of these raids that should have been going on.

There should, as a minimum, be a task force assembled by — of federal law enforcement authorities as well as a assigned dedicated, you know, prosecutor at the DOJ level, at the attorney general level, someone who is working directly for her and for the president of the United States. This has gotta happen very quickly.

//

July 21, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Final question, general. Since you are a military man, you rose to the highest conceivable ranks within the military and within the civilian structure in the White House. Your credentials are impeccable. When Stephen Miller calls this a seditious conspiracy, when Tulsi Gabbard calls it a traitorous act, treason against our country — those seem like legal terms, but also really military terms. And since Barack Obama was the commander-in-chief, what angle would it be to go at this from a military perspective? Perhaps you could explain what is treason and seditious conspiracy mean from a military perspective. Would you advise them to go after them on those terms?

MICAHEL FLYNN (GUEST): I would. I absolutely would. I would advise them to go after on those terms and make sure that they have them locked in tight in terms of the legalities.

But what I want people to understand is, you know, after World War II, we had the Nuremberg trials, and there was a lot of people that were found guilty. And because they stood at — when they got on the stand, they said, well, I was just following orders. Well, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Jim Comey, Susan Rice, Sally Yates, and many others, Lisa Monaco, many, many others, you're not gonna get away with it.

If Barack Obama directed you, and it appears that he did — this is very intentional. This eight December 2016 meeting that they had where it looks like — which was something that was not on my radar, Benny. So this is a new piece of evidence that Tulsi has exposed.

That to me, you know, in addition to some of the other critical criminal evidence that has been discovered, yeah, I think that they're gonna have to look at conspiracy, treason, traitorous activities by some of these people and particularly starting at the very top, and that would be Barack Obama.

They were ready to convict and throw Donald Trump in prison for the rest of his life, Benny. And so, you know, all bets are off when it comes to immunity. There's no immunity for this president, not for President Obama for what he did.

JOHNSON: Could you have a military tribunal for the commander-in-chief?

FLYNN: I'm not — you know, I don't know. But, you know, but it'd ought to be explored, Benny. It should be explored.

---

July 21, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): I mean, you're simply left to assume that all of it's been a lie and that they're 100% authentic, and I think most people in this audience already believe that.

But then if that's the case, then there's a lot of questions that are gonna be asked of Hillary Clinton. Now there's reports that Hillary Clinton and her team were aggressively pushing Barack Obama to launch Russiagate. We'll wait to see those documents — perhaps that's what Tulsi Gabbard is telling us is going to be dropping soon. We're not sure. But Tulsi Gabbard is saying not only are there major whistleblowers from inside the IC, but also that there's a lot more to come. And, you know, at what point do you begin to pull the threads back to Hillary Clinton? Could she potentially be culpable in any of this?

JULIE KELLY (HOST): I doubt it. I mean, you know, let's cut to the chase. No one's gonna indict Hillary Clinton. No one's gonna indict Barack Obama. So we can, I think, disabuse ourselves of that vision or —

JOHNSON: Really? You don't think Obama either?

KELLY: No. No. No. No. No. No. And, you know, of course, you got the issue with Barack Obama. What would you charge him with? We have the immunity ruling from the Supreme Court, really, a year ago that carves out only specific instances where a president in office could be held criminally liable. And I'm sure that Barack Obama, if anything came down, would be smart enough and his lawyers would figure that out. So no.

But look. I really wanna see the henchmen like Lisa Monaco — and I know I keep going back to her. But look, she also ran the Biden DOJ. So she was the one that really ran the first two invest — the two investigations into the president for classified documents and for January 6. She, I'm sure, worked with special counsel Jack Smith, was involved in his appointment. People from the DOJ leaving the Department of Justice, going to the special counsel's office — Chuck Grassley just, last week, I believe, the last several days, releasing emails showing how Tom Windom, another prosecutor who went to the DCUS attorney's office, which was in constant contact with the DOJ, I'm told, specifically Lisa Monaco's office, how he was pushing top-down the FBI to open this January 6 investigation into the president, which of course they did.

So I'm looking for a lot more records related to that as well. And so, those are the people who I think are the most likely to be held responsible, criminally liable, and the ones who should be.

---

07/08/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• William Wolfe cheers on the Trump administration's "mass deportations of illegal foreign invaders," declaring it to be "a modern day crusade."

• Shane Vaughn tells MAGA activists to stop embarrassing themselves by blaming cloud seeding for the devastating flooding in Texas: "Did you know you can be a conservative without being crazy?"

• Seth Gruber declares that "for the pedos, 'gay marriage' was a HUGE gift because it redefined parenthood from 2 opposite sex couples who created the child to literally anyone, so now pedos can buy sperm & egg, rent a womb, and go home with a baby that they intend to sexually abuse."

• David Barton claims that the Scopes Monkey Trial was really a dispute over "a law trying to preserve the original intent of the Founding Fathers and teaching that government is not God." No, it wasn't.

• For a second time, Benny Johnson has brought QAnon conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin onto his show.

• Finally, in February, Glenn Beck promised that the Epstein files would be released by Kash Patel on his "first day" as FBI director: "In the next 10 days, you're gonna see the Epstein file released." Five months later, they haven't been released and Beck is now demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi resign.

---

benny goes false flag

: Mike Lee Is A Real Piece Of Sh*t - by Evan Hurst}:

_Wonkette_

https://www.wonkette.com › mike-lee-is-a-real-piece-of...](https://www.wonkette.com/p/mike-lee-is-a-real-piece-of-sht)

38 minutes ago — Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, Mike Cernovich, they've all lied about Boelter. ... D'Souza tweet with the picture of the “No Kings” fliers ...

Well, folks, they caught the motherfucker. We don’t know exactly what took so long to find the Christian nationalist anti-abortion activist Trump supporter who impersonated a cop and assassinated Democrats in Minneapolis on Friday night, with plans to target many more, but they caught him. Maybe they were just looking the wrong places? We would have checked Republican politicians’ houses first, but that’s just us.

Anyway, they found him in a field.

Again, who this guy Vance Boelter is, it’s not shrouded in mystery, and it’s been out in the open from the beginning. He’s one of them. He’s just a typical Republican voter who decided to assassinate some Democrats. You’d think MAGA would be proud of what it’s wrought. And some of them are, to be sure.

But then there are piece of dogshit Republican senators like Mike Lee who have been lying since the beginning.

caption...

Why so ashamed, bud?

You’d think considering Mike Lee’s extremist record,he might already be lobbying Donald Trump for any extra pardons he’s got lying around for Boelter.

Vance Boelter is a registered Republican.He’s an anti-gay, anti-abortion pig. He’s a conservative Christian preacher. Basically all the red flag characteristics that say “Here’s a guy you shouldn’t leave your kids alone with,” but that MAGA Americans find godly and manly. Again, why is Mike Lee so ashamed? He has a lot in common with this guy! Surprised they aren’t taking up a collection for this guy’s legal defense in Mike Lee’s church. He just reminds us so much of Mike Lee (or any other white Republican loser, they really do all look alike).

As Tim Miller from The Bulwark notes,a bunch of Republicans and MAGA conservatives have taken this tack, instead of embracing this guy who is just like them in so many important ways. Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, Mike Cernovich, they’ve all lied about Boelter. Previously (?) Kremlin-funded weirdo Benny Johnson claimed Boelter was a “left-wing Tim Walz appointee.” Today Benny is rambling about how the murders are a “leftist false flag.” Also something about “I’m sorry, but these are the same agencies that brought you the Whitmer Fednapping, that brought you January 6, that brought you the Epstein cases, that brought you Ghislaine Maxwell. These are the same people. These are the same people.”

Uhhhh okeydoke. We guess Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are now card-carrying members of the Deep State voices in Benny Johnson’s head community.

Musk tweeted that “the far left is murderously violent.” Laura Loomer said that “Walz’s goons are now assassinating lawmakers who support legislation Walz opposes.” (There’s a whole conspiracy theory they made up surrounding this that involves healthcare legislation in Minnesota, it’s too stupid to type, but you can read it if you want.)

:{:{How Did Evil Russians Manage To Fool Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, AND Benny Johnson? Wow!}:

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/9485412-evan-hurst)

·

September 5, 2024

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/how-did-evil-russians-manage-to-fool)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/how-did-evil-russians-manage-to-fool)

Mike Lee also had another tweet about it that said “Nightmare on Walz Street.” Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno — another Republican dude with a lot in common with Vance Boelter — tweeted this, a retweet of another right-wing liar connecting “No Kings” fliers found in Boelter’s car with Randi Weingarten and teachers unions somehow.

He hasn’t removed it. None of the posts and tweets we’re referencing in this post have been removed.

[

Sherrod Brown's Gross Republican Opponent Pretty Sure Women Over 50 Too Old To Vote On Abortion

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/9485412-evan-hurst)

·

September 24, 2024

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/sherrod-browns-gross-republican-opponent)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/sherrod-browns-gross-republican-opponent)

A mouthy extremist Republican state senator in Tennessee named Brent Taylor, who represents a tiny slice of Memphis, a city that otherwise cannot stand him, posted a Dinesh D’Souza tweet with the picture of the “No Kings” fliers, because that’s how debased and pathetic he is. He then proceeded to babble like a dementia patient for 9,000 paragraphs about leftist violence:

The Left's violence masquerading as free speech is a stain on our republic, and it’s escalating at a terrifying pace. From assassination attempts on President Trump—twice in two months—to torching cars at Tesla dealerships during Tesla Takedowns. Members of “Progressive” groups like this have now turned to a call to arms.

Los Angeles burns under their orchestrated chaos, with anti-ICE riots seeing Molotov cocktails, looted businesses, and attacks on federal agents, all while Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass fumble, blaming others for their failures. […]

This is the Left’s legacy: burning cities, targeting conservatives, and excusing violence as “resistance.” Their hypocrisy is glaring—silent on their own extremists while attempting to demonize the Right. It’s time to call this what it is: a dangerous, unhinged movement that threatens our way of life.

Ahem OK sure, pal. Below that are comments from Memphis voters telling him to go drink piss in hell, which is something Memphis voters say to Brent Taylor a lot. (He’s a big buddy of Todd Starnes, which should tell longtime Wonkette readers what kind of guy we’re making fun of here.)

[

Todd Starnes Writes Love Letter To Donald Trump's Penis

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/14358125-evan-hurst)

·

July 27, 2015

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/todd-starnes-writes-love-letter-to-donald-trumps-penis)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/todd-starnes-writes-love-letter-to-donald-trumps-penis)

Again, there was never any mystery who this murderous piece of shit is. The story, from the beginning, was Typical, Unremarkable Trump Voter Assassinates Democrats. He’s an anti-abortion Christian extremist, which is no surprise, because that’s a really common thing to find in a terrorist profile. There were anti-abortion extremists all over the place among the domestic extremists who attacked the Capitol on January 6. Far-right extremists are the greatest domestic terrorist threat to the United States, and have been for a long time, no matter how much the Trump Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security try to cover that up so they can blood libel people who aren’t white.

This is their dude, y’all.

Why they lyin’?

It couldn’t be shame causing them to do this, because white conservative Christian men and the people who serve them don’t have the capacity for that.

We guess they just find it extremely politically inconvenient right now, since everybody hates Trump and his agenda and his incompetent Cabinet, and Trump’s North Korean birthday parade was more poorly attended than a common wiener dog race at the county fair.

Not a great time to remind America just how much they hateall religious conservative Republican extremists, we reckon!

Everybody Hates Trump, And His Little Nazi Loser Friends Too}:

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/9485412-evan-hurst)

·

Jun 12

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/everybody-hates-trump-and-his-little)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/everybody-hates-trump-and-his-little)

Also Republican politicians are simply bad people who are going to hell when they die, and that’s why they’re doing this.

We probably needn’t try to psychoanalyze it any further.

---

---

MMA

Benny Johnson podcast guest claims it's “a total lie” that the GOP legislation cuts Medicaid from millions of Americans

05/22/25

Contrary to right-wing media claims, the GOP's Medicaid cuts are for far more than “able-bodied men”

05/22/25

---

---

RWW

05/23/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Religious-right activist and Seven Mountains dominionist Floyd Brown is now serving as a vice president of the Kennedy Center.

• Joshua Feuerstein was recently at Mar-a-Lago and the U.S. Capitol.

• Mario Murillo proclaims that America will soon see so many supernatural events that atheism will be rendered obsolete.

• Rick Joyner declares that Hamas is the "ultimate manifestation of evil" and even worse than the Nazis and that "THOSE WHO SIDE WITH THE ANTISEMITISM THAT IS RISING IN OUR COUNTRY ARE LIKEWISE JOINING WITH, AND PROMOTING SOME OF THE WORST EVIL CIVILIZATION IS NOW FACING."

• Finally, just days after going full QAnon, Benny Johnson was on Capitol Hill using Rep. Tim Burchett's office as a studio to interview multiple GOP members of Congress.

===

---

MMA // MUSK?

Benny Johnson: “Social Security is completely fraudulent. It should be privatized. They should destroy that entire program.”

05/20/25

---

RWW

05/19/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Richard Harris declares that the "tyrannical COVID-19 pandemic regime" was "the closest thing to widespread tyranny" in his lifetime.
• Jason Rapert reports that he expects the presidents of Poland and possibly Romania to attend his upcoming National Association of Christian Lawmakers conference.
• Mark Meckler is "super worried" about the GOP's chances in the elections in Virginia this year because "a gay pornographer" is running for lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Winsome Sears is "running a terrible campaign."
• California Republican gubernatorial candidate Kyle Langford admits that he's a groyper, declaring that he would "sooner take a bullet in the head than disavow" Nick Fuentes.

• Finally, Benny Johnson has gone full QAnon, bringing on conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin to explain how the deep state cabal supposedly engages in "predictive programming" by using shows like "The Simpsons" to announce their satanic plans to the world.

---

MMA

1. ### Benny Johnson claims Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo were “colluding with the deep state to destroy” Trump with COVID

05/06/25

---

mma

WSJ pundits demolish right-wing talking points defending Hegseth: “It all comes back again to this basic point that something's wrong at the top levels”}:

04/24/25

fox stars pass on defending Hegseth amid Pentagon “chaos”

Written by Matt Gertz

:{:{Published 04/25/25}:

Fox News’ biggest stars have stopped defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid the weeklong firestorm over their former colleague’s dysfunctional management of the Pentagon and his potentially illegal handling of classified information.

Three months after Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 Senate tie to install the historically underqualified Hegseth at the Pentagon, journalists routinely describe a department in “chaos.” Five top Hegseth aides have left the department since last Friday amid reports of “vicious rivalries,” and a “leadership vacuum.” Reporters further revealed that Hegseth had shared details about U.S. strikes in Yemen in a second unsecured Signal chat, potentially endangering U.S. service members, and had the app installed on his Pentagon computer.

Hegseth responded to his growing list of scandals with a combative Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends, whose hosts defended his conduct.

But other Fox hosts have been silent, even after rallying to support Hegseth when his nomination came under fire and again following the first revelation of his use of Signal to share attack plans.

Fox’s evening lineup of The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity, and Gutfeld!have ignored Hegseth’s struggles this week (a passing remark from guest Jimmy Failla to host Laura Ingraham was the only mention of the story on any of those shows).The Five, the Fox panel show which features Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Jeanine Pirro, and Dana Perino, also has not covered the subject.

Even Will Cain, who spent years sharing the couch with Hegseth as co-hosts of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, hasn’t mentioned his former colleague’s name on his afternoon show this week. (He did not comment on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke’s report about the Signal story during Monday’s program.)

As Fox’s stars take a pass, full-throated defenses of Hegseth’s leadership are coming from the likes of MAGA stalwarts like Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and Laura Loomer, while their corporate cousins at The Wall Street Journal editorial board savage his handling of the Pentagon.

Two explanations seem plausible for why Fox’s biggest stars have gone silent as their former colleague comes under fire:

• They’ve decided that the best way to help Hegseth is to keep pretending the Signal story is over, hide other damning reports about his leadership from their viewers, and hope the firestorm dies out.

• They think Hegseth’s performance is so bad and the stakes of his failure at the Defense Department are so high that they are unwilling to keep sticking their necks out for him.

Either way, this disaster was the predictable result of President Donald Trump putting a former Fox weekend host with little relevant experience in charge of the Pentagon. The secretary of defense oversees a massive budget and bureaucracy and has the authority under certain circumstances to launch nuclear weapons and end human civilization. The risks of handing the position over to someone because of their takes on TV are almost incalculably high.

Hegseth is currently struggling to manage the Pentagon when its biggest problem is a costly, ineffective, and apparently unending bombing campaign in Yemen. How will he respond if India and Pakistan start trading fire?

1. ### Fox stars pass on defending Hegseth amid Pentagon “chaos”

04/25/25

//

1. ### Trump used Fox to vet his defense secretary. It isn’t going well — but now the network is fighting back.

:{:{12/04/24}:

2. ### Fox propagandists scramble to explain former colleagues texting war plans to a reporter

:{:{03/25/25}:

3. ### The Pete Hegseth debacle was inevitable

04/23/2

---

---

OMFG

On Friday, April 25, far-right FBI Director Kash Patel announced that Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan has been arrested on federal obstruction charges for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant "evade arrest."

On X, formerly Twitter, Patel posted, "We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest…. Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public."

A law enforcement official told ABC News that Dugan was arrested at the courthouse.

READ MORE:'Afraid' Trump 'will lose': Lawyers blast firms capitulating to Trump in scathing letter

According to MSNBC, Patel's tweet on Dugan was removed from X.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

During an MSNBC appearance, attorney Temidayo Aganga-Williams told host José Díaz-Balart that the arrest of a judge was "unusual" but added, "I think it's going to be a pattern going forward…. I think it's only going to pick up."

Dugan's arrest is receiving plenty of reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

Some MAGA Republicans are applauding the arrest.

READ MORE:How to prepare for the uprising

John Fabbricatore, a former field officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tweeted, "Judge Hannah Dugan arrested by FBI for allegedly helping illegal alien 'evade arrest' by ICE. 'Lawfare' by these judges has to stop. This is a good start!"

Far-right MAGA radio host Benny Johnson posted, "Another rogue judge down. FAFO."

But others see Dugan's arrest as MAGA ramping up its authoritarian disdain for the rule of law.

Journalist Kristian Ramos tweeted, "I see we are now at 'arresting judges' on our path to autocracy.

"On Democracy" host Fred Wellman noted, "Marshalls appear to be confirming she was arrested and other news outlets are picking it up now."

X user Iron Goodman wrote, "This is a chilling escalation of federal overreach and raises serious questions about the scope of executive power versus judicial independence."

Another X user, Laura Okazaki, posted, "We must not look away while the feds take us another step into authoritarianism."

X user Hannah Martinez tweeted, "This is a deeply unsettling development with huge implications for the rule of law and potential abuses of power. The optics are disastrous."

READ MORE: 'Obama 2028' trends after official Trump store starts selling $50 'Trump 2028' hat

---

---

omfg mma

Benny Johnson on “pain” in the economy: This is what happens "when you have demonic possession, which is what the country has right now”

04/10/25

---

mma

Benny Johnson calls Amy Coney Barrett a “repulsive lizard” and a “sick witch”

Johnson: “She didn't deserve to be on the Supreme Court. I disown her.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 04/08/25

Video

Citation

From the April 8, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

:{:{BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Amy Coney Barrett is a real problem. Amy Commie Barrett is what some, users on the Internet are calling her. I am sickened about her. I want to -- we didn't have time today, but I wanna have a full conversation with Mike Davis about this this week. What the hell is going on with her? Donald Trump put his — stuck his neck out, used all of his political capital to get her into the Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat at the very end of his presidency. }:

Donald Trump said so many nice things about her, advocated for her, fought for her, did all these lavish and wonderful events where he, like, talked about how great she is. Then she has betrayed him time and time and time again on the court. You know, there are some warning signs. There are definitely some warning signs about Amy Commie Barrett, but, it is a despicable thing that this has happened again. You know, there's this — Sandra Day O'Connor was this Ronald Reagan appointee to the court, and she was supposed to be this, like, rock ribbed conservative, and they all go left. They all swing left.}:

What happened yesterday was that five justices who are men voted in favor of the law, which is that the president has the right to deport criminal aliens, and four women voted their feelings. They don't like it. Amy Coney Barrett, she doesn't like it. It hurts their feelings. So Amy Coney Barrett, who I think has like seven kids, two them are adopted from Haiti if I'm remembering this correctly. She has seven kids. Amy Coney Barrett is voting in favor of the terrorists who murder American children and put her children's lives at risk and my children's lives at risk. She is a repulsive lizard. You can see it in this clip. You can see it. Look at the way that she looked at Trump. Sickening. Sickening. So ungrateful, so despicable, spitting in the face of the Constitution, our movement, of the people who fought to get her on the supreme court.

She didn't deserve to be on the Supreme Court. I disown her. I disown it. I disavow. I worked very hard to get her elected. We did a lot of, you know, pushing for her on the seat. We thought this would swing the court to just rational constitutionalism for the rest of my life. And now we get sabotaged by Amy Coney Barrett. Amy Coney Barrett who voted with this, the DEI faculty, in order to bring terrorists back to America. That was what they were voting on. They were voting on an order by the judge to bring the turn the planes around and bring terrorists back to America. Every deportation was supposed to go through Judge Boasberg. Judge Boasberg was gonna sit there as president— they might as well just put a little presidential seal at the end of his gavel, because he was just essentially gifting himself the presidential powers. Amy Commie Barrett.

Now, of course, the three liberal justices voted you know, oh, feelings for the gang members. Amy Commie Barrett voted to bring in terrorists that threaten her children, her seven children, and their lives to bring the terrorists back to America so that we could have a Laken Riley 2.0. What a sick witch. Everybody pray for Amy Commie Barrett, man. Something's going wrong with her. Something's gone horribly, horribly wrong. I'm just — it's sickening. It's disgusting to watch. There's nothing worse in this life than betrayal. There's nothing worse in this life than — on the ingratitude for the people who brought you and made you. And this is a spitting in the face to the movement that picked her and said that she was gonna be good. So I'm pretty angry about all of this.

//

1. ### Benny Johnson on Trump's tariffs crashing markets: “Nobody ever had their net worth carved onto their tombstone. Doesn't even matter when you're on your deathbed. Who cares?”

:{:{04/04/25}:

2. ### Benny Johnson on crashing markets: “Losing money costs you absolutely nothing”

04/04/25 5:19 PM EDT

3. ### MAGA and manosphere podcasts helped Andrew Tate reach millions while he was stateside

03/31/25

---

mma

Benny Johnson announces that the speaker of the House invited him to stream from his office during Trump's address to Congress 03/03/25 11:51 AM EST

3 25

---

mma

February 19, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Julie, good morning to you and a very lovely morning. We are one step closer to Kash Patel. Let's begin with that. A very squishy 48-45 vote to — for cloture and to bring an executive session forward. Do you have any reporting that says that we may need to do extra work or arm twisting in the Senate for Kash?

JULIE KELLY (GUEST): Not that I see, but, of course, something like that is always possible. You do have — look, this is the appointment, Benny, as you know that the deep state, the ruling class is most afraid of. So I'm sure they are twisting arms as heavily as they possibly can to get some, defectors, Republican defectors, but they will pay a price if anyone prevents the confirmation of Kash Patel.

Because as you noted, he himself has been a victim of the lawfare, political lawfare by the previous Department of Justice. He has had a front row seat to all of this dating back to his work on, Devin Nunes' intelligence committee. He is the one that really found the ties between the DNC, Hillary Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, all tied to the Steele dossier. So he's got — but he's a professional, as you know, Benny. He's a very serious individual. He was a public defender and a prosecutor. So, he is going to exhume all the skeletons out of the FBI, hold people accountable, and clean up that agency to the extent that it's even possible.

---

mma

February 11, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Ladies and gentlemen, I have good and glorious news for you, and it's the reason why our stream was a minute late this morning. We have broken news of the FEMA top official, chief financial officer Mary Comans, has been fired by President Trump.

The top official at FEMA breaking here first, ladies and gentlemen, directly from our sources at DHS. FEMA is being gutted by Donald Trump.

This is the person in charge of billions of dollars in funding for FEMA who defied — please put it up — who defied President Trump and sent $60 million to criminal aliens in New York for luxury hotels, fired. Here's her photo.

We heard that they would be gutting positions. We didn't know it'd be the number one person at FEMA. How sick is the rot inside of our federal government? Breaking news this morning. This is your front seat to the golden era. Expect a lot more of this. We're working on some very big and very breaking stories. We are a dog with a bone. We are not going to let up on these corrupt, sickening bureaucrats.

More on the chief financial officer of FEMA getting walked out of the building by security, which is what just happened in Washington DC.

//

1. ### Trump is signaling he wants to shutter or gut FEMA — another Project 2025 scheme

01/29/25

Ben Shapiro on FEMA: “It is a bizarre thing that area-specific crises ought to be thrust on the federal government”

01/27/25

3. ### Sean Hannity endorses Kristi Noem's call to shut down FEMA

02/10/25

---

Trump’s DHS freezes FEMA grant money hours after judge orders funding to be distributed

AN 2 25

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===

February 3, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST):I 'm not a gambling man. I'm not a gambling man. You know, I'm no fun at the casinos. OK? I'm no good at that. I wanna go to the casino with you. I wanna go to a 7-11 and pick the Powerball's with you, Julie, because you are the luckiest person on planet Earth right now.

You have been predicting what should happen with President Trump's first couple weeks on this show for years. And now here we are. Julie, you were not only right, dare I say, some little birdies tell me you are, perhaps the architect of the current salting of the earth inside of federal agencies. And so, a very happy early Super Bowl touchdown dance victory to you, ma'am.

JULIE KELLY (GUEST): Well, thank you, Benny. What a Monday morning. Thank you for all the energy that you're sending my way. I think you've had a lot of Blackout coffee this morning, so that's good.

Yes. This is amazing news, and, honestly, it's happening at a quicker pace, and more widely, I suppose you would say, than I originally — that you and I have discussed or anticipated. So, yes, this is tremendous news what's happening. Top officials at the DOJ, top officials at the FBI being walked out of their offices. This is Washington field office, the Vegas field office, the Miami field office, which of course was — participated in the armed raid of Mar-a-Lago.

And it looks like what I'm really interested in, Benny, is this questionnaire that went out to every field office asking all FBI employees to account for their involvement in the January 6th investigation and prosecution of now well until it was shuttered 1600 Americans. So that questionnaire is due today by three o'clock. I expect they will be reviewed and processed quickly. It could be, Benny, up to six thousand FBI employees who were involved because every FBI field office was involved, in that four-year-long investigation and prosecution. So I think there's going to be more heads rolling today, tomorrow, and throughout the next few weeks.

---

MMA

Benny Johnson declares a “jihad” on “vengeful witch” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) for opposing Pete Hegseth's nomination

01/24/25

https://www.mediamatters.org/benny-johnson/benny-johnson-declares-jihad-vengeful-witch-sen-lisa-murkowski-r-ak-opposing-pete)

---

troll nation

mma

Steve Bannon praises Trump's pick of Kari Lake to lead Voice of America: “Edward R. Murrow, you're stepping into his shoes”

12/12/24 11:58 AM EST

2. ### Kari Lake, Trump’s VOA pick, hates the “fake news” — and called Fox a “globalist network”

12/12/24

1. ### Benny Johnson says he texted Kari Lake a suggested lineup for Voice for America: “She loved it”

12/12/24

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1. ### Benny Johnson suggests there may be a fake alien invasion to “steal Trump's swagger”

12/11/24 mma

---

USEFUL IDIOT

oct 16

The fake whistleblower videos started popping up last fall, the work of a small but prolific Russian group that researchers call Storm-1516.

Much remains unknown about Storm-1516 — one prong of Russia’s propaganda operation — but it has produced some of the country’s most far-reaching and influential disinformation.

The Storm-1516 campaigns rely on faked primary sources — audio, video, photos, documents — presented as evidence of the claims’ veracity. They are then laundered through international news sources and influencers to reach their ultimate target: a mainstream Western audience.

...

At least 50 false narratives have been launched this way since last fall, according to a count NBC News assembled with researchers. The narratives aim to diminish Western support for military aid in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, a contentious issue in Congress. The videos also back the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to halt military aid to Ukraine, while painting the former president as a victim of a “deep state.” And they attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

In one fake video, a Ukrainian troll farm operative reveals the machinations behind a CIA plot to defeat Trump.

In another piece of propaganda, a woman says she was paralyzed as a child — by Harris in a hit-and-run accident.

In a third, a “whistleblower” falsely claims Ukraine’s leaders spent U.S. aid money on yachts.

The claims peddled by the actors and false primary sources in these videos fall apart upon basic inspection. Experts quickly identified Olesya, the Ukrainian troll, as an AI-generated fake. The 2011 hit-and-run never happened, according to San Francisco police, and KBSF-TV, the local news station behind the claims, does not exist.

And the companies that own the yachts told reporters they hadn’t been sold. But the story spread anyway, and this time, far — from small-time right-wing influencers to members of Congress, including Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, now the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Vance did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is very purposeful, very systematic, and it's a process that we see over and over,” said Darren Linvill, co-director at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, whose team uncovered the Storm-1516 campaign last fall.

Russia is the most active foreign threat to the 2024 election, according to U.S. officials. A pair of indictments unsealed in September alleged an expansion of Russia’s influence operation: from crude, fake social media posts and bot networks in 2016 to more ambitious and successful recent campaigns. That includes laundering propaganda through seemingly independent U.S. actors, according to one of the indictments. It was a scheme that entangled several popular right-wing creators, including Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin and Tim Pool, who all said last month they had been unaware their employer was working with Russia.

“It’s a bigger threat than it ever was,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said of Russia's influence operation at a recent news conference, where federal prosecutors unsealed indictments regarding two alleged state-sponsored propaganda schemes. “Russia has meddled in our society and tried to sow discord for decades. Really what we're seeing is just more tools in the toolbox.”

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

Experts fear Storm-1516 and similar groups have the potential to sway public opinion by undermining the credibility of democratic institutions, influencing U.S. policy and diminishing people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction.

Russia is increasingly leaning on an advancing technology landscape — including artificial intelligence and more sophisticated bot networks — to spread its falsehoods. But Storm-1516’s most valuable quality is persistence, according to Clint Watts, the general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.

“The danger comes with just the sheer volume of claims that they make, and it only takes one person, one influencer with outsized influence, to grab onto a video and amplify it in the United States,” Watts said. “They may miss 99 times, but the 100th time they may get it just right.”

The dozens of Storm-1516 storylines examined by NBC News offer a window into the disinformation pipeline: where the most successful false claims originate and how they spread.

Stage 1: The video

In February, a Russian man falsely confesses on YouTube that Ukraine promised him $4,000 to assassinate Tucker Carlson while he was in Moscow. The man says he was caught before he could detonate a bomb in the underground parking lot of the Four Seasons Hotel there.

Stage 2: The placement

Like a criminal gang’s ill-gotten cash, this video — and its manufactured evidence — is laundered through Kremlin-linked platforms and websites in a quest for legitimacy. First in Russian, then in English.

Stage 3: The spread

Russian propagandists pick up the story. The anonymous account MyLordBebo, known to researchers as a spreader of false stories about Ukraine, first posts the video to X, with English subtitles. Then, a Q-Anon influencer, KanekoaTheGreat, shares it. The videos go viral. no lnx

Stage 4: The mainstream

Simon Ateba, the Today News Africa reporter known for disrupting White House press briefings, posts the video. Right-wing creators and pundits leap on the story, using it to ask whether U.S. funding for the war in Ukraine is being weaponized to kill an American citizen.

Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk, podcaster Tim Pool, conservative commentator Benny Johnson and comedian Jimmy Dore share the false story with their millions of U.S. followers.

mma

Benny Johnson: “Put Matt Gaetz in charge of rooting out election fraud as a special counsel all around the country”

11/25/24

---

index

videos storm 1516 4 stages

cheap video, 1/2 fail but a few hits/viral

2 picked up by russ sites jrnl fake bio

3 launder thru telegram and local sites that look legit eg duggan mtg shared w 3 mil followers

how-foreign-disinformation-makes-its-way-into-the-american-mainstream-221936709542

---

---

an 10 24

Revealed: Bundy collaborator fueled FEMA conspiracy in Hurricane Helene aftermath

Clockwise from upper right: Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Shawna Cox, Pete Santilli, Jon Ritzheimer, Ryan Payne, Joe O'Shaughnessy

Jordan GreenandRaw StoryOctober 14, 2024

Only 30 minutes after billionaire Elon Musk began publicly accusing the federal government of blocking his company from delivering the satellite internet components to the disaster zone in western North Carolina, another extraordinary claim popped up on X.

“NC State Police issue statement that they will start arresting any federal employees trying to hinder rescue operations,” an Arizona man named Joseph O’Shaughnessy wrote on X Oct. 4.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, quickly disputed the claim from Musk, who owns both SpaceX and the social media platform X and would speak at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa. the following day. But O’Shaughnessy’s claim piggy-backing off Musk's post added a new layer to manufactured intrigue: a potential clash between state and federal authorities in a region traumatized by the staggering loss.

The statement is completely false, and it comes from someone with a history of armed confrontation with the FBI and other federal agencies. O’Shaughnessy served prison time for his role in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 and was also charged in the standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in 2014.

Prior to his involvement in the Bundy ranch standoff, O’Shaughnessy had been arrested for disorderly conduct, domestic violence and drugs, according to federal prosecutors.

“If you tie back to this guy, you’ll see that nothing reliable comes from that guy,” First Sgt. Christopher Knox, a public information officer for the N.C. State Highway Patrol, told Raw Story. “That’s not a trusted source of information. That information is not true in any way, shape or form.”

Knox pointed out that North Carolina doesn’t even have an agency called “NC State Police.” The claim is even more dubious if one considers that State Highway Patrol in North Carolina is under the command of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, an ally of Vice President Kamala Harris. From a purely partisan standpoint, it is unlikely the two agencies would end up in an adversarial position with one another.

O'Shaughnessy responded to an inquiry from Raw Story by sending an AI-generated GIF of Trump dancing through a direct message on X.

While O’Shaughnessy’s post was quickly shot down by X users who pointed out that no such agency exists in North Carolina, it landed within a matrix of false claims by Trump allies that has created a mutually reinforced narrative, belied by the facts on the ground, that the federal government is abandoning the people of western North Carolina.

O’Shaughnessy’s post was reshared 18,000 times, including Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has a long history of promoting conspiracy theories despite a professional background that requires an ability to separate fact from fantasy astutely.

Before joining the Trump administration, Flynn held the highest military intelligence position as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, re-shared O’Shaughnessy’s post, writing: “Finally, some good news!”

Flynn, who has persistently used his X account to push apocalyptic messages about the impending breakup of the United States, has also pushed misinformation related to the disaster. During an Oct. 4 interview with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Flynn said there were “reports” about “illegals” raping children, while describing the flood-ravaged region as a “warzone.”

Flynn also could not be reached for comment for this story.

Johnson, who interviewed Flynn on his show, was recently employed by a media company alleged by federal prosecutors to be a front for a Russian influence operation. Johnson and other conservative influencers linked to the company have said they were victims of the scheme. During his interview with Flynn on Oct. 4, Johnson echoed many of the same themes as his guest during his opening monologue for the segment, claiming that the federal government has “chosen” immigrants over Trump supporters.

“Our federal government has left you to die in whatever small, inconsequential town that you come from because you are a Trump voter, because you support MAGA, because you are America first,” he said.

Flynn wasn’t the only one who greeted O’Shaughnessy’s bogus claim about a state law enforcement agency challenging the federal government.

Gianna Miceli, who co-hosts a podcast that promotes sovereign citizen ideology, enthused: “Now we have a jurisdiction war happening! What a great time for people to learn some lessons about who is the government and who is not.”

“Exactly,” O’Shaughnessy responded.

In another reply to O’Shaughnessy’s thread, Miceli falsely claimed: “FEMA is a private for-profit corporation. It is not government.”

O’Shaughnessy’s false claim that a state agency in North Carolina is threatening to arrest federal agents in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election fits a pattern with not only his involvement in the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff and 2016 Malheur occupation, but also the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Bundy ranch, Malheur occupation and Stop the Steal 2020

O’Shaughnessy was described in a federal indictment in response to the Bundy ranch standoff as a “mid-level leader and organizer of the conspiracy who, among other things: organized gunmen and other followers; led gunmen and other followers in the assault and extortion of federal law enforcement at the impound site; organized protection for members of the criminal enterprise; and organized armed patrols and security checkpoints.”

Similarly, federal prosecutors would later describe O’Shaughnessy as a “mid-level organizer” of the Malheur occupation. In a video interview during the occupation, according to the criminal complaint, O’Shaughnessy said: “I’m right now in the process of trying to set up a constitutional security protection force to make sure these federal agents and these law enforcement don’t just come in here like cowboys.”

O’Shaughnessy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede federal officers for his conduct during the Malheur occupation, but the government dismissed charges in the Bundy ranch case. O’Shaughnessy was sentenced to time served, and reportedly spent one year and nine months in custody for the two cases.

O’Shaughnessy has described Roger Stone, a political consultant and longtime confidant of Trump, as a “hero and a mentor.” Like Flynn, Stone was pivotal in mobilizing a pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election. Immediately following the 2020 election, Stone privately strategized with Flynn, the Washington Post reported.

O’Shaughnessy’s Instagram account shows that he was with Stone during a dinner in Florida with Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander in November 2020. Another post shows dated Dec. 11, 2020, the eve of the pro-Trump Jericho March rally in Washington, D.C. includes a photo that shows Stone drinking with InfoWars conspiracy trafficker Alex Jones.

It is unclear what, if anything, O’Shaughnessy discussed with Stone, Jones and Alexander when they met on those two occasions.

A false claim that evolved out of Elon Musk’s dustup with FEMA

In his false post about state law enforcement threatening to arrest their counterparts last week, O’Shaughnessy appears to have taken a cue from Nick Sortor, a right-wing videographer who spent the past week in the Asheville area delivering Starlink terminals while producing media assailing the federal government response to the disaster.

In an Oct. 3 X post, Sortor thanked Musk and SpaceX “for bringing us another truckload of Starlinks. A photo in the post shows an officer wearing a North Carolina State Highway Patrol uniform holding a box labeled “Starlink,” while a video shows police vehicles that appear to be providing an escort for Sortor down a winding mountain road.

The following day, Sortor replied to Musk’s post accusing FEMA of preventing his engineers from allowing him to deliver supplies. In his reply, Sortor appears to reference the State Highway Patrol, while using the same misnomer that O’Shaughnessy would later use.

“Let me know where the blockades are and we’ll have the NC State Police move them out of the way,” Sortor wrote. “Already did it once, which is one reason why we have an escort now. FEMA has zero jurisdiction.

“Trust me,” he added. “They’re not going to win this one.”

Twenty-four minutes later, O’Shaughnessy made his post claiming that the “NC State Police” were prepared to start arresting federal agents.

Challenged to substantiate his claim, O’Shaughnessy responded to one detractor by writing, “Calm down stranger danger, my boys were one of the 1st on-scene to bring aid…. I am the source.”

O’Shaughnessy didn’t identify his “boys” on the ground in North Carolina, but on Sunday he praised Sortor for delivering the Starlink terminals, writing, “And everyone, please follow @nicksortor. He’s the one who made it happen.”

Manufacturing a fake turf war between FEMA and state law enforcement doesn’t help the residents of western North Carolina, Christopher Knox, the State Highway Patrol spokesperson, told Raw Story. Instead of relying on dubious accounts on X, Knox recommended that people seek information about the recovery effort from trusted sources such as the NC Department of Public Safety.

“There’s a lot of people hurting and a lot of people looking for resources,” Knox said. “We hate that there’s stuff out there slowing the response. Getting people to the right sources is a big goal of the state of North Carolina.”

NOW READ: The Purge is real: Inside the GOP's 2024 playbook to disenfranchise voters

---

• • On his YouTube livestream ahead of the September 10 debate between Harris and Trump, Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson claimed that Harris has “been in blackout mode, meaning I think she’s been drunk.” Johnson also suggested Harris would be drunk during the debate: “She might show up drunk. We’re not exactly sure.” Johnson also repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ name, playing into a long-standing racist attack against her. YouTube, *The Benny Johnson Show*, [9/10/24; WHYY, 8/16/24]

Benny Johnson claims January 6 was a military coup: “Donald Trump is actually the number one person who attempted to prevent January 6th”

10/03/24 mma

---

Why the MAGA movement can’t cut loose toxic liabilities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer

What it takes to get kicked out of the MAGA movement

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/12/24 MMA

MAGA stalwarts Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer, and Benny Johnson spent the last week demonstrating that as long as you pledge fealty to Donald Trump, there’s virtually nothing you can do that will get you kicked out of his movement.

The trio of pro-Trump personalities drew significant shows of support from the top echelons of the GOP after dabbling in Holocaust denial and Nazi apologia (Carlson); describing Vice President Kamala Harris as “a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she's in today” and saying her “White House will smell like curry” (Loomer); and unwittingly receiving vast sums of laundered money that originated with the Kremlin (Johnson).

Right-wing media figures with bizarre fixations and extreme views became an increasingly potent power center within the Republican Party in recent years. The rising influence of these conspiracy-minded propagandists led GOP politicians to seek their favor by mimicking their affects and obsessions, which are toxic to normal people, thus weakening the GOP’s electoral prospects.

Trump’s Tuesday debate performance encapsulated this trend, as he ranted about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets and spread other lies familiar only to those steeped in the deep lore of Fox News prime-time hosts and right-wing online subcultures.

But Trump shows no signs of breaking out of that right-wing bubble. And his willingness to embrace anyone willing to give him their loyalty — no matter how extreme their views — has helped make it impossible for the GOP to separate itself from even the most depraved and corrupt MAGA figures.

By way of contrast, there is one thing that will get you purged from the modern right: forcefully arguing that Trump’s 2020 election subversion effort renders him unfit for the presidency.

• ### Tucker Carlson promoted Nazi apologia. JD Vance is standing by him.

Carlson may be the single right-wing media figure with the most influence within the GOP. He spoke at the Republican National Convention, has Trump’s ear, and helped secure Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s position as Trump’s running mate. Carlson is currently touring the country for events featuring numerous Republican power players, including Vance.

So when Carlson touted Daryl Cooper as “the most important historian in the United States” at the top of their two-hour interview published September 2, he was effectively giving the podcaster the imprimatur of the GOP.

He then proceeded to nod along as Cooper complained that purportedly legitimate German grievances are treated too unsympathetically by historians, argued British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the chief villain” of World War II, and blamed negligence for how “millions of people ended up dead” in Nazi concentration camps. In a follow-up thread on X, Cooper suggested Churchill should have taken Adolf Hitler up on an offer to “work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem.”

Carlson has a long history of promoting white supremacist talking points — I noted a prominent neo-Nazi describing the then-Fox as “our greatest ally” more than seven years ago. But his eager platforming of Holocaust denial and Nazi apologia last week drew condemnations from some elected Republicans and numerous right-wing figures, with some suggesting that Vance and Trump should cut ties with him and that the right as a whole should cast him out.

“It is now incumbent on all decent people, and especially those on the right, to demand that Carlson no longer be treated as a mainstream figure,” wrote Jonathan S. Tobin, the editor-in-chief of Jewish News Syndicate and former executive editor at the conservative magazine Commentary. “Call it cancel culture, if you like, but the notion that someone who thinks it is acceptable or legitimate to question the truth about the Holocaust ought not to have access to a potential president, as Carlson appears to have with Trump, is entirely reasonable.”

But the revolt dissipated without forcing a break between Carlson and the upper echelon of the GOP. Carlson “laughed off the backlash,” while Vance “pointedly refused to join in the outrage over Carlson’s chat with Cooper” and even sat for an interview with the host. Kevin Roberts, the president of the powerful Heritage Foundation think tank which oversees Project 2025, kept his September 6 date on Carlson’s tour. Vance’s appearance is still on Carlson’s schedule for later this month.

By Tuesday, Carlson’s Republican critics were reduced to anonymously and impotently telling reporters that if Vance and Trump stick with the host, it might alienate “swing voters in the suburbs.”

• ### Laura Loomer’s Harris commentary is unprintable in a family publication. She’s campaigning with Trump.

The GOP’s situation grew more toxic that evening when an unexpected person disembarked from Trump’s plane when it arrived in Philadelphia for the night’s presidential debate: the pro-Trump influencer Laura Looomer, a notorious bigot and conspiracy theorist.

Loomer is a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who is “pro-white nationalism.” She has claimed there is a “genocide” of “native white populations,” which she says are “being replaced in this country by third-world invaders,” and accused “so many rich Jews” of having “a fixation on trying to destroy America.” She has accused the Biden administration of seeking to assassinate Trump; called for the execution of unnamed “Democrats who are guilty of treason”; said that “all of these communist secretaries of state who try to rig our elections” against Trump “belong in jail for election interference”; and shared a video which claimed “9/11 was an Inside Job!”

Loomer is “mentally unstable and a documented liar” who “can not be trusted” and is “toxic and poisonous,” according to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) (herself no stranger to bigoted and unhinged conspiracy theories).

But Loomer’s ardent support for Trump has made her a favorite of the former president, who has repeatedly praised her on the campaign trail, repeated her baseless smears on Truth Social, and reportedly attempted to hire her in the spring of 2023 before being dissuaded by “a firestorm” among some of his “most vocal conservative supporters.”

Loomer has in recent weeks described Harris, whose parents immigrated from India and Jamaica, as “a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she's in today,” said she “is NOT black and never has been,” said her election would ensure that “Ebonics will replace English as the language of our land,” and said that if she’s elected “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.”

That last remark — which Loomer posted to X on Sunday, days before going on the campaign trail with Trump — led Greene to respond, “This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump.”

Loomer’s direct contact clearly has some Republicans unnerved. Some are suggesting to reporters that her presence on Trump’s plane led to his unhinged debate rant about migrants eating pets. But she remained on the campaign trail with the former president on Wednesday — including at ceremonies marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — and the X account of the National Republican Senate Committee promoted one of her videos that same day.

• ### Benny Johnson took money from Russia, then hosted the RNC co-chair

One might have expected Trumpist influencer Benny Johnson to have had difficulty finding guests for his streaming coverage of Tuesday’s presidential debate.

He was one of several right-wing YouTubers revealed to have unwittingly received significant sums that originated with the Russian government after the Justice Department indicted two Russia propagandists last week for allegedly directing the scheme.

Johnson described himself and the other influencers as the “victims” of the effort. Its existence, however, suggests that Kremlin operatives believed paying Johnson and his colleagues would result in the kind of divisive and extreme content that redounds to Russia’s benefit.

But top Republicans aren’t treating Johnson as radioactive following that revelation.

His “STACKED” guest list on Tuesday featured Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s election-denying daughter in law; Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who in his role as House Judiciary chair often pretends to be very concerned about the prospect of foreign money finding its way to Democrats; as well as Greene and Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL).

Lara Trumpconcluded her friendly interview by suggesting that Johnson had been the victim of a government conspiracy, saying, “You know we’re in election season, Benny, whenever they’re bringing Russia back up and trying to make some sort of a connection between Republicans and Russia.”

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mma

Lara Trump tells Benny Johnson the indictment over Russian media funding may have been politically motivated

Lara Trump to Benny Johnson: "You know we're in election season, Benny, whenever they're bringing Russia back up and trying to make some sort of a connection between Republicans and Russia.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/12/24

Video note joker makeup she is crying and angry /hysterical silly w boxing glove

CitationFrom a September 11, 2024, posted to Benny Johnson's YouTube page

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Look at this. And in closing, the Justice Department, "Undocumented Individual Charged in Connection with Voter Fraud." Goodness. Lara, this mixed with the Arizona news, that sounds like foreign interference in our elections.

LARA TRUMP (GUEST): Mhmm.

JOHNSON: And we stand against that. Goodness gracious.

TRUMP: Yeah. We sure do stand against that.

JOHNSON: Yes.

TRUMP: And by the way, you know we're in election season, Benny, whenever they're bringing Russia back up and trying to make some sort of a connection between Republicans and Russia.

Let's be very clear. American citizens are the only ones who should be deciding American elections, period. We can all agree on that, and I would love to see more prosecutions of people who are interfering, who are not American citizens in whatever form that takes.

We love to see that sort of thing.

JOHNSON: Yeah. Let me know where I can help. I would love that. True foreign interference in our elections.

TRUMP: Yeah.

As Matt Gertz recently wrote for MSNBC.com:

Prominent right-wing influencers Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and Tim Pool have huge followings on YouTube and a fondness for the Trumpist talking point that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election on the former president’s behalf are a “hoax.” That’s not all they have in common: They also reportedly enjoyed lucrative deals with a content creation company that was a front for Russian propagandists.

The Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian propaganda outlet RT on Wednesday, charging them with laundering almost $10 million through foreign shell companies and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The DOJ alleges this was done “to covertly fund and direct” a media company that produced videos whose content and subject matter were “often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests.”

...

The indictment states two of the commentators were deceived about the source of the funding; the trio all described themselves as unwitting “victims” of the operation in separate statements on social media. But the Tenet Media saga demonstrates once again that Russian election interference is not, as these commentators and their allies have insisted, a “hoax.” It is a fact, a deliberate and ongoing operation by the Kremlin to sway U.S. politics. And the Trumpist right’s yearslong quest to rebut that reality have ended up ensuring that their entire information ecosystem is honeycombed with Russian propaganda.

By ERIC TUCKER, MATTHEW LEE and DAVID KLEPPER

Updated 6:58 PM PDT, September 4, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state media employees in its most sweeping effort yet to push back against what it says are Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the November presidential election.

The measures, which in addition to indictments also included sanctions and visa restrictions, represented a U.S. government effort just weeks before the November election to disrupt a persistent threat from Russia that American officials have long warned has the potential to sow discord and create confusion among voters.

Washington has said that Moscow, which intelligence officials have said has a preference for Republican Donald Trump, remains the primary threat to elections even as the FBI continues to investigate a hack by Iran this year that targeted the presidential campaigns of both political parties.

• AP’s Role:The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.

“The Justice Department’s message is clear: We will have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic systems of government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

One criminal case disclosed by the Justice Department accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of covertly funding a Tennessee-based content creation company with nearly $10 million to publish English-language videos on social media platforms including TikTok and YouTube with messages in favor of the Russia government’s interests and agenda, including about the war in Ukraine.

The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.

RELATED COVERAGE

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The two defendants, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They are at large. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers.

The Justice Department says the company did not disclose that it was funded by RT and that neither it nor its founders registered as required by law as an agent of a foreign principal.

Though the indictment does not name the company, it describes it as a Tennessee-based content creation firm with six commentators and with a website identifying itself as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”

That description exactly matches Tenet Media, an online company that hosts videos made by well-known conservative influencers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others.

Johnson and Pool both responded with posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, calling themselves “victims.” Calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “scumbag,” Pool wrote that “should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived.”

In his post, Johnson wrote that he had been asked a year ago to provide content to a “media startup.” He said his lawyers negotiated a “standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.”

Tenet Media’s shows in recent months have featured high-profile conservative guests, including RNC co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.

In the other action, officials announced the seizure of 32 internet domains that were used by the Kremlin to spread Russian propaganda and weaken international support for Ukraine. The websites were designed to look like authentic news sites but were actually fake, with bogus social media personas manufactured to appear as if they belonged to American users.

The Justice Department did not identify which candidate in particular the propaganda campaign was meant to boost. But internal strategy notes from participants in the effort released Wednesday by the Justice Department make clear that Trump was the intended beneficiary, even though the names of the candidates were blacked out.

The proposal for one propaganda project, for instance, states that one of its objectives was to secure a victory for a candidate who is currently out of power and to increase the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. has been doing too much to support Ukraine. President Joe Biden has strongly supported Ukraine during the invasion by Russia.

Intelligence agencies have previously charged that Russia, which during the 2016 election launched a massive campaign of foreign influence and interference on Trump’s behalf, was using disinformation to try to meddle in this year’s election. The new steps show the depth of those concerns.

“Today’s announcement highlights the lengths some foreign governments go to undermine American democratic institutions,” the State Department said. “But these foreign governments should also know that we will not tolerate foreign malign actors intentionally interfering and undermining free and fair elections.”

The State Department announced it was taking action against several employees of Russian state-owned media outlets, designating them as “foreign missions,” and offering a cash reward for information provided to the U.S. government about foreign election interference.

It also said it was adding media company Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik to its list of foreign missions. That will require them to register with the U.S. government and disclose their properties and personnel in the U.S.

In a speech last month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Russia remained the biggest threat to election integrity, accusing Putin and his proxies of “targeting specific voter demographics and swing-state voters to in an effort to manipulate presidential and congressional election outcomes.” Russia, she said was “intent on co-opting unwitting Americans on social media to push narratives advancing Russian interests.”

She struck a similar note Thursday, saying at an Aspen Institute event that the foreign influence threat is more diverse and aggressive than in past years.

“More diverse and aggressive because they involve more actors from more countries than we have ever seen before, operating in a more polarized world than we have ever seen before, all fueled by more technology and accelerated by technology, like AI, and that is what we have exposed in the law enforcement actions we took today,” she said.

Much of the concern around Russia centers on cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns designed to influence the November vote.

The tactics include using state media like RT to advance anti-U.S. messages and content, as well as networks of fake websites and social media accounts that amplify the claims and inject them into Americans’ online conversations. Typically, these networks seize on polarizing political topics such as immigration, crime or the war in Gaza.

In many cases, Americans may have no idea that the content they see online either originated or was amplified by the Kremlin.

Groups linked to the Kremlin are increasingly hiring marketing and communications firms within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks, the officials said during the briefing with reporters.

Two such firms were the subject of new U.S. sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation.

The ultimate goal, however, is to get Americans to spread Russian disinformation without questioning its origin. People are far more likely to trust and repost information that they believe is coming from a domestic source, officials said. Fake websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets and AI-generated social media profiles are just two methods.

Messages left with the Russian Embassy were not immediately returned.

Associated Press writers Dan Merica and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Ali Swenson in New York and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

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Right Wing Watch has noted multiple times in the past that there seems to be a common theme among Christian nationalist commentators who, time and time again, spread blatant falsehoods in defense of their ideology.

The latest example comes courtesy of right-wing commentator and TPUSA contributor Benny Johnson, who recently delivered a rant in which he declared that “if you are a Christian, there is no excuse for voting for Democrats” and attempted to buttress this claim by telling a bunch of falsehoods about Benjamin Franklin and the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

“Even Ben Franklin understood that in the formation of this nation [that] if God wasn’t the center of it, then it would fail,” Johnson claimed. “The quote from Ben Franklin at his prayer at the opening of the Constitutional Convention—which he presided over as the oldest Founding Father, and it was in Philadelphia, his home city—he said, ‘If a sparrow cannot fall from the sky without [God’s] notice, how can a nation rise without his aid?'”

“Speaking in a prayer to God, [Franklin asked], ‘If a sparrow cannot fall from the sky without God’s notice, how could a nation rise without God’s aid?’ Johnson reiterated. “That’s how inextricably interwoven the being, the nature of God is, in our government. And if you are looking to destroy this place, you must separate us from God.”

IFrame Content

First of all, Benjamin Franklin did not preside over the Constitutional Convention, George Washington did.

Secondly, the quote Johnson repeatedly cited did not come from a “prayer” delivered by Franklin “at the opening” of the Convention, but rather from on a speech Franklin delivered on June 28, 1787, over a month into the convention.

Franklin was not “speaking in a prayer to God,” as Johnson claimed, but was rather suggesting that the delegates should turn to God in prayer for help in drafting the Constitution.

Finally, what Johnson and so many other Christian nationalists who love to tell this story always conveniently fail to mention is that the delegates explicitly chose not to heed Franklin’s call to prayer and adjourned without taking any action on his suggestion. In fact, on the bottom of the handwritten version of the speech Franklin delivered that day is a note acknowledging that “the convention, except three or four persons, thought prayer unnecessary!”

Given that nearly everything Johnson said about Franklin’s speech is wrong, there are no grounds for accepting his assertion that it somehow proves just how “inextricably interwoven the being, the nature of God is, in our government.”

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Benny Johnson: Mitch McConnell "should be tried in Guantanamo Bay" | Media Matters for America

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Benny Johnson says Donald Trump must send Joe Biden "to Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life" | Media Matters for America

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Benny Johnson: "Ten million cases of human trafficking should be filed against Joe Biden on day one by a Trump Department Justice" | Media Matters for America

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i2010, Johnson began contributing opinion pieces to the opinion website Breitbart. In 2011, he was hired as a full-time worker for conservative media website TheBlaze.^[2]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benny_Johnson_%2812555523704%29.jpg)Johnson speaking at the 2014 International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C.

In 2012, Johnson became a staff writer at BuzzFeed.^[3] In July 2014, BuzzFeed found 41 instances of plagiarism in Johnson's writings, comprising almost ten percent of his work. He was subsequently fired from BuzzFeed and apologized for the plagiarism.^[4]

In September 2014, Johnson became digital director at the National Review (NR).^[5]

In 2015, Johnson joined the Independent Journal Review (IJR) as a creative content contributor.^[5] Later that year, the IJR staffers accused him of plagiarizing an article about then-House Republican Conference chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers.^[6]

In March 2017, Johnson was suspended by the IJR after his involvement in an article which asserted that judge Derrick Watson's partial blocking of Executive Order 13780 was connected to former president Barack Obama's visit to Hawaii. Johnson had been warned that the IJR could potentially be promoting a conspiracy theory, but assigned the story anyway.^[6][7] That same month, Johnson was reported to have been verbally abusive and driven numerous staffers away from the IJR due to his management style;^[7] he was subsequently demoted.^[8]

In August 2017, Johnson wrote an article containing the most controversial tweets of what he thought was the Boston antifa Twitter account, but what was a fake account intended to lampoon antifa. Initially an editorial note was added, and the article was later removed.^[9][10][11]

A month after his relationship with the IJR was terminated in October 2017,^[8] Johnson joined The Daily Caller.^[12][13][14] In 2019, he became a chief creative officer at Turning Point USA.^[15] In 2020, Johnson was a host on Newsmax TV.^[16][17]

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Benny Johnson says Donald Trump would still be president if Jim Jordan had been speaker | Media Matters for America

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Right-wing media are pushing the “irresistible,” “electric” Tucker Carlson as Trump’s VP

Charlie Kirk: “Tucker understands the philosophical, intellectual base that motivates the muscular class”

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

PUBLISHED 11/16/23

Last week, former President Donald Trump said that “I guess I would” consider former Fox host Tucker Carlson for a vice presidential nomination, setting off a wave of enthusiasm among Trump’s extremely online right-wing media fan base. Carlson, who privately said that he hates Trump “passionately,” has apparently not commented on the trial balloon.

In addition to vocal support for a Vice President Carlson from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA,) Salem radio host and close Trump ally Charlie Kirk has been a fervent proponent of the idea. Calling Carlson “tough,” “principled,” and “electric,” Kirk fantasized about the X vlogger as an “irresistible” pull for young voters and suburban women. Many voices in right-wing media also love the idea -- though some, notably including Donald Trump Jr., just don’t think Carlson would be interested.

“Who is the second most trusted, the second most popular, the second smartest and principled person in the conservative movement?” Kirk asked last week. “If he was still alive, it would have been Rush Limbaugh. I think we all agree with that. It is without a doubt Tucker Carlson.”

Kirk’s enthusiasm could be described as fanboying, and it continued throughout the show.

“Tucker Carlson might be the smartest person in the movement. He is a loyal family man.” “He’s real. He’s honest. He’s a true American.” “He is irresistible online. He’s smart. He’s tough.” Picking Carlson for vice president “would literally be a hack — it would break the matrix.” Sneering with excitement, Kirk asked, “Could you imagine Tucker Carlson at a press gaggle?”

“You’ve got the alpha beast Trump, and you got a VP that is probably the smartest, smoothest, person in the conservative movement that has our trust.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the November 10, 2023, edition of Salem Radio Network's The Charlie Kirk Show

Kirk came back to the idea on November 13, celebrating the “hundreds of thousands of tweets in favor of it over the weekend,” as well as Trump’s ringside appearance at a UFC fight, with an entourage including Carlson.

“Who else other than Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson can get this kind of hero's welcome at a UFC fight? … What Tucker and Trump present is cultural power and a cultural phenomenon in a political space,” Kirk beamed. “It’s a completely different dynamic. … Tucker understands the philosophical, intellectual base that motivates the muscular class.”

Kirk is not alone in his enthusiasm, which has begun spreading throughout conservative media:

• Sean Davis, a co-founder of The Federalist, told Kirk he loves the idea: “I love it. I love Tucker. I think it’d be great. I think it'd be great for America. He's one of the only people who says all the things that we all think but aren't allowed to citedsay.”
• Podcaster and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson “Elon’s razor” -- a reference to X owner Elon Musk -- “the most entertaining outcome is always the right one” to say that Trump and Carlson are “your ticket right there,” adding that “Tucker Carlson with Secret Service protection … and access to the military” is a “thing I want.”
• Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said that he has “floated this idea for years at this point” and “if I were Tucker, two years ago, I probably wouldn't want this,” but now that Carlson no longer has his Fox News perch and salary, “he’s got less to lose,” and “who else could run with Trump that the base loves? … He represents the Buchanan wing of the party. He represents the conservative wing of the conservative party.”
• On November 14, Johnson asked Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) about this on The Benny Show, to which Nehls responded that he likes the idea and doubts that any of the primary candidates could be Trump’s vice president, “but Tucker Carlson, he really, really could -- he just speaks a lot of truth. And he’s real. And I think the American people love him.”

Despite the excitement from some, other right-wing media voices aren’t so sure Carlson would even join the ticket. On Newsmax’s Chris Plante: The Right Squad*, guest Marc Lotter acknowledged that Carlson is “probably one of the smartest people around” and it would make an “epic” ticket, however fellow panelist and guest Jason Nichols said, “I don’t think that that’s something he wants to do. I think he likes his life.” Co-host Chris Plante agreed that Carlson likely “wouldn’t want any part” of a Trump White House.

Even one of Trump’s own children, Donald Trump Jr., sees a Trump/Carlson ticket as highly unlikely, though he does like the sound of it. Responding to viewer comments on his podcast Triggered, Trump said that “I don’t think he would” accept a vice presidential nomination, because it’s “not his thing.”

However, Trump added, if Carlson would accept, he “would be my first, second, third, fourth, and fifth choice for VP if I could decide right now.”

“He’d be great on a lot of issues,” Trump said, “and it would also drive the other side insane.”

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ref beast

serial plagiarist Benny Johnson has left his job as a reporter for The Daily Caller to join Charlie Kirk’s right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA.

On Wednesday afternoon, The Hill confirmed that Johnson will join TPUSA, a national pro-Trump student activist organization founded by Kirk, 25, a frequent Fox News guest and outspoken Twitter presence.

In a Tuesday memo, the Caller’s editor in chief said Johnson will leave the publication, noting that he got the most traffic of any writer “by a long shot.”

“His indomitable spirit is an example for all, his thirst for politics is absolutely insatiable, his creativity is unprecedented ... at least in the center-right,” Geoff Ingersoll wrote. “I’m glad we got to work with him for as long as we did.”

Ingersoll made it a point to later clarify on Twitter that Johnson was not fired.

The move to the conservative student-focused meme factory is the latest twist in Johnson’s strange media descent that began when he was fired in 2014 by BuzzFeed for repeatedly copying others’ work.

Several online sleuths discovered multiple instances in which Johnson—then a for BuzzFeed—lifted phrases wholesale from other websites. BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith initially defended Johnson’s reputation and his canon—which included such work as “The Story of Egypt’s Revolution in ‘Jurassic Park’ Gifs”—by telling Gawker that “Benny Johnson is one of the web’s deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work.”

But then at least 40 more instances of plagiarism were discovered. Not only did he rip off content from other media outlets but he also copied wording verbatim from About.com, Yahoo Answers, and Wikipedia. He was then promptly fired. His reputation for groan-worthy trolling and shoddy journalism has since become so well-known that years later Smith publicly apologized for being partly responsible for Johnson’s career.

After being fired by BuzzFeed, Johnson found a brief home at National Review Online before moving on to conservative startup blog Independent Journal Review, where he was eventually demoted and then fired over a series of reported mishaps that included: Publishing baseless conspiracy theories, allegedly violating company ethics and being a poor manager, and, ultimately, plagiarizing yet again.

Johnson, 32, has since then seemingly traded remorse for a career of trolling the mainstream reporters and outlets who spurned him by lurching further and further rightward, incessantly “owning the libs” with posts engineered to go viral among the MAGA audience or playing court-jester at a Turning Point USA conference in which Johnson donned an American flag suit and fired a t-shirt cannon while rambling about “meme wars.”

“Benny is bringing his humor, wit, and creative force of nature to Turning Point USA as our new Chief Creative Officer. It’s a natural partnership and we could not be more thrilled,” Kirk said of Johnson’s hiring in a statement to The Hill.

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Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson: A “mongoloid horde” of “woke intersectional failures” could ruin American cities

03/01/23 2:41 PM EST

Charlie Kirk: “Our prison population is probably not big enough”

03/01/23 1:26 PM EST

Newsmax's Benny Johnson: “Perhaps exclusively white Americans with rare exceptions” fought to end slavery during the Civil War

02/28/23

https://www.mediamatters.org/google/youtube-newsmax-host-benny-johnson-claims-merrick-garland-loves-baby-murder-and-child

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https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/benny-johnson-federal-government-rigging-trials-against-january-6-defendants-which-real

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https://www.mediamatters.org/google/turning-point-usas-benny-johnson-mongoloid-horde-woke-intersectional-failures-could-ruin

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// gamergate incursion?

https://www.mediamatters.org/google**/newsmaxs-benny-johnson**-black-national-anthem-should-be-illegal-you-shouldnt-be-able-do-there

https://www.mediamatters.org/ben-shapiro/ben-shapiro-complains-about-all-women-flyover-during-super-bowl

https://www.mediamatters.org/health-care/anti-choice-figures-twist-rihannas-pregnancy-and-powerful-super-bowl-performance-anti

https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/daily-wire-host-complains-about-lift-every-voice-and-sing-performance-super-bowl-it-libs

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https://www.alternet.org/tucker-carlson-2658998824/

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On Wednesday, December 21, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Joe Biden in the White House and gave an English-language speech during a joint session of Congress.

This was Zelenskyy’s first visit to the United States since Russian forces, on orders from President Vladimir Putin, launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 21. During his speech before Congress, Vice President Kamala Harris and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood behind Zelenskyy while holding up a Ukrainian flag in solidarity with his country.

But some far-right MAGA Republicans were not happy to see Zelenskyy getting a warm reception from Biden, Harris, Pelosi and other Democrats. And libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young calls out those MAGA Republicans in a biting article published by The Bulwark on December 22 and headlined, “Putin’s Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over Zelenskyy Visit.”

READ MORE: George Will: Why Americans should 'give thanks' for Volodymyr Zelensky’s 'pugnacious individualism'

Young observes, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s surprise arrival in Washington on Wednesday for a meeting with President Joe Biden and a speech before Congress has unhinged the always-seething anti-Ukraine Trumpian right, triggering a deluge of snark and grievance…. ‘National conservative’ pundit and Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, who played the ‘obviously, Putin is a thug and Ukraine is the victim here, but….’ game in the early days of the war, went full Putin this time around.”

Hammer, on December 21, tweeted, “Raise your hand if you are personally DONE with the Ukraine gravy train.” And Republican activist Donald Trump Jr., on Twitter, posted, “Zelenskyy is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen.”

“To top it off, Hammer, who shares Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage, also accused the Ukrainian president of being a bad Jew — unseemly under any circumstances, but all the more so considering that only a few days earlier, Hammer had been spotted at a New York Young Republicans’ Club Gala in the company of various alt-right types with, shall we say, a complicated relationship to antisemitism,” Young writes. “Among them: Rep. Marjorie ‘Jewish Space Lasers’ Taylor Greene, the founders of the white nationalist website VDARE, and erstwhile Jew-baiting troll Jack Posobiec.”

Young notes that the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said of Zelenskyy, “Get this grifting leech out of our country please,” while Fox News’ Tucker Carlson mocked Zelenskyy as a “Ukrainian strip club manager” and said of his visit to the U.S., “It may be impossible to imagine a more humiliating scenario for the greatest country on Earth.”

READ MORE:Watch: Tucker Carlson lashes out at 'aging' Republicans 'in their orthopedic shoes' for opposing Vladimir Putin

MAGA conspiracy theorist Benny Johnson and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk slammed Zelenskyy for wearing casual attire during his speech before Congress.

Young writes, “A few other right-wing pundits, including career plagiarist-turned-conspiracy-theory-peddler Benny Johnson and Turning Point USA grifting leech Charlie Kirk, homed in on the really important stuff: Zelenskyy’s outfit…. Of course, Zelenskyy’s clothes were meant to visually convey the fact that he’s in the middle of a brutal war. When you’re just back from a visit to the front lines in an area that looks like a ghost warscape from World War I come back to life, you’ve earned the right to make that particular fashion statement — even on a visit to Washington, D.C.”

The libertarian/conservative journalist goes on to offer some reasons why many MAGA Republicans have such intense “hatred” for Zelenskyy.

“The question of why the Trumpian populist right is so consumed with hatred for Ukraine — a hatred that clearly goes beyond concerns about U.S. spending, a very small portion of our military budget, or about the nonexistent involvement of American troops — doesn’t have a simple answer, Young explains. “Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it. Partly, it’s the belief that Ukrainian democracy is a Biden/Obama/Hillary Clinton/‘Deep State’ project, all the more suspect because it’s related to Trump’s first impeachment.”

Young continues, “Partly, it’s the ‘national conservative’ distaste for liberalism — not only in its American progressive iteration, but in the more fundamental sense that includes conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: the outlook based on individual freedom and personal autonomy, equality before the law, limited government, and an international order rooted in those values. Many NatCons are far more sympathetic to Russia’s crusade against secular liberalism than to Ukraine’s desire for integration into liberal, secular Europe. Whatever the reason, the anti-Ukraine animus on the right is quite real and widespread.”

READ MORE:'Propaganda that empowers Putin': Conservative says these Fox News hosts have become Kremlin mouthpieces

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ALL POSTS ABOUT BENNY JOHNSON

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• SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 5:05 PM Right Wing Bonus Tracks: Bring on the Taliban
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• AUGUST 26, 2020 3:53 PM Gay Gaslighter Rick Grenell’s Dishonest Attack on Joe Biden and Absurd Claim About ‘Pro-Gay’ Trump
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• [JUNE 30, 2020 11:23 AM Benny Johnson ​Falsely Claims That Gun-Toting Couple Were Democrats](https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/benny-johnson-%e2%80%8bfalsely-claims-that-gun-toting-couple-were-democrats/ "Benny Johnson ​Falsely Claims That Gun-Toting Couple Were Democrats")
• [JUNE 25, 2020 11:34 AM Conservatives ​Threaten to Leave Twitter for Parler​—But for Real This Time](https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/conservatives-%e2%80%8bthreaten-to-leave-twitter-for-parler%e2%80%8b-but-for-real-this-time/ "Conservatives ​Threaten to Leave Twitter for Parler​—But for Real This Time")
• MAY 2, 2019 5:10 PM Louis Farrakhan Was Finally Banned But The Right Stays Mad

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https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/newsmaxs-benny-johnson-people-suspended-twitter-claim-be-reporters-they-are-not

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Basketball star Brittney Griner is back in the United States after her December 8 release from a Russian prison. Griner, who spent almost 10 months imprisoned in Russia, was serving a nine-year sentence on a drug smuggling charge but was released as part of a prisoner exchange; the United States agreed to release Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for Griner’s release.

Civil libertarians all over the world described Griner’s arrest and imprisonment as politically motivated, as it came during a time of considerable tensions between the United States and Russia. On February 17, Griner was detained after Russian customs officials found less than a gram of medically prescribed hash oil in her luggage. And in August, Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Griner’s release was applauded by countless civil libertarians and critics of the War on Drugs. But a long list of MAGA Republicans, on the other hand, are furious that the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) player was released. And libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young vehemently calls them out in a biting article published by The Bulwark on December 16.

READ MORE: James Carville: Right-wing ire over Brittney Griner is because she 'is not white and is not straight'

“Since just about everything is potential fodder for culture wars these days,” Young argues, “it’s no surprise that the return to the United States of basketball player Brittney Griner, detained in Russia on a drug charge earlier this year, turned into another such skirmish. What is notable, though, is the extent to which American far-right punditry has been almost literally reciting Kremlin propaganda talking points — and putting identity politics over basic solidarity with a fellow American.”

Young describes Griner as a former “hostage” of the Kremlin.

“Bringing American hostages home — and there is little doubt that Griner, arrested days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was being held hostage — is surely a cause for patriotic celebration,” Young writes. “But many commentators on the right touted the trade as evidence that the Biden Administration was Woke Central: Griner is Black and gay — gay-married, even! — and spoke out against the American anthem being played at WNBA games during the summer 2020 racial justice protests. That two other Americans, ex-Marine Paul Whelan and history teacher Mark Fogel, still remain in Russian prisons — the former on spying charges, the latter in a marijuana-possession case very similar to Griner’s — became further evidence of wokeness run amok, or a decision based on ‘DEI’ (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies.”

Young cites specific examples of anti-Griner comments from the far right. On December 8, Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted, “The Biden Admin was apparently worried that their DEI score would go down if they freed an American Marine.” And Matt Walsh, that same day, tweeted, “Unfortunately Marc Fogel and Paul Whelan made the mistake of being white men. The rules of intersectionality dictate that the black woman gets freed first. That's one of the primary factors driving this, whether we want to admit it out loud or not.”

READ MORE:Tucker Carlson pushes bizarre, racist theory about Britney Griner’s release from a Russian prison

Newsmax’s Benny Johnson said of Griner and the Biden Administration, “They knew they had to appeal (to) the left-wing, woke wing of their party. They wouldn’t allow a Black woman, lesbian woman, drug addict, America-hating woke, to be kept in prison in Russia. One of ours. Not the Marine. Not the person who served this country. No, no. One of ours. Somebody on the identity-politics spectrum who’s notched every single victory that you could ever hope for inside of the vector of woke politics.”

Young points out that similar rhetoric has been coming from the Russian media. For example, RT’s Margarita Simonyan, during an appearance on Russia’s TV-1 program “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” commented, “I found it very amusing, though not surprising, that Bout was finally traded for Griner, not Whelan…. (Whelan) is a hero, a decorated Marine covered in medals. He only has one — no, two — no, three, problems. First problem: He’s white. Second problem: He’s a man. Third problem: It seems he’s hetero. This is something that just can’t be forgiven these days…. American voters were given a choice: A hero who suffered in the service of his country…. or a black lesbian hooked on drugs who suffered for a vape with hash.”

Young also notes that in the prisoner exchange, the Biden Administration didn’t choose Griner over the other American prisoners being held in Russia; the Kremlin’s offer was “Griner or no one” — a fact that “right-wing propagandists in the United States” overlooked when they “recycled Kremlin talking points.”

“Also not mentioned: Trevor Reed, another former U.S. Marine and one-time Russian prisoner who happens to be white, male, and heterosexual,” Young writes. “Despite these three strikes, Reed — detained in Moscow in 2019 on probably bogus charges of assault on two police officers — was freed in late April in a swap for Russian pilot and convicted drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, a highly inconvenient fact for the ‘woke points’ narrative…. For the overwhelming majority, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan are both Americans. You’d think the ‘All Lives Matter’ gang could grasp that.”

READ MORE:Adam Schiff warns Americans risk being captured and 'used as a political chip' in Iran, North Korea, Russia

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-right-turned-dr-fauci

matt g

no lnx many vid]

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official and a public health adviser to seven presidents, announced on Monday that he plans to retire in December after more than 50 years of public service. President Joe Biden toasted Fauci as “a steady hand with wisdom and insight honed over decades” and praised his “unparalleled spirit, energy, and scientific integrity,” while top scientists touted his record of “sav[ing] countless lives.”

While Fauci once earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-President George W. Bush, his impending retirement was not greeted with plaudits from the right. On Fox News that night, Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue described him as “a dangerous fraud, a man who has done things that in most countries, at most times in history, would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” The New York Post headlined its editorial the next day “Good riddance to dangerous Dr. Fauci,” while The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board concluded that “his legacy will be that millions of Americans will never trust government health experts in the same way again.”

Fauci, like everyone else involved in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans, does not have a perfect record. But he spent his career trying to remain impartial, avoid partisanship, and offer the best advice he could, and for decades, he was respected on both sides of the political aisle. That reputation ultimately could not survive the relentless propaganda of the right-wing press, which needed a coronavirus scapegoat and found one in the octogenarian scientist.

Right-wing propagandists began turning Fauci into their latest hate object in March 2020. At the time, states had imposed stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures that were recommended by the Trump administration to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Fox and other pro-Trump outlets consistently downplayed the threat posed by the virus and promoted a minimalistic response that dismissed such efforts in favor of snake oil miracle cures.

Trump’s media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president, and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response. He initially drew their ire as a critic of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, the malaria drugs that Fox hosts and then the president had recommended as a coronavirus treatment (numerous studies have found the drugs ineffective) and as part of the supposed “ruling class” that could weather a long-term economic shutdown. 

At the time, even right-wing pugilists like Fox’s Tucker Carlson were still pulling their punches. “Imagine another year of this,” he said on his April 3, 2020, show. “That would be national suicide, and yet, that is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least.” But Carlson went on to acknowledge that Fauci wasn’t trying to “hurt America,” saying that he “seems like a very decent man” who was simply misguided. 

That gentility would not last. The pro-Trump media — and Carlson in particular — became increasingly unhinged and vituperative toward Fauci as the pandemic wore on. Ultimately, the right-wing attacks on Fauci had dramatic impacts for the country.

By mid-May of 2020, Fox’s prime-time stars had decided that the crisis was over. When Fauci said in congressional testimony that it was not, and that the virus was likely to recur in the fall and winter, they began pushing for Trump to fire him. On programs that the Fox-obsessed president watched religiously, they portrayed Fauci as power-mad and using his influence to “favor what the Democrats want.” Those attacks continued over the following weeks and months. 

In July, Trump began publicly echoing the right-wing media’s concerns about Fauci. The following month, the president appointed Scott Atlas, a radiologist and right-wing think tanker who caught his attention through frequent Fox appearances, to the White House coronavirus task force.

Atlas effectively displaced Fauci as Trump’s top coronavirus adviser, and used that position to promote a “herd immunity” strategy for coping with the virus. His actions ultimately helped bring about the very wave of hospitalizations and deaths Fauci had earned the opprobrium of the right for warning about months earlier.

But the right’s attacks on Fauci continued over the months and years to come.

Carlson was the scientist’s most implacable media foe. He described Fauci as an “elderly power-drunk epidemiologist”; “capricious and transparently political”; a “hypocritical buffoon”; an “oily politician on an ego trip”; and an “even shorter version of Benito Mussolini.” He denounced the scientist’s recommendations as “authoritarian,” falsely claimed that Fauci “helped to create” the coronavirus, and called for him to “never work in public policy again.”

Other right-wing pundits demonized Fauci as “one of the great criminals of our civilization” and a member of the “medical deep state” who was “on a jihad” against Trump and behaves “more like a monarch.” They called for an investigation into his purported crimes and fantasized about him being put in “leg irons” or even beheaded. They even accused him — falsely — of killing puppies, with one describing him as “the dog-murdering and orphan-killing doctor, Anthony Benito Fauci.”

Fox’s attacks on Fauci have become so habitual that they often seemed to serve as background noise on the right-wing channel. But at times, the network’s talking heads have issued comments so abhorrent that they trigger widespread public outrage and even a response from the network brass. Fox sidelined Lara Logan, a host on the network’s streaming service, after she compared Fauci to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele during a November 2021 appearance. The following month, the network publicly defended host Jesse Watters after he drew controversy for exhorting an audience of young right-wing activists to “ambush” Fauci with a rhetorical “deadly” “kill shot.” 

Amid the flurry of often violent public criticism, Fauci divulged that he regularly received threats. Earlier this month, a man was sentenced to more than three years in prison for sending Fauci emails with comments like “You and your entire family will be dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.”

Fauci’s retirement announcement has opened a debate about who might succeed him. But senior members of the U.S. medical establishment are warning that the right’s attacks on Fauci may limit the pool of applicants willing to try to fill his shoes.

“What keeps the former surgeon general [Jerome Adams] up at night is his fear that talented candidates won’t want these jobs after what Fauci and other public health officials have faced over the last few years,” Politico reported on Monday. “Fauci has received death threats, and his daughters have been harassed — and Adams worries that this vitriol is a big part of why Fauci is stepping down.”

When the next pandemic hits, the U.S. response might thus be hobbled, thanks to the right-wing media’s impulse to destroy a vital public servant for political gain.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-promise-harass-anthony-fauci-retirement-if-republicans-win-back-control

no lnx vid

Right-wing media promise to harass Anthony Fauci in retirement if Republicans win back control of Congress

Fauci’s retirement announcement was met with a new flurry of vitriol from right-wing media

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD, BUSHRA SULTANA & SHELBY JAMERSON

PUBLISHED 08/24/22

When presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci announced his plans to retire in December after five decades of public service, right-wing media personalities predictably attacked him, calling him a “sociopathic liar and political hack” who “needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.”

On Monday, Fauci announced he intends to step down as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In response, right-wing media mounted a public onslaught, claiming that Fauci is stepping down to avoid investigations if Republicans take control of Congress in November, directing the GOP to investigate Fauci if the party should take control, proclaiming Fauci should face criminal charges and be sent to prison, and generally attacking his character.

Even Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, who had previously served as a seeming voice of reason and who has previously interviewed Fauci at the network, pressed the retiring public servant about whether his retirement was really just “a way to avoid Republican investigators.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto

Right-wing media, especially Fox News, have been maligning Fauci since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted, then-President Donald Trump’s “media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president,” whose administration’s response included recommendations of stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures, “and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response.” The smear campaign against Fauci didn’t stop; over a roughly 10-month period in 2021, Fox News personalities attacked him over 400 times.

Fauci may plan to retire at the end of the year, but the right-wing echo chamber is prepared to hound him for years to come if given the opportunity.

Claims that Fauci is stepping down to avoid oversight

Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson speculated that Fauci may have resigned because he thinks the Republicans are going to take over Congress in the midterm elections and does not want to be investigated by them. “So it's possible that Tony Fauci might want to resign before he has to explain all of that to a new Congress,” Carlson said. “He might want to get out of town now and move to, say, Cambridge, find a safe place to hide before the reckoning. Just a thought. Because honestly, there's a lot to answer for.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]

Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham speculated that “Fauci thinks this retirement would save him from a congressional investigation or a subpoena.” She then interviewed Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who said congressional Republicans would want to investigate Fauci based on the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus was human-made. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/22/22]

Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton claimed, “Sociopathic liar and political hack Fauci is making a run for it before Republicans can take over the House.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing radio host Dana Loesch claimed Fauci “doesn't want that GOP-controlled House oversight.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Fox prime-time host Jesse Wattersclaimed that Fauci “seems to think stepping down before Republicans take the House will get him off scot-free.” Watters made this pronouncement just hours after Fauci appeared on Fox and told Neil Cavuto that he would not avoid appearing before Congress. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/23/22]

The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam: “BREAKING: Fauci to step down right before Republicans are expected to take control of Congress and commence investigations into his funding of the Wuhan Lab and pandemic response.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Conservative pundit Mercedes Schlapp claimed “it's no coincidence” that Fauci announced he will step down in December, noting that it “is right after Republicans will take back the House and immediately plan oversight into our pandemic response and his funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Calls for congressional Republicans to investigate Fauci

Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity declared that “Fauci still needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” He then interviewed Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who predicted that if there is a Republican-controlled Congress, it would subpoena Fauci to testify next year. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/22/22]

Fox’s “news side” presented a more respectable face for the right’s determination to investigate Fauci. Fox contributor Marc Thiessen discussed the need for an “after-action study” of the nation’s COVID-19 response, while blaming Fauci for various aspects of both the pandemic response and its economic consequences. Concluding the segment, co-anchor Bill Hemmer said that in “2023, I think we’ll see him again.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]

Fox anchor Sandra Smith asked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS): “What do you want to see happen as far as holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his actions during this pandemic?” Marshall then repeatedly and falsely accused Fauci of covering up the supposed creation of COVID-19 in a lab, statements which Smith did not challenge. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/23/22; FactCheck.org, 5/19/22]

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro said on Newsmax that the government should to “take that SOB’s passport” so Fauci cannot flee a Republican-led congressional investigation.Navarro himself was recently indicted for a charge of contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. [Newsmax, Eric Bolling: The Balance, 8/22/22; NPR, 6/4/22]

Calls for Fauci’s to face criminal charges and/or prison

“Stop the Steal” organizer Alex Bruesewitz wrote that Fauci “should be investigated, and quite frankly arrested, for what he put our country through.” [Twitter, 8/22/22; Media Matters, 7/27/22]

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk declared that Fauci “belongs in prison.” He continued, “Seize the passports. Freeze his pension, distribute it to his victims. Lawyer up. Time to hold him accountable for the last 3 years.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing radio host Clay Travis wrote that Fauci “belongs in prison,” claiming he is the “most destructive bureaucrat in United States history.” Travis also said Fauci’s “‘leadership’ on covid will — in the decades ahead — come to be seen as one of the greatest and most destructive failures in our nation’s history.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing podcasters Diamond & Silk: “Fauci doesn't need to just step down, he should be arrested for Crimes Against Humanity!” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Attacks on Fauci’s character

In his opening monologue, Fox's Carlson said, “On some level, even Tony Fauci knows that Tony Fauci is in fact a dangerous fraud.” Carlson further elaborated that Fauci “has done things that in most countries at most times in history would be understood perfectly clearly to be very serious crimes.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]

Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy called Fauci an “authoritarian monster.” She claimed Fauci “led our country on a Chinese-style approach instead of an American-style where we look at science.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/23/22]

Washington Examiner’s Haisten Willis described Fauci as someone some people “feel is … self-promoting, unaccountable, and even liable for helping start the pandemic.” [Washington Examiner, 8/22/22]

Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen: “Never has anybody been so wrong about so much for so long and been so lionized as Anthony Fauci.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]

Sean Duffy, Fox News contributor and former member of Congress, repeatedly accused Fauci of having “Chinese” principles instead of American ones in his supposed use of the power of government. [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/23/22]

Fox News’ Katie Pavlich said it is “sickening” the way Fauci supposedly let “power and fame” go to his head.Pavlich tweeted, “In March 2020 Fauci actually told the truth about who Wuhan coronavirus was deadly for, the elderly and those with comorbidities. He said it was ‘very clear.’ He also said drug store masks don’t work. Then, he got a taste of power and fame he just couldn’t let go. Sickening.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

New York Post columnist Karol Markowiczon Fauci: “His half-century of ‘public service’ was a disaster for us. His handling of covid should be studied in the future as a blueprint of what not to do.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro called Fauci “a true douchebag.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 08/23/22]

Right-wing media gadflyBenny Johnson called Fauci “the most evil and malevolent character in my lifetime.” [The Benny Show, via YouTube, 8/23/22]

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not exactly punked?

https://www.mediamatters.org/abc/abc-takes-bait-and-suspends-veteran-correspondent-over-bad-faith-right-wing-hit-job

2/26/20

ABC News suspended veteran correspondent David Wright on February 25 after he gave reasonable criticism of the network while being secretly recorded in a video later released by Project Veritas. The organization has a well-known reputation for videotaping media figures and progressive activists and releasing bad-faith, edited videos to push a right-wing agenda.

The video, which Project Veritas on February 26 after teasing it the night before, features Wright offering criticisms of ABC’s coverage of the Trump administration and other political issues. It has clearly been edited to portray Wright’s comments in a negative light.

In the heavily edited video, Wright was critical of the broadcast news business model and suggested that the network still hasn’t figured out how to properly cover Trump. He claimed that ABC fails to give Trump credit for things he does right while also failing to “hold him to account”; chooses more exciting, “TV-friendly” stories over practical issues that matter to voters; takes Trump’s coverage bait in a way that enables him; and overcompensates for the false accusation from groups like Project Veritas that mainstream media pull for the Democratic Party.

Wright also complained that drama surrounding Trump dominates the news cycle and the “voters are poorly informed.” He criticized ABC’s “self-promotional” relationship with Disney, saying that the network often blends news with commercial interests: “You can’t watch Good Morning Americawithout there being a Disney princess or a Marvel Avenger appearing.”

Many of these comments are consistent with criticisms other journalists have made of political media in the age of Trump, and thus there was swift condemnation of ABC for its decision to suspend Wright.

Others were furious that Wright was suspended after he expressed support for progressive policies and said he considers himself a socialist, calling his suspension “absolutely outrageous” given a lack of progressive voices in mainstream media.

Project Veritas, founded by James O’Keefe, has a long history of secretly recording videos and then deceptively editing and releasing them in order to paint its subjects as negatively as possible and catch them in a “gotcha” moment. Veritas targets organizations that it claims have a “liberal” association, and its operatives often approach targets using a false name to coax information from them through casual conversations.

O'Keefe's goal is typically to obtain footage that can be edited in a way that embarrasses or delegitimizes targeted organizations, often seeking to expose “liberal bias” in the media. Past targets have included NPR, The New York Times, and CNN, and as a result, many news organizations are aware of Project Veritas’ motives when these videos are released. 

Wright has been a journalist with ABC for nearly 20 years, covering the White House and reporting from the Middle East and Europe. His reporting has earned him an Emmy and a Peabody Awardfor work related to Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, respectively.

The reasonable nature of Wright’s criticisms of a business model that prioritizes generating ratings over informing viewers, combined with Project Veritas’ well-known reputation and bad-faith tactics, make ABC’s decision to suspend Wright and reassign him from political reporting to “avoid any possible appearance of bias” concerning.

Conservative media outlets like Fox News and The Federalist and figures such as Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson have already pounced on the footage to advance the right-wing narrative that ABC is a biased source that does a poor job of informing viewers -- and by suspending Wright, the network has fallen for it too.

Update (5:45 p.m.):O'Keefe and Sean Hannity agreed that ABC News should not have suspended Wright[aUDIO]

 O'KEEFE: This guy Wright is just being honest. He's just talking about how ABC's pushing Disney products on Good Morning America. He called himself a socialist. He calls Trump a bad name, the d-word, in this tape. He also seems to say that they don't give Trump credit -- they don't give him enough credit. He actually says this about Trump, that they don't give him enough credit for the things that he does right. So he's simultaneously kind of trashing Trump, calling himself a socialist, but also saying Trump does some good things and we don't talk about it, we don't care about voters, we don't cross the Hudson River, this guy says, to look at what voters care about. So he's just being honest, he's been suspended for being honest, and for that I think it was wrong to suspend him. I think he was just telling the truth, Sean. 

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Well, I think so too.

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