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MMA 8 26

Real wages have fallen for several months, but these Fox hosts claim wages are rising

08/24/26

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MMA

On Newsmax, Dick Morris falsely claims “except for a training accident really, nobody's died” in the Iran war

  1. 08/19/26

DENY HUNGER STRIKE, BAD CONDS

MMA

Right-wing media defend ICE detention center amid protests over horrible living conditions

Written by Sophie Lawton

Research contributions from John Knefel

Published 05/29/26

Right-wing media are defending the living conditions at Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in New Jersey, following reports of a detainee hunger strike sparking protests outside. In addition to repeating Department of Homeland Security talking points about the conditions, media figures have attacked protesters outside the facility, claiming the demonstrations are “performance art,” among other allegations.

According to NBC, one lawyer who represents multiple detainees said her clients at Delaney Hall “have been given expired food and meals with worms in them” and that some “have been released in recent months because they were not receiving medication or treatment for cancer, diabetes, depression and other conditions.”

The Department of Homeland Security has denied that a hunger strike is taking place at the facility, and both DHS and private prison company the GEO Group, which operates Delaney Hall, have rebuked claims that conditions are unsanitary or “subprime.” In the past year, reports of poor conditions at ICE detention centers have arisen across the country, including from locations such as Fort Bliss Army Base in Texas and the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in Florida.

Right-wing news pundits and podcasters have contested such reports, repeating DHS talking points claiming that conditions in immigration detention facilities are “clean and nice” and possibly offer “better meals” and “better healthcare” than detainees had previously. Further, several have argued that it shouldn’t matter whether the detainees are on a hunger strike.

Besides defending the facilities, right-wing media figures have also attacked the protesters demonstrating outside Delaney Hall, encouraging escalation from the federal government and accusing protesters of being an “organized agitator group” that aims to stir up votes for the midterm elections and set violent criminals loose on the streets.

Right-wing media dismissed the hunger strike, defended detention center conditions, and attacked demonstrators for protesting

Video

Citation

From the May 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Video

Citation

From the May 26, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

How right-wing media helped the Trump administration push a “psyop” against Iran's new supreme leader

At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem ran with unsubstantiated rumors that the new Iranian ayatollah may be gay

Written by Harrison Ray, Noah Dowe & Reed McMaster

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe

Published 03/27/26

At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem helped the Trump administration push an unsubstantiated narrative that the new Iranian ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, is gay — a move that Zeteo reports was meant to be a “psyop against their Iranian enemies and the new supreme leader.”

Yet according to a March 27 report from Zeteo, there exists “no credible intel” on Khamenei’s sexuality; rather, “the idea was fabricated and pushed behind the scenes in the past several weeks by a cohort of Trump advisers, US government personnel, and MAGAworld associates.” One source told Zeteo that the administration “wanted to mindfuck [the Iranians] with gay shit,” while another suggested, “It’s some 20-year-old frat boy in the federal government’s idea of a good joke.”

While some within the right-wing media simply highlighted the New York Post story, others added their own takes.

Fox host Greg Gutfeld joked about the rumor on March 16, saying, “Speaking of world leaders, rumors are circulating that the new Iranian supreme leader is gay. They know this because he keeps throwing himself off a building — that’s what they do in Iran.”

Newsmax host Chris Plante made the same joke on his March 17 podcast, saying, “If he became the ayatollah, the first thing he’d have to do as ayatollah is kill himself.” Following a lengthy and graphic fantasy about Khamenei committing suicide, Plante explained, “That’s what they always do when they hang the gay people in Iran, and the Democrats are on the side of the Iranian regime because of their many mental illnesses.”

Referencing the death of the new supreme leader’s father, former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Plante added, “And here’s the headline: Ayatollah disappointed to learn 72 virgins awaiting him in paradise are all women. Oh no, not the women. That is because, you know, it might run in the family, like monkeypox.”

That same day, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles ranted, “The ayatollah might be a homosexual, might be a little light in the loafers. You know what I'm saying? A couple fries away from a Happy Meal. The kind of fella has a long handshake.” While Knowles acknowledged that the story seemed at first “like an op” and “a demoralization tactic from our intelligence services,” he claimed, “There's a little bit of evidence that the ladies are not exactly his type.”

Newsmax host Rob Carson repeated the claim on March 22 and suggested the ayatollah has not been going out in public because “he's been in the closet.” After showing a clip of host Carl Higbie mocking “the Strait of Hormuz and the gay son,” Carson broke out in song, seemingly parodying “It's Raining Men.”

VID]

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  1. ### TPUSA spokesperson on Iran: “Boots on the ground is a line we don't want to cross. We are not supportive of boots on the ground, full stop.”

03/30/26 2:06 PM EDT

  1. ### Ben Shapiro downplays American ground troops in Iran: There will be “squads of, you know, at most, a few hundred who are performing special operations”

03/30/26 1:57 PM EDT

  1. ### Megyn Kelly: The goal for Iran war changed from “it’s about the missiles” to “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon” to “we got to do regime change” to get the uranium

03/30/26

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RWW

Mark Meckler, Medical Ships, And The MAGA Media Bubble

03/11/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

Mark Meckler is a Christian nationalist political activistand right-wing commentator, the sort who brags about being "a radical, right-wing, Tea Party, Bible-thumping, gun-toting conservative" and praises President Donald Trump for supposedly having rescued the word "retard" from the woke thought police.

Meckler is also the co-founder and president of the Convention of States Foundation, a conservative organization that seeks to get state legislatures to call for an Article V convention to propose constitutional amendments that will dramatically limit the power of the federal government. It was in this capacity that Meckler appeared on his organization's monthly "COS At Home" program last week and demonstrated the perils of living in the MAGA media bubble.

During the program, Meckler and host Jonathan Viaud discussed Trump's ongoing obsession with acquiring Greenland. Meckler praised Trump's efforts to acquire the nation, particularly his decision to deploy a hospital ship to the region.

"There was a really interesting thing that happened recently [that] most people didn't pay attention to in the news," Meckler said. "He sent a mercy ship, a surgical ship to Greenland to provide medical care for Greenlanders, because apparently the medical system there is a disaster and they are not provided that kind of support from Europe. So I think now what he's going to do is use the candy part of the [negotiation]—like we can help you out, we're going to make you guys wealthier, we're going to make you healthier—and ultimately, I think that means he gets to whatever agreement he wants on Greenland.

"Amazing how the mainstream media doesn't cover that type of story," Viaud replied contemptuously. "It's unbelievable."

Video URL

IFrame Content

Perhaps the reason that people weren't aware of this news is because it never happened. Like so much else with Trump, this was nothing more than a confusing announcement made by the president via social media. The entire idea was completely divorced from reality, rejected by Greenland, and never occurred, as the Wall Street Journal reported:

The Pentagon has received no orders to deploy any U.S. Navy vessels to Greenland, according to U.S. officials, despite President Trump’s claim that a hospital ship is ‘on its way’ to the self-governing Danish territory.

The U.S. has two hospital ships, the East Coast-based USNS Comfort and the West Coast-based USNS Mercy, which are designed as floating medical-treatment facilities. Both vessels are in a shipyard in Mobile, Ala., according to maritime tracking information. The Comfort is undergoing repairs that are expected to be completed in April, while the Mercy is in the middle of a one-year maintenance period that began last July.

The "mainstream media" covered the story extensively, pointing out that the supposed mercy operation was nothing more than a figment of Trump's imagination. But Meckler and Viaud were completely unaware of that because they apparently live in a MAGA media bubble where they can remain insulated from things like facts and reality.

On the Watchlist

MMA

Right-wing media blamed Iran for bombing of Minab elementary school, but reporting suggests it was a US strike

Reporting indicates that a US Tomahawk missile likely hit the school, yet right-wing media blamed the attack on Iran and downplayed the killing of children because “things happen in war”

Written by Torri Lonergan, Ben Van Bloem & Isabella Sherk

Published 03/11/26

Right-wing media blamed Iran for the likely U.S. bombing of an elementary school during initial U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. As evidence mounted that the U.S. was likely at fault, right-wing media called it “disinformation from the enemy.” The strike killed about 175 civilians, largely young children.

Multiple mainstream news organizations have now verified a video that appears to show a U.S. Tomahawk missile hitting a building near the school as part of an attack on an Iranian naval facility next door. Additionally, Defense Department investigators have reportedly determined that the U.S. was likely responsible for the strike. However, right-wing media figures claimed to have “photographic evidence” that Iran was behind the bombing, downplayed the killing of school children, and cast doubt on reporting about the strike, calling the entire story “a lie that has been completely retracted.”

MMA

an 2 26

Donald Trump and his MAGA allies repeatedly make claims that abuse basic math and break from reality, according to one mathematician and Harvard, who wrote on Thursday that the administration's lofty claims shatter both truth and "mathematical possibility."

Aubrey Clayton is a PhD mathematician who teaches subjects like probability, statistics and philosophy at Harvard University. Writing in an op-ed for the New York Times, he called out Trump and his allies for their use of numbers and statistics, which he claimed were divorced from reality and used only to make their arguments sound bigger.

As a prime example, Clayton cited Trump's oft-repeated claims about how much he has brought down prescription drug prices. While the reality of those price drops is debatable on their own, the president has claimed multiple times to have them down by percentages well over 100. Most recently, he claimed a 600 percent drop during his State of the Union address. As Clayton pointed out, since a 100 percent drop in price would make the drugs free, Trump's claims "would require a pharmaceutical company to pay you five times over to take a medication."

"From the perspective of a math educator, this is not a minor abuse of statistics but a failure of epistemic responsibility, one that undermines the possibility of public reasoning itself," Clayton wrote, later adding that these claims were meant to "short-circuit" public debate about his policies.

Clayton further highlighted Attorney General Pam Bondi's claim that Trump's anti-fentanyl policies had "saved 119 million American lives (later revised to 258 million)," a number only matched by the deadliest plagues in human history. He contested Trump's claim that his tariffs had created $18 trillion in new investments for the U.S., "which would represent a rate of economic growth that dwarfed even the greatest periods of post-World War II expansion." He also noted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's claim that the agency could deport up to 100 million people, despite that being roughly double the actual number of immigrants in the U.S.

"Elementary number sense and some understanding of the world reveal that these numbers are grossly out of scale," Clayton argued, later adding, "These numbers go beyond plausibly being true to being inconsistent with known mathematical axioms and definitions."

Clayton concluded his arguments by suggesting that Trump's use of "absurd" statistical claims shows his disdain for the intelligence of Americans, since he does not expect them to be smart enough to debunk them.

"We can and must hold our political leaders to a higher standard," he wrote. "When officials use absurd numbers, it shows that they believe that Americans are incapable of critiquing them."

MMA

New report highlights systemic failures behind DC plane crash that right-wing media blamed on DEI

The incident illustrated how right-wing media rush to establish a political narrative before facts emerge in the wake of tragedy

Written by Courtney Hagle

:{Published 02/18/26

In January 2025, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump kicked off his presidency by attributing a deadly midair collision in Washington, D.C., to diversity policies. Right-wing media quickly followed suit, offering an early glimpse of how the administration and its allies would confront tragedies on their watch: by pushing politically charged narratives ahead of verified information. Now, a new report highlights how “multiple failures across different parts of the government” were responsible for the crash, citing eight main factors none of which included DEI initiatives.

The day after the crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people, Trump and his administration pointed to DEI policies as part of the cause, claiming that a group within the FAA had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white” and signing an executive order ”aimed at undoing all of that damage" from “Biden administration's DEI and woke policies.” Trump further claimed, “We want the most competent people. We don't care what race they are,” even as he admitted that “we don’t know” what caused the crash but that “common sense” helped him reach his conclusion.

Right-wing media fell in line with the Trump administration’s effort to essentially blame the crash on the hiring of women, nonwhite, and disabled people through diversity policies. Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that the crash “is why DEI can be dangerous.” Fox News host Will Cain claimed, “DEI is a policy that exacerbates human error.” Fox News host Jesse Watters used the tragedy to say people should be “suspicious” that DEI plays a role in disasters. He continued, “When DEI is in place, which it was at the FAA, standards get lowered, staffing's affected.”

Scapegoating DEI was not a new tactic for right-wing media, which had previously blamed DEI for the 2024 Baltimore bridge collapse, the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, and ongoing issues with Boeing planes.

Now, a new report highlights how “multiple failures across different parts of the government” were responsible for the crash, citing eight main factors, none of which included DEI.

The attempts to cynically exploit the crash were just a preview for how MAGA would handle tragedies in Trump’s second term. In the past year, conservative media lied about the ideological profile of a man who killed Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband; covered for the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated immigration abuses that included the killing of two Minnesotans; and baselessly targeted an innocent Palestinian student after a shooting at Brown University.

In each of these incidents, the Trump administration and its media allies moved quickly to establish a political narrative before facts were established, which often takes time and investigation. The result was a cycle in which speculation hardened into talking points, shaping public perception before a full and careful accounting of the truth could take place. By the time the actual facts came to light, the narrative was set and right-wing media had already moved on to the next outrage cycle.

MMA

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

Shirley’s new California video is little more than a rehashing of O’Keefe’s bogus claims from over a decade ago

Written by John Knefel & Sophie Lawton

Published 02/18/26

Citation

Andrea Austria / Media Matters

A new video by MAGA provocateur Nick Shirley purports to expose voter fraud in California, but in fact it’s little more than a repackaging of false narratives spread over a decade ago by right-wing operative James O'Keefe. In both cases, the right-wing influencers suggest that fraud could exist without actually exposing any, relying on innuendo and hypotheticals rather than evidence.

O’Keefe created the template for undercover videos meant to expose and embarrass liberal organizations and causes. His old videos, like Shirley’s new ones, were frequently debunked in real time, but they nevertheless served a role in providing fuel to conservative content creators hungry to stoke outrage about perceived liberal excesses. Shirley’s repackaging shouldn’t be surprising given the incentives for young, MAGA-aligned influencers to make a name for themselves in a crowded field. But the original claims didn't provoke any policy changes — reasonably so, given that they were bogus — so Shirley's repackaging has little to offer beyond a hope that new consumers take the bait.

Shirley gained prominence in recent months following a so-called investigation into fraud in Minneapolis day care centers. Although there were some real instances of fraud within the city’s social services, local news and prosecutors had already exposed and investigated many instances of wrong-doing. Still, The New York Times referred to Shirley as having “spurred the federal crackdown on Minneapolis.”

Once the right-wing’s most identifiable creator of sting-style — often deliberately misleading — exposés, O’Keefe’s star has since somewhat fallen. In 2010, O’Keefe founded Project Veritas, and over more than a decade the organization produced videos meant to discredit perceived liberal organizations, often through tactics such as manipulation and deceptive editing. According to Rolling Stone, in 2023 O’Keefe “either left or was pushed out of his own company … depending on whom you ask.” He has since tried to reestablish himself in the right-wing media ecosystem, including by creating an award in 2025 for the so-called citizen journalists who have followed in his footsteps. The first recipient was Nick Shirley.

Shirley, like O’Keefe, is promoting the possibility of fraud that he hasn't actually found

Shirley’svideo is one of many from right-wing influencers, such as Benny Johnson, decrying supposedly rampant voter fraud in California, and it includes many examples and myths that have already been debunked. One of the most prominent narratives in Shirley’s video, which was already debunked when Johnson spread it, is that voters whose registrations list central locations, like an abandoned building, as an address are a clear sign of fraud. However, as Democracy Docket notes, California law “gives people experiencing homelessness the flexibility to use any location to register to vote. As long as unhoused residents can describe the place where they spend most of their time — whether it’s an address, a cross street or a vacant lot — they can legally list it as their address on their voter registration form.”

Another one of Shirley's key examples of “fraud” in the video is a previously reported story about a woman who registered her dog to vote and cast two ballots for him in 2021 and 2022, only one of which was counted. The woman, a registered Republican, self-reported her crimes and is facing six years in prison.

The premise of Shirley’s 20-minute video is that there could be fraud in California without stricter voter ID laws and “with the state receiving millions of illegal migrants, the opportunities for fraud now are even higher.” California does require a valid ID or Social Security number when registering to vote or when voting for the first time after registering by mail, and extensive research has shown that noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is exceedingly rare and extremely unlikely to impact elections. Yet Shirley’s video has been picked up by others in right-wing media, including livestreamerTim Pool, former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit.

Had someone just awoken from a decadelong coma, they might find these types of claims quite familiar. In 2012, O’Keefe attempted to show how easy it was to commit voter fraud in a state without strict voter ID laws via a video titled “Dead people receive ballots in NH primary,” which claims that conspirators could use the names of the deceased to cast fraudulent ballots to steal an election. But, as Media Matters noted at the time, the video “actually demonstrates just how difficult it would be to pull off such a plot.”

Although it’s true that making sure ballot rolls are accurate is important, O’Keefe’s stunt only showed that without knowing how many votes were needed, the conspirators would need to engage in a massive plot and subsequent cover-up to make sure they had covered the spread. It would be an enormous undertaking. O’Keefe provided no evidence that such a scheme existed for the simple reason that there was no such plot.

In another one of O’Keefe’s “gotcha” videos on voter fraud, a Project Veritas employee almost obtains a ballot meant for registered voter Eric Holder, then the U.S. attorney general. Project Veritas marketed the video as a slam dunk, claiming it had “proven” fraud occurred while in reality no vote was cast and no fraud occurred. The manufactured stunt, like Shirley’s escapades in California, was another senseless attempt to rally people behind more restrictive voter ID laws.

Though Shirley’s claims about California include some different details from O’Keefe and Project Veritas’ claims, the gist is the same: Both attempt to prove “voter fraud” and fail to show any actual fraud being committed. Such right-wing misinformation has been debunked for years while the truth is still that fraud is just not happening at the scale they claim.

GMAIL 2 26

San Francisco Chronicle (AP)

Trump’s ‘meme’ of an activist’s arrest shows official embrace of AI fakes

Takeaway

The White House posted a doctored image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong crying after her arrest, then defended it as a “meme.” Experts warn this state-backed use of AI-edited visuals deepens distrust, invites copycats, and makes it harder for the public to tell truth from propaganda.

Why it matters

The Trump White House turning a real arrest into a “meme” normalizes state-backed disinformation and makes outrage itself a distribution strategy. Once official channels treat manipulated images as jokes, it gets harder to police bad faith content, blurs what counts as evidence, and arms Republicans to dismiss real footage as “AI” when it hurts them....$

AP News

https://apnews.com › article › fact-check-levy-armstrong-crying-minnesota-3de56d267fe704d16fac31d8fc3d71e9

White House shares altered image of attorney arrest in Minnesota | AP News

Jan 22, 2026The Trump administration is misrepresenting the arrest of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong for her role in an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church.

NOTE HE NO ~ WACKO

February 4, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Frank, you called this defund the police 2.0. What do you mean by that?

FRANK GAFFNEY (GUEST): Well, as you said earlier, Steve, in 2020 the pretext of the Floyd death was used to mount violent attacks on not just government property and private property but law enforcement personnel. And the result of all of that was this huge effort to blame the police for the problem and say they needed to be defunded.

Well, if that doesn't sound like déjà vu all over again at the moment, I don't know what this is. The law enforcement personnel who are doing their assigned missions as well as they can under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to say nothing of life threatening circumstances in some cases, are now being told we need to defund them effectively. I mean, whether it's disarming them or simply dismantling any protection that they have from being doxxed and thereby having not only their own lives put at risk but their families.

I mean, the question has to be asked, Steve. Not only is this, you know, defund the police 2.0, who are we thinking are gonna do these jobs under these circumstances? It is just as was the first go round. Predictably the case that you will see people bailing out of ICE, people refusing to work under these job conditions, people making the eminently sensible decision that if they — we don't have their back, they're out of there. And then where are we?

And I just have to say, Steve, I did a commentary this morning, I think you're referring to it, about this being a moment when actually we need ICE more than ever. And it's not just because of the, the so-called worst of the worst, the gang bangers and the drug cartels and this, I'm worried sick about what we are told is multiple divisions worth of Chinese soldiers who were brought in across Joe Biden's open borders.

And what Sam Faddis has just written up at AND magazine, one of his stupendous pieces informed by his own experience in his last duty station at the Central Intelligence Agency where he was responsible for countering weapons of mass destruction terrorism. And he's warning about the second biowarfare laboratory by the same guy who had the first one and possibly they think there may be 20 more of these things.

You put those Chinese soldiers in positions to use bioweapons that, according to Sam, maybe have a mortality rate of 60 to 90%. You're talking about mass destruction of the United States, the population, and that's what the blood of — will be on the hands of these Democrats and some Republicans who are trying to get rid of ICE. We need them more than ever now.

BANNON: They don't care, they'd rather keep the 20 million, that's how they keep power.

AN 1 26

Kicking off what is expected to be a weekly campaign-style tour of the nation to promote his agenda ahead of the November midterms, President Donald Trump engaged in what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale described as an “alternative reality” of “piling lie upon lie” for his Iowa audience.

“You know, inflation we’ve solved; it’s done,” Trump told Fox News during the trip to Iowa. “We have it good where prices are coming way down. They were just saying, in Iowa the fuel is $1.95. Did you hear that? Somebody said $1.85. But it was $3.50, $4.50 just a year ago, a year and a half ago. You look at eggs, you look at groceries, it’s all down. Everything’s come down. Do you notice they don’t mention affordability anymore?”

According to Dale, it’s “true” that egg prices have fallen significantly, but the “rest of his narrative was thoroughly inaccurate.”

He continued his fact check: “Inflation is not over; prices continue to rise. Overall prices have gone up, not down. Overall grocery prices have gone up, not down. Iowa’s average gas price is much higher than $1.95. And Democrats have certainly not stopped mentioning affordability; in fact, it remains a key focus of their public remarks.”

Dale apparently wasn’t the only one fact-checking gas prices.

“In an unusual moment,” he writes, “Trump was fact-checked on this subject by an attendee at his Iowa speech on Tuesday. When hespoke of gas in Iowa being $1.95 or $1.85 per gallon, someone in the crowd shouted, ‘No, $2.63,’ according to CNN’s Steve Contorno, who was on scene.”

According to Dale, “Overall consumer prices have increased during this presidential term; in December 2025, seasonally adjusted overall prices were 2.2% higher than they were in January 2025, and, again, 2.7% higher than they were in December 2024.”

He also noted that “It’s not true that ‘you look at groceries, it’s all down.’ In fact, the 0.7% increase in the Consumer Price Index for groceries between November 2025 and December 2025 was the biggest month-to-month jump reported in more than three years.”

And he added, “Iowa gas prices are generally much higher than Trump said.”

AN 1 26

President Donald Trump was up early Thursday morning for a Truth Social posting spree that focused largely on his 2020 election loss — but included a dash of claims about 2016's "Russiagate."

The rant included a nearly decade-long conspiracy that Trump was spied on by former President Barack Obama. Trump reposted Fox News commentary from far-right host Jesse Watters who claimed Obama personally ordered a CIA spying operation on Trump.

"ARREST OBAMA NOW," one post read.

According to the "Truths," the Obama administration manufactured evidence to undermine Trump's election in 2016, though none of the information about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia was revealed publicly until after the election. Other reports about the Russian hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign, Russian bots and content farms were reported throughout 2016, a Washington Post timeline shows.

Trump on Thursday morning also posted a series of "Truths" showing he's still focused on his 2020 election loss.

Among the posts was a flood of accusations claiming that the election was "crooked."

Trump appeared to post screenshots of random users from X who agree with his sentiment that he actually won the 2020 election.

Another video Trump posted from CNN appears to show a discussion about Trump winning Georgia in 2024, though Trump doesn't explain how that is relevant to his 2020 conspiracy theories about the election.

Trump also shared another conspiracy cited by former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly about the Chinese government funding leftist groups and the Minnesota Immigration Rights Action Committee.

AN 1 26 CDV

When President Donald Trump holds a press conference, he often gets a comprehensive fact-check from CNN and MS NOW. CNN's Daniel Dale will go point by point, debunking false or inaccurate claims. And MS NOW hosts Chris Jansing and Ana Cabrera will pause coverage of a Trump presser to point out something that's blatantly false. Trump typically responds to debunking on CNN or MS NOW by attacking it as "fake news."

In a biting article published on January 13, Salon's Chauncey DeVega argues that Trump's use of "distortions" is an effective tool for the president because MAGA voters and politicians take comfort in an "alternate reality."

"Donald Trump has constructed a political hall of mirrors," DeVega warns. "It is a sinister, distorting reality that shows the president only what he wishes to see: fantasies of greatness and unchecked power. The effect disorients those who still live in the reality-based community, with centrists, institutionalists, mainstream liberals and progressives among the most vulnerable. For the president and his MAGA followers, though, these distortions are more comforting and real than the outside world. Since Trumpism is a political personality cult, the hall of mirrors and alternate reality it creates are a powerful tool for tying its followers to their dear leader."

DeVega adds, "This illusion is not to be found at some traveling carnival in small-town America. It exists in the White House and is expanding across the United States — and, increasingly, the world, where Trump's behavior is, by his own admission, constrained only by 'my own morality…. my own mind.'"

This "alternate reality," DeVega laments, is reinforced by Trump loyalists in Congress and his administration. The Salon journalist even compares Trump's Cabinet meetings to North Korea, where communist officials relentlessly praise "Dear Leader."

"In scenes that recall North Korea, or some other dictatorship or banana republic," DeVega observes, "Cabinet meetings increasingly function as loyalty rituals, with participants taking turns praising Trump's greatness and flawless leadership…. The president's followers in Congress want to put his face on the silver dollar and other currency. They also want to see Trump's face on Mount Rushmore."

DeVega continues, "The U.S. Navy recently announced plans for a new type of 'battleship' called 'the Trump-class'…. Trump's hall of mirrors is much more than narcissism or egomania. It is a vainglorious Orwellian project to rewrite America's public memory with the goal of further hollowing out democracy and the rule of law.

*Chauncey DeVega's full article for Salon is available at this link.