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WH INFLUENCER

3 26 MEBBE REDUMBDENT SEE WH MTG ~ ANTIFA

merri ok

SEE NICK SHIRLEY

BENNY J

JOK

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an 8 26

Foreign countries are paying online influencers in the MAGA world, but new reporting revealed it's no longer only about elections.

Politico Playbook reported Monday that the influencer campaign has now taken a turn where foreign money is flowing into MAGA influencers who, in turn, have their own online lobbying campaign targeting Cabinet officials.

After previously caring little, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl.) wants to do something about it and Democrats are eagerly joining her effort.

“Being an influencer right now is kind of like the Wild West,” Luna said, speaking to Politico Playbook. “There’s a lot of things laws haven’t caught up to.”

The report cited bipartisan support from Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) and Vicente Gonzalez (Texas) and Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden (Wis.).

Luna said that the Foreign Propaganda Registration Act would be an amendment to the Foreign Agents Registration Act that would mandate influencers disclose when they're being paid by a foreign government to promote political commentary to their followers.

Luna had a briefing that cited foreign influence efforts and she spoke with government agencies that heard about payments coming "on the back end" of the influencer world.

“I have a number of those people,” Luna said when asked whether she knew there were specific influencers scoring foreign cash. “I’m not going to put anyone on blast. That’s not my job.”

“Some of your biggest profile names ... a large portion of them, in some way, shape or form, have been approached at one point to push a certain position that’s probably tied to a foreign country,” Luna added.

She said she's seen contracts that go into the millions of dollars.

Luna also said that she thinks Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will be open to the idea, but if he isn't, she said she'd simply do a "discharge petition" and move it forward anyway. In the past several months, Republicans have sidestepped the leadership on bipartisan legislation that Johnson refused to push by using a discharge petition. It requires that 218 lawmakers sign on to support a bill or resolution to be pushed out of committee and voted on by the full House.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to use because members’ signatures are public and can carry political consequences. Though in the last two years, all of the discharge petitions have been in part due to public pressure.

"The fight ballooned in recent months inside MAGA, where the sprawling influencer ecosystem that fueled Trump’s political rise faces growing accusations within its own ranks that foreign governments and other well-funded interests are trying to manipulate it," said Playbook. "Allegations have been leveled against influencers targeting JD Vance, Tucker Carlson and recently that Laura Loomer’s trip to Ukraine was funded by the country — which she vehemently denied."

In April, Alex Bruesewitz, who is in Trump’s inner circle and is also closest to the MAGA influencer world, has been advocating that influencers stamp out such foreign campaigns.

"Bruesewitz has begun flagging suspected paid pressure campaigns as high up as Cabinet officials, warning them who may be behind efforts to influence their agencies," Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the effort.

“If you get paid to promote a swimsuit, you have to say ‘paid partnership.’ If you get paid to tell the president to pull tariffs off of India, you don’t have to disclose,” Bruesewitz told Playbook. “The American public deserves to know what content that is going out on the accounts of their favorite social media personalities is bought and paid for by foreign interests.”

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podcast alt rt infl

Andy Ngo is MAGA media's go-to "expert" on far-left extremism. The Portland-born social media personality has spent years pushing Republican leaders to treat anti-Trump and leftist movements as terrorist threats, churning out a bevy of hyper-sensationalized and misleading social media content to make his case.

3 hr vid

126: Who the Hell is Andy Ngo? feat. Molly Conger

Jul 27, 2026 Posting Through It

Andy Ngo is MAGA media's go-to "expert" on far-left extremism. The Portland-born social media media personality has spent years pushing Republican leaders to treat anti-Trump and leftist movements as terrorist threats, churning out a bevy of hyper-sensationalized and misleading social media content to make his case. Jared and Mike’s guest for this episode is researcher and reporter Molly Conger (https://bsky.app/profile/socialistdog...) , who hosts the "Weird Little Guys" podcast.

Together, they retrace notable moments in Ngo's life and career to explain his overnight MAGA stardom and how he's weaponized it against his perceived political opponents. From his roots in the "New Atheist" movement to his appearance last year at a White House "Antifa Roundtable" event, Ngo’s career has become emblematic of MAGA’s contempt for journalistic standards and the truth. (Ngo declined to be interviewed for this episode. He responded to our request for comment with a public statement on X that said he wanted "nothing to do with" this episode and included false claims about one of the show's hosts.)

Links for Molly: • ​Weird Little Guys (https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-w...) (Cool Zone Media (https://www.coolzonemedia.com/) ) • ​Bluesky: @socialistdogmom.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/socialistdog...)

we covered Michael Tracy, Steven Miller, Steven

Crowder, Scott Adams, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbe, Laura Loomer, Charlie Kirk, Anthony Kumia, Dave Portoi, Nick

Fuentes, Candace Owens, Tim P, and as the affforementioned Jack Bizobic

rww misc

07/20/2026

Joel Zapata @ Texas Observer: The Real Lesson Behind Texas’ New Bible Curriculum Requirements

Going forward, students will learn that life circumstances are beyond their power to change. They will learn that their place and the place of others in the economy and larger society should not be questioned.

Sophia Tesfaye @ Salon: MAGA’s influencer class is breaking Trump’s White House

As the failure of Trump’s domestic agenda demoralizes his base, the defining currency of MAGA has shifted from ideology to access.

FOr years, Donald Trump benefited from an informal court of influencers, podcasters and self-appointed power brokers who claimed unusual access to the former reality TV star. During his presidential campaigns and midterm election cycles, that ecosystem amplified Trump’s message and bypassed traditional Republican institutions. Now it’s colliding with the basic mechanics of governing and embarrassing the administration by creating a parallel power structure of clout chasers around the presidency.

This week alone offered multiple remarkably different examples of the same phenomenon. In one, alleged pardon brokers sold access to Trump’s orbit as a luxury service. In another, one of Trump’s most influential MAGA personalities allegedly converted that proximity into a payday on the prediction markets. And in another example, a freshman Republican congressman threatened to derail House business over a feud with one of Trump’s favorite influencers.

It’s not just that MAGA has grifters. It is that the grifters now help define the terms of power.

Each of these scandals is about a White House surrounded by people who have figured out that proximity to power is the only product worth selling, and who are now cashing in on it badly enough to blow up their own party’s agenda. It’s not just that MAGA has grifters. It is that the grifters now help define the terms of power.

The clearest way to see the problem is the way Trump World now treats information. In MAGAland, insider information is something to be teased, reposted and traded on. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that over lunch at a members-only social club in Tampa, Florida, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna confided in associates that she already knew Trump would pick JD Vance as his running mate in 2024. According to a person familiar with the conversation, she revealed she had passed the tip on to Rogan O’Handley, the MAGA influencer known to millions of followers as “DC Draino,” so he could place a winning bet on Polymarket, and she later teased him for not placing a bigger wager.

O’Handley had reportedly been quietly campaigning on social media to get Trump to consider Luna herself for the ticket, and when she told him Vance had gotten the nod instead, he cashed in on the correct pick anyway. Another account described a former investment banker saying he received the same kind of early tip through a conservative Heritage Foundation associate and used it to profit as well. Both Luna and O’Handley deny any wrongdoing, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is reportedly examining the allegations.

As the failure of Trump’s domestic agenda demoralizes his base, the defining currency of MAGA has shifted from ideology to access. So now the administration is completely besieged by unelected influencers who treat proximity to the Oval Office as a monetization strategy.

To understand how deep the transactional rot at the heart of modern conservatism goes, look no further than the spectacular saga of Torrence Hatch, rapper Boosie Badazz’ legal name. Facing a federal sentencing hearing for possessing a firearm as a felon, Hatch did what many desperate people do in the orbit of the current administration: He looked for a monetary shortcut. For the cool sum of $600,000, Hatch hired JM Burkman & Associates — a firm run by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, a pair of notorious right-wing grifters. The deal was supposed to help him secure a Trump pardon after a federal gun case, but the pardon never materialized, and Boosie is now trying to recover part of the money through arbitration.

Related

MAGA wants to launder political donations — through God

The Trump administration’s second-term clemency process has become so informal that a handful of White House aides and outside allies can shape who gets attention, while people outside the administration sell themselves as if they can guarantee access.

Boosie’s case reads like a perfect MAGA parable because Wohl and Burkman allegedly pitched him with the confidence of people who knew how to sound close to the center. These are the same convicted felons who pleaded guilty over an illegal robocall campaign targeting Black voters during the 2020 election and later faced millions in civil penalties. Yet in the MAGA economy, past disgrace is a premium credential. The two reportedly invoked a network of conservative influencers and Republican officials — including influencer and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, far-right media personalities Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, MAGA activist Erika Kirk, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Andy Biggs of Arizona — as if name-dropping alone could grease the machinery of the presidency. Several of those figures denied involvement once the story went public, which only sharpened the point: the MAGA ecosystem is so saturated with pseudo-access that it is hard to tell where the con ends and the governing begins.

If the Boosie affair illustrates how MAGA influencers are monetizing the White House from the outside, a crisis that emerged this week on the House floor shows how they are breaking the government from within as that same competition for influence is now spilling directly into the legislative process.

Alex Bruesewitz is not a Cabinet official and holds no Senate-confirmed position. He serves as an outside political adviser to Trump. Yet a sitting Republican congressman spent this week threatening to gum up the GOP’s agenda in the House until Bruesewitz is removed from the president’s orbit.

Florida Rep. Randy Fine’s break with his party over a routine procedural rule might look minor in isolation, but in a chamber of Congress Republicans control by a bare 218 to 212 margin, even one defection changes the math. On July 14, Fine did something almost unheard of for a modern Republican and voted no, the only member of his party to do so, on a 215-211 procedural rule tying the long-stalled Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act to a State Department funding bill.

The strange part is that Fine had spent months publicly begging Senate Republicans to attach the SAVE America Act to exactly this kind of must-pass legislation. He’d even co-signed a letter in March alongside Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, Chip Roy of Texas, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and others, pledging to vote no on any Senate bill until it moved. So when House leadership finally gave him what he’d demanded, he voted no anyway, telling reporters only that he was working out “disputes inside the family,” a line he delivered, word for word, to both the Daily Caller and TMZ, which tells you it was a rehearsed answer.

The real family dispute has nothing to do with voter identification. Fine has reportedly told White House officials he intends to vote against every rule that reaches the House floor until Trump fires Bruesewitz. The feud apparently traces back to Bruesewitz’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, where Carlson, discussing Trump’s own endorsement of Fine, described the congressman on air as “that creepy fat guy from Florida who endorsed genocide.” Bruesewitz piled on, telling Carlson that Fine “has tweeted some ugly things, really ugly things,” and he promoted Fine’s primary challenger, celebrity gambler Dan Bilzerian.

Fine, who is Jewish, has built much of his political identity around confronting antisemitism on the right, once calling Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America” for platforming white nationalist Nick Fuentes. The Florida congressman retaliated on X, accusing Bruesewitz, Carlson and Candace Owens of spreading a “mind virus” that seeks to “pit Jews and Christians against each other.” He has since taken the fight off social media and turned his own vote into a weapon, threatening to freeze the House floor until Trump and Bruesewitz waved the white flag.

That a sitting member of Congress was willing to shut down his own party’s legislative business over a personal and ideological vendetta involving a Fox News alumnus and an outside political adviser is landing at the worst possible moment for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who needs something close to unanimity just to function. He’s already seen what a handful of defections can do: Weeks earlier, a separate bloc of conservative holdouts, several of whom had signed Fine’s own SAVE America letter, tanked a defense authorization rule. Suddenly Johnson was faced with a member willing to burn down the floor schedule indefinitely because the party’s most influential unofficial adviser called him fat on a podcast.

When clout brokers can provoke lawmakers into obstructing their own party’s agenda, the White House is no longer directing the coalition — it is being dragged around by it. It’s clear that Donald Trump’s unofficial MAGA court is becoming a liability.

Read more

about MAGA

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MMA 6 26

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, several right-wing influencers includingJames O’Keefe,Anthony Rubin, Cam Higby,Jonathan Choe, 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 andaffiliatedlocalstations, the New York Post,*The Benny Show*, andAsmongold — spread the videos and their claims of bribes. O’Keefe, in particular, was interviewed on several programs — including*The Benny Show*, 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“tens if not hundreds of thousands” of times.

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 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.

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 publishedcontent 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.

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

02/18/26 4:25 PM EST

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

01/11/12 4:54 PM EST

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

06/10/26

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an 4 26

MAGA influencers are battling with each other over foreign donations from those who support the Iran war.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer took a dive into the influencer culture of the right.

"There is rampant suspicion that there is a DOJ investigation into conservative influencers who may be paid by foreign sources to both oppose and/or support the Iran war," Stein explained. "And all of these conservative influencers are salivating over the prospects that their ideological foes within the conservative movement, not like liberals within the conservative movement, may soon be arrested."

Sommer thinks that this investigation isn't likely to exist.

All of it stems from a tweet from someone calling themselves "Zero Hour" that Sommer said is a "shady character" he's dealt with in the past. When the account posted it, the right-wing pounced.

"They imagined their foes, whether it be, you know, pro-Israel, pro-Iran war against Iran, war against Israel. They imagine them in shackles," Sommer said.

The Justice Department hasn't given a statement confirming or denying the existence of a probe.

Still, it prompted Sommer to crack a joke about whether "CatTurd" would be arrested.

What Stein found amusing was that conservatives were excited that others on their team might be arrested as opposed to someone on the left being targeted.

"We're past the point where they want to lock up Hillary Clinton, they now want to see their own MAGA influencers locked up over this war," said Stein.

Sommer said it's a sign about just "how bad things have gotten in the MAGA civil war."

Jack Posobiec posted this week on X, "Influencers who take foreign money and don't disclose it should be deported to the country they took the money from."

"So, I mean, these guys are, they're so excited for what, again, to be clear, is the non-existent pundit purge," mocked Sommer.

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mma 4 26

Research/Study

“No Kings” rallies highlight how right-wing provocateurs generate content for right-wing media

Right-wing criticism of No Kings protests are being fueled by videos from TPUSA Frontlines, FreedomNews, Nate Friedman, Julio Rosas, and others

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Jack Winstanley

:{Published 04/08/26

Right-wing media have been using video content from right-wing content creators, many of whom describe themselves as “independent journalists,” to attack the March 28 “No Kings” rallies, claiming protesters had “idiotic things to say,” calling protesters “quite terrible” people, and accusing them of engaging in “terrorism.”

This is just the latest example of the feedback loop between right-wing media and a variety of online influencers and content creators who have emerged to create and distribute content that spreads right-wing narratives on social media. These creators, some of whom have affiliations with right-wing outlets and organizations like FreedomNews and Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, have become part of the right-wing media ecosystem, as right-wing media figures have come to rely on them for on-the-ground footage and evidence in support of longstanding right-wing talking points.

These content creators and so-called “independent journalists” descended on the March 28 No Kings rallies in several U.S. cities — including New York City, Nashville, Las Vegas, Dallas, and Los Angeles — for content, using their videos to push the longstanding right-wing narrative that anti-Trump protesters are violent or paid.

While 74 arrests were reported in relation to protests in Los Angeles, the No Kings rallies drew out an estimated 8 million people across the United States. Despite the overwhelming number of protesters engaging peacefully, right-wing content creators highlighted confrontations between protesters and police.

Citation

Images via Nate Friedman, Frontlines TPUSA, Julio Rosas, and FreedomNews.tv

Another video claimed that Turning Point Action volunteers had been heckled and that “cops just stepped in to scold a leftist protester after she used her pom pom to hit a woman singing Christian praise music.” On Instagram, TPUSA and one of its creators, Bronson Alford, posted a video from New York City that claimed a No Kings attendee “can’t define ‘conservative.’” Instagram, [3/28/26, 3/28/26, 3/28/26, 3/28/26, 3/30/26, accessed 4/6/26; Axios, 10/30/25; TPUSA Frontlines, accessed 4/6/26]}:

Citation

From a March 30, 2026, YouTube video from Turning Point USA

Citation

From a March 30, 2026, YouTube video from Nate Friedman

Citation

From a March 29, 2026, video from Brecca Stoll, uploaded to Instagram

Citation

From a March 29, 2026, video from SurgePhilly, uploaded to TikTok

Citation

From the March 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's The Charlie Kirk Show

Citation

From the March 30, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Citation

From an April 3, 2026, video from Savanah Hernandez, uploaded to YouTube

Citation

From a March 24, 2026, video from Nate Friedman, uploaded to YouTube

//

  1. ### Backlash from MAHA influencers and right-leaning podcasters over glyphosate is loud, but they still stop short of breaking with Trump

03/30/26 1:39 PM EDT

  1. ### Far-right influencers Nick Fuentes and Jake Lang are fighting over who is “the main pro-white advocate”

03/18/26 11:00 AM EDT

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

02/18/2

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MMA

March 24, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House

ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): You see my point about the socialization that begins to happen when you are accustomed to seeing these guys in their uniforms basically everywhere you go.

ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): That's right. And that is a big -- and that is what Bannon is trying to say is that they are trying, and there's an important thing sort of tie in here with the question you just had with Michael, because one, they're trying to make it much more acceptable and normal. And that's not only going to be in these big displays like we saw in Minnesota where it's scary and they're coming in with masks and it's overwhelming force. It's a normal part of life. And if they're picking a few people off the line, and that's one of the things that they've been saying in talk radio as they continue to pull Bannon's thread, is that they're getting used to sniffing out individuals that are suspicious on these lines. It's practice in training.

MENENDEZ: Sounds a lot like racial profiling.

CARUSONE: It sure does. And this is all part of it, that it starts to become even more normal and acceptable in places you don't expect. But in the lead up to your question with Michael, one of the things you said is that ICE was sent in a response to viral videos. Now, let's play this out. There is a entire phalanx of investigative creators just like that Nick Shirley guy that are about to be deployed around election misinformation. So, now what happens when you have a video that sort of totally based off of nonsense gets uplifted in the right-wing media, makes its way to Fox News. It's a new big story.

Then Trump has a pretext to sort of send these now figures that have been socialized to be more present into these areas where these videos prop up. That's the scenario that we're playing out. It's not just going to be out of nowhere. Right now, it's the crisis at airports because of TSA and it seems dispersed, but it'll be much more targeted and focused as we get closer and closer to the election. That's the real threat. And so when it's more normal, it's going to be hard to mount a kind of resistance to just their sheer presence alone.

//

  1. ### On The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses the right-wing media chain of events that led to Trump sending ICE to airports

03/23/26

  1. ### On MS NOW, Angelo Carusone warns of right-wing media’s efforts “to preload a narrative” about the GOP’s SAVE Act ahead of midterms

03/23/26

  1. ### On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses how right-wing media are spinning economic consequence of the Iran war

03/20/2

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On MSNBC's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone highlights that what Brendan Carr is doing at the FCC was “forecasted and telegraphed” in Project 2025

09/22/25

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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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