Kilmeade, Brian fx
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PRIMARY 7 26 EZ IRAN WAR HAWK
bak fail?
NO MERRI
JRNL FAIL PORTLAND OLD B ROLL
big 3 iran war 3 26 // HANNITY
TRUMP CORRUPT PRO
kill the homeless gaff
not straight news
CRM TRAITOR HILLARY RUSSIAGATE BS
see snap cuts
after 5 hearings?! 1st brk w djt?
trump 12-17
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October 12, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): So, the other big news that happened over the last few days is the President of the United States in a personal call with Vladimir Putin has gotten a deal that would bring hundreds of tons of diesel oil to our shores. But that money is no doubt gonna be used to help kill innocent Ukrainians and those in the battlefield. Are you okay with that tradeoff?
K.T. MCFARLAND (GUEST): Look, Russia gets its money to pay for this war through oil sales. It still sells more oil in Europe than Europe is paying Ukraine to fight the war. So am I okay with the United States kind of bailing Russia out for the immediate term with diesel? Let's just see where it goes. If this is the beginning of a ceasefire, if this is an energy ceasefire — Ukraine doesn't attack Russia's energy infrastructure, Russia doesn't attack Ukraine's infrastructure, we get a little oil — that's fine. If Russia, however, is going to use that money and then escalate the war and not go to the negotiating table and then think that somehow it's got President Trump over a barrel, bad joke, barrel of oil. Look, it's not gonna happen. President Trump is not gonna be done in and fooled by Russia or China, or Zelenskyy or Iran.
KILMEADE: Well, Vladimir Putin is making him look terrible. Because he said there is a ceasefire on energy. And this post was backed up by fact. Zelenskyy put it up. A power plant in Kharkiv was attacked this evening. Overall, the past weeks alone, the Russians have carried out more than 200 strikes on electricity generation and transmission facilities in Ukraine. And another 17 strikes this week targeting gas and oil facilities. Ukraine wants peace. The question is whether Russia does. Look, Russia is having one of the biggest catastrophic wars in their history: four and a half years, 1.4 million casualties, hundreds of thousands of dead, 30,000 a month, and now they're losing ground in the Donbas, which some predicted would be won by Russia flat-out. So they have no choice. I'm concerned about them using that money to help kill our guys in the Middle East.
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STUDY: Figures on Fox News' key programs have called for escalation in the Iran war more than 250 times since the initial ceasefire
Mark Levin, Brian Kilmeade, and Gen. Jack Keane accounted for nearly 90 calls for escalation
Written by Harrison Ray
Research contributions from Isabella Sherk, Rob Savillo, Tyler Monroe & Casey Wexler
Published 08/26/26
In the four months since the initial ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, Fox News figures have continuously warmongered. Throughout the cycle of ceasefire violations and stalled peace talks, individuals on Fox have urged the president to “decapitate and destroy this regime,” send Iran “back to the Stone Age,” and urged him to “send the SEALs in and blow something up just for grins.”
Media Matters found that 7 key shows on Fox News — which includes Fox's evening programming as well as some shows hosted by commentators whom President Donald Trump has praised or promoted during the Iran war — called for escalatory action in the Iran War at least 252 times since the initial ceasefire agreement on April 7.
Key Findings
From April 7, when the U.S. and Iran reached the first ceasefire of the war, through August 6, network personalities and guests called for the Trump administration to escalate its war in Iran at least 252 times. Over the period, figures on Fox frequently argued for military strikes, ground invasions or seizing territory, regime change, arming Iranians, or attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Just 5 individuals — host Brian Kilmeade (35 calls for escalation), host Mark Levin (32), Fox News senior strategic analyst retired Gen. Jack Keane (22), former national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (16), and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen (13) — accounted for nearly half of all these calls for escalation. These 5 figures have all played a prominent role at some point in informing Trump's foreign policy, at times specifically on Iran. Trump has discussed Iran with Kilmeade directly and encouraged people to watch Levin's coverage of Iran, while Thiessen and Keane reportedly have his ear on Iran strategy as well. Kellogg has played high-level national security roles in both Trump administrations.
Top 5 warmongers on key Fox News shows
The network's flagship 3-hour morning show, Fox & Friends, led all shows in our study with 92 calls for escalation, followed by Life, Liberty & Levin (50), Hannity (35), and Jesse Watters Primetime (32). Laura Ingraham's show The Ingraham Angle, which has notably pushed back on the war at times, produced only 8 total calls for escalation in our study.
Key shows calling for escalation in Iran war NO GRAPH
Calls for escalation consisted of several types of arguments
The arguments within these calls for escalation fell in 1 of 5 categories — Fox figures arguing for resumed or expanded military strikes, ground invasions or the seizure of territory, further regime change, arming the Iranian populace, or attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure.
All together, there were 299 unique arguments made over the course of the study period (calls for escalation could — and often did — include more than one argument).
Arguments calling to escalate Iran war
Speakers consistently advocated to resume or expand military strikes
As the Trump administration repeatedly announced imminent peace deals throughout the four-month period, network guests and personalities argued for the resumption or expansion of military strikes. Over that period, speakers on the 7 Fox News programs argued for resuming or expanding military strikes at least 119 times.
Brian Kilmeade, who was the network's chief advocate pushing for military strikes, argued 21 times in favor of additional strikes. Kilmeade frequently argued that the U.S. should resume military action, saying he doesn’t “see any scenario” in which the Trump administration would not have to “go back in and finish the job.” The Fox & Friends host argued that “the quicker we start again, it’s the quicker we end it.”
Fox & Friends led the key shows by a large margin, arguing for resuming or expanding strikes at least 65 times.
Jack Keane (14) and Marc Thiessen (11) followed Kilmeade with the most arguments to resume or expand military strikes. On June 5, in the middle of the supposed ceasefire, Keane said, “Let's go big, take down as much of their capability as we possibly can, and get these guys as close to collapse as a military operation can possibly achieve.”
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From the June 5, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Speakers frequently suggested deploying ground troops or seizing territory
Throughout the war, network guests and personalities frequently advocated deploying ground troops or seizing territory. Suggestions from these figures included seizing Kharg Island or other islands in the region, taking further military action in the Strait of Hormuz including reclaiming or occupying the waterway, and for the Trump administration to go in and physically seize enriched uranium. In total, network guests and personalities argued for deploying ground troops or seizing territory at least 63 times.
Brian Kilmeade led all speakers, arguing at least 13 times that the U.S. should deploy more troops or seize territory, often focusing on U.S. control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Keith Kellogg argued to deploy ground troops or seize territory at least 12 times, the next most of any speaker, often focused on seizing Kharg Island. Kellogg acknowledged in his appearances that he has "repeatedly" and "consistently" argued for taking Kharg Island, adding the president should “put a provisional government in charge.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Speakers often advocated for further regime change in Iran
After the initial assassination strikes on the first day of the war, network guests and personalities continued to argue for further regime change at least 51 times.
Mark Levin led all speakers, arguing for this at least 11 times. His show Life, Liberty, & Levin led the charge with at least 21 such arguments. Levin frequently argued for the Trump administration to “eliminate” the regime, insisted that nothing would change Iran “except its destruction,” and argued that “the regime itself must be pulled out by the roots.”
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From the April 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin
Speakers pushed for arming Iranians
Network guests and personalities argued for the Trump administration to arm or fund the Iranian populace or Iranian opposition groups in their fight against the Iranian regime at least 42 times.
Life, Liberty, & Levin (27 arguments) led all shows by a large margin, followed by Hannity (12).
Mark Levin was seemingly the network's chief proponent of arming Iranians, arguing for this 22 times. Levin leaned on comparisons to the Reagan administration, saying in one segment, “We need to arm the Iranian people the way we armed other entities, freedom fighters, throughout the world under the Reagan administration,” and in another, touted the “success” of the Reagan administration when they “armed the freedom fighters.”
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From the May 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin
Speakers advocated for attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure
With network guests and personalities seeming to grow frustrated with stalling negotiations, speakers resorted to arguing for attacks on civilian, oil, or other non-military infrastructure at least 24 times over the four month period.
Fox News host Sean Hannity proposed a campaign to “take out 10%” of Iran's infrastructure every three days until “everything is wiped out.” Keane argued to “destroy and dismantle” the country's energy infrastructure “on the mainland.” And Fox host Jesse Watters repeatedly touted Trump's so-called “bridge and power plant day.”
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From the April 7, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
Fox News' warmongering rhetoric has real-world implications
Donald Trump's close relationship with Fox News has blurred the line between the network's political commentary and unofficial policymaking. The president watches the channel “religiously,” its personalities have direct access to him, and their on-air demands often worm their way into the administration's political agenda.
And while the promised “four to five week” war — which has strained household budgets, failed to achieve its stated objectives, and killed thousands overseas, including at least 18 U.S. troops — ran on, many of Fox News' personalities and guests spent their time on air encouraging the president to dig in his heels and escalate.
Methodology...
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...Others on the right have denied, excused, or downplayed Trump’s self-dealing
- Fox host Greg Gutfeld excused Trump's Qatari jet and crypto ventures, saying that Trump was “making billions before and he will make billions after.” Gutfeld said, “He didn't put a gun to anybody's head and took money from them” and questioned, “How much money did the Clintons and the Obamas make after they were president?” [Fox News, The Five, 7/1/26]
- After Fox anchor Bill Hemmer talked about the danger of “investigations” into the Trump family if they “lose control of Congress,” Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said, “Both Eric and Don said they have nothing to do with that mining company.” Hemmer immediately clarified that they were discussing the mine in Kazakhstan. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 7/1/26]
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FOX HOST BRIAN KILMEADE ON IRAN: "YOU CAN'T SAY IT'S THE NEW YORK TIMES' OR WALL STREET JOURNAL'S FAULT, THEY ARE SETTING UP A TOLL SYSTEM"
06/26/26 9:20 AM EDT
https://www.mediamatters.org/us-iran-relations/fox-host-brian-kilmeade-iran-you-cant-say-its-new-york-times-or-wall-street)
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06/22/26
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05/27/26
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Trump’s Fox Cabinet urges escalation as he ponders a return to war in Iran
05/18/26
Trump’s Fox Cabinet urges escalation as he ponders a return to war in Iran
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 05/18/26
As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with top aides to discuss next steps in the Iran war, his Fox News Cabinet is advising him to escalate.
Influential pundits on the MAGA propaganda channel are telling the president that he currently holds “the cards” and are urging him to use U.S. military might to seize Iran’s uranium stockpile, force open the Strait of Hormuz, assassinate the country’s leaders, and overturn its regime.
Fox has played a key role in getting the U.S. into the quagmire in Iran, with the network’s hosts (who often double as off-the-books presidential advisers) counseling him to launch the campaign in February. They continued to cheer him on over the following weeks, even as Iran’s regime remained intact and in control of its nuclear stockpile, its seizure of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices soaring, public support for the war cratered, and analysts issued dire warnings of U.S. strategic defeat.
With Trump’s ceasefire with Iran failing to produce a more permanent agreement to end the conflict, the president has returned to saber-rattling and reportedly plans to meet with “his top national security team in the Situation Room on Tuesday to discuss military options.” And Fox, which often plays an influential role in shaping Trump’s worldview through its coverage, is already banging the drums for a return to war, telling its viewers — which on any given day can include the president — that the war is a success and that Trump is in control of the situation and can easily escalate without risk.
Brian Kilmeade, one of the network’s most prominent hawks and a co-host of the president’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, on Monday morning proposed a series of simultaneous U.S. strikes against Iranian targets.
He called for the U.S. military to “open up the strait,” “grab the uranium,” and “target these bad actors that have been insincerely negotiating with our group,” an apparent reference to assassinating Iran’s diplomatic team. Kilmeade added that “the best chance for no casualties is you open up four different fronts immediately, simultaneously.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Fox correspondent Trey Yingst stressed on the same broadcast that Trump’s strategy has put him in control of the situation and left Iranian leaders desperate for a deal to avoid further U.S. strikes.
“President Trump holds the cards here, according to regional officials, who say that his strategic patience has given him not only the upper hand on the battlefield but also at the negotiating table,” Yingst said. “Now the Iranians … are grasping at straws. They are trying to find some path forward that would give them an agreement at least temporarily to enter into deeper negotiations to avoid such a bombing campaign.”
He added that Iran’s economic situation is “truly dire” and its officials “are having to try to sell a reality to the people that doesn’t exist. They were defeated militarily during Operation Epic Fury.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
And KT McFarland — a former Fox personality turned Trump national security adviser — even suggested during her Fox & Friends appearance that China would hesitate to engage the U.S. militarily because the U.S. success in Iran has shown them to be “no match for America militarily.”
“If you are the Chinese leader, you’ve got to look at what the United States is just pulling off in Iran,” she said. “The unbelievable precision, the capability, how everything seems to work together. We seem to have done the miraculous.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Likewise, Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Middle East hawk who Trump has urged supporters to watch for his Iran commentary, spent the weekend urging the president to push for regime change in Iran.
On Saturday night, Levin hosted retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former Fox contributor Trump named as a special envoy in 2024 who has called for “putting boots on the ground” in Iran and for the U.S. to seize its territory “like the Romans did” in Carthage.
After Levin called Trump “the only president that's put his foot down firmly and said no,” Kellogg added that “there's been eight presidents since the revolution in Iran, and only one, Donald Trump, has done something about it.” He then called for Trump to seize Iran’s Kharg Island and Qeshm Island to force open the strait.
“I would just say, go full in, get rid of this regime, whatever it’s going to take out there, because as long as you’ve got the theocratic leaders, as long you’ve got mullahs running that government, you’re going to have this problem, not just today, tomorrow, a month from now, but five or 10 years for the next presidency or our grandchildren, or children as well,” Kellogg added.
“All right, I appreciate that,” Levin replied. “I agree with that. And we’re there. Let’s get it over with already. And what do I mean by that? Destroy the regime, help the people, so they can help themselves.”
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From the May 16, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
After a similar segment on Sunday night’s show featuring right-wing commentator Josh Hammer, Levin again said the U.S. needs to “eliminate that regime, because it’s the only way to prevent them once and for all from getting a nuclear weapon, tomorrow, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”
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From the May 17, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
Levin followed that up by interviewing right-wing commentator Jim Hanson, who served in the U.S. Army special forces, about how the U.S. could, as Hanson put it, “slow roll an internal unrest” in Iran “until the regime finally gets overthrown from within.” Levin suggested that this would be necessary because the Iranian regime could not be trusted to follow through on any deal Trump made.
“We have a deal, whatever the deal is, let's say it's the greatest deal since sliced bread,” Levin pontificated. “Are future presidents, future Congresses, the American people in the future, do you think we're going to be willing to enforce a deal if they break the deal, which I think they obviously will when the president leaves?”
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As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 05/13/26
While President Donald Trump accuses news outlets of committing “virtual TREASON” by producing reporting that suggests the United States is losing his war against Iran, the president’s loyal Fox News propagandists keep telling him that he’s doing a great job, saying he’s on the verge of victory, and suggesting he can fail only by backing down.
Ten weeks after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran — and nine weeks after Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” of its leaders — Iran’s regime remains intact and in control of both its nuclear stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route for global trade whose closure has spiked domestic fuel prices. In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan wrote Sunday that Trump’s decisions have put the country on the brink of a “total defeat” whose consequences “can neither be repaired nor ignored,” and he noted that “any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks.”
With his war at a standstill and the Iranians rejecting his demands for a negotiated settlement, the president has repeatedly lashed out at the press for undermining the effort by producing “treasonous” reporting — an attack he resumed on Tuesday afternoon.
“When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement,” he wrote on Truth Social. “They are aiding and abetting the enemy! All it does is give Iran false hope when none should exist. These are American cowards that are rooting against our Country."
Recent reporting suggests that Trump and his allies have been lying about how successful the war has been.
Minutes after he posted that remark, The New York Times published a report revealing that contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, classified intelligence analyses reveal that “Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities."
Earlier this month, The Washington Post determined that satellite imagery shows that “Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East,” far more destruction than the administration has publicly acknowledged, while Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence indicates the war has not impacted Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, one of Trump’s putative rationales for starting it. NOT COUNTED IN COST?
Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Trump abruptly canceled his “Project Freedom” plan to force the reopening of the Strait after Persian Gulf allies objected.
But on Fox this week, the hawkish sycophants who encouraged Trump to launch the war in the first place are still telling him he’s doing everything right.
Mark Levin: Trump’s war prevented a second holocaust and a nuclear attack on America
Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Fox host and sometime presidential adviser whose program Trump has urged the public to watch, devoted a lengthy and increasingly loud monologue on Sunday’s broadcast to lavishing the president with praise for launching the war and averting a second holocaust.
Levin denounced the Iranian regime and the war’s critics, claiming the latter “hate America and Israel so much they'd rather tens of thousands more Iranians die horrible deaths than see our country defeat this homicidal regime” and “care not at all, not one whit, that they are not only giving aid and comfort to this horrific enemy, but they are encouraging this enemy to slaughter, to execute, to rape, to torture, and to do what homicidal regimes do, because they know the enemy, that these people are in the bag.”
After urging the U.S. to arm and organize a Kurdish resistance to the regime, Levin praised the president, saying that while “humanity allowed the Holocaust to occur,” Trump and his administration had put “this Iranian Nazi regime … on its back."
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From the May 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin
“The only president with the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime, this mass-murdering, nuclear-obsessed Islamist enemy, the world’s enemy, is Donald Trump,” he said. “And unlike other such circumstances around the world where genocide is taking place — and as a practical matter, we can’t get involved in all of them — in Iran, we have the opportunity to do something about it,” he continued, calling Iran “the biggest concentration camp in human history right now.”
Levin went on to host Fox contributor Newt Gingrich, who said the Iranian regime was “fully as evil as Adolf Hitler was or Joseph Stalin was” and the war was necessary to prevent Iran from deploying a nuclear weapon “in your neighborhood,” and Fox senior strategic analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane, who urged the president to revive Project Freedom, “return to combat operations,” “put Kharg Island on the table,” and implement an intelligence operation to overturn the Iranian regime.
Sean Hannity: Iran’s leaders should “get out while they can”
Sean Hannity, the president’s chief mouthpiece at Fox, said on Monday’s show that Iran’s leaders are on the verge of fleeing the country.
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From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
After parroting Trump’s statement earlier that day that the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire is “on life support,” Hannity cited unspecified “reports tonight that Iran's very fractured fourth-tier leadership, they may be planning an exit to Russia and Vladimir Putin.”
“Now, if you recall, on this program before Epic Fury, there were reports the supreme leader, other leaders were planning a move, that they had planes with cash and currency on a tarmac ready to go,” he continued. “I said multiple times, my advice to all of them is to get out while they can. The supreme leader, all his top leadership, and then the next tier and pretty much the third tier, they're all dead. They should have listened to me then. My same advice applies here.”
Hannity then brought on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke for a report on the war, telling him, “I think they're just lashing out in utter complete paranoia, but this report that they might be planning an exit is intriguing to me.”
“Yeah, intriguing indeed,” Corke replied. “And I salute you. You are spot-on. You gave him great advice. Of course, they didn't listen and it could cost all of them.”
Hannity was off the air on Tuesday night as he traveled with the president on his state visit to China.
Fox & Friends: “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.”
The co-hosts of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show, have spent the week alternating between assuring their viewers that victory is at hand and pushing for risky escalations to the war.
Ainsley Earhart on Monday floated a military effort to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile. “The question is do we go in and get the enriched uranium? … Do the Israelis do it? Do the Americans do it?” she asked.
Lawrence Jones casually responded that such a mission — which experts say would constitute an immensely complex and risky endeavor — could be a “joint operation,” before pivoting back to how successful the war has been.
He criticized retired Adm. William McRaven’s declaration the previous day that the U.S. is “not really that much better off” than it was before starting war with Iran. “There is no doubt in my mind, taking out the ayatollah, a lot of their leadership, has put us in a better position,” said Jones. “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.” (If the metaphorical language seems confusing, consider that Jones is operating within a worldview where it’s unfathomable that we’re farther from the war’s endzone than 5 yards.)
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From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
On Tuesday, the trio stressed how important launching the war had been and praised Trump for carrying it out.
In one segment, Jones said that “we’ve been dealing with this threat for 47 years,” criticized news coverage in the face of the “phenomenal” military operation, and concluded, “I'm glad that the president has the will to deal with this."
“Don't forget the purpose of this,” Earhardt chimed in. “It is to get the enriched uranium away from them because they are planning a nuclear -- they want to have a nuclear weapon. What would they do with that? Well, they yell in the streets, publicly, death to America and wipe Israel off the face of the map. That's their ideology. That's how they think."
“They are not thinking clearly like Americans do,” she added. “They hate us with a passion, with a vengeance. And they have the capability, possibly, of building this nuclear weapon. So the president — that was why the president decided to begin this conflict.”
Brian Kilmeade added that Iran causes “chaos in the region” before adding, “For those people who think the president is boxed in and frustrated, I’m telling you, he gets coolest under pressure. He does not feel it at all.”
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Dire Strait: Trump’s Fox Cabinet ignored Hormuz in the month before the U.S. attacked Iran
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/13/26
It’s little wonder that President Donald Trump didn't seem to worry about the Strait of Hormuz in planning his war of choice against Iran: His Fox News advisers utterly ignored the possibility that Iran could respond by closing that critical shipping lane as they urged the president to launch the attack last month.
Roughly 20% of global crude oil and liquified natural gas, along with a “dominant” share of global fertilizers, reach world markets by flowing from the Persian Gulf through the narrow strait between Iran and Oman and into the Indian Ocean. A few days after U.S. and Israeli forces launched their campaign, Iran said it would attack any ship attempting the passage, effectively grinding shipping to a halt and triggering a spike in global energy prices. This week, Iranian forces have struck oil tankers and reportedly began mining the strait.
While closing the strait in response to hostilities is a well-known aspect of Iranian strategic doctrine, the Trump administration apparently did not plan for it in the lead-up to the February 28 attacks.
“The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter,” CNN reported Friday.
The report continued:
President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.
While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.
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The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.
“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”
The president’s official advisers weren’t the only ones who missed this. The Fox pundits Trump regularly watches on his television provide an alternate source of information and counsel which often shapes his worldview, including with regard to the Iran war. But Trump’s Fox News Cabinet, in the weeks leading up to the attack they urged him to launch, largely did not clue the president in to the risks posed by Iran closing the straits in response.
Sean Hannity, the Fox star and Trump confidante whose program the president reportedly cited in conversations about the prospective war, referenced the “all-important Straits of Hormuz” during a discussion of rising tensions in the region on his February 3 show. But Hannity did not detail why the passage is important, and he subsequently threatened Iran’s leaders not to mess with Trump.
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From the February 3, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Tensions are once again rising just off the coast of Iran where American — an American F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. Meanwhile, in the all-important Straits of Hormuz, six Iranian gunboats tried, but they failed, to intercept a U.S.-flagged oil tanker before a U.S. Navy vessel arrived on the scene.
Mark my words, the ayatollahs, the mullahs, they’re now playing a very dangerous game, one that they’re not going to win. President Trump, he does want peace, but he’s also a man of his word. He did promise he would take out their nuclear program if they didn’t negotiate, and he did. After vowing to do so, it happened. A hostile Iran will not be met with Obama and Biden-like appeasement.
That was nonetheless the most detailed treatment of the strait on Hannity’s program in February, according to a review of the Nexis database. Hannity did not mention the strait again that month, and while a handful of correspondent reports that aired on the show in February did so in passing, none of those detailed the possibility that Iran could close it.
And Hannity’s coverage of the strait, while glaringly insufficient, nonetheless stands out compared to other Fox propagandists favored by the president. The strait was not mentioned on the February editions of Fox’s Life, Liberty & Levin — the weekend show hosted by Mark Levin, an influential (and abrasive) voice in the president’s Middle East decision-making — or the programs of Hannity's evening weekday colleagues, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters, according to a review of the Nexis database.
Fox & Friends, the weekday morning show beloved by Trump that is co-hosted by Iran hawk Brian Kilmeade, also produced scant coverage of the strait. The passage was mentioned only a handful of times on the program in February, all glancing mentions — except for a single segment, nearly a month before the attack, in which a retired U.S. admiral pooh-poohed the risks posed by Iran attempting to close the strait.
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From the February 6, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Kilmeade, on that February 6 broadcast, read a comment from an Iranian official stating that “the Strait of Hormuz will be the place of a massacre” and said the official had “warned that if we do attack, they’re going to block that.”
“Well, look, Iran has been very good on rhetoric,” Kilmeade’s guest, retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, replied. “They are always talking. The capabilities are not the same as their rhetoric.”
“Sure, they can challenge the Straits of Hormuz, they can strike that, they can put mines, but we have the capability to counter that and so I think they are pretty weak at this point,” he continued. “I think that’s what everyone needs to keep in mind: Iran is at the weakest position they have ever been. They have been neutered in terms of the ability – ”
“Admiral, I agree with you,” Kilmeade replied, moving on.
Whoops.
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03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
03/12/26 1:57 PM EDT
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In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/02/26
President Donald Trump, across both of his terms, has regularly shaped federal policy in response to the propaganda he hears from his sycophants at Fox News. But his decision over the weekend to launch a war of choice against Iran without a clear goal may prove to be the most consequential example of this feedback loop to date.
Trump is deeply immersed in the Fox universe. He famously consumes the network’s content; highlights particular segments that strike his fancy on social media; hires its employees to run his administration; consults its personalities for advice on domestic and foreign policy; and doles out contracts and pardons alike based on what he sees on its airwaves.
And for decades, the Fox stars Trump trusts most have consistently called for military strikes and regime change in Iran.
That campaign took on new urgency when Trump returned to the White House.
Last June, Fox personalities — particularly Trump loyalists Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade — used their programs to urge Trump to follow up on Israeli attacks on Iran by launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. They warned that Iran is, as Kilmeade put it, “our enemy,” that it posed an imminent threat to American citizens and that, in Levin’s words, “force” is the “only thing to stop” Iran.
Other MAGA media figures from non-Fox outlets opposed U.S. involvement in the conflict. But the overwhelmingly pro-war Fox coverage — and a White House meeting Levin had with the president — were apparently dispositive.
And after Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack three Iranian nuclear sites, Fox’s war hawks rewarded the president by showering him with praise for what Hannity said would “go down in history as one of the greatest military victories.”
The same pattern appears to be playing out eight months later, albeit on a much larger scale.
A Fox-fueled push for war with Iran
Over the past weeks, as U.S. military forces converged in the Middle East, the same Fox figures again urged Trump to attack. Notably, their argument was noticeably light on defining a goal for U.S. military operations after the bombs began to fall.
Instead, they argued that because Iran could, at some point in the future, pose a threat, Trump should act now while he is empowered to do so — and that the result would be an easy U.S. victory. “I cannot think of any reason not to take this regime out,” Levin argued. The U.S. would “lose credibility forever” without a strike, Kilmeade claimed. For Hannity, “The world is going to be better and safer.”
While some on the network seemed to shy away from the topic, criticism of potential strikes largely took place elsewhere in the MAGA media — outside of the Fox programming the president himself watches.
On Friday, hours before the attack began, the trio made their final pitch.
“I hope the president chooses to go at it,” Kilmeade said Friday morning. “We have been looking at these headlines for 47 years, and we have an opportunity to end it. And this president likes to make history.”
“This president knows right from wrong,” Levin told Hannity that night. “He knows good from evil. He knows that this regime is a death cult. And he knows that there's only really two countries that are prepared and willing to put an end to this.”
“We don't need to put up with their crap,” he concluded, as Hannity nodded along. “It's time to put it to an end.”
They got what they wanted: The U.S. and Israeli militaries began attacking Iranian targets that night. Since then, hundreds of Iranians have reportedly been killed, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Pentagon has reported the first U.S. casualties in the conflict. There is no end currently in sight — the Iranian government remains defiant, while the U.S. is sending more troops to the region.
The propaganda war has an aim. The real one doesn’t.
Trump, meanwhile, has had trouble articulating what he’s trying to accomplish.
He first suggested his aim was regime change when he urged the Iranian people to “take over” the government in his first public statement after the attack, but in interviews since then, he just seems to be riffing. He told The Washington Post he is seeking “freedom for the people” of Iran, but he bemoaned to ABC News that regime figures he expected to take over the country had also been killed in the initial strikes. Trump also stressed to The New York Times that his model was the U.S. attack on Venezuela, where the dictatorial regime remained in place after U.S. forces seized its leader. But he also suggested that the Iranian military could turn over its arms to its public. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he explained.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, added to the incoherence of the administration’s message when he said at a Monday morning press conference, “This is not a so-called 'regime change war,' but the regime sure did change.” But the Iranian regime currently remains in place, and according to at least some of his statements, Trump may prefer it that way.
Perhaps the reason there doesn’t seem to be a clear goal for the U.S. bombing of Iran is because the goal, as laid out by Trump’s Fox propagandists, was for the U.S. to bomb Iran. That is the aim the likes of Kilmeade, Hannity, and Levin had in mind, and now that they’ve goaded Trump into following through, they are cheering him on.
“Donald Trump did what nobody else could do for half a century,” Levin marveled on Saturday. “How do you like that? And you know why he did it? Because he loves his country.”
So what happens next in Iran? That’s beyond the remit of Trump’s Fox Cabinet. Instead, they are gearing up for a propaganda war in which they declare Trump a world-historic victor and paint his critics as terrorists and traitors. For them, the details of what happens to the Iranians is for someone else to handle.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone within the official Trump administration has answers either.
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:{06/18/25
02/28/26
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MMA
01/05/26
Right-wing media’s “war on meat” paves the way for Trump administration to blame climate policies for rising beef prices
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Ilana Berger
Published 12/18/25
Right-wing media's longstanding claims of a Democratic “war on meat" have given Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins cover to blame rising beef prices on Democrats and climate policy — even as cattle ranchers themselves point to climate-driven drought as one factor contributing to small herd sizes and voice their opposition to the administration’s plans to import Argentine beef.
On December 8, Rollins told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, “The cost of ground beef is actually coming down, so we’ve started now the trajectory down. But let’s be very clear: To rebuild the lowest beef herd in 75 years … will take a little bit of time. You think about the last administration. They had a war on American agriculture. They thought that cows created climate change. They didn't want big herds, and the cost of inputs were skyrocketing.”
She made similar claims prior to this appearance at least five separate times on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria, Fox News’ Fox & Friends, and CNN’s The Situation Room.
Right-wing media have long tried to pit ranchers and farmers against environmentalists and those attempting to mitigate the environmental impacts of agriculture, including falsely claiming Democratic leaders and the Inflation Reduction Act (which they often called the “Green New Deal”) would ban meat.
- ## The IRA offered only incentives to reduce methane from ranching, and ranchers and industry experts say prolonged drought, high input costs, and inflation are driving high beef prices
- The Inflation Reduction Act included a program aimed at reducing methane emissions, but it included only “voluntary, incentive-based approaches” for farmers and ranchers.In 2023, the Biden administration announced the Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan, which included plans to mitigate methane emissions. The only elements of the action plan targeting agricultural methane emissions were “voluntary, incentive-based approaches,” even though the sector is responsible for an estimated 37% of human-caused emissions globally, and about 10.5% in the U.S. According to Sentient Media, these incentives might have had the potential to “increase emissions from the sector.” Vox, [8/16/22; Reuters, 1/11/22; Sentient Media,9/28/23; The White House, 11/2/21, 12/23; Environmental Protection Agency 12/2/2; U.S. Department of Agriculture, 11/5/24]
- Severe drought and changing weather patterns have contributed to shrinking U.S. cattle herds. According to Investigate Midwest, climate change-driven weather volatility has “made relying on typical weather patterns and grazing conditions difficult for the nation’s beef producers." That means ranchers must transport feed from farther away, increasing costs. They are also forced to wean calves earlier so heifers expend less energy feeding calves and require fewer nutrients. Some farmers have even had to cull their herds. Bloomberg, [1/31/25; Investigate Midwest, 3/13/24; South Dakota State University Extension, 3/21/25; Grain Journal, 6/12/25]
- Several ranchers and cattle industry players told Fox News that prolonged drought is tightening livestock supply and hurting their bottom lines.Various cattle ranchers told Fox News and Fox News Digital that drought helped herd sizes hit a historic low and said that it was contributing to “the ongoing decline of the industry.” In 2023, a Florida-based rancher also told Fox News that extreme drought was part of the problem because it was “increasing our production costs” and it would “have a long-term effect on our bottom line.” Fox News Digital, [11/24/25; Fox News,Fox & Friends Weekend, 10/25/25; Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/12/23]
- Inflation, high interest rates, and Trump’s tariffs are impacting ranchers. ABC News reported in October that amid rising inflation, beef prices were soaring, noting also that “tariffs modestly contributed to the uptick in overall inflation.” A report from the American Farm Bureau Federation also found that inflation and interest rates were “driving up costs for farmers.” The report noted: “When the Fed increased rates, they dramatically increased the cost of borrowing money across the economy. This has happened at a time when farmers and ranchers rely more heavily on credit due to the growing gap between commodity prices and input costs.” ABC News, [10/24/25; American Farm Bureau Federation, 8/26/25]
- ## For years, right-wing media have labeled climate policies and other Democrat supported initiatives as a “war on meat”
- In 2019, right-wing media falsely said the Green New Deal would ban meat and that it was “bad news or cows."Fox host Brian Kilmeade said that the Green New Deal would be “bad news for cows,” adding, “Time to slaughter all of them quickly because of their propensity for gas.” Climate skeptic Marc Morano told Kilmeade the same day, “We're told we need to do all of this, from banning meat, to airline getting rid of the combustion, internal combustion engine, all to save from us from a climate emergency.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [2/8/19, 2/8/19; Fox News Primetime, 8/9/21]
- In 2021, Fox News spread a fake story that then-President Joe Biden wanted to ban hamburgers. The administration did not call for an end to meat consumption. But on Fox News @ Night, anchor Shannon Bream asked viewers, “Could new climate impact plans limit you to just one burger a month?” She later added, “About the burger thing, I'm not going to comply with that.” On Fox News’ America Reports with John Roberts, Fox’s “straight news” program, chyrons included, “Bye-bye burgers under Biden’s climate plan,” as well as “Study: 90% of red meat out with Biden climate plan,” and “Biden’s climate plan burns all-you-can-eat burgers.” Media Matters, [4/26/21]
- In 2022, right-wing media used farmer protests in the Netherlands over plans to cut nitrogen pollution to fearmonger about a globalist conspiracy to trample freedoms, including eating meat. The Guardian, [11/16/23; Media Matters; 7/8/22, 7/15/22, 11/8/22]
- Frequent Fox News guest and Tennessee dairy farmer Stephanie Nash has appeared on several segments across right-wing programs, telling hosts that the “Green New Deal” and Biden’s “energy climate change initiative” would lead to “empty shelves” and that the Biden administration was targeting farmers.Nash told hosts that “Americans should be prepared for food shortages” because “the Green New Deal … is an attack on family farmers and ranchers,” and that “climate change has always been a hoax for the agriculture industry, they continue to blame agriculture for global warming and change of our planet. … I think this is just an excuse to continue to blame agriculture, to continue to let our farmers struggle around this country.” She also said that the administration was “trying to push agriculture out of the United States, pushing this plant-based food.” As recently as this October, Nash said on Fox Business, “Everybody knows that we’ve been bringing in more imports than ever the last two years, and that’s thanks to the Green New Deal. … Trump is trying to fix that and bring back American agriculture.” Fox Business, *Varney & Co.*, [8/10/22, 10/3/25; Fox News,Fox & Friends, 8/5/22; Newsmax, Rob Schmit Tonight, 7/6/22; Fox Business, Cavuto: Coast to Coast, 8/10/22;]
- Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis said that “what happened to Big Oil … same thing is going to happen to the farmers.”DeAngelis argued that “more regulations make it harder for those companies to increase supply” and that “food costs will continue to rise.” Fox Business, *Cavuto: Coast to Coast*, [8/10/22]
- A 2024 Fox Business interview with a cattle rancher pushed the narrative that “global sustainability initiatives could cause millions of people to starve.” Host Dagen McDowell told Texas and Colorado-based cattle rancher Shad Sullivan that “the climate crusading wack jobs want to destroy us, our life, and your livelihood." Sullivan told the hosts that “they've all teamed up in this anti-meat rhetoric that you see sweeping across the globe, to get control of the people. And that's all it amounts to, is total control.” [Fox Business,The Bottom Line, 2/15/24]
- Right-wing media falsely claimed that Kamala Harris wanted to “get rid of” red meat. Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz, for instance, made the claim on three different segments, saying, “She wants to get rid of meat.” Former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host and current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also translated Harris’ support for changing the dietary guidelines to “get rid of red meat.” Media Matters, [8/6/24]
- In an interview with Rollins, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade blamed “craziness around climate change” for “a shortage of shrinking cattle” herd sizes. Kilmeade claimed that this was because of “the methane from the cows they thought was killing the ozone.” Rollins agreed that Democrats have “waged war” against cattle ranchers. Fox News, Fox & Friends, [11/24/25]
mma
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12/17/25 4:22 PM EST
12/17/25 12:16 PM EST
- ### Fox found its culprit for high grocery prices following Democratic election victories — Joe Biden
12/17/25
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Brian Kilmeade says “either you’re pro drug dealers” or “you’re for taking out those boats”
12/05/25
mma
December 8, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): For Mamdani to do this, it is totally in your face to people that were worried that he was going to be working with Trump. I think that was to his community. But here is the nuance. The nuance is, there is an election in Miami right now. And for the first time in decades, it looks like a Democrat could win.
:{ :{And that is a very Hispanic community. And the whole redistricting in Texas was if the president continues to make gains with the Hispanic community, some of them are misreading the aggressive tactics of ICE, and taking it on the whole Hispanic community and they feel as though they have been too broadly targeted and that is why the president's numbers are coming down with Hispanics.}:
That's why Tom Homan has to get together with Kristi Noem and find out whose policy is going to work. Because they have an election, midterm election. Things aren't going to go good for anybody's mission on the Republican side if they lose the Hispanic vote or nullify, negate some of the gains that they have worked so hard to make. So they got to figure out a policy that goes for the criminals, the people that are abusing their visa, and leaves the people that belong here.}:
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5 YR OLD B ROLL ON FOX? btb SAYS MOLO COCK ONLY BURNED FEET OF PROTESTOR, NOT BLDG? 10 25
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AN PP 11 25
When President Donald Trump told reporters on Sept. 5 he’d started looking at sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, he said it was because of something he saw on television.
He said the city was being destroyed by paid agitators. “What they’ve done to that place, it’s like living in hell,” he said, a comment that became an internet meme as some Portland residents juxtaposed it with tranquil images of the city.
Trump didn’t say which channel he watched; he said at one point he saw something “today” and at another “last night.”
The evening before, on Sept. 4, Fox News aired a two-and-a-half-minute segment spotlighting protests outside a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Portland. Similar footage aired the morning of Trump’s remarks. The president went on to announce Sept. 27 on Truth Social that he would send troops, saying that he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
He later said he’d told Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, that “unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down.”
ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed more than 700 video clips posted to social media by protesters, counterprotesters and others in the three months preceding the Sept. 4 broadcast.
The review found that the news network repeatedly provided a misleading picture of what was happening in Portland.
As The Guardian and The Oregonian/OregonLive have reported, Fox News on Sept. 4 used footage from the 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd and said it was from 2025. We found two clear cases from that night as well as one that seemed to match a scene filmed at a key site of the 2020 protests. Fox also mislabeled two other dates of actions shown on screen, and one broadcast implied that a protest from elsewhere was happening in Portland.
Fox News chyrons about Portland the week of Trump’s remarks carried phrases like “violent demonstrators,” “protesters riot,” “anti-I.C.E. Portland rioters” and “war-like protests.” One host said protesters were attacking federal officers.
This portrayal of protesters as routinely instigating violence or rioting was also misleading.
As ProPublica reported last week, most clashes between protesters and police before the Fox News segment did not result in any criminal charges or arrests alleging protesters committed violence. What’s more, based on news releases from federal and local authorities, charges and arrests for assault, arson or destruction of property were almost entirely confined to a period that ended the night of July 4.
Videos after that date captured numerous images of federal officers forcefully moving in on protesters without corresponding criminal charges alleging protester violence.
A spokesperson for Fox News did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security did not answer requests to comment on its officers’ tactics.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said of action on the ground in Portland: “This isn’t a peaceful protest that’s under control, like many on the left have claimed, it’s radical violence. President Trump is taking lawful action to protect federal law enforcement officers and address the out-of-control violence that local residents have complained about and Democrat leaders have failed to stop.”
Here’s how Fox News’ coverage of the Portland story was misleading.
Fox News Said It Was 2025. It Wasn’t.
Protests in 2020 in the wake of Floyd’s murder by a police officer attracted large, sometimes violent crowds to Portland — along with a federal law enforcement response authorized by Trump.
The protests outside the ICE facility have typically been far smaller. Still, Fox spliced footage from 2020 into its coverage this year and claimed it was from 2025.
The Fox News correspondent in the segment that aired the night Trump was watching TV said: “On this night in late June, police used tear gas.”
The accompanying image appears to be not from the ICE building but from the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, more than a mile away. A nearly identical scene was shown in a
five years earlier. Footage that aired Sept. 4, shot at a slightly different angle, blurs out spots where graffiti was visible on the building in Fox’s July 2020 broadcast.
Almost immediately after showing the courthouse scene, the segment cuts to another image as the correspondent says, “federal police used tear gas and flashbangs.”
On screen at that moment is a U.S. Navy veteran who was pepper-sprayed and repeatedly struck with a baton. But it didn’t happen in September 2025. The video was posted on social media on July 18, 2020.
The Fox News segment about the ICE protests soon shows an American flag burning.
That image was posted on social media July 16, 2020.
The location: the base of a downtown Portland statue more than a mile away from the ICE building where protests are happening in 2025.
On the webpage for its Sept. 4 video segment, Fox News added an editor’s note at least two weeks later: “This video contains footage from protests in Portland in 2020 and 2025.”
“Still Going On”
After mislabeling 2020 events as 2025, Fox’s Sept. 4 evening broadcast explicitly drew a connection between the two periods.
“The protest chaos, which began with riots aimed at social justice in 2020, has severely damaged Portland’s reputation,” the correspondent said.
The dramatic footage at this moment shows fires in the street and was broadcast on Fox on Aug. 19, 2020, the day after a crowd smashed through windows and set items on fire in the headquarters for the government of Multnomah County, where Portland is located.
We don’t know for certain which broadcast got Trump thinking about Portland. The White House did not respond to questions about what Trump watched. But the president said on Sept. 5 that what he’d seen about Portland on TV was “unbelievable.”
“I didn’t know that was still going on,” he said. “This has been going on for years.”
The reality: Portland’s 2020 social justice protests, which resulted in hundreds of arrests and continued for months, turned sporadic by early 2021. Protests in years since have led to occasional property damage, but nothing in Portland has matched the scale of events that followed Floyd’s death.
Portland police Chief Bob Day said at a Sept. 29 press conference that the city had been inaccurately portrayed through the lens of the protests in 2020 and 2021.
“What’s actually happening, and the response we’re seeing both from Portlanders and from the Portland Police Bureau,” Day said, “is not in line with that national narrative. And it is frustrating.”
A Riot That Wasn’t
In a Sept. 2 segment featuring the video from a day earlier, anchor Bill Hemmer said it shows “riots raging.” Anchor Trace Gallagher teased another Sept. 2 news segment by once again showing the video, saying, “It’s a riot outside a Portland ICE facility.”
The Sept. 4 segment shows Julie Parrish, an attorney for a neighbor of the ICE facility, accusing Portland police of saying, “Meh, we’re just gonna let violent rioters do this for 80 straight nights.”
The physical behavior of protesters that was captured on the video is not violent. The camera instead shows federal agents advancing on them. In the moments before officers tossed munitions into the crowd, videos show, one protester was blowing bubbles. The Portland police did not declare a riot, a legal designation that allows for an elevated police use of force. (They declared a riot just once, a police spokesperson said, on June 14.)
The Sept. 1 protest had “little to no energy,” according to an internal Portland police summary, before federal officers dispersed the crowd to collect a prop guillotine that had been brought. Katie Daviscourt, a Trump-aligned commentator who filmed the clips, noted on X that protesters were having dance parties and that their main problems were “not leaving restricted areas, burning a flag, and possessing a deadly object (guillotine).”
ProPublica found a similar pattern for the three months before Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast: clashes that on most days and nights had no criminal allegations of protester violence to explain them.
After dozens of arrests and charges were announced in June through July 4, federal prosecutors accused just three people of crimes at the ICE building in the roughly two months leading up to Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast.
During that same two-month time frame, ProPublica’s review found numerous instances of police using force: videos from more than 20 days or nights with federal officers grabbing, shoving, pepper-spraying, tackling, firing on or using other munitions on protesters.
No local arrests or federal criminal charges were announced on these days or nights, and only a handful of dates corresponded with incidents of protester aggression later asserted by federal authorities in their legal case for sending troops.
Asked whether Fox News accurately represented her footage, Daviscourt said: “I stand by my four months of accurate reporting.”
Parrish told ProPublica she had collected evidence that “shows ongoing and persistent activity” outside the facility that under statute and police directive “would be considered riotous, unlawful assembly and/or disorderly conduct.” She declined to share this evidence, saying it was privileged as part of her client’s file.
Her lawsuit on behalf of a neighbor living near the ICE facility, which sought to require police to enforce Portland’s noise ordinance, was dismissed.
The Reappearing Neighbor
A Sept. 5 “Fox & Friends” segment showed a neighbor from an apartment building confronting protesters over noise, shouting at protesters: “Turn that (bleep) down, it’s midnight! … We the people need sleep!”
Fox said it happened Tuesday, which would have been Sept. 2. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, “This has been going on for months now, but a lot of this since Labor Day,” as the video shown on screen sandwiches footage of the neighbor between other scenes from the Labor Day protest.
“This is a chaotic city,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said.
The next day, the clip of the neighbor appeared again on Fox News. This time, the network said the footage was from Wednesday, or Sept. 3.
In reality, the confrontation was captured on video months before. Daviscourt published the video on June 29 on X.
On the two September nights that Fox said the neighbor’s confrontation happened, ProPublica’s review found no videos of violent clashes posted on social media, and federal authorities announced no arrests.
For example, according to a Portland police email from 11:22 p.m. on Sept. 3: “There are still about 20 people hanging around but only 4 were even on the sidewalk in front of the building.”
Misrepresentations Continue After Trump’s Guard Order
On Sept. 28, the day Trump’s order was implemented, a Fox News broadcast played a clip of Kotek saying that Guard troops were not needed in Portland, then immediately cut to a clip of a hectic scene of protesters clashing with police.
“Wish she could see some of those images,” the anchor said. Sarcastically, as a co-anchor chuckled, she added: “Look at that. Just a peaceful protest.”
A small box on the screen showed the footage wasn’t from Oregon.
It was from Illinois.
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RWW
09/15/2025
by
- David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: Vance Hosts Stephen Miller on Kirk’s Show to Preach ‘Real Unity’ — While Blaming the Left
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was Vice President JD Vance’s guest on Monday’s edition of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” just days after the right-wing political commentator was assassinated. The suspected gunman’s motives and political beliefs remain unclear, but the vice president pinned the blame for Kirk’s murder on “left-wing extremism.”
- Jennifer Bowers Bahney @ Mediaite: Trump Declares He’s ‘Already Investigating’ People On The Left Who Share Blame for Charlie Kirk’s Murder
President Donald Trump reiterated his claim that radical leftists and Democratic supporters were responsible for the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, while taking questions from reporters on the tarmac at Morristown Airport in Morris County, New Jersey, on Sunday evening.
- Cameron Adams @ The Daily Beast: MAGA Star Uses Prayer Vigil to Launch Charlie Kirk Killer Conspiracy
The adviser actually pleads for parents to pull their kids out of university.
- Anna Merlan @ Mother Jones: The Full Weight of the Federal Government Is Being Used to Memorialize Charlie Kirk
After the shocking murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk on Wednesday afternoon, tributes and expressions of grief poured in from conservative politicians and activists, along with expressions of sympathy and denunciations of political violence from both sides of the aisle. Now, however, numerous government and elected officials are taking their protection of Kirk’s legacy a step further, indicating they’ll use the power of their offices to discourage, punish, or, in some cases, fire anyone who speaks ill of him.
- Moira Donegan @ The Guardian: Charlie Kirk’s killing was a tragedy. But we must not rewrite his life
In the wake of horror, honest accountings of his life have not only become rare – they have also become dangerous.
- Paige Skinner @ HuffPos**:{t: 'Fox And Friends' Host Apologizes For 'Callous' Remark About Homeless People}:
Brian Kilmeade has a history of saying insulting things while on the air.
- Aaron Parnas @ MediaTouch Network: How the Trump Administration is Breaking the Law and Wasting Taxpayer Dollars with Giant Banners of Donald Trump
An exclusive report from Senator Adam Schiff exposes a coordinated misuse of federal funds for political propaganda.
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AN 9 25
SAID CONTEXT WAS WOMAN MURDER nc? BY HOMELESS, SIAD EXEC LETHAL INJECTION
'Extremely callous': Fox host's stunning comments met with disgust as he attempts backtrack // ~ MATT DOWD
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mma
Fox host Brian Kilmeade: “I am just not comfortable with the Education Department collapsing”
09/09/25
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SEE TRAITOR BS 7 25
NY Times reported John Durham found the “Clinton Plan” emails were likely created by Russian spies. Right-wing media are running with them as legitimate.
Figures have suggested Clinton should be “behind bars,” argued the debunked scandal will “make Watergate look like a jaywalking ticket,” and likened it to a “soft coup attempt” and “treason”
Written by Noah Dowe, Pete Tsipis & Lis Power
:{Published 08/01/25
The right-wing media ecosystem has exploded with false claims about a newly-declassified annex to special counsel John Durham’s report on Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign. Right-wing media are claiming that the annex provides evidence of a “plot” by the Clinton campaign to undermine then-candidate Donald Trump. However, the newly-declassified assessment found that the documents in question were “not credible” and “likely made by Russian spies.”
Conservative media figures have ignored this assessment, instead calling for Hillary Clinton to be put “behind bars” for coordinating a “soft coup attempt.” And although they previously heralded Durham’s efforts, some in right-wing media are now arguing he “failed the American people.”
- ## Despite right-wing media claims, the declassified Durham annex found that the “Clinton Plan” emails “were likely made by Russian spies”
- On Thursday, the New York Post falsely claimed that newly declassified documents showed Clinton approved a plan to “smear” Trump with the Russia collusion narrative. The Post pointed to what it claimed are “explosive intelligence files declassified” this week, that purportedly show a “plot” in emails between Clinton’s campaign and allies to smear Trump with Russian collusion narratives. The evidence allegedly comes from Durham’s probe. New York Post, [7/31/25]
- In reality, the declassified documents show the opposite: the report’s conclusion was that the supposedly scandalous emails “were likely made by Russian spies.” Reporting from the New York Times noted that Durham’s assessment was that “a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible” and was “probably manufactured.” Furthermore, Durham’s assessment was that the purported emails “were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks.” New York Times, [7/31/25]
- The disclosure — which the Times called “the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files” — follows weeks of outrage from some right-wing media over the administration’s handling of Epstein’s case. While some outlets have aided the administration’s attempt to deflect attention from Epstein, others, especially the hosts of online shows, have called the disclosures a “distraction” meant to make supporters “stop paying attention to Epstein.” Media Matters, [7/9/25, 7/23/25, 7/28/25, 7/30/25; New York Times, 7/31/25]
- ## Right-wing media are pushing debunked claims about the declassified annex
- Right-wing podcast host Megyn Kelly argued “Hillary Clinton should be behind bars, and so should the people who work for her who did this.” Referring to the alleged bombshell news, Kelly continued, “She wanted to distract from her email scandal. She cooked up a plan to accuse Trump of being a Russian agent in order to distract from her own legitimate scandal.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [7/31/25]
- Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson suggested the annex “confirms Hillary Clinton personally approved the plot to frame Donald Trump with fake Russia collusion—despite intel proving it was false.” He added, “This was a coordinated criminal cover-up to protect Clinton and take down Trump. Christopher Wray must be investigated immediately.” Twitter/X, [7/31/25]
- Johnson: “It would hurt the feelings of this audience if nobody did anything on this.”YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [8/1/25]
- Fox contributor Byron York said the documents prove the “Clinton campaign played an important role in creating the whole Trump-Russia narrative” and suggested, “All those Republicans who think Soros is a big villain, well, they’ll be confirmed in this one.” Fox News, *Special Report with Bret Baier*, [7/31/25]
- Fox host Jesse Watters claimed “George Soros’ people worked with the DNC to roll out the hoax and the FBI was in on it the whole time.”Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/31/25]
Citation
Fox News
- Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo claimed that the documents point “right, straight to Hillary Clinton as she was the key voice signing off on the entire Russiagate scheme” and pushed for punishment, saying, “The statute of limitations does not apply when it comes to conspiracies.” Fox Business Network, *Mornings with Maria*, [8/1/25]
Citation
Fox Business
- New York Post: “Read the documents that prove Hillary Clinton OK’d plan to ‘smear’ Trump with Russia collusion.”New York Post, [7/31/25]
- Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said the documents “further implicate Barack Obama as deeply embedded in the hoax.”Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/31/25]
- OnThe Will Cain Show, OutKick’s Buck Sexton said the annex proved a “soft coup attempt.”Cain replied, “I don't think there's any words that would rise to the level of hyperbole. You couldn’t outdo yourself if you said soft coup or treason.” Fox News, *The Will Cain Show*, [7/31/25]
- Fox host Sean Hannity: “I've been saying that this is going to make Watergate look like a jaywalking ticket in the end, and I believe this smoking gun out today proves that comment to be correct.” On his radio show, Hannity continued, “What I believe we are looking at is probably what Chuck Grassley classified as the biggest political scandal in American history.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [7/31/25]
- National Review news writer James Lynch claimed Clinton “approved a plan devised by her campaign to falsely smear Donald Trump with claims of Russian collusion.” National Review, [7/31/25]
- Gateway Pundit: “Declassified Durham Appendix Shows Hillary Clinton PERSONALLY Approved Trump-Russia Hoax.” The Gateway Pundit, [7/31/25]
- The Federalist wrote, “Hillary Clinton approved the Russia collusion hoax but then lied to the FBI about her knowledge of the plot.”The Federalist, [7/31/25]
- Washington Examiner: “Declassified Durham annex reveals FBI ignored evidence of a Clinton plan to create Russia hoax.”The Washington Examiner, [7/31/25]
- Former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed, “The Clinton campaign in coordination with Team Soros weaponized US government law and intel agencies to manufacture a lie and media was complicit.” Twitter/X, [8/1/25]
- Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade said the documents “appear to show that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to smear Trump in that summer prior to the RNC with the Russia collusion documents and brought Vladimir Putin along with her.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [8/1/25]
Citation
Fox News
- Infowars author Sean Miller claimed the annex revealed “a conspiracy between the Democrat National Committee [DNC], Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Barack Obama administration to formulate a fraudulent claim that then-candidate Donald Trump was a Russian asset.” Infowars, [7/31/25]
- ## Some in right-wing media attacked Durham, arguing he “failed the American people” with his initial report
- Blaze Media host Liz Wheeler: “How did John Durham miss all this evidence? Did he intentionally ‘miss’ it?” Twitter/X, [7/21/25]
- Right-wing commentator Bill Mitchell called Durham “the most useless special prosecutor in the history of Earth” and argued he intended to “kick the can down the road until they could install Biden and run this beyond the SOL.” Twitter/X, [7/27/25]
- Newsmax host Greg Kelly said Durham “failed the American people” because he was loyal to “the swamp.” Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [7/31/25]
- Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell said “Durham clearly did not do justice” to the case. Twitter/X, [7/31/25]
//
- ### Fox News has mentioned Obama over 3 times more than Epstein since Tulsi Gabbard released her report
07/23/25 4:07 PM EDT
07/31/25 2:12 PM EDT
07/30/25
---
mma
June 18, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): I love that ICE cracked down on him. He's sitting there gripping a reporter, an illegal immigrant. And they said let go, he wouldn't, so we're going to throw his ass right out. They put him in handcuffs, they didn't end up charging him according to the governor, but he deserved to be charged. What does it take for these lawmakers to respect law enforcement? ICE got a job to do, they are an illegal immigrant, they are out of there. You have a problem, go through the legal process. HE WAS ASKING TO SEE THE WARRANT, NEVER SHOWN
---
mma
Fox host Brian Kimeade supports cuts to Medicaid: “People get addicted to the free money”
05/21/25
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mma
April 18, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): So let's talk Democrats. And for the most part, you're looking at a party looking for leaders. But one thing they are getting is big crowds. And they're getting big crowds where Bernie Sanders and AOC are traveling around. They're going to areas, and there's definitely people out there when you have 49, you know, when you have millions of people vote for Democrats, you can get a big crowd. I'm astounded to see Yale University did a survey, and it says that AOC is now in the second spot behind Kamala Harris as the most popular, but she's supposed to be the working class socialist. A message to those that oligarchs are ruining this country, and the rich are gonna get richer unless she is voted in, and 83 year old Bernie Sanders is the nominal leader.
LAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): So you got Kamala Harris at the top of the list.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): It's — yes, you're right. Yeah.
JONES: She lost every swing state. The American people overwhelmingly rejected her. She was a bumbling mess on the campaign trail, could not complete her sentences accurately. No one really knew what she stood for. And then you got AOC that's right behind her, Ainsley.
EARHARDT: Is she tied with Cory Booker?
JONES: Exactly. A radical. The people in the country aren't gonna sign up for her agenda. I just think it's another double down on crazy.
EARHARDT: You know, this is what, this is what we all feared. I remember when Bernie Sanders came on the scene, and he said, ‘I'm a socialist.' We were like,‘What? No one's voting for you.' Now look at these crowds. This is where our country is going, and it is very, very scary. They are socialist. They are so far to the left. They are progressive.
//
11/15/18 2:57 PM EST
03/13/19 1:56 PM EDT
04/21/25
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texts Fox hosts sent during the Jan. 6 riot don't match how Fox covered it on air
:{December 15, 2021
Heard on All Things Considered
By
Fox hosts sent desperate messages during the Capitol riot, urging Trump to act. The messages are a stark contrast to the way Fox has covered the insurrection on air.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Fox News is in damage control mode.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HANNITY")
SEAN HANNITY: Now, all riots, obviously, are bad - all of them. And on this program, we strongly condemn the violence on January 6, just like we condemned all of the violent riots from the summer of 2020.
KELLY: That is Fox News host Sean Hannity talking about text messages that he sent then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6 as rioters were storming the U.S. Capitol. The messages were released earlier this week by the House committee investigating January 6. Over and over, they reveal Fox News hosts - Hannity, also Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade - pleading with Meadows to get his boss, then-President Trump, to stop the attack. The messages also stand in stark contrast to the way Fox has covered the insurrection on-air this past year.
And I want to bring in two voices to examine that disconnect - NPR's Tom Dreisbach, who's been covering the attack and its aftermath. Hey, Tom.
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Hey.
KELLY: And NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik. Hey, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: David, you start and set the stage a bit further for us. What are some of the other text messages that have now come to light?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, they heard from Brian Kilmeade. He's one of the hosts of "Fox & Friends," an opinion show in the morning - very popular - and somebody in contact with the former president and his advisers. He texted on that day, please get him - meaning Trump - on TV destroying everything you have accomplished. Laura Ingraham wrote, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. Interesting choice of words - all of us. Sean Hannity - simply - can he make a statement - meaning Trump - ask people to leave the Capitol? Of course, that didn't happen until many hours later. In fact, too late to have a meaningful effect on what was there.
Very different from the tenor of what you heard subsequent to that. Let's hear from Laura Ingraham - what she had to say on the show the night of the attack, suggesting to her audience of who really might be behind that siege of the Capitol.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS")
LAURA INGRAHAM: Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. We'll have more on that later.
FOLKENFLIK: You know, I think what you heard was an incredible diminishment of how serious it was in terms of what Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity had to say to viewers on their airwaves in front of millions of viewers and a kind of erasure of then-President Donald Trump as a player in all of this.
KELLY: And I want to bring in Tom on that in just a second. But David, one more to you. Now that these text messages are out there in public as of this week, how long before Fox hosts address this, took any of this on and covered it on-air?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, it took about 24 hours for Hannity and Ingraham to address it themselves. Amazingly, right after those texts were released, Hannity had Mark Meadows on the air with him on the show - didn't touch it.
KELLY: Yeah. And Tom Dreisbach, jump in here because I want to hear just a little bit more about how the - these months, between January 6 and now, just how big has the gap been between what Fox News hosts were saying on-air and what they were texting privately to top White House officials?
DREISBACH: Well, I think what the text messages revealed in many ways is how broadly the narrative around January 6 has shifted. In the moment that it was happening and immediately afterwards, the event was almost universally condemned on the right, including by President Trump. It's important to remember what Donald Trump himself said in taped remarks the day after, on January 7.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.
DREISBACH: That was January 7. Now and as soon as this summer, Trump was saying something completely different. He was describing the rioters who have been arrested and charged with crimes as political prisoners. And he says that January 6 was actually just a protest.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I reverse it. The insurrection took place on November 3 - that was Election Day - and before and after. That was, to me, the insurrection. And the - January 6 was a protest.
KELLY: So what's going on with this evolution? Is this Fox coverage mirroring an evolution in what Trump and his loyalists have been saying or are they driving that evolution? Or do you think it's some of both?
DREISBACH: It's a little hard to say who's driving it. It's sort of a chicken-and-the-egg issue, who is in control of this narrative. But I would say that early on, the seeds of this counter-narrative were being planted. As you heard, Fox hosts like Laura Ingraham were arguing that leftists or antifa were actually causing the violence, even though rioters who were there that day say that is completely false. Then there was this narrative that the violence was being overblown in order to discredit Trump and his supporters.
Most recently, what we've seen is from folks like Tucker Carlson - Fox host - this argument that is largely based on conspiracy theories that federal agents must have been instigating the attack that day, causing a sort of false flag so they could launch a, quote, "war on terror" against Trump supporters. And at this point, I should say there's really no evidence to support any of those narratives
KELLY: Well, this prompts a wider question. David, is Fox News - should we be calling it Fox News? This is a TV channel. They track current events. Are they performing journalism?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think we can answer that question just by looking at what's happened in recent days. Fox News at no point is addressing the fact that, you know, these opinion journalists who are primetime stars are acting essentially as fully part of the Trump political circle. They're never addressing that. That's not - you know, you're still supposed to admit facts against your rooting interest as an opinion journalist. It's not happening here. The way to think about Fox News right now is as a highly profitable political operation to which some journalists are appended, some of them trying to do honest reporting.
KELLY: Well, and some journalists jumping ship, as we saw with Chris Wallace this week.
FOLKENFLIK: That's right. Wallace raised objections about Tucker Carlson's documentary that Tom alluded to about January 6 itself, that it was filled with lies and unfounded conspiracy theories. He objected to the CEO, Suzanne Scott, and got nowhere with it.
KELLY: And this brings me to my last question, which is all of this matters because a whole lot of people are watching and listening to what Fox broadcasts. Tom, you have spent the last year talking to people connected to the riot. How closely are they watching? How entrenched are these alternate narratives?
DREISBACH: Well, just today, PolitiFact declared that lies about the January 6 attack on the Capitol are the lie of the year. I think that's a recognition of just how entrenched these views have become. I talk to people who were at the riot, who have admitted to breaching the Capitol of their own will. And after the Tucker Carlson series aired on Fox, on Fox Nation, they started questioning their own experience not based on what they saw or did that day themselves, but based on what they saw on TV.
And we are seeing some of that playing out in the broader public. You look at polling, and a majority of Republicans think too much attention is being paid to the attack on the Capitol now. And the number of Republicans in the public who say it's important to prosecute the rioters is going down by about 20 points, according to Pew Research, over just the last several months.
KELLY: NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach and NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Thanks to both of you.
---
daily show
beut domes demolished; bk tries to get him to admit russ invaded; inly want to taLK bc of me
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JUN WRAP 2022
Fox News’ host Brian Kilmeade launched an unexpected broadside at Donald Trump, calling the former president “unhinged” after the 2020 election in the period before the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Speaking on Howard Kurtz’s “Media Buzz” show on Sunday about the House Jan. 6 committee hearings, Kilmeade also rejected Trump’s repeated assertions that “he was robbed” due to widespread election fraud. “I have not seen any evidence,” he said, adding that Trump’s continued false claims are hurting his chances for political comeback.
“I’ve said this before, I believe from the time when the election results came in until January 6th is the worst moment of Donald Trump’s political career, and had he just said I’ve got problems, I’m going to have my legal team look at it, going to welcome the Bidens to the White House, he’d have about 70% approval rating right now and a clamoring to have him back in office,” the “Fox & Friends” host said. “It would be a coronation, not even an election. So I think how you lose in life defines who you are, and even if there are things that bother you, welcome to the world.”
Read Next
Trump Didn’t ‘Fully Understand He Was Responsible’ for Jan 6 Riots, Doc Filmmaker Says (Video)
Kilmeade underscored how Trump’s lawyers repeatedly failed to find any evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have swung the election results in any battleground state. “Your team couldn’t prove it, move on,” Kilmeade said. “And the people that I think he trusted a lot kept telling him the other side of the story. Don’t give up, Mr. President. There’s Something here. You owe it to your party to keep fighting, and he kept listening to that.”
While Kilmeade suggested that “it would have helped to have pushback” from senior White House officials during the last months of Trump’s administration, that might have mattered.
“The president was unhinged during that period,” he said, recalling an interview Kilmeade had at West Point between the election and January 6. “I’ve never seen him so angry. … As soon as he was done, he just stormed off, and you know — I’ve known him for 15 years or 20 years, prior to him going to the White House — I’ve never seen him so angry.”
Watch the segment above.
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Fox News turns a blind eye as cancer research funding gets decimated by the Trump administration
The network apparently aired only 2 segments about NIH cuts that mentioned the impacts on cancer research funding in the month since they were announced
Written by Harrison Ray
Research contributions from Rob Savillo
Published 03/13/25 mma
- Fox News has apparently spent only about 20 minutes covering spending cuts to the National Institutes of Health since February 7, when the NIH announced a cap on indirect funding included in research grants. Of the 11 segments about the cuts, Media Matters found only 2 that mentioned the impact they would have on cancer research.
The Trump administration's recent attacks on the NIH have resulted in significant funding cuts, severely impacting cancer research across the country. The cuts include a drastic reduction in the reimbursement rate for indirect costs from an average of 27-28% to a proposed cap of 15%, potentially leading to billions of dollars in losses for research institutions. The funding cuts are affecting a wide range of programs, including precision therapy, quality of life studies, artificial intelligence applications in cancer research, and state clinical trial programs.
Experts warn that these funding reductions could have severe consequences for cancer research and patient care. Some researchers fear that the cuts will lead to delayed discoveries, stalled clinical trials, and a potential exodus of talented scientists from the field, ultimately hindering progress in developing lifesaving treatments for cancer patients.
Pediatric cancer research, which already receives less than 4% of all federal funds for cancer research, is particularly sensitive to these cuts:
Many universities rely on NIH reimbursements to maintain the kind of high-tech facilities and highly trained staff that are necessary to conduct clinical trials and other forms of medical research. Pediatric cancer research, in particular, is often expensive due to the relative rarity of many childhood cancers, the smaller number of patients able to participate in trials, and the need for specialized equipment capable of accommodating the physiology of small children.
“The proposed NIH funding cuts pose a significant threat to the future of pediatric cancer research and could severely impact the progress of life-saving treatments,” Danielle Fragalla, the Chief Executive Officer of Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, said. “With research institutions facing multi-billion-dollar losses, the ability to fund new and ongoing studies–including those focused on childhood cancer, survivorship, and equitable care–could be drastically reduced.”
- Despite these potential consequences, Fox News has seemingly almost completely ignored the impacts the NIH funding cuts would have on cancer research. From February 7, when the NIH announced a cap on indirect funding included in research grants, through March 12, Fox News spent a total of only about 20 minutes discussing the cuts. Of the 11 segments discussing the cuts, only 2 mentioned cancer research, accounting for about 3 minutes of coverage. In segments that weren't directly about NIH funding cuts, there were at least 3 additional passing mentions of cuts to cancer research, accounting for about 1 minute of coverage.
Of the 2 segments about NIH funding cuts that mention cancer research, 1 came from the network's left-leaning co-host of The Five, Jessica Tarlov, and the other came from a flippant comment by Fox host Brian Kilmeade in a segment obfuscating the topic. Tarlov was also responsible for one of the other three passing mentions about the funding.
- While Fox spent the last month burying the Trump administration's cuts to the NIH and to cancer research, the network did have time to express outrage about some Democrats failing to stand for a pediatric cancer patient mentioned during Trump's congressional address. Just as the network highlights individual stories about cancer survivors, it ought to inform its viewers about the devastating impacts the Trump administration’s NIH funding cuts could have on the future of cancer research.
- ## Methodology...
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===
MMA
On January 6, 2021, as a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and halted Congress’ counting of electoral votes, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade dashed off a desperate text to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
“Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” he wrote of Trump, who had summoned the enraged crowd to Washington, D.C., and incited it with lies that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a plot to subvert that election.
Kilmeade expressed a drastically different view on Monday, as a new Congress prepared to count the electoral votes that would return Trump to the Oval Office.
In one of Fox & Friends’ few references to the January 6 insurrection that morning, he mocked Democrats who “want to point out how different” today’s events will be “from four years ago” when “democracy was in danger.”
Kilmeade added that the American people think that January 6, “as bad as that day was, it’s a small part of the Donald Trump story” and that it would be “put to bed even further after today happens.”
The Fox & Friends host is one of an array of right-wing media figures who said at the time that the January 6 insurrection was a calamity, that the rioters were criminals, and that Trump himself bore responsibility for their actions. But over the past four years, they have participated in the right’s Great Forgetting, making their peace with Trump’s attempted coup and supporting his return to the presidency.
- ### When the right said January 6 was “deplorable” and its participants “criminals”
“Remember what yesterday’s attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol was like. Very soon, someone might try to convince you that it was different,” The Atlantic’s David Graham wrote the next day. “The health of the republic depends both on what swift consequences come—for Trump and for others—and also on how people remember the participants’ actions later on.”
Graham’s warning proved prescient. As the attack unfolded and in its immediate aftermath, many media figures on the right joined those on center and left in condemning the attack — and Trump’s work to incite it — in the strongest possible terms. But they did not sustain their initial response.
“Shoot the protestors,” influential commentator Erick Erickson wrote that afternoon. He added that Trump should receive immediate consequences that would end his political career: “Waive the rules, impeach. Waive the rules, convict. Waive the rules, deny the ability to run for election again.”
Four years later, Erickson offered this take: “First, Happy January 6th to all who celebrate. Note to the media: The exit polling in November showed that most voters do not care. That you will try to make them care today is another reason trust in the media is beneath that of Congress itself.”
Fox chief political analyst Brit Hume likewise denounced Trump at the time for having “fueled the worst suspicions of his supporters with wild claims that the election was stolen. And now we see the result.” But on Election Day 2024, he declared this “a BS issue” because “the thing was over in a matter of hours.”
Erickson and Hume are among a long list of right-wing media notables who condemned January 6 — and even Trump for bringing it about — but came around to implicitly or explicitly support his return to the presidency, even as he showed no remorse for his own actions and valorized the rioters.
Rupert Murdoch, whose right-wing media empire is one of the most potent forces in Republican politics, wrote in an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on Inauguration Day 2021 that Trump’s election lies had been “pretty much a crime” that made January 6 “inevitable.” He added: “Best we don't mention his name unless essential and certainly don't support him."
On Fox, numerous hosts condemned the criminal acts of the mob and said its members deserved punishment, with some even describing such denunciations as morally necessary.
“Those who truly support President Trump, those that believe they are part of the conservative movement in this country, you do not — we do not support those that commit acts of violence,” offered Fox host and Trump adviser Sean Hannity. “Every good and decent American, we know, will and must condemn what happened at the Capitol.”
“The actions at the United States Capitol three days ago were deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal,” Jeanine Pirro likewise declared. “Anyone watching this must condemn it.”
Fox contributor Mark Thiessen was among the few to single out Trump on the network’s airwaves, saying the then-president had been “responsible for what happened,” and he went much further in a Washington Post column.
“It was one of the darkest moments in the history of our democracy. And Trump is responsible for it,” he wrote. “Trump formed and incited the mob. He stoked their anger with self-serving lies. He betrayed his followers. He betrayed his office. And now he has blood on his hands.”
The organs of the upper-crust right were united in blaming Trump for the attack.
Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal wrote in a January 7, 2021, editorial that Trump should resign the presidency after committing “an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election.” The New York Post editorial board wrote that “while the roots of this madness were many, with some blame across the spectrum, it’s fundamentally on President Trump.” And the editors of National Review said Trump “found a new low” by having “whipped up and urged on a mob toward the U.S. Capitol, where it breached the building and forced his vice president and lawmakers to flee.”
The hosts of the All-In podcast, which became a key venue of the MAGA tech right, were even more scathing at the time, describing Trump as “a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag” who had engaged in “insane, deranged, criminal, lunatic behavior” and had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level.”
- ### The Great Forgetting and what comes next
These comments reflected the widespread initial consensus that January 6 had been horrific — and that Trump had been responsible for it. In the first days following the attack, politicians of both parties, corporate leaders, and the public at large responded with revulsion and demands for consequences.
But that unity ultimately proved fragile. A coterie of Trumpists, led by former Fox host Tucker Carlson, worked diligently to unwind it, reframing the sacking of the U.S. Capitol as either unimportant — or a conspiracy driven by Democrats and the media in which the assailants were the real victims of a crackdown on “political dissidents,” as Fox’s Rachel Campos-Duffy put it last week.
As this fraudulent counternarrative became increasingly widespread, most other conservative media figures eventually chose to join the right’s Great Forgetting. They pretended that a president who they knew had tried to overturn the republic was fit to return to that office. And in so doing, they helped power Trump from his post-January 6 position of disgrace back to the GOP nomination and the presidency.
Trump’s return to office sets the stage for more authoritarian acts. He never repudiated his election lies or the attack they incited, instead valorizing the January 6 “hostages” and promising they will receive pardons as one of his first acts in office. And he is assembling a team to carry out the “retribution” he has promised to inflict on his political foes, including an FBI director who proposed legal action against the conspirators, “not just in government but in the media,” who he claimed “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
Trump’s authoritarian impulses may ultimately come to nothing. But with their actions after January 6, the leading lights of the right have already signaled their willingness to accept whatever he does.
//
01/06/21
They did it and will do it again – if no one stops them
07/22/22
05/21/24 MMA
===
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MMA 11 24
November 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five
BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): The other thing I thought of this morning, why are we just seeing this 2-year-old today? We hear about about 300,000 kids missing, 32,000 that I.C.E. is looking for, 80,000 which didn't show up. Why are we just seeing this one today? So Bill Melugin just told me it's because DPS picked them up. Texas is much more lenient. If you get picked up by border patrol, it's a black hole. You don't know what happens.
Why is it that Ted Cruz had to go in with a secret iPhone, and same with Rodriguez or Gonzalez, when he was on the border with, he represents that district. Why don't we just see it? We blur out the faces. If there were 300 kids in a small tent or a shed, we need to see those people. We need to find out what is going on. And the question is, what do we do with those kids, Harold? I say this, treat them great.
What we're going to do is get them ready on a plane and we send them right back to El Salvador. That's what got to happen. By the way, El Salvador, you shouldn't be leaving. They have cracked down on those criminals. They've cleaned up their country. You've got to really sing a different song if you tell me that you need asylum from El Salvador. It's not Venezuela. It's not Bolivia. It's not Nicaragua. It's not Cuba.
===
11 24
.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg appears to have schooled Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, explaining that due to Donald Trump’s policies during his presidency China was able to establish itself as the leading producer of electric vehicles, in a rancorous interview Tuesday.
“The manufacturing recession is in your head,” Kilmeade falsely declared to the Secretary of Transportation. “It never happened.”
Secretary Buttigieg invited Kilmeade to “look it up on Politifact,” and “maybe bring it up on screen right now because there was a Trump manufacturing recession. Look it up.”
“Mr. Mayor,” Kilmeade, ignoring Buttigieg’s request and his current job title, then said, “Michigan matters a lot. That’s why you’re there, right?”
“That’s right—that, and because I live here.”
READ MORE: Trump Pledges to Concede ‘Fair’ Loss Before Quickly Casting Doubt on Election Integrity
“How much did the EV [electric vehicle] mandate hurt the uh, the Kamala Harris quest to be the next president?” Kilmeade asked, mispronouncing the name of the Vice President of the United States.
“Well, first of all,” Buttigieg responded, “the statement that there is an EV mandate is a lie. You can buy a gas car right now if you want one, you can buy an EV car if you want one, and we’ll help make it cheaper.”
“Really, an incredulous Kilmeade asked. “For how long?”
“As long as you want,” Buttigieg replied. “Now, our goal with the tax supports—and by the way, you you admit, right, that you can buy a gas car if you want right now, which means by definition there’s no mandate.”
“But if he has a goal by 2035, California is gone. By 2035, New York’s gone. And do you get any incentive, Mr. Mayor—” Kilmeade said as Buttigieg talked over him.
“But you admit you don’t have to, we’re not making you buy this car or that car, right?” the Secretary asked. “Now, the goal, and I gotta be careful, right, because I can’t get into the administration side, but what I’ll say is, the goal has been to be about half and half by the end of the decade.”
After some cross talk, Kilmeade asked, “if you had your druthers, would there be combustion engines?”
“If I had my druthers, every car would be made in America,” Buttigieg replied. “Now, we know that EV technology is coming. Whether people are ready for it or not, it is coming, it’s happening around the world and Donald Trump allowed China to take the lead on EVs. I want those EVs made in America.”
“Allowing China?” Kilmeade interjected, “you guys won’t ’em mine. You will not let ’em mine in Minnesota, where the governor wants to be vice president.”
“Let’s be super clear right now,” Buttigieg said. “Let’s be very clear—Sorry, is this an interview or a debate? Can I at least finish?”
“Well, I just can’t let you throw out fallacies,” Kilmeade said. “It’s important.”
“Can I at least— excuse me? Name one statement that I just made that you would say is factually inaccurate.”
“The statement you just made that Donald Trump let China take the lead?” Kilmeade charged. “If somebody wants an EV, they should be able to get it, not get a rebate if they buy one.”
“If somebody wants an EV, they can get it,” Buttigieg replied. “And if somebody wants a gas car, they can get it, but what we’re doing is we’re making sure more of those are built in the US and here.”
READ MORE: Trump Closes Campaign With Misogynistic Slur, Violent Rhetoric Against Women
Zeteo News media columnist Justin Baragona observed, “What stands out here is that Kilmeade comes across as harried, agitated and aggressive — while Buttigieg remains calm and unflustered amid the Fox host’s constant agenda-driven haranguing.”
Business Insider in December of 2019 reported: “President Donald Trump won over Rust Belt states in 2016 on pledges to revive American manufacturing. But the sector slipped deeper into a recession in November, with a key gauge of factory activity falling for a fourth straight month.”
ABC News last month reported that experts say Donald Trump’s “tariff proposals would all but certainly trigger a global trade war.”
An October, 2024 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) appears to show that by the number of vehicles produced (“registered,”), China is by far the leading global producer. And in 2023, the MIT Technology Review reported, “China [has] managed to build a world-leading industry in electric vehicles,” and, “dominate the world of electric cars.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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mma
Project 2025 seeks to fulfill the right-wing media dream of cutting vital food assistance
The extreme right-wing initiative proposes cuts to programs benefiting millions of Americans
Written by Casey Wexler & Reed McMaster
Published 10/29/24 mma
Right-wing media have spent over a decade attacking and calling for cuts to vital food assistance programs, with particular focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as “food stamps”) as well as free school lunch programs.
Now, Project 2025 — an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration — proposes fulfilling their wish of cutting off hundreds of thousands of Americans from vital food assistance.
Project 2025 calls for sweeping cuts to the food stamp program, which would eliminate food assistance for some Americans and slash the purchasing power of families
- Project 2025’s play book, Mandate for Leadership, calls for reimplementing work requirements for food stamps, which it estimates could put 688,000 adults at risk of losing food assistance. Project 2025 claims that these work requirements would be “fairly limited” but admits that the policy will deny some Americans food assistance. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analysis of Project 2025, “These requirements are premised on the false assumption that people who receive SNAP do not work and must be compelled to do so — an assumption rooted in a host of unfounded prejudices based on race, gender, disability status, and class. Rigorous studies have shown that the current work requirement policy is ineffective at increasing employment. Instead, it takes food assistance away from people with very low incomes and increases food insecurity and hardship.” Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/3/24]
- Project 2025 seeks to remove automatic qualification for SNAP if an individual receives benefits from another government program or broad-based categorical eligibility.The authors of Mandate for Leadership are trying to end automatic eligibility for SNAP for those who receive other benefits because, they claim, “‘benefit’ is defined so broadly that it includes simply receiving distributed pamphlets and 1–800 numbers. This definition, with its low threshold to trigger a ‘benefit,’ allows individuals to bypass eligibility limits—particularly the asset requirement.”
- But a major benefit of broad-based categorical eligibility, according to CBPP, is helping families through the “benefit cliff,” when a family’s income rises just above the SNAP limit. Broad-based categorical eligibility allows states to ignore the threshold and phase out SNAP benefits gradually as income increases. It also lets families keep higher levels of allowed assets, which allows them to “avoid debt, weather unexpected financial disruptions, and better prepare to support themselves in retirement.” Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 7/30/19]
- Project 2025 attacks recent increases to the Thrifty Food Plan, which estimates the cost of a healthy diet, saying the Biden administration “may have skirted regulations and congressional authority to increase the overall cost of the program.” The Biden administration raised the budget of SNAP when it found higher costs in maintaining a healthy diet, which Project 2025 called “a dramatic overreach.” Mandate says the Thrifty Food Plan has previously been based on just inflation, which was proposed in the latest federal farm bill. According to the Urban Institute, “In effect, the proposed changes would reduce SNAP benefits’ purchasing power over time, exacerbating the current SNAP benefits gap.” Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Newsweek, 4/23/24; Urban Institute, 3/18/24;]
- Project 2025 seeks to close the “heat-and-eat loophole” that allows states to issue larger amounts of food stamp benefits. Food stamps are issued based on income minus certain deductions, and beneficiaries of the Low-Income Heat and Energy Assistance Program receive a large deduction even if, according to Project 2025, their LIHEAP benefits are as low as $1 (in reality, as of 2014, LIHEAP benefits have to be $20 or more).
- LIHEAP helps households pay utility costs, and beneficiaries of the program can maximize their SNAP benefits on top of receiving utility assistance. The program was created because low-income households have a tendency to go without food due to high energy costs. Therefore eliminating this “loophole” entirely will create the food insecurity it was implemented to prevent. Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Food Research and Action Center, 3/16/21; LIHEAP Clearinghouse, 2/21/24]
- ## Right-wing media have attacked SNAP and downplayed its importance for years
- In 2012, Fox host Megyn Kelly claimed that food stamps created a culture of dependency. Kelly claimed there is an “emerging culture of dependency on taxpayer-funded money.”She and other Fox figures ignored the fact that most SNAP recipients stay on the program short term. Media Matters, [10/4/12]
- Fox News' Andrea Tantaros claimed she would look “fabulous” if she were forced to live on a SNAP diet. In November 2012, on the eve of Thanksgiving, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros dismissed the plight of hungry Americans, claiming that she would look “fabulous” if she were forced to try to subsist for an extended period of time on $133 for food per month, the amount that SNAP participants in New Jersey received. Media Matters, [11/21/12]
- In 2013, Fox's Charles Payne complained that there wasn’t enough “stigma” surrounding people on SNAP. According to Payne, “The good part about the stigma is it actually does serve as an impetus to get people off” food stamps. Media Matters, [3/28/13]
- In 2013, right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh used his radio show to smear SNAP as “the buy-beer ... with-a-government-credit card program” even though people cannot buy alcohol with food stamps.Media Matters, [3/29/13]
- Fox’s Brian Kilmeade repeated a baseless attack against SNAP in 2013, when the New York Post claimed with little evidence that low-income New Yorkers were using SNAP funds to purchase food to send overseas.Kilmeade said, “You're paying for food stamps for foreigners? The New York Post reports that welfare recipients in New York City are buying groceries and sending them in giant barrels to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.” Media Matters, [7/12/13]
- In 2013, Fox aired a special attacking SNAP titled, “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” which centered on one person abusing the program, even though less than 2% of SNAP benefits at the time were issued to people who did not meet all of the program's eligibility requirements.Host Bret Baier asked in reference to people who use food stamps to feed themselves and their families, “Shouldn't there be at least some stigma?” Media Matters, [8/13/13]
- In 2013, Kilmeade claimed that SNAP was rife with fraud when it had one of the lowest fraud rates of all federal programs. According to Kilmeade, “30 percent: That's how many more Americans, according to a new study, are selling food stamps for cash illegally. No, Steve, that's not legal. Nearly 48 million people receive food stamps.” Media Matters, [8/19/13]
- Fox's Brad Blakeman claimed that the Obama administration was “like a drug dealer,” because it was making people dependent on food stamps and it should instead “get ‘em a job.” Blakeman also claimed of entitlement plans broadly: “Fraud, mismanagement, and abuse is rife in America.” Media Matters, [10/31/13]
- Limbaugh falsely claimed that SNAP increases childhood obesity, referring to a misleading op-ed in The Washington Times. Limbaugh also said, “We got nearly 48-49 million Americans on food stamps and they can buy whatever they want with it. The Democrat party has made everybody they can think that they’re victims, which makes them entitled.” Media Matters, [12/3/13]
- In 2014, Kilmeade falsely claimed SNAP benefits could be used to withdraw cash and purchase marijuana. He stated, “Can people collecting food stamps in Colorado add marijuana to their shopping list? Right now the answer is yes. Because there's nothing blocking government benefit cards from working in pot shop ATMs.” Media Matters, [1/21/14]
- In 2014, then-Fox host Eric Bolling cited an interview with food stamp user and surfer Jason Greenslate to argue food stamps will later be used on “strip clubs” and “liquor stores.” He stated, “What's next? Strip clubs, liquor stores, pot dispensaries? Oh, that's already going on, folks. Welcome to Obama's America.” Media Matters, [2/25/14]
- Fox's Stuart Varney accused the government of helping poor people in order to buy votes by expanding food stamps. He stated, “What's really going on here is the government is buying votes. They’re keeping churning out food stamps in return for votes. That's what's happening.” Media Matters, [3/11/14]
- In 2014, when a report showed that the SNAP benefits program hit a historic low for waste in 2012, Kilmeade accused the program of being wasteful. He stated, “The government is overpaying on food stamps by about $2 billion.” Media Matters, [7/24/14]
- In 2015, Varney continued to push his dubious theory that food stamps are designed to “buy votes” for Democrats.He told Fox anchor Martha MacCallum, “I said to you, this is a couple years ago, I think — I remember saying it to you — this is an attempt to buy votes right before an election.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [5/13/15]
- In 2017, Fox guest and billionaire Ken Langone falsely claimed people were using food stamps to buy drugs. According to Langone, “Hell, people use food stamps to buy marijuana, that's illegal, or cocaine, or whatever the hell else people use to get high.” Fox News, *Your World with Neil Cavuto,* [5/24/17]
- In 2017, Fox host Jesse Watters said that the “able-bodied” on food stamps could get work by building Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall. Watters said, “Maybe the able-bodied that are getting the food stamps could work for the food stamps by building the wall.” Fox News, *The Five*, [7/12/17]
- In 2018, Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway blamed SNAP for helping perpetuate obesity in America. Hemingway: “People on these programs tend to eat a lot of cookies, candies, sugary snacks.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [2/13/18]
- In 2018, Fox's Jesse Watters praised the Trump administration's food stamp cuts and claimed that SNAP fraud was a major issue even though it had fallen consistently since 1993.Watters also said, “Food stamps skyrocketed under President Obama and under President Trump they’re coming down. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to be dependent on government, but you want to do it with heart.” Media Matters, [2/13/18; Time, 3/30/17]
- In 2018, Fox’s Tucker Carlson attacked refugees for using food assistance and complained about having to pay taxes if migrants get assistance. He said, “If we're rewarding foreign nationals who break our laws, why should I have to pay my taxes? Why should I, as an American citizen, obey the laws? I mean, I guess that's a rhetorical question, but what's the message that we are sending? I have to obey every law or else I go to jail, but a foreign national can show up and give the finger to our justice system and get rewarded for it? How does that work exactly?” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight,* [8/14/18]
- In 2019, Fox & Friends guest Star Parker celebrated Trump’s move kicking hundreds of thousands of people off SNAP: “This is fantastic news.” She added, “They are now acknowledging those that are sitting on their couch, they've gotten very comfortable on the couch, to say our national food stamp program is for those that are in need, desperate need.” Fox News,*Fox & Friends*, [12/5/19]
- In 2021, Fox’s Sean Duffy claimed Black people who spend SNAP benefits on junk food are the cause of racial disparity in COVID statistics.He said, “We have to take personal responsibility for the choices that we make in our lives, and to say that it's all racism is a farce.” Fox News, *The Five*, [4/9/21]
Project 2025 also aims to cut free school lunch programs, cutting children off from vital nutrition
- Some school districts are part of the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision, which allows all students within a low-average-income school district to access free breakfast and lunch.U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, accessed[7/22/24]
- Project 2025 wants CEP gone, ending universal free school lunch for low-income schools and districts.Mandate also criticizes efforts to allow schools to provide meals in the summer. Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023]
- Not providing meals over the summer creates a three-month food insecurity gap. Nebraska Public Media, [7/18/24]
- Project 2025 also wants to reduce school lunch programs to their “original intent” by feeding only “students who otherwise would not have food to eat while at school.” Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023]
- Studies have shown that before CEP, students who were eligible for free school lunch while other students paid were stigmatized.CEP eliminates that stigma by providing free lunch schoolwide, which potentially helps students do better academically and receive fewer disciplinary infractions. American Educational Research Journal, [1/9/24; Economics of Education Review, August 2020]
- Free school meal programs like CEP have also been shown to decrease obesity and lower school administrative burdens. Health Day, [3/18/24; No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices, accessed on 7/22/24]
- ## Right-wing media have also been crusading against free school lunch for more than a decade
In 2010, Rush Limbaugh attacked school lunches and suggested hungry children should “dumpster dive.” Limbaugh provided a list of places kids could supposedly go to get meals such as their own kitchens, McDonald’s, and a dumpster, stating, “There are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [6/16/10]|}:
- Limbaugh complained on his show that the Memphis school district provided dinner, arguing that it would lead to children living at school. He stated, “You know where this is heading? To hell with home — the kids live at school. You and your spouse, the sperm meets the egg, the kid’s born and, off to school he goes and you might see him on weekends.” He continued, “Going home is going to be the exception. Going home is going to be the odd thing about school.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [11/9/11]
- In 2013, Limbaugh compared students who receive free school lunches to family pets.He claimed, “When you get a new pet what’s the first thing you do to try to bond with it? You want to be the one to feed it, right? You don’t want anybody else feeding that new puppy or kitten. You are going to, because you know that that puppy or kitten will bond with you first and when that happens, everybody else is getting second or third dibs. That pet is always going to be yours if you’re the only one that feeds it. Well, same thing here.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [9/6/13]
- Fox guest Joy Pullman called school lunches a “collusion” between big business and government that deprives families of the joy of providing for their children. She stated, “So the federal school lunch program, the reason that it exists is actually a collusion between big agribusiness and big government, and what it ends up doing is raising food prices for the poor and middle class, it makes kids more fat, and it also has the effect of making families -- depriving them of their ability and the privilege and joy of providing for their own children.” Media Matters, [10/23/13]
- Fox's Martha MacCallum attacked New Jersey’s free school lunch programs, arguing that it’ll cause kids to grow up thinking “school lunch is free.” She stated, “One of the things that kills me is that now that, you know, there’s a free lunch program in New Jersey, and it’s for everyone, even if you don't need help to send your child's lunch to school. So, now those kids are all going to grow up thinking, well, school lunch is free. Right? And then God help the person who comes along and tries to take that away.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [9/30/21]
- As recently as 2021, Fox host Sean Hannity complained about free school lunches that were offered in summertime. He said, “They want free school lunches, even when school is out for the summer, they want lunches for welfare recipients, anybody and everything for illegal immigrants as well.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [10/1/21]
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an 10 24
'Defending Nazis': Fox host under fire for 'excusing' Trump wanting 'Hitler’s generals' kilmeade
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// kirk kashyap
How the Fox bubble is reacting to John Kelly calling Trump a fascist
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/23/24 mma
John Kelly, who once served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, believes that the former president is a “fascist” and would seek to rule as a dictator if he returns to office in November, The New York Times reported on Tuesday evening. The paper published audio of an interview Kelly gave to the Times’ Michael Schmidt in which Kelly explained that Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government” and believes he should have “an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
Kelly is not the only retired four-star general now sounding the alarm after working at the highest levels of the Trump administration: Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described him as “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever,” remarks reportedly echoed by Jim Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper calls Trump a “threat to democracy,” while former national security adviser John Bolton describes him as “unfit to be president.”
But while Trump’s top national security advisers have largely abandoned him, he retains the zealous loyalty of the counselors he relied on most of all during his presidency: the faithful hosts at Fox News.
### Fox’s Kelly response is silence and spin
Fox’s evening propaganda rotation of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld all completely ignored Kelly’s clarion call on Tuesday night.
On Wednesday’s edition of Fox & Friends, the curvy couch crew avoided the Times story while attacking Kelly and Mattis as defiant, disloyal, partisan figures.
The hosts defended Trump from a report in The Atlantic, also published Tuesday, that Trump had been so fixated on wanting military leaders to truckle to his whims that he once said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
For co-host Brian Kilmeade, such a remark would be a reasonable response to what he characterized as insubordination by the likes of Kelly and Mattis.
“After a while, while being investigated, there were probably times where he [indecipherable] off,” Kilmeade said of Trump. “‘Wouldn't it be great if generals actually listen? Can you imagine if some people listened to the commander in chief?’ I could absolutely see that happening.”
“And they know it in context,” Kilmeade added, “But they said, ‘He could win. I’m going to stop him.’”
“I could absolutely see him going now, ‘You know what, it would be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ knowing that's a third — maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis and whatever,” Kilmeade offered in a second segment.
### Fox guards its viewers from the truth about Trump
Fox’s early handling of Kelly’s warning that his former boss is a fascist is characteristic of the network’s strategy of suppressing unfavorable news about Trump.
Fox typically hides Republican dissent from its audience. Milley’s description of Trump as “fascist to the core” garnered only a handful of mentions on the network. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and the Republican speaker of the House during his tenure, Paul Ryan, both said in exclusive interviews on the network that they would not be supporting his campaign — only for Fox to bury that news as well. When several disaffected Republicans spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, Fox did not air a secondof any of their speeches.
The network’s stars turned other prominent Republican Trump critics, like former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, into political punching bags, helping the former president drive them from office.
By helping Trump control the narratives his supporters are exposed to, Fox maintains his iron grip on the GOP base — and thus on the pliant Republican leadership. And next month, if the election is close and Trump declares victory, the right-wing information bubble Fox helps maintain will become even more crucial to his strategy.
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mma
October 8, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Today is Tuesday. It is exactly four weeks before the election, and there's a brand new New York Times poll — came out, an hour and 14 minutes ago. And Kamala Harris has a slim lead. And once again, we've been talking about the polls. They are neck and neck. She's up by three. They were tied in mid-September. It is now 49 to 46.
That is why we're seeing more of her, and we've been talking a little bit about how she's trying to get ahead with the storms and stuff like that. That's one of the reasons why over the weekend, she was out, and the administration was promoting the fact that this administration has sent a hundred and fifty-sevel million dollars to Lebanon. Now that's one thing. But it comes as the same time that there are tens of thousands of Americans struggling, and the federal government doesn't have enough money for them. Peter Doocy asked some very basic questions about how lopsided that is. So let me get this straight. We got money for Lebanon. We don't have money for people in North Carolina. If you miss it, here is this extraordinary interchange.
...
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): She's missing what he was trying to ask. He was just saying why can we give all this money to Lebanon and without Congress's permission, but yet Congress has to come back to give money to our Americans in North Carolina and in Florida. That's all he was saying, and she's saying you don't want Congress to come back. No.
LAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): Ainsley, she knows exactly what he's saying. She being intentionally obtuse, pretending like she doesn't understand there are people, I just got back from there — they are frustrated that they are not getting the resources at a faster rate. I know they say FEMA is there, but the people aren't seeing them. That's the bottom line. People are not seeing them on the ground. They are seeing Samaritan's Purse. The country is a giving country. But when they see other people getting resources before them, they get pretty hot about it. And there's dead bodies still having to be dragged out right now, which is sad. There's no government agency on the ground that's doing, those are private organizations that are doing the work. And so for Peter to ask the question that most Americans that are in this tragedy are feeling, and for her to reject it as disinformation, you don't like the question but it's not disinformation.
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): We're also watching everyone cover for this administration, The New York Times, the Washington Post, almost every network is not acknowledging the fact that they've taken a week to ask the military to get involved.
JONES: Yes.
KILMEADE: These are hard-to-reach areas, it's different than Florida is going to need. These are hard-to-reach areas. You needed the army, they are literally one hour away and you waited a week. Don't say you didn't need them because you called them last Thursday when you could have had them in country, in the state working on Monday.
CBS News reports (emphasis added):
Only $1.6 billion remains in a federal program to help small businesses impacted by hurricanes and natural disasters — enough funding for only a few more weeks without emergency intervention by Congress. Multiple Biden administration and congressional sources told CBS News there are concerns funding will be depleted by the end of this month.
The remaining pot of funding in the Small Business Administration's disaster loan fund is being severely strained by the damage of Hurricane Helene, CBS News has learned, and the Small Business Administration has received at least 3,000 applications every day since Hurricane Helene struck the Southeast. One administration official said there is not sufficient money to last until Congress' scheduled return to Washington after the November elections.
Congress failed to include additional funding for the disaster fund when it passed a short-term spending bill to fund the federal government in September. Although there is optimism that sufficient money remains to help offset the costs of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until Congress returns during the week of Nov. 12, there are growing concerns that the Small Business Administration disaster money will run dry.
CBS specifically notes that the Republican senator from Florida Rick Scott is among those asking Congress to reconvene immediately:
An aide to Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, told CBS News that Scott spoke with President Biden about the need for Congress to swiftly reconvene and approve new federal aid to respond to Helene's destruction.
“While I know from my experience with previous hurricanes that FEMA and SBA damage assessments take time, I am today urging Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to immediately reconvene the U.S. Senate when those assessments are completed so that we can pass the clean supplemental disaster funding bill and other disaster relief legislation,” Scott said in a news release.
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Fox is in denial of reality just weeks before the election
Fox personalities have rejected data showing a reduction in violent crime, record energy production, plummeting inflation, and fewer unauthorized border crossings
Written by Zachary Pleat
Published 09/26/24 mma
In recent weeks, multiple Fox personalities have been in denial of objective reality that under the Biden-Harris administration, especially in recent months, violent crime has declined, inflation is steadily declining, oil and natural gas production are at record highs, and unauthorized border crossings have plummeted.
- ### Statistics show violent crime has dropped under the Biden-Harris administration, but Fox is rejecting this data and claiming the opposite
On September 23, the FBI released its annual crime statistics estimates, which showed a 3% decline in violent crime nationwide, including an 11.6% drop in “murder and non-negligent manslaughter.” These statistics were widely reported, and The New York Times noted that this continues a pattern of declining murder rates under the Biden-Harris administration, with the decline in murders showing “the largest year-to-year decline since national record-keeping began in 1960.”
Yet Fox, which spent more than half the year running nearly 1,000 weekday segments on the bogus “migrant crime” narrative, has denied these statistics showing a drop in violent crime.
- Fox News anchor Dana Perino: “So much for crime being down.” Perino, reacting to a chaotic video from Philadelphia, suggested it was evidence that statistics showing a drop in crime were not reflective of reality. Fox host Greg Gutfeld claimed, “The statistics that the FBI uses aren't taken seriously because they’re limited. They don't pass the smell test.” Fox News, *The Five*, [9/24/24]
- Fox host Harris Faulkner confusingly suggested that statistics may not show a decrease in violent crime — immediately after acknowledging that they do. On her program, Faulkner said: “So crime down — what about violent crime? Because that’s the part that is changing people’s lives.” Moments prior to this, Faulkner said: “The White House is praising new FBI statistics which indicate violent crime is down across the nation. However, the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics have some numbers that tell a very different story.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [9/24/24]
- Fox host Jeanine Pirro falsely claimed there has been an “increase in crime” and that Vice President Kamala Harris is responsible for it. Fox News, *The Five*, [9/24/24]
- ### Inflation has plummeted from its peak more than two years ago, yet Fox claims it's at “record highs”
Multiple measures of inflation have plummeted since their mid-2022 peak. Both the consumer price index and the personal consumption expenditures price index measures show 2.5% inflation — near the Federal Reserve’s 2% PCE target — and the producer price index measure shows a lower 1.7%. The improving inflation picture has at last galvanized the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, much to Fox’s displeasure. Yet Fox continues to cover inflation in a misleading manner, falsely claiming that it is currently at “record highs.”
- Fox host Jesse Watters falsely claimed “inflation [is] at record highs.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/24/24]
- Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: “The truth is, inflation is high. That’s why prices are up.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/20/24]
- Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: Harris lacks a “plan to take inflation down because she doesn’t have an understanding of what took us to 40-year highs.” Prior to Bartiromo saying this, her program aired a graphic showing the annual CPI inflation measurement declining significantly from its peak of 9.1% more than two years ago to its current level of 2.5%. Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria Bartiromo*, [9/20/24]
- ### Data shows record-high oil and natural gas production under Biden-Harris, but Fox is telling you not to believe it
American energy production is experiencing record highs under the Biden-Harris administration. In addition, the U.S. is on track to be the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas for the second year in a row and is the largest supplier of LNG to Europe. In 2023, U.S. crude oil production, at an average of 12.9 million barrels per day, surpassed the record set in 2019, and the Energy Information Administration has forecasted a new record of 13.25 million barrels per day this year.
- Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade: “We’re not” leading in natural gas and oil production. Kilmeade continued: “Don't let anybody tell you our oil and gas production is high.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/25/24]
- Kilmeade falsely claimed there was double the daily production of oil under Trump compared to the Biden-Harris administration. Kilmeade said: “When she talked about there’s more oil production under us than under you, she’s wrong. It was 4 million barrels a day under Trump. It was 2 million barrels under Biden-Harris. So, that's totally inaccurate.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/13/24]
[### U.S. produces more oil than any country
Spectrum News
https://spectrumlocalnews.com › news › 2024/08/29 › 2...](https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2024/08/29/2024-election-record-us-oil-production-)
Aug 30, 2024 — What You Need To Know. As former President Donald Trump pledges to increase oil and gas production, the U.S. is already is producing a record ...
[### Harris and Trump kept talking about pumping more oil. ...
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › oil-fracking-trump-harris-debate](https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/11/investing/oil-fracking-trump-harris-debate/index.html)
Sep 11, 2024 — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talking so much about expanding oil production during Tuesday night's debate.
[### Under both Trump and Biden-Harris, US oil and gas ...
Alaska Beacon
https://alaskabeacon.com › 2024/09/11 › under-both-tr...](https://alaskabeacon.com/2024/09/11/under-both-trump-and-biden-harris-us-oil-and-gas-production-surged-despite-different-energy-goals/)
Sep 11, 2024 — With Trump and Harris facing off in the November presidential election, let's take a look at how each influenced fossil fuel production and ...
Missing: million
[### Biden-Harris Administration Purchases More Than 4 ...
Department of Energy (.gov)
https://www.energy.gov › articles › biden-harris-administ...](https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-purchases-more-4-million-barrels-strategic-petroleum-reserve)
Jul 29, 2024 — The New Purchase of 4.65 million Barrels Means Department of Energy has Purchased Over 40 Million Barrels, Showcasing the Biden-Harris ...
Missing: day Trump.
[### Why no president has slowed the boom in U.S. oil drilling
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com › 2024/08/16 › biden...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/)
Aug 16, 2024 — Under President Joe Biden, who campaigned on a pledge of “no more drilling,” America is pumping more oil than any country ever has.
[### US oil output notches fresh record in August
Politico
https://www.politico.com › news › 2024/08/07 › us-oil-...](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/07/us-oil-output-august-record-00173065)
Aug 7, 2024 — U.S. oil production set an annual record peak in 2023 that is likely to be broken this year.
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[### Trump says 'drill, baby, drill,' but the record for US oil ...
ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos
https://abcnews.go.com › Politics › story](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/drill-baby-drill-donald-trump-oil-gas-rnc/story?id=112108980)
Jul 19, 2024 — During Biden's tenure, the United States has continued to produce and export the most crude oil out of any country, at any time.
- ### Data shows fewer unauthorized border crossings, yet Fox is using legal immigration numbers to reject it
Report after report has shown that unauthorized border crossings in the Southwest have plummeted in recent months compared to previous years in the Biden-Harris administration. Even Fox News reported a huge drop in apprehensions at the border.
Yet Fox continues to challenge the data showing a huge drop in unauthorized border crossings by insisting that the number of people using the administration’s programs to entice immigrants to enter legally should be added to border crossing numbers. This denial of reality and goalpost shifting bears similarities to the rhetoric of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who has been purposefully referring to authorized migrants as “illegal aliens” after stirring up hate against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, with false smears.
- Fox correspondent Bill Melugin: Data showing “illegal crossings … have been down significantly” is “not a true reflection of the amount of people who are being allowed into the country.” Melugin suggested that data showing unauthorized border crossings plummeting in 2024 isn’t genuine, citing programs from the Biden-Harris administration to increase legal immigration. Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [9/17/24]
- Fox host Laura Ingraham: Harris can only claim “our numbers are down” for unauthorized border crossings because immigrants are “coming through the ports of entry” legally and “bringing in people under ‘legal’ cover … from four countries.” Melugin added: “We’re talking, like, 70,000 to 80,000 people per month between these two programs that come into the U.S. quote-unquote ‘lawfully,’ and they never get counted in the border numbers now. They’re not illegal crossings, so they don't show up in Border Patrol numbers. So yeah, those numbers have fallen off a cliff, but if you look at the port-of-entry numbers, those numbers are skyrocketing. They’re bringing tens of thousands of people in every single month via these lawful programs, and it’s been effective at pushing those illegal crossings down.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [9/9/24]
- Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy decried legal immigration programs: The administration “can artificially keep their numbers low and pretend that they're actually doing something on the border when, in fact, they're doing the opposite. They’re increasing them.” Campos-Duffy cited Fox contributor and former Trump administration Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan to claim that legal immigration programs enacted by the Biden-Harris administration are “in place to change the numbers so those people … are not counted in the illegal crossings.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [8/31/24]
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September 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
AINSLEY EARHARDT (FOX HOST): Think about the few speeches we have heard her give or interviews we have heard her give. She is not focusing on the environment anymore, climate.
STEVE DOOCY (HOST): Listen, and regarding costs of stuff. When she talks about how insurance — your insurance, your home insurance is going up, because of climate change, I have actually heard that from my insurance broker. They said okay. Your rates are going way up. I said why? Because of the weather. Because of climate change. So that is — that's somebody who is not a partisan.
AINSLEY EARHARDT: They just want to charge you more, It's the weather. El Nino.
STEVE DOOCY: Also why they are canceling people. That's why she is using that.
:{BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): One more windmill and his insurance rates will go down. Fantastic. Get me those solar panels from China.}:
LAWRENCE JONES (HOST): Right.
As Media Matters recently documented:
During the August 28 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Fox Business correspondent Max Gordon reported on the skyrocketing cost of car insurance, another one of the “big issues coming up in the campaign” according to anchor Dana Perino. Gordon went on to connect this pocketbook issue to climate change, noting that the, “Increase in severe weather events has been one of the main drivers behind these increasing premiums. Climate events that cause a billion dollars or more in damage have been steadily on the rise, impacting how insurers set rates.”
Notably, the climate crisis is creating a housing insurance crisis as well. Climate change is making storms and wildfires more destructive. Last year, the U.S. experienced a record 28 disasters that cost more than a billion dollars each in damage. In response, some private insurers are raising premiums in areas frequently hit by extreme weather or pulling out of high-risk areas altogether, leaving homeowners uninsured.
Rising insurance costs are not the only economic impact of climate change. A study released early this year found that climate change is among the factors driving inflation which is “driving up the prices of food and other goods worldwide.” As Axios reported: “This is not the first study to note the economic toll of climate change, or even the inflationary pressures of increasing temperatures and extreme weather events."
Here is a recent CBS News segment on how climate change is affecting insurance rates:
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// haiti pet fail? mma 9 24
the “crime crisis” narrative Fox News concocted for Donald Trump was exposed at Tuesday night’s debate when moderator David Muir pointed out that FBI data shows violent crime has actually fallen dramatically in recent years. The network’s stars are responding by lashing out at Muir, falsely claiming violent crime is actually up, and arguing that even if data show violent crime is plummeting, “we're all a little bit more scared than we used to be.”
Trump, in a nonresponsive answer to a question about how he would carry out his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, claimed that due to migration under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, “crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.”
Trump’s assertion of rising crime echoed months of anecdote-based Fox coverage — but Muir pointed out in response that actual data shows the opposite, saying, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”
Indeed, preliminary FBI data released in June found “steep drops in every category of violent crime in every region in the first three months of 2024 compared to a year earlier, continuing a downward trend since a coronavirus pandemic surge” during Trump’s administration.
Trump responded to Muir by echoing baseless right-wing media claims that the FBI had been “defrauding” data. But the agency’s report is consistent with other sources showing that crime is falling.
Video
CitationFrom the September 10, 2024, presidential debate.
The co-hosts of Fox & Friends responded the next morning by arguing that data that shows violent crime has fallen is irrelevant in the face of the vibes.
“Any time people say violent crime is down in America,” offered Brian Kilmeade, “I ask you, people of Philadelphia, where they are hosting, find anyone in Philadelphia who thinks violent crime is down. I ask you, people of Chicago, site of the DNC, walk around and tell us how crime is under control. I ask you in Washington, D.C., where violent crime is down, the carjacking capital of the country, ask anyone in Washington, D.C., if they feel safer today than four years ago. There is the numbers and there is the reality.”
“It’s the word ‘violent,’ however they define ‘violent.’ Crime is up,” responded Ainsley Earhardt.
“Kamala Harris didn’t even make that point — it was the moderators,” Lawrence Jones added. “They’re not there covering these stories. They’re not going to all these major cities talking about the violence that is impacting urban America on the day to days, so they probably believe what the FBI numbers are saying.”
In fact, according to data compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, all three cities Kilmeade mentioned have seen steep declines in homicides and at least one other category of violent crime the group reported (rapes, robberies, and/or aggravated assaults).
Video
CitationFrom the September 11, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends.
The trio returned to the subject later in the program.
“One of my favorite parts of the debate, and when it just became clear to me that the bias was jumping off the screen at one point, was the conversation about crime,” Jones complained. “And then David hops in and says, ‘Well, actually, the FBI is saying that the crime is going down.’”
“OK, well now, we know those numbers aren’t quite accurate,” he continued, echoing Trump’s false claim from the debate. Jones then urged Muir to spend more time focusing his broadcast on crime anecdotes, saying, “David, you have a newscast every single day. You may not report on it, but you have local affiliates in major cities all across this country. They are reporting on the crime in Chicago, in Philadelphia. Why not pick up the phone and call them and see what’s going on on the ground?”
“I think, Lawrence, the operative word there was ‘violent,’ and David said, ‘Violent crime has gone down,’” Earhardt replied. “We know that crime is up in these cities, we know that thousands, millions of more illegal immigrants have come over our border under this administration, many of them are affiliated with gangs. We know that more of them have murdered more little girls or young women than ever in my lifetime.” (Earhardt was alive in the 1990s, when violent crime and homicides peaked at levels dramatically higher than the present.)
“So violent crime might be going down,” she continued, “but crime overall, we're all a little bit more scared than we used to be."
“Ask anybody in the streets of Philadelphia, outside where that debate was taking place, if they think crime is going down,” Kilmeade added. “In New York City, you walk the streets here, I don't care what the bar chart or the pie chart says, it’s not going down.”
Related
- ### Fox News' attempt to manufacture a Biden crime crisis runs into a problem: Violent crime is down
02/29/24 12:55 PM EST
07/16/24 9:04 AM EDT
09/11/24
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mma 9 24
Right-wing media spread falsehoods about Minnesota’s abortion law after Trump’s poor debate performance
Special ProgramsAbortion Rights & Reproductive Health
Written by John Knefel
Research contributions from Media Matters Staff
Published 09/11/24
Right-wing media figures responded to former President Donald Trump’s poor debate performance on Tuesday night by spreading falsehoods about Minnesota’s abortion law.
During the debate, Trump made false and misleading assertions about legislation enacted by Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine,” Trump said. “He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay.”
As ABC News moderator Linsey Davis noted after Trump’s comments, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.”
Trump’s comments about “abortion in the ninth month” are also misleading. In 2023, Walz signed the Protect Reproductive Options Act, or PRO Act, into law, further codifying the right to an abortion in Minnesota. As KARE11 reported this April, Minnesota healthcare providers performed only one third-trimester abortion in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. The same was true in 2019 and 2020. In 2021, a single Minnesota resident was listed as having received a third-trimester abortion, but it was performed out of state. Generally, only about one percent of abortions nationwide occur after 21 weeks.
Despite clear evidence to the contrary, right-wing figures took Trump’s comments and ran with them.
Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade falsely claimed that under Walz, Minnesota performed five “abortions” after a child had been born — in other words, had committed the crime of infanticide. “It soon turned to the fact-checking on abortion, when it come to there’s no abortion after the ninth month, when, in fact, under Gov. Tim Walz, it happened at least five times in Minnesota,” Kilmeade said. “When a moderator … fact-checks you and the moderator is wrong, that's tough on a candidate.”
Video
CitationFrom the September 11, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox and Friends
It’s not entirely clear what Kilmeade is referring to, but he is completely wrong on Minnesota’s abortion laws. In 2021, Minnesota recorded five instances of a “born-alive infant” following an abortion procedure; two were not viable, two were provided “comfort care,” and in the final instance, “fetal anomalies were reported resulting in death shortly after delivery.” In no case was a so-called post-birth abortion performed.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also mischaracterized the 2023 Minnesota legislation, writing on X (formerly Twitter), “The left believes in legal infanticide.”
CitationFrom Charlie Kirk's X/Twitter account
Contrary to Kirk’s claims, the 2023 law clearly states: “An infant who is born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law.”
As 10News reported, citing a doctor who supports abortion rights, the law was designed to make “sure doctors aren't forced to prolong the suffering of an infant unable to live on its own.” An editorial in the Star Tribune further explained how the law’s changes supported families by not forcing “an infant with severe anomalies undergo extraordinary and futile medical care.”
Fox News co-host Kayleigh McEnany echoed Kirk’s mischaracterization of the Minnesota law. “Where was the question about Tim Walz allowing babies born alive after abortion to die in Minnesota and then removing reporting requirements?” McEnany wrote on X.
CitationFrom Kayleigh McEnany's account on X/Twitter
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles similarly wrote, “Kamala’s own running mate repealed the legal requirement that physicians attempt to ‘preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.’”
CitationFrom Michael Knowles' account on X/Twitter
Knowles’ colleague at The Daily Wire, Mary Margaret Olohan, did as well.
CitationFrom Mary Margaret Olohan's account on X/Twitter
Right-wing radio host Erick Erickson made a similar claim, though did not specify that he was talking about Minnesota.
CitationFrom Erick Erickson's account on X/Twitter
This line of attack against Walz isn’t new. In August, Fox’s McEnany made similar misleading claims, telling her viewers that “his abortion policy allows abortion until birth.”
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an 8 24
Donald Trump falsely told a crowd of North Carolina supporters on Wednesday that President Joe Biden had sent Vice President Kamala Harris to meet with Vladimir Putin to prevent him from invading Ukraine in 2022, days before the Russian President ordered his forces to attack the sovereign nation.
“Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine?” Trump said at a rally in Asheboro, continuing to pronounce the Vice President’s name wrong, “She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked. How did she do, do you think she did a good job? She met with Putin to tell him, ‘don’t do it.’ And three days later he attacked. That’s when the attack started.”
That was a lie.
READ MORE: ‘Spit in the Faces’: Trump Slammed for Doubling Down on Insulting Medal of Honor Veterans
Trump repeated and embellished the same lie Thursday morning, telling Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” hosts in a call-in audio-only interview, “Biden sent, I called her ‘Comrade Kamala.’ Sent Comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked. Three days later, he laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.”
Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, a staunch Trump supporter, told viewers, “Yeah. And just as a quick clarification, we don’t have confirmation that the Vice President went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin. I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”
But Fox News’ Ainsley Airhardt told Kilmeade, “I’ve heard that said a lot. You don’t have confirmation that that’s true?”
READ MORE: JD Vance: ‘I Don’t Believe the Polls’
“I don’t know if the vice president ever met Vladimir Putin,” Kilmeade remarked on a story that had already been debunked.
Earlier in their interview, Airhardt told Trump that Democrats at this week’s Democratic National Convention are “spreading so many different lies.”
CNN Wednesday evening reported: “Trump’s claim is false. Harris has never met with Putin. In reality, she met with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Munich Security Conference in the days before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin was not at the conference.”
The network’s fact-checker, Daniel Dale, added a quote from a Kremlin spokesperson: “Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs. Harris.”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
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mma 8 24
News outlets reported that Vice President Kamala Harris proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% if she wins the presidency this November, partially rolling back the Trump-era tax cuts that slashed corporate taxes.
Even though corporate tax revenue plummeted in response to the Trump tax cuts, and American corporations are undertaxed relative to other developed economies in the OECD, conservative media began assailing Harris’ policy with false claims of immediate and “massive layoffs” and higher inflation.
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has explained, Trump’s 2017 tax cut was skewed to the richest Americans, and the corporate tax cut even moreso, with the bottom 90% of workers gaining nothing from the corporate tax rate cut, while corporate executives earning nearly $1 million a year got an average $50,000 earnings boost. A leading reason that Trump's corporate tax changes benefited the wealthy was the imposition of a flat tax of 21% to replace what had been a graduated rate system, ranging from 15% to 35%.
:{And thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, even as corporate profits went up during most of his presidency, corporate tax revenue dropped until the pandemic and the years after. Corporate tax revenue as a share of the economy remains near historic lows at under 2% of gross domestic product, and it’s also near historic lows as a share of federal tax revenue. :{}:
Meanwhile, the Organisation for Economic Co-operations and Development (OECD) average showed corporate tax revenue in 2020 at just over 15% of total tax revenue, and 3% of GDP, showing that U.S. corporations have a very light tax burden in comparison. In 2023, the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that raising the corporate tax rate to 28% would raise more than $1.3 trillion in revenue over 10 years.
Yet conservative media reacted to Harris’ proposal with hyperbolic doom and gloom. Citing an analysis from the Tax Foundation, Fox News personalities claimed that raising the corporate tax rate would lead to “massive layoffs” “right off the bat.” Yet the Tax Foundation’s analysis projected a loss of only 128,000 “full-time equivalent jobs” by 2034. This is a drop in the bucket of the millions of jobs projected to be created over the course of a decade. Other conservatives claimed that raising the corporate tax rate would be inflationary; in reality, tax increases are broadly considered deflationary.
- Fox Business’ Jackie DeAngelis falsely claimed that if Harris “raises the corporate tax rate to 28%, almost 150,000 people right off the bat are going to lose their jobs.” DeAngelis added: “Ultimately the corporations aren't these big, bad evil entities.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [8/20/24]
- Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones claimed that “you’re gonna have massive layoffs” if Harris raises the corporate tax rate to 28%. Co-host Brian Kilmeade defended the Trump-era rate, saying, “Corporations have people in it,” and claiming that it would make the U.S. uncompetitive with European countries with lower corporate tax rates. Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [8/20/24]
- Fox Business host Charles Payne: Harris wants to “go to war with corporate America.” Payne then proclaimed Harris will “make the lives of workers harsher,” adding that “there will be fewer jobs.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [8/20/24]
* Wash. Times columnist and Trump campaign staffer Tim Murtaugh: “She wants to tax job creators at a higher rate than Chinese communists do.” Murtaugh added: “Who do you think will pay for the tax increase? Do you suppose maybe it’s passed on to consumers like always? Harris is dangerous.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]
- Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz: “Do you think a 30% increase in the corporate tax rate will increase the cost of your life? Yes, it will. Everything will cost more. That’s VP Harris’ plan. Believe her.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]
- Right-wing commentator Bill Mitchell: Raising the corporate tax rate is inflationary. Mitchell posted that “corporations will pass costs onto consumers.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]
related
08/15/24
08/09/24
08/02/24
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mma 3 24
Fox News wants its viewers to think that one of yesterday’s witnesses at the House GOP’s impeachment hearing is untrustworthy.
But the network isn’t concerned about the one who testified from federal prison after a fraud conviction, or the one who admits to having a grievance with Hunter Biden.
No, the guy Fox wants viewers to disbelieve is the witness who told the committee that he played a key role in concocting the anti-Biden Ukrainian disinformation campaign that played out on Fox’s airwaves.
Fox has long known Lev Parnas lacked credibility, thanks to research by its own staff. But now it’s finally useful to the network’s narratives to say so.
Back in 2019, Parnas was part of a Rudy Giuliani-driven campaign to smear Joe Biden and his son Hunter as corrupt because of actions and positions the senior Biden took regarding Ukraine when he was vice president. Giuliani worked with a motley crew of Fox News staples such as conservative writer John Solomon and Republican attorneys Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing to launder Russian-linked disinformation into the right-wing media ecosystem. The goal was to lay the groundwork for attacking then-President Donald Trump’s most likely opponent in the 2020 presidential election.
Parnas, along with fellow Soviet-born con man Igor Fruman, worked closely with Giuliani to feed him an endless supply of lies about Joe Biden and his supposed corruption. This effort ultimately got Trump impeached for attempting to blackmail Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden, but it’s nonetheless most familiar now for serving as the incredibly shaky foundation of the right’s current efforts to impeach Biden.
Media Matters extensively documented the key role Fox News played in laundering this smear campaign into the media.
Giuliani’s strategy hinged on the network’s active participation. Working with con men like Parnas and other Trump cronies, he pursued an “investigation” into Ukraine that he claimed showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son. He provided his “report” to allies in Congress to exploit while also feeding the story to conservative columnist John Solomon, who at the time worked at The Hill and dutifully reported out Giuliani’s claims in dozens of columns. During that same time period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times. Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity alone, with host Sean Hannity weaving Solomon’s reporting into his ever-evolving conspiracy theories that “deep state” elements were out to get Trump.
Despite what played on the network’s airwaves, behind the scenes Fox News' researchers warned that Parnas and his allies’ information was not reliable. As The Daily Beast reported, “Fox News’ own research team has warned colleagues not to trust some of the network’s top commentators’ claims about Ukraine.”
According to The Daily Beast, the 162-page brief compiled by researchers for what was then known as Fox’s Brain Room “openly” questioned “Fox News contributor John Solomon’s credibility, accusing him of playing an ‘indispensable role’ in a Ukrainian ‘disinformation campaign.’”
The document also specifically called into question Parnas’ credibility, noting: “Reading the timeline in its entirety—not a small task—makes clear the extensive role played by Rudy Giuliani and his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, in spreading disinformation.”
Indeed, when Parnas was arrested for allegedly making illegal campaign donations to Republican candidates and committees, he was at the airport, preparing to leave the country in order to facilitate an interview with disgraced Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin for none other than Sean Hannity.
Shortly after his arrest, Parnas flipped, and he has since repeatedly sought to expose the misinformation campaign he facilitated and the key players behind it. During Trump’s 2019 impeachment trial, Parnasprovided evidence about the pressure Trump allies were placing on Ukrainian officials to provide information about Biden.
With Parnas’ change in position, Fox suddenly became much more publicly skeptical of the claims he was making. And yesterday, when he testified in the latest of the House Republicans’ doomed efforts to invent a reason to impeach Joe Biden, he specifically called out Fox’s tendency to run with the dubious, unverifiable claims he had given to John Solomon:
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): At what point did the campaign to dig up dirt on Biden become a campaign to spread disinformation and lies about Biden?
LEV PARNAS: At some point when we hit a few brick walls, all of a sudden, then I saw the shift between the BLT group, which included John Solomon, the media personality, and Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers, to start trying to push narratives that were — we had no, they were not validated. We had no way to validate them. Basically, a letter would come over from somebody in Ukraine, I'd hand it over to John Solomon. Next thing you knew he was on Fox TV two hours later with Sean Hannity.
Predictably, Fox has sought to discredit Parnas’ testimony by attacking his credibility.
Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade complained that Parnas “went to jail for lying and is talking about Ukraine” (Parnas was convicted of wire fraud and campaign finance violations, not anything related to his work with Giuliani) and said his testimony was nothing but a “head fake” on the part of the Democrats who invited him to testify.
So-called “straight news” anchor John Roberts said of Parnas: “The credibility of a witness clearly depends on which side of the political aisle you sit, because the Democrats were happy to have Lev Parnas testify there in person. He’s been in jail for wire fraud, among other things, but Jason Galanis, who’s currently in jail, oh, he had no credibility. So, I mean, pick and choose your villains here, right?”
It's convenient how Fox suddenly develops journalistic standards when the claims Parnas is making no longer fit the network’s anti-Biden narratives.
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Since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israelis, Islamophobic rhetoric has thrived in right-wing media spaces}:
- Hamas launched its attack against Israel on October 7, with militants from the Gaza Strip targeting both civilians and Israeli military personnel. Since then, Israel has promised to eradicate Hamas, leading the Israeli military to target Gaza in an ongoing conflict that has left more than 1,400 Israelis and nearly 3,800 Palestinians dead. Al Jazeera, [10/20/23]
- Right-wing media figures fearmongered about a supposed “global day of jihad” transpiring on October 13.The notion of a “day of jihad,” in which Islamic extremists would launch Hamas-inspired attacks around the world, seemed to come in part from the mistranslation of a statement from former Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal. Without a “specific and credible threat” to the U.S., this day failed to materialize. The rhetoric nonetheless sparked increased fears of violence during a time when anti-Muslim violence is already expected to rise. Media Matters, [10/16/23; The Guardian, 10/17/23]
- An Illinois man who “‘listens to conservative talk radio on a regular basis’ and became obsessed with the war between Hamas and Israel” allegedly stabbed his 6-year-old Palestinian tenant to death in what is being investigated as a hate crime. NBC News, [10/16/23]
- ## Radio hosts and guests fearmongered about Islamic extremists attacking the U.S.
- Charlie Kirk told people to carry a gun to defend themselves in case sleeper cells are “activated” in the U.S. The Turning Point USA founder told his audience, “This needs to be a wake up call. They are here, they mean harm to the American homeland and I pray that they are not activated. Make sure you have a gun on you.” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/11/23]
- According to Kirk, “We have imported the dynamite right into our country.” Kirk claimed that “we have invited some of the most disgusting people on the planet into the West,” including “Third World Muslims,” and now “we shouldn’t be surprised” to see a “global day of jihad.” Media Matters, [10/16/23; Salem Media Group, The Charlie Kirk Show, 10/12/23]
- Kirk claimed that “millions of young, fighting-age Muslim men in America” have the potential to be “activated” as terrorists. Kirk said, “You have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of young, fighting-age Muslim men in America. All it takes is for a couple of them to be activated in this country.” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/12/23]
- Kirk fearmongered about the potential of Islamic terrorists crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and “shooting up a public place in the name of Allah.” Kirk said, “What's to prevent one of these Muslims that came across the border … from getting their hands on a firearm and going and shooting up a public place in the name of Allah?” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/10/23]
- Sean Hannity told his audience to take the “global day of jihad” seriously despite a lack of evidence. He proclaimed, “Hamas has now called for their supporters to make tomorrow, Friday the 13, a global day of jihad. Now I care about everyone in my audience. I'm gonna urge all of you: Take this seriously.” He added, “You know, it’s a holy war, and they want it worldwide.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [10/12/23]
- Hannity claimed there are terrorist cells in the U.S. that have already entered the country illegally and are planning attacks.He said, “I guarantee you that among the 8 million, by the end of this year, of illegal immigrants, I guarantee you people that have connections to terrorism have entered this country and that there are terror cells plotting, planning, and scheming another attack.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show,* [10/17/23]
- On right-wing pundit Eric Metaxas’ show, a guest spread the conspiracy theory that the Biden administration is allowing men from “Muslim countries” into America to be later used to cause chaos. Appearing on The Eric Metaxas Show, The Stream senior editor John Zmirak claimed, “They were letting in thousands of military-age men from Muslim countries and spreading them all over the country. Why? My theory, my conclusion is this is the next army of political police, of political thugs whom the Democrats will send out onto the streets to riot, to burn, to threaten, to intimidate, to pillage the next time it suits their political advantage.” Salem Media Group, *The Eric Metaxas Show*, [10/11/23]
- ## Right-wing radio hosts spread blatant Islamophobia
- Steve Deace claimed that Islam has “no compunction or reservation at all about using women and children as human shields.” “Hey, I lose a wife. I've got seven more,” Deace said, mocking Muslims. “I lose a kid, I'll make another kid with the other seven wives. And that kid, you know, was just welcomed by Allah into heaven as a hero.“ Blaze Radio, *Steve Deace Show*, [10/16/23]
- Charlie Kirk maintained that the “vast majority of Muslims” live “in the 1300s” and hold a “medieval worldview.” Kirk framed the Israel-Hamas conflict as “civilization, aka Western values, versus barbarism.” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/11/23]
- Kirk claimed Muslims are going to kidnap people “across the world.”According to Kirk, “People are going to start getting kidnapped all across the world if we mishandle this. You’re going to see a string of kidnappings,” Kirk said. “Americans don’t travel internationally nearly as much as Europeans, but we travel internationally a lot, and there's a lot of Muslims out there.” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/11/23]
- Kirk falsely claimed that Islamic law justifies killing children. “It's perfectly acceptable in Islamic law to go kill kids — perfectly fine,” Kirk said. Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/12/23]
- Shapiro claimed that the United Nations is “despicable and vile” and “filled with Islamist countries that support the death of Jews.” Westwood One, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [10/10/23]
- ## Right-wing radio hosts dehumanized Palestinians
- Charlie Kirk claimed Palestinians in Gaza are “savage animals.” The TPUSA founder and Salem Media Group radio host stated, “To be clear, they will — they'll take you out of the car and cut your head off and parade you through the streets. They're really nice people we got dealing with here. And I'll never forget — as soon as they see an Israeli license plate, they're savage animals, they’ll come after you.” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/11/23]
- Mark Levin declared, “The Israelis are up against these animals — they’re not even animals,” before calling Palestinians “subhumans.” On his Westwood One radio show, Levin also questioned why the safety of Palestinian civilians should be considered, “particularly when the enemy wants its own civilians killed.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [10/13/23]
- Levin: “And I'm supposed to, what, shed crocodile tears, for what's going to happen to these people?”Levin also called people in Gaza “barbarians” and said that their deaths are not Israel’s responsibility. Levin continued, “I'm not. Maybe I'm the only one who will voice it, but I'm not. Israel has every right to throw every damn thing it has at barbarians. And if there are innocent people, quote-unquote ‘civilians’ who are killed, then maybe they ought to organize to take out the government they elected, but it's not Israel's responsibility." Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [10/10/23]
- Levin implied that all Palestinians are evil and said that if “there's collateral damage” when Israel attacks Gaza, “so be it.” According to Levin, “One side is immoral and evil. The other side is moral and good. It's that simple.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [10/17/23]
- Steve Deace claimed that Palestinians are “basically Arab squatters, people who were kicked out of countries like Jordan, who didn't want them.” The Blaze Radio host said, “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian. It’s a people group that does not exist. They’re basically Arab squatters, people who were kicked out of countries like Jordan, who didn’t want them.” Blaze Radio, *The Steve Deace Show*, [10/13/23]
- Blaze Radio producer Aaron McIntire claimed that Palestinian civilians “don’t exist” and also called them “squatters.”McIntire said, “What you do with the Palestinian civilians — that don’t exist — what you do with the people, the squatters, who live in the area known as Gaza Strip: Make Egypt take them, make the Arab nations, Arab neighbors take them.” Blaze Radio, *The Steve Deace Show*, [10/13/23]
- Deace also said, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people as a people group.”He stated, “The people identifying as Palestinians — and they're not all Muslims, they're not all, you know, Hamas crazies, and every one of them's made in the image of God. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a Palestinian people as a people group. These are folks from other Arab countries, a lot of them, a legacy like in Jordan that were kicked out of those countries, and there's a reason why these Arab countries like Jordan and Egypt are closing their borders to them now. They don't want them back.” Blaze Radio, *Steve Deace Show*,[10/16/23]
- Charlie Kirk claimed Palestinians are all antisemitic to justify attacking them: “The reality is Hamas and the Arab world, they just hate Jews. They just want Jews dead.” Salem Media Group, T*he Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/12/23]
- ## Right-wing radio figures tried to justify withholding aid to Palestinians
- Sean Hannity said any humanitarian aid to Palestine will help Hamas. Hannity stated, “Any humanitarian aid you want to give the innocent people in Gaza — I don't know what the percentage is because I don't know how deep their indoctrination is — will not go to the civilians. Innocents won't see this aid. It will go to Hamas, and they will build out their terror network.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [10/18/23]
- Ben Shapiro said “turning off water and electricity in military areas is normal” and emphasized that Israel is trying to avoid targeting civilians. Westwood One, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [10/16/23]
- Shapiro claimed that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a humanitarian organization, allows for “Jew hatred” and should not be supported. According to Shapiro, “The UNRWA, the U.N. refugees administration, which is an agency that is specifically dedicated only to the Palestinians, it’s amazing. It’s a garbage administration run internationally that allows for full indoctrination in Jew hatred at UNRWA schools and the hiding of weaponry beneath UNRWA schools. They admitted yesterday on Twitter, briefly, that Hamas was literally stealing aid and then they deleted it because they’re afraid that Hamas might get mad at them.” Westwood One, T*he Ben Shapiro Show*, [10/17/23]
- On The Mark Levin Show, the president of the Zionist Organization of America declared: “The civilians are not innocent.”ZOA National President Mort Klein said that the U.S. should withhold aid because Palestinian civilians were also guilty for Hamas’ October 7 attack, saying, “In any war, do you do something against the civilians there? Do we do anything for the Vietnam civilians? For the Iraqi civilians? For the German civilians? No. It is a war. And yet strangely enough when it's Israel fighting Hamas Nazis, we want to aid the civilians. And I must add, the civilians are not innocent.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [10/18/23]
- ## Right-wing radio figures defended or downplayed civilian casualties in Gaza
- Mark Levin complained that asking Israel not to bomb schools or cut off food and medication to Gazan civilians constitutes too many “conditions.”Levin said: “Urban battle: It’s going to be very hard. Of course it is, but the Israelis are being told by our government, ‘Make sure your feed the population, make sure you medicate the population, make sure you don’t hit a mosque, a hospital, a school, don’t hit any of those. Now go for it.’ Look at all these conditions. All these conditions.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [10/16/23]
- Brian Kilmeade suggested civilians should not be let out of Gaza because terrorists might escape. According to the Fox News and radio host, “Word is — there’s some word that we are pressuring — the U.S. is pressuring Israel to hold off on the invasion so that more civilians get out. But you know who else gets out? The terrorists! Who are going to plot and plan another day and be treated like heroes when the red carpet comes out with a lot of these evil regimes or the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates around the world around the globe. “ Fox News Radio, *The Brian Kilmeade Show*, [10/16/23]
- Shapiro excused civilian casualties as necessary to achieve Israeli military objectives, saying, “This notion, that it is incumbent on Israel not to achieve its military objectives in order to prevent civilian casualties caused by Hamas, is absurd on its face.” Westwood One, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [10/17/23]
- Shapiro also said that Palestinian civilians should not be prioritized over “the first rule of war: winning.” According to Shapiro, “Yes, of course, those of moral bent ought to work to minimize civilian casualties. Yes, of course, those of moral bent ought to work to find a place for civilians to escape from the line of fire. But neither of those rules can be prioritized over the first rule of war: winning. War is ugly by nature. Nearly the ugliest thing. As it turns out, there’s only one thing uglier: losing to those who don’t care about morality or decency at all.” Westwood One, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [10/16/23]
- Sean Hannity claimed Hamas and Iran, not Israel, are to blame for civilian deaths in Gaza. According to the Fox News and radio host, “The people of Palestine — those that have been killed and will be killed — you can only blame one group, and that would be the terrorist group Hamas. Well, you can blame another group too — the No. 1 state sponsor of terror that helped, apparently, organize, foment these attacks against Israel. That would be Iran.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [10/16/23]
- Kilmeade said it’s “not Israel’s problem” that civilians are collateral damage in eradicating Hamas.According to Kilmeade, “They say go by the rules of war, and — the best you can — but if Hamas is going to use these people as human shields, prevent them from leaving, or going south, or leaving their building — even though it’s gonna be targeted — that’s not Israel’s problem, it’s their problem.” Fox News Radio, *The Brian Kilmeade Show*, [10/16/23]
- Beck claimed there are “no Israeli war crimes” and said that “every innocent harmed in Gaza is on Hamas.” Beck dismissed the number of casualties caused by Israel, arguing, “Every piece of human suffering in Gaza is on Hamas. Want more peace? Have less Hamas.” Blaze Radio, *The Glenn Beck Program*, [10/17/23]
- ## Right-wing radio figures tried to justify the complete elimination of Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip
- Blaze Radio founder Glenn Beck said Israel should make Gaza into a “parking lot,” claiming the over 2 million Palestinians who live there are simply the tools of “people who just want to kill Jews.”Beck stated, “I think Israel should park their car there. You know what I mean? Park a lot of cars there. It could be, you know, some sort of a parking lot that they make it. … The Palestinian people have been used over and over again by people who just want to kill Jews. That's it. That's — that's been the thing from the very beginning." Blaze Radio, *The Glenn Beck Program*, [10/16/23]
- Salem radio guest: “I’m OK” with an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.During an appearance on Salem Media’s The Charlie Kirk Show, Breitbart writer Joel Pollak stated, “I don’t think it’s going to be something people consider, but it's there. It's a possibility, and frankly I'm OK with it. I say that at the risk of being accused of all kinds of stuff, but, you know, if it comes down to ethnic cleansing, if you want to cleanse my people, I'll cleanse yours first. I mean, that’s where we are.” Salem Media Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [10/9/23]
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an 6 22 no lnx
fox News host Brian Kilmeade took a shot at former President Donald Trump for his "unhinged" lies about the 2020 presidential election.
While speaking about the Jan. 6 hearings, Kilmeade recalled his interactions with Trump following the last presidential election.
"The president was unhinged during that period," the Fox News host said. "I interviewed him at West Point and he was kind enough to give me a few minutes. I've never seen him so angry. That was in between the election and Jan. 6."
"As soon as we were done, he just stormed off," he continued. "And you know how long -- I've known him for 15 years or 20 years prior to him going to the White House. I've never seen him so angry."
Kilmeade added: "So he's convinced he was robbed. There's no doubt about it. But I have not seen any evidence and these are all incremental examples."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-brian-kilmeade-says-robert-f-kennedy-jr-was-right-covid
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did not get tucker slot w gutfeld
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): I would like to bring something else up. I'm wondering if the timing is affected. The New York Times gets these documents, gives it to CNN at the same time that Hunter's stuff hits turbo speed in terms of revelations and widespread interest. Now of course you don't script Russia, but that was fortuitous timing for the Hunter Biden investigation. But then here this comes, and I wonder is anyone curious what Joe Biden managed to smuggle out of the SCIF I assume for the past 20 or 30 years that ended up at the University of Delaware, at one of his houses, one of his lawyer's places, or in Chinatown. I just don't understand how they can both be doing investigations and only one side is leaked out.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-role-spreading-conspiracy-theories-one-january-6-defendant-using-his-trial
mma 7 23
january 6 defendant Alan Hostetter will reportedly rely on three conspiracy theories at his trial, each of which he could have seen repeatedly on Fox News.
Hostetter, a former police chief, was initially charged alongside four other January 6 defendants who the government has accused of being Three Percenters — an extremist, anti-government ideology. The judge severed his case, however, “in a nod to the unusual nature of Mr. Hostetter’s proposed defense,” according to the New York Times.
The Times further reports:
Acting as his own lawyer, Mr. Hostetter has said that he intends to fight charges of conspiracy and obstruction based on what he calls “three fundamental pillars”: that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump; that he and other rioters had no desire to disrupt the challenges to the vote results that were taking place inside the Capitol on Jan. 6; and that, therefore, the assault on the building had to have been staged by “federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
Fox News embraced Hostetter’s first false claim — that the 2020 election was stolen — across nearly the entire network. Fox cast doubt on the election results almost 800 times in the two weeks after it called the race for President Joe Biden, and falsely claimed machines run by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic were unreliable or had been hacked to change vote totals. Dominion sued Fox for defamation, forcing a massive settlement on the day the trial was set to open. Smartmatic also filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox, which is ongoing.
Fox News also pushed Hostetter’s second inaccurate claim, that the rioters were simply tourists or otherwise not looking to disrupt the transfer of power. As recently as this March, prime-time host Laura Ingraham argued the insurrectionists were “old ladies walking through the halls of Congress taking selfies.” In January, her guest Miranda Devine, a Fox News contributor, claimed “most of the people that they've been rounding up are just guilty of trespassing. A lot of them were confused.” Fox’s Mark Levin said the rioters were simply “parading on public lands,” and compared them to “people in the civil rights movement.” On the day after the riot, Fox & Friends insisted the insurrectionists were at the Capitol to “voice their concerns” and to “defend our Republic.” That type of language was a fixture of Fox’s coverage, with on-air talent and guests calling the rioters “nonviolent” and “political prisoners." [twt]
hostetter’s final claim, that the insurrection was an inside job orchestrated and manufactured by federal law enforcement, was also a mainstay on Fox News. Like much of the network’s January 6 revisionism, this particular myth was largely, but not exclusively, driven by former marquee star Tucker Carlson. He filled his prime-time show and a documentary-style series called Patriot Purge with unsupported allegations that the riot was driven by FBI agents or informants, a claim that doesn’t stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.
Carlson promoted the series on Fox & Friends, during which co-host Brian Kilmeade asked, “Do you think maybe, perhaps and maybe you don't want to give away your series, you find indications that the FBI was actually pushing for this invasion?”
Hostetter recently criticized the network’s decision to fire Carlson in a rambling, incoherent defense motion that also referenced the JFK assassination and The Wizard of Oz. Prior to his ouster, Carlson had defended Hostetter as a victim of deep state persecution.
But Carlson wasn’t alone in spreading the conspiracy theory that the federal government was behind the attempted insurrection. Ingraham devoted a segment in October 2021 to the conspiracy theory that a man named Ray Epps was an FBI informant who had surreptitiously provoked the riot. She suggested in March of this year that FBI informants were “working the crowd either before they entered the Capitol or while they were in the Capitol.” Her guest in that segment was American Greatness’ Julie Kelly, a leading January 6 conspiracy theorist, who frequently pushed the same line on Carlson’s program as well. Levin interviewed Kelly in November 2021, asking, “Was this attack on the Capitol building instigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on January 6?” And a guest on the radio program of Fox’s Sean Hannity recently suggested that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “planned and conjured up” the riot to add drama to her daughter’s documentary film.
As the Times reports, prosecutors in Hostetter’s case are worried about the trial devolving to a “circuslike atmosphere.” If it does, Fox News will have played no small role in providing the elements for Hostetter’s spectacle.
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mma 2 23
fox News’ Brian Kilmeade acknowledged on Thursday that federal regulations may be necessary to protect people and the environment, a rare admission on a network that has pushed for mass deregulation for decades. Kilmeade, who co-hosts Fox & Friends, made the comments while discussing the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment and its aftermath.
“I knew nothing about these derailment numbers,” Kilmeade said. “I'm stunned by it – that we have thousands of derailments all the time and how costly it is, and how they're not kept up and maybe the regulation needs to be there"
fox News has long vilified federal regulations as governmental overreach, and needless red tape that eats into corporate profits. In 2011, the network launched Regulation Nation, a series that would “expose how excessive laws are drowning American businesses.” The series was the brainchild of then-Fox News President Roger Ailes, who said at the time that bureaucrats “draw up regulations totry to ruin your life.” [vid]
That same year, Fox News also waged a full-on war against the Environmental Protection Agency, and continues to argue against environmental regulations, including in its so-called straight news programs.
More recently, Fox News personalities and their guests have railed against federal regulations for the oil industry, argued that federal regulations are a way to divide families, blamed regulations that purport to limit police violence for resulting in the police killing of Tyre Nichols, and pushed for further deregulation of the cryptocurrency market, just to name a few examples. Fox News and other cable networks also largely ignored the Trump administration’s broad deregulatory agenda to benefit massive polluters in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Television coverage of East Palestine was scant and decontextualized, including on Fox News, immediately after the derailment, with only3% of coverage mentioning the decadeslong deregulatory push by the rail industry. The Obama administration attempted to make more effective train brakes mandatory following a series of derailments in 2014, which the industry fought against, effectively hollowing out the proposed rules. In 2018, the Trump administration completely repealed the regulations.
related
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-host-ohio-train-derailment-regulations-regarding-train-safety-were-changed-during
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morano control BS?
Fox News is returning to its pro-COVID-19 stance by attacking Los Angeles, California, for considering an indoor mask mandate as infections in the county skyrocket. The right-wing propaganda channel, which has long spewed pandemic-related misinformation, is again lying about the efficacy of masks for slowing the spread of the disease.
The Los Angeles Times reported that LA County’s case rate “has been increasing since late October and is now triple what it was in the autumn low,” and is currently 188 weekly cases per 100,000 residents, with a case rate of 100 or more being considered high. The LA Times also reported that the county is suffering about 60 deaths from COVID-19 each week. According to City News Service, the county’s COVID-19 hospitalization rate already exceeds one of the two thresholds that County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said would trigger a universal indoor masking mandate.
Fox’s response to this news is to return to its history of killing its viewers by spreading medical misinformation that has contributed to the staggering national COVID-19 death toll exceeding 1 million people. In particular, Fox has spread lies about the usefulness of face masks in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Some Fox personalities have bizarrely claimed that wearing masks makes people crazy, while others simply told lies about their effectiveness. Fox as a whole worked very hard to incorporate masking into their deranged culture war, even though at least one Fox prime time host early in the pandemic repeatedly gushed about their potential in keeping people safe. (Fox also for a time required staffers to wear masks at the workplace.) Besides attacking face masks during a respiratory disease pandemic, Fox has also urged its viewers to distrust public health officials.
And with the possibility of a mask mandate coming back to LA, Fox personalities reacted with incredulity, pretending that masking is ineffective and attacking the county public health director as “power hungry.”
- Fox & Friends First co-host Todd Piro asked, “Have we learned no lessons from the … failure of masks?” He added, “These people, Barbara Ferrer, that you saw there, the entireestablishmentthat is pushing more masking, more lockdowns, they are power hungry. And they refuse to acknowledge that COVID is something we cannot prevent at this point, but something we have to deal with.”
- Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said: “Masks don’t work. … What is wrong with these people?”
- Later in the program, Kilmeade portrayed a masking mandate as intentional sabotage on people’s lives and children’s schooling, saying: “The problem is too many people enjoying their lives going back to normal. Let's try to screw them up again.”
- Fox’s America’s Newsroom interviewed **Fox contributor Caitlyn Jenner for her inexpert opinion on the efficacy of face masks. During the interview, Jenner said: “I don’t think they work very well.” She later added: “I think our public health director is kind of like a little mini [NIAID Director Dr. Anthony] Fauci, wanting the control that they have.”
- Fox Business host Steve Hilton claimed that masks “make practically no differencein the preventing of the transmission of this virus,” then ranted: “Can you believe we're back here again, yet again? You have these lunatics, these bureaucrats, totally unaccountable – Barbara Ferrer, the half a million dollar a year woman who runs public health in Los Angeles – not a medical doctor, parading these totally bogus metrics, right, about cases and whatever. How does she know what the cases are? People are testing on their own at home privately. It's not reported. It's complete BS. The whole thing is total BS, and I hope nobody pays any attention to it at all.”
- On Twitter, Hilton also urged LA residents to “rise up and say enough is enough.”
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NBA]
mma 922
BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving blasting New York city Mayor Adams decision to end the COVID vax mandate for the private sector employees while leaving the municipal workers out of luck. He says the mandate is "one of the biggest violations in human rights history." Might be an overstatement, but I understand the sentiment. Clay Travis, Outkick founder and Mr. Everything joins us now. Clay, he's right. Eight-hundred fifty teachers are off, a couple of thousand cops are fired. Let alone the military that were told to take a hike.
CLAY TRAVIS (OUTKICK FOUNDER): Yeah and it's not just New York City, Brian. I'm going to keep hammering this, because it is so incredibly frustrating to me. He's a hundred percent right about New York City but here's the reality: Military, teachers, so many federal employees, so many private sector employees, as well, all for COVID shots that, Brian, they told us would prevent you from getting or spreading COVID. That's now not true. Effectively, in my opinion, these COVID shots are like used cars that didn't work. We have lemon laws everywhere, right? The American taxpayer has enriched Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. I give credit to Kyrie Irving, Novak Djokovic, and to Aaron Rodgers. Players in different leagues who all stood against these mandates. But the American taxpayer deserves to get back all of the profits from these shots. And what should happen in my opinion, is everyone in the military and everybody who lost their jobs for refusing, all those teachers, everyone who lost their jobs for refusing to get the COVID shot should get their jobs back with back pay, funded by the profits that the American taxpayer paid for all these COVID shots that didn't do what they told us they would.
KILMEADE: President ended the pandemic, said we are out of it, we knew that already. We are also three variants into this. The new variant booster, they want to sell that after telling us the pandemic's done? Forget it.
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mma 9 22
Then-President Donald Trump ordered Alex Azar, then his health and human services secretary, to immediately approve the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment because Fox News host Laura Ingraham had said it was effective, according to a new book.
Trump, an avid Fox viewer who regularly turned the network’s programming into White House policy, became transfixed by the drug after his trusted Fox hosts started talking it up in mid-March of 2020, as the novel coronavirus swept across the country. If hydroxychloroquine had worked as the COVID-19 miracle cure Fox claimed, it would have allowed Americans to swiftly return to normal life without fear of becoming seriously ill from the virus. Unfortunately, hydroxychloroquine is not an effective coronavirus treatment, according to numerous studies as well as U.S. and international health agencies.
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser shed new light on the role Fox played in convincing Trump that hydroxychloroquine would be a COVID-19 “game changer” in their new book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.
They chronicle a phone call between Trump and Azar that took place on March 18, 2020, two days after Ingraham had praised the hydroxychloroquine’s potential during an interview with the Long Island lawyer Gregory Rigano, who championed the drug.
“Laura says hydroxychloroquine works. It’s perfectly safe, so just approve it,” they write that Trump told Azar during the phone call.
When Azar protested, the then-president told him, “Laura takes it. It’s safe,” Baker and Glasser report.
“I want it approved today. That’s an order,” he ultimately demanded, according to the book.
After Trump publicly touted hydroxychloroquine at a press briefing the day after his call with Azar, the Fox-Trump feedback loop went into full swing: Fox ran hundreds of segments talking up the drug’s benefits; Trump tweeted praise of the drug in response to the coverage and successfully pressured health officials to issue guidance supporting the use of the drug as a coronavirus treatment; and Ingraham visited the White House with two members of her “medicine cabinet” to meet with Trump and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and push for additional support for the treatment.
The federal government ultimately amassed a stockpile of 66 million doses of a drug that is not effective in treating COVID-19 because Fox hosts told Trump that it worked and he believed them. Meanwhile, the network moved on to peddling ivermectin, another drug studies show is ineffective in treating COVID-19, while slandering the actually effective COVID-19 vaccines. The results for Fox’s viewers have been devastating.
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8 22
STEVE KIRSCH (GUEST): They told -- the agencies, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH said that these vaccines were safe and effective. And when I started seeing my friends die and be injured and I started looking at the data, there was no question that this vaccine is the most dangerous vaccine ever created by man. It is a thousand times more deadly than the smallpox vaccine and that's too unsafe for people to use.
...
BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): You did your own research. What did you find was effective and what was the reaction when you put it out there?
KIRSCH: Well, what I found was that hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by this vaccine and millions have been injured. And, you know, there -- clearly, you are more likely to be injured or dead from the vaccine than if you were unvaccinated.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-host-brian-kilmeade-migrant-resettlement-youre-poisoning-these-cities-and-these
w ppl who do not belong there
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/brian-kilmeade-mein-kampf/ in HS
| In a preview of the next four years, right-wing media refuse to admit that Joe Biden is the president-elect |
Fox News has been Donald Trump’s personal propaganda outlet throughout his presidency, however he’s recently increased his criticism of the network. Trump has urged his followers to instead watch OAN and Newsmax, who in his mind, are more willing to promote delusional conspiracy theories and aid his efforts to undermine election results. }: OAN and Newsmax, Fox’s right-wing competitors, refusal to refer to Joe Biden as president-elect proved to be an early point of contention between the networks, and a preview of how they will interact in the years to come. Since the early discrepancy, Fox has aggressively course-corrected in hopes of maintaining its audience. For example, OAN’s Pearson Sharp highlighted that his network “will officially not be calling Joe Biden the president-elect.” Further, Newsmax’s highest-rated host, Greg Kelly, said that “Joe Biden is pretending that he is the president-elect” and that “at least on this opinion show” he “is not the president-elect.” Though the network has said that “as a result of the Electoral College vote Joe Biden is the president-elect and will be referred to as such on Newsmax.” While several of Fox’s “news-side” programs have correctly referred to Biden as the president-elect, several other personalities have expressed an unwillingness to do so, in an effort to retain viewers loyal to the president. This week, Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade described Biden as “the former vice president who is, according to some, president-elect,” while his co-host Ainsley Earhart referenced “what they’re calling the President-elect Biden.” Lou Dobbs mentioned the “so-called president-elect” on Wednesday, while Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson both avoided the issue by simply calling him “Joe Biden” without any title at all. Media Matters’ Matt Gertz explained the absurd nature of Fox’s efforts: “But Fox’s fear of crossing its competitors and its viewers over something this patently ridiculous bodes ill for how it will react when Newsmax and OAN push deranged conspiracy theories during the Biden presidency.” Also: Fox News has already started poisoning the well for climate action under the Biden administration. |
AN 1220
HMMN
Internet slams 'groveling' Brian Kilmeade for allowing Trump to spew 'lie after lie' in Fox News interview
David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement
Americans who watched Fox News' Brian Kilmeade interview President Donald Trump are outraged at the "Fox & Friends" co-host's "groveling" and "allowing" the president to spew "lie...
an 1220
Fox & Friends" host **Brian Kilmeade** is furious over YouTube's decision to ban videos that promote the lie that there was widespread election fraud that handed the election to Joe Biden.
"Big tech YouTube is the latest to decide that any conversations or postings about election fraud is not going to be posted on YouTube," Kilmeade ranted.
Kilmeade has the facts wrong.
"More than a month after the U.S. presidential election," the AP reports, "YouTube says it will start removing newly uploaded material that claims widespread voter fraud or errors changed the outcome."
Kilmeade wrongly claimed YouTube was banning "any conversations or postings about election fraud."
"I'm very disappointed," Kilmeade continued, claiming an interview he conducted would be banned. "But in all seriousness, it's unbelievable the way these big tech companies are flat out taking the incoming and being biased because they just want the outcome. The outcome is Joe Biden is president," he admitted. "And this is more of an example of them doing it."
Watch
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fox News' Brian Kilmeade urges Trump to cooperate with Biden's transition team
mma 3/28/20
03/26/20 10:18 PM EDT
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http://www.mediamatters.org/shows-and-publications/fox-friends
Brian Kilmeade, a co-host of “Fox & Friends,” on Monday…
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-contributor-calls-homeless-people-los-angeles-zombies
mma 819
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): The homeless crisis is growing in America's second largest city: Los Angeles, California.
LISA BOOTHE (GUEST CO-HOST): Well, Fox News contributor Emily Compagno recently visited the appalling conditions on the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles. Wow, look at that.
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): How can that be allowed? She joins us right now with part two of her investigation. Why does it look like that out there?
BOOTHE: I mean, that is just crazy.
EMILY COMPAGNO (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): It is. Thank you so much for having me this morning. We're about to find out, as we saw in part one of our series, homelessness, mental illness, drug abuse, and rat infestation have brought the Skid Row area of Los Angeles to a crisis point.
...
DOOCY: "They come there to die."
COMPAGNO: I know. How sad is that? No one throws away people like Los Angeles. What was so striking to me about being down there is that it's not just squalor. It's not just poverty. It is so much worse than that. And it's not people sitting there lucid and asking for help with signs. These are zombies. These are absolute drug addicts with mental illnesses. And in talking to the law enforcement consultancy on Joseph, I was struck by how hamstringed they are. How much these policies have crippled and made the entire situation worse.
KILMEADE: Because these people are also dangerous to civilians who are just trying to go about their lives, to families. Because look where they're set up. And the law enforcement, it's no longer a misdemeanor to do a lot of these things. So law enforcement says I really can't do anything. So I'm not even going to go there anymore.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/fox-news-so-called-voter-fraud-expert-was-just-smacked-down-and-discredited-for-his-bogus-claims/
no lnx
Fox News’ so-called ‘voter fraud’ expert was just smacked down and discredited for his bogus claims
Written by Alex Henderson July 19, 2019
During his frequent appearances on Fox [biz?] News, far-right Republican attorney and activist J. Christian Adams has often been billed as an expert on voter fraud. But many of Adams’ critics would argue that his area of expertise isn’t really voter fraud, but rather, finding ways to promote voter suppression. And Media Matters is reporting that Adams, as part of a federal settlement, will be required to apologize to Virginia citizens who his organization wrongly identified as being illegally registered to vote.
Adams is the founder of a nonprofit right-wing law firm called the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), which is known for producing reports on voter fraud and suing counties in order to bully them into purging people from voter rolls. Adams’ group produced two reports on Virginia: one titled “Alien Invasion in Virginia” in September 2016 and a sequel titled “Alien Invasion II” in May 2017 — and in both reports, PILF called for voter roll purges and claimed that undocumented immigrants could have changed the results in some elections in that state.
The federal lawsuit, according to Media Matters’ Matt Gertz, reportedly came about because of misleading information in those reports. “Alien Invasion in Virginia” alleged that the group found that “1046 aliens” had “registered to vote illegally” in that state.
But as it turned out, experts on election law found the reports’ methodology to be seriously flawed. In April 2018, four United States citizens filed a federal lawsuit against PILF for wrongly identifying them as noncitizens who were voting illegally. Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit included the League of United Latin American Citizens, Protect Democracy and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
The lawsuit asserted that PILF’s tactics amounted to voter intimidation, stressing, “Labeling the individuals named in the reports as non-citizens — and therefore, felons — with reckless disregard for the truth of those accusations acts to intimidate and threaten those individuals and to deter them from voting or registering to vote.”
The plaintiffs also asserted in the lawsuit that Adams and PILF had not only committed defamation, but also, were guilty of violating the Voting Rights Act.
According to Media Matters, Fox News failed to vet “Alien Invasion in Virginia” when PILF released it and carelessly repeated false information as fact. On October 3, 2016, according to Media Matters, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeadesaid, “Let’s start with, first, 1046 — that’s how many illegal aliens were found on voter rolls in the crucial battleground state of Virginia. It’s a felony for illegals to vote in that state. However, people are not required to prove their citizenship when they register. Doesn’t sound like a problem, does it?”
The lawsuit against PILF did not discourage Fox News from featuring Adams as a guest: according to Media Matters, Adams has appeared on Fox News “at least 11 times” since April 2018.
==
no lnx twt
Ocasio-Cortez blasts Fox News host for comparing migrant camps to ‘a house party’: Where did you drink ‘out of a toilet?’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Brian Kilmeade.
written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement July 2, 2019
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going after Brian Kilmeade, after the Fox News host likened the deplorable conditions in federal government-run concentration camps for migrants to a “house party.”
AOC visited several camps in Texas on Monday, reporting back to the American people the horrific conditions, including tremendous overcrowding, guards telling detainees to drink out of toilets because there was no water – then laughing at them, and other disgraceful instances of inhumane abuse.
The Democratic Congresswoman from Queens and The Bronx just posted this tweet:
Hey, @kilmeade:
What was the last “party” you went to where you:
– Were locked in a cage under armed guard
– Drank out of a toilet
– & given food of such poor nutritional value, for so long, that it gave you mouth sores? https://t.co/UfO8EQzRbI
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 2, 2019
She links to this video of Kilmeade on “Fox & Friends,” making his disturbing remarks:
Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade likens overcrowded detention facilities at the border to having a house party with 100 people and only two and a half bathrooms: pic.twitter.com/tfOJ49b55N
— courtney hagle (@CourtneyHagle) July 2, 2019
“Here’s the thing,” Kilmeade says. “Picture yourself, you have a house, family of five. You have a party, you have 30 people over. Maybe you have a big party and you have 100 people over and you have two and a half baths. In the beginning, it would be OK with 30. Then after 100 people, it would be a little bit taxed, maybe you got to get an outdoor facility. Can you picture 5,000? You can have the best facilities in the world but they are so overstocked.”
As Media Matters reports, Kilmeade’s guest host, Griff Jenkins later says AOC calling the migrant camps concentration camps “isn’t fair because all the people that are in our custody came on their own accord.”
Jenkins clearly has no knowledge of Hitler’s Germany.
==
The New York Times wrote that Fox & Friends "has become a powerful platform for some of the most strident attacks on President Obama."[16] The program has provided a platform for conspiracy theories about Obama's religion and, in May 2012, aired a 4-minute video attacking Obama's record as President.[16] The video was widely criticized as a political attack ad masquerading as journalism,[19][20] TIME television critic James Poniewozik wrote: "It’s hard to imagine a more over-the-top parody of Fox raw-meat-hurling, fear-stoking, base-pleasing agitprop."[21]^
In response, a Fox News exec vice-president 'disavowed' the video, blaming an associate producer and that the video 'slipped by' senior managers at the network.[22]Fox stated that the show was entertainment and "does not pretend to be straight news."[16] Citing anonymous sources, the New York Times reported that some reporters, producers and executives at Fox were 'embarrassed' by the show, which remains by far the highest-rated cable show in its time slot as of June 2012.[16]
On October 5, 2013, while covering the government shutdown which had led to the closing of a veteran's museum, presenter Kooiman claimed that President Obama had offered "to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture". The story seemed to have been sourced from a spoof news website National Report, and the following week an on-air apology was made for "reporting a story based on poor research that was not true".[23]
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8/1//13
http://mediamatters.org/print/blog/2013/08/01/fox-news-adopts-glenn-beck-nudge-conspiracy-the/195177
Fox dumped Glenn Beck after his bizarre conspiracy theories and rhetoric reportedly caused the network's advertisers to balk. Now Fox appears to be clinging to one of his classic distortions, characterizing a government effort utilizing behavioral psychology to reduce fraud, error and debt as "mind control."
FoxNews.com reported that it obtained a document outlining plans for the government to hire a "Behavioral Insights Team" that "will look for ways to subtly influence people's behavior." The United Kingdom has implemented several related initiatives. In one instance the U.K. government sent out reminder letters to late taxpayers, leading to increased tax revenue.
The ideas behind this type of initiative were laid out in Professor Cass Sunstein's book, Nudge. When Sunstein joined the Obama administration as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Beck launched a campaign to demonize him and his ideas.
Beck said Sunstein was "the man that controls everything through nudges. He'll just nudge you. He'll never tell you what to do, he nudges." For example, Beck claimed that Sunstein might enact policies to increase health premiums for gun owners, which would "nudge you into a position where you might get rid of that gun."
Beck cast behavioral psychology in sinister terms, describing it as a plot to convince people to "give up on your freedom" by being "nudged into it." He also stated that progressives were trying to "nudge" the United States towards "global governance."
Fox News is now echoing its former afternoon host. Fox contributor Monica Crowley said the initiative "has an Orwellian ring to it," while Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said it "sounds purely like propaganda and mind control." On America Live,host Shannon Bream said the initiative was "raising serious concerns about Big Brother."
On multiple occasions, Beck characterized behavioral psychology in violent terms, claiming that "Nudge leads to shove, and shove leads to shoot."
Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade echoed Beck's complaints. Doocy noted that "sometimes a nudge can lead to a shove, so you just don't want to overdo it," while Kilmeade responded, "Right. Nudge, push, shove, poke, we don't know."
Beck often opposed related initiatives by jumping to the most paranoid conclusion in response to benign proposals. He opposed a food safety bill in Congress, describing it as a stealth effort to "nudge us out ofmeat" because Sunstein "doesn't want us to eat meat." He also attacked a program to promote healthier eating in school lunches, falsely claiming it would eventually lead to imprisonment for eating French fries.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/05/05/fox-s-kilmeade-i-let-myself-down-not-following-when-trump-brought-jfk-conspiracy-fox-friends/210256
lakof direct causation problem again?
Chris Christie’s Debunked Clinton Claim About Boko Haram Comes Straight From Right-Wing Media
Research
July 20, 2016 1:05 PM EDT ››› CYDNEY HARGIS
During his speech at the Republican National Convention, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie echoed the right-wing media myth that as secretary of state, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton personally “fought” to keep Nigerian group Boko Haram off the terror watch list, which resulted in the abduction of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls -- a claim media fact-checkers debunked.
Christie Claimed Clinton “Fought” To Keep Boko Haram Off Terrorism Watch List In Convention Speech
Christie: Because Clinton “Fought For Two Years To Keep An Al Qaeda Affiliate Off The Terrorist Watch List, ... These Terrorists Abducted Hundreds Of Innocent Young Girls.” During his speech at the July 19 Republican National Convention, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie claimed that “In Nigeria, [presumptive Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton amazingly fought for two years to keep an Al-Qaeda affiliate off the terrorist watch list,” referring to the extremist group Boko Haram. Christie argued that “because of this reckless action … terrorists abducted hundreds of innocent young girls.” From the July 19 speech:
Since the Justice Department refuses to allow you to render a verdict, let's present the case now, on the facts, against Hillary Clinton. She was America's chief diplomat. Look around at the violence and danger in our world today every region of the world has been infected with her flawed judgment.
[...]
In Nigeria, Hillary Clinton amazingly fought for two years to keep an Al-Qaeda affiliate off the terrorist watch list.
What happened because of this reckless action by the candidate who is the self proclaimed champion of women around the world? These terrorists abducted hundreds of innocent young girls two years ago.
These schoolgirls are still missing today.
What was the solution from the Obama/Clinton team? A hashtag campaign! Hillary Clinton, as an apologist for an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria resulting in the capture of innocent young women guilty or not guilty? She fights for the wrong people. [NJ.com, 7/19/16]
Right-Wing Media Previously Hyped This False Claim
Fox & Friends: Clinton “Made Sure” Boko Haram Was “Not Placed On The Terror List,” Which “Perhaps Could Have Saved These Girls Earlier." Fox hosts Steve Doocy and Elisabeth Hasselbeck blamed Clinton for refusing to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), claiming that if she had done so, it "could have saved these girls earlier." From the May 8, 2014, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends:
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): This is really something. We've with been telling you over the last couple of days about this terrorist group called Boko Haram out in Africa, how they've killed an entire village. They have since, in the last couple of weeks, they have kidnapped 300 young girls. They're going to sell them into slavery.
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): And prior to that, boys.
DOOCY: They burned a bunch of boys. They burned down a village. It's all bad. And now, word is, because we did not place them on the terror list, of officially known terrorist groups, it's going to be harder to go after them. And who exactly made sure that they were not placed on the terror list? Hillary Clinton.
[...]
ELISABETH HASSELBECK (CO-HOST): And the rights of women and young girls, those were pillars of what she wanted to accomplish in her time at the State Department. But right here, what she didn't actually tweet, and perhaps because it was over 140 characters, was the fact that her own State Department, as Steve just mentioned, did not place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, which would have forbidden any sort of authority to increase securities to them, increase assistance to Nigerian security forces in that area, and perhaps could have saved these girls earlier. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/8/14]
National Review: "The Excuses Now Being Offered In Explanation Of Clinton's Dereliction Are Specious." National Review's Andrew McCarthy claimed that Clinton “protected” Boko Haram as secretary of state and that “the excuses now being offered in explanation of Clinton’s dereliction are specious" and "ridiculous." McCarthy wrote that Clinton was "appeasing Islamists." From the May 8, 2014, article:
The excuses now being offered in explanation of Clinton’s dereliction are specious. As Rogin explains, Clinton’s State Department claimed that Boko Haram was merely a local group with parochial grievances that was not a threat to the United States. Have a look, though, at the State Department’s list, here. Several of the listed groups are waging local terrorist campaigns that do not threaten our country—the Basque ETA, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Real Irish Republican Army, etc. A significant reason for having the list is to promote international cooperation against terrorism and discourage its use against anyone anywhere. The fact that a terrorist organization may have only local grievances and may not directly imperil the U.S. has never been thought a reason to exclude it from the list.
Fox News has further reported another rationale of Clinton apologists: Hillary did not want to raise Boko Haram’s profile and assist its recruiting which, they reason, would be the effect of designation by the Great Satan. That is ridiculous. The main point of having the list, and the sanctions that accompany a terrorist designation, is to weaken the organization by depriving it of assets and material support. The logic of what Clinton supporters are claiming is that U.S. counterterrorism law — much of which was put in place by the administration of President Bill Clinton — does more harm than good. Does anyone think they really believe that?
What happened here is obvious, although the commentariat is loath to connect the dots. Boko Haram is an Islamic-supremacist organization. Mrs. Clinton, like the Obama administration more broadly, believes that appeasing Islamists--avoiding actions that might give them offense, slamming Americans who provoke them--promotes peace and stability. [National Review, 5/8/14]
Hot Air: "The Responsibility For This Failure Rests Directly With Hillary Clinton." The conservative blog Hot Air wrote that “the responsibility for this failure” to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization was Clinton’s and that the decision enabled the group to commit acts of terrorism, including the mass kidnappings. Hot Air also brushed aside Clinton's support of U.S. intervention in the Nigerian kidnappings, writing, "Now Hillary wants to fight Boko Haram with hashtags. Too bad she didn't fight them with real resources when she had the chance." From the May 8, 2014, post:
Boko Haram has wreaked havoc in Nigeria and portions of surrounding nations since 2009, when the Nigerian government tried to crack down on their arms-gathering operations. The group of Islamist terrorists had been known for much of that time to have ties to al-Qaeda, both ideological and tactical. Hundreds, perhaps thousands died in terrorist attacks from 2009 to 2013, many of them targeted for their Christianity. And yet, not until November 2013 did the US finally list Boko Haram as a terrorist group.
Why? We should ask Hillary Clinton
[...]
It’s true that not every local grievance requires a State Department designation, but Boko Haram allied itself with al-Qaeda and provided it tactical support, at least. That should have prompted State to act, especially with the consensus within the national-security communities demanding it — repeatedly. Instead, Hillary Clinton refused to act in order to keep up a pretense that “al-Qaeda was on the run.”
Now Hillary wants to fight Boko Haram with hashtags. Too bad she didn’t fight them with real resources when she had the chance. [Hot Air, 5/8/14]
Newt Gingrich: State Department Under Clinton “Wouldn’t Even List [Boko Haram] As A Terrorist Group.” Former Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich blamed Clinton for not listing Boko Haram a terrorist organization in 2015 speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit, even though. “last year Boko Haram killed more people than Ebola.” From CSPAN’s broadcast of the Iowa Freedom Summit:
NEWT GINGRICH: You see people all around the planet, this is a global war, and yet they insist on talking about it by geography. So, we’re going to really focus on Northern Syria. Well, there are thousands of jihadists who have come to Northern Syria from all around the world, over a thousands from France alone. Over 600 from Great Britain. over 100 from the United States. This is a global war. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has 10,000 fighters, and last year Boko Haram killed more people than Ebola. But the State Department, for years under Secretary Clinton, wouldn’t even list them as a terrorist group, even though their initial base camp was called Afghanistan, in honor of the Taliban. Now, you would think somewhere in here, people would get a hint. [CSPAN, Iowa Freedom Summit, 1/24/15]
Fact-Checkers Point Out Christie’s Claim Has Long Been Debunked
Politico: Clinton “Was Heeding The Advice Of Numerous Regional Experts” And There Is Doubt About “Whether The Designation Could Have Prevented” The Abduction Of School Girls. Politico fact-checked Christie’s claims about Clinton’s foreign policy record as secretary of state, noting that Clinton “was heeding the advice of numerous regional experts who argued in an open letter that” designating Boko Haram a terrorist group “could elevate the group's prestige” and that “It is not clear that the group ever pledged formal allegiance to al Qaeda, and the two groups were sometimes described as rivals.” Politico also explained that Boko Haram was designated a terrorist group a year before the Nigerian schoolgirls were abducted, “raising the question of whether the designation could have prevented their abduction.” From the July 20 Politico report:
Christie said that Clinton "fought" to keep the radical Islamist group Boko Haram off an official State Department terrorism watch list before she left government in 2012. In 2014, the group abducted hundreds of young women and girls who are still missing. Clinton, Christie concluded in perhaps his most explosive allegation, was "an apologist for an al Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria resulting in the capture of hundreds of young women."
It's true that Clinton opposed designating Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organization, an act that imposes financial sanctions and other legal penalties on named groups and their supporters. While that may be hard to understand—the group already had a clear record of violence and radicalism — she was heeding the advice of numerous regional experts who argued in an open letter that doing so could elevate the group's prestige. The Nigerian government also opposed the designation.
John Kerry did name Boko Haram a terrorist organization after succeeding Clinton in 2013. But the girls were kidnapped the following year, raising the question of whether the designation could have prevented their abduction.
Finally, Christie described Boko Haram as "al Qaeda affiliate." It is not clear that the group ever pledged formal allegiance to al Qaeda, and the two groups were sometimes described as rivals. (Boko Haram publicly pledged allegiance to ISIS last year.) [Politico, 7/20/16]
CNN: “No Evidence” Clinton Personally “‘Fought’” To Keep Boko Haram Off Terror List. CNN’s Reality Check Team gave Christie’s claim a “false” rating, noting the lack of evidence that Clinton “was personally responsible for the delay in the designation.” CNN also pointed out the “delay” did not result in the kidnapping of Nigerian school girls, which occurred after Clinton left the State Department. From the July 20 fact-check (emphasis original):
Boko Haram, an affiliate of al Qaeda, was never designated a foreign terrorist organization during Clinton's leadership of the State Department. The department eventually labeled the group a terrorist organization while under Kerry in December 2013.
[...]
The kidnapping of the 200 Nigerian school girls occurred in April 2014.
While Clinton was head of the State Department at the time, Christie says she "fought" to keep them off the list and there is no evidence that she herself was personally responsible for the delay in the designation. Our verdict: false. [CNN.com, 7/20/16]
Wash. Post: “No Evidence That Clinton Played A Role Or ‘Fought’ To Keep Boko Haram Off The List” Or “That A Terrorist Designation Any Sooner Would Have Prevented” The Mass Kidnappings. Washington Post fact-checkers Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee wrote that “Christie grossly simplifie[d] a complex debate at the State Department -- which actually did not involve Clinton personally.” The Fact Checker blog noted that State Department officials conceded they could have moved faster with Boko Haram’s designation, but that “there is no evidence that Clinton played a role” and that there is also “no evidence” that the terrorist designation “any sooner would have prevented the kidnapping of the girls.” The fact check also pointed out that the hashtag campaign “came after Clinton had left the State Department.” From the July 19 article:
Christie grossly simplifies a complex debate at the State Department — which actually did not involve Clinton personally.
In 2014, the Fact Checker closely examined this issue, concluding that claims that Clinton was responsible for the decision betrays a misunderstanding of how the State Department works. Yes, Clinton was secretary of state in 2012. Designations of foreign terrorist groups are ultimately issued by the secretary of state. But the decision on how to handle the group was resolved before it ever reached her level, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
State Department officials in 2012 vigorously debated how to treat Boko Haram, with the Bureau of Counterterrorism, headed then by Assistant Secretary Daniel Benjamin, leaning toward designation, and the Africa bureau, headed then by Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson, urging caution. One big issue was that Nigeria was a government close to the United States — and Nigeria was adamantly opposed to the designation, arguing it risked entrenching Boko Haram. Nigerian officials also argued that a terrorist designation — which halts any flow of funds to the entity or people associated with it — would make it difficult for humanitarian aid to continue in the region where Boko Haram operated.
There was another, complicating issue: U.S. officials thought the Nigerian army had engaged in brutal human rights abuses in its efforts to fight Boko Haram. So a compromise was reached internally: The administration would name three leaders of Boko Haram as specially designated global terrorists while holding out the possibly of a broader designation of the entire group as a means of improving the behavior of Nigerian forces battling Boko Haram.
In any case, in 2013, the State Department formally designated Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization. Officials later conceded that, in retrospect, they could have moved a bit faster, but there is no evidence that Clinton played a role or “fought” to keep Boko Haram off the list. The internal debate did not rise to her level; it was handled by the deputy secretary of state.
There is no evidence that a terrorist designation any sooner would have prevented the kidnapping of the girls. As for the hashtag campaign, that came after Clinton had left the State Department. [The Washington Post, 7/19/16]
ABC: Clinton “Publicly … Denounced [Boko Haram].” An ABC News fact check rebutted Christie’s claim that Clinton personally “fought” to keep Boko Haram off the terrorist organization list and “responded to its mass kidnapping with a ‘hashtag strategy,’” noting that she publicly denounced the group and that “she was not Secretary of State when the kidnapping happened.” From the July 19 fact check (emphasis original):
Claim: Hillary Clinton is an “apologist” for Boko Haram. She and Obama responded to its mass kidnapping with a “hashtag campaign.”
Rating: False. It is based on a true fact, that Clinton’s State Department declined to list Boko Haram as a terrorist group out of concern that doing so would raise the group’s profile. But publicly Clinton has denounced the group, and she was not Secretary of State when the kidnapping happened.
[...]
Background: In 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. declined to list Boko Haram, the terrorist group that would abduct more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in 2014, as a foreign terrorist organization, against the recommendations of DOJ, FBI, CIA, and lawmakers, Josh Rogin reported for The Daily Beast in 2014.
That move, however, appears to have been based on a disagreement over whether listing Boko Haram would elevate its status. A State Department official said as much to Rogin in the same story. The assertion that she is an “apologist” appears to be a rhetorical exaggeration criticizing that decision. But publicly, Clinton has denounced Boko Haram. [ABC News, 7/20/16]
tag: http://mediamatters.org/people/brian-kilmeade
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http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/07/20/chris-christie-s-debunked-clinton-claim-about-boko-haram-comes-straight-right-wing-media/211754
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