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Open in TheBrain

bad trinity

1/20 congrats feck ALL IN ON FASCISM 6 25 LA ICE RAIDS?

neglected? ALL GT REPLACMENT THEORY?

--> JESSE WATTERS, HANNITY, INGRAHAM

IRAN 3 WAR

see EXTRA JUDIC KILLING 11 25

SEE RENEE GOOD

SEE HYPE 4 FEAR eg 2026 midterm

SEE JRNL FAIL

SEE DENIAL 4 5 COP 30 BRAZIL 11 25 LOMBORG

BARTIR CAN SUB

EMERGENCY XO MARTIAL LAW PORTLAND

trump base held together by hannity, tucker and ingram?

every once in a while tucker seems to grow a spine/conscience, but never lasts

see bloviator?

is there a set order they go off deep end jump the shark into conspiracy, or does it depend on issue; do they have different target demos?  do they get instructions from network? is there a feedback loop of trump whisperers?

hannity is most useful idiot tool of trump? priority #1 for fox/ trump TV channel is protect/boost trump, and covid his most blatant fail, so deflect to minimize or blame chinese (or soros or gates), so even if trinity does not sign on to Qanon explicitly, ingr ~ vax and Tuckr ~ fauci boost its signal.

7/20 hanty and tukr get hit man character assassination, LI?

sammon canned for correct az call, needed a scapegoat?

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omfg

mma

Fox News is peddling election “fear porn” about Democrats to rescue Republicans

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/16/26

Fox News host Jesse Watters effectively summed up his network’s recent election coverage on Thursday when he said that Republicans need to churn out “fear porn” that paints Democrats as “scary and dangerous” in order to avoid calamity in the midterms.

Watters told his fellow panelists on The Five that “polling” shows “MAGA is engaged, it’s the non-MAGA faction and independents that the Republicans are worried about” in the midterms. He then pointed to an interview he conducted with Caroline Sunshine, a former Disney star turned MAGA political operative, saying, “She said you can't just go out and sell all the great stuff Trump did. It's been great, but it doesn't motivate."

“You got to go out and have fear porn,” Watters continued. “You have to say, these people are going to take your healthcare, they're going to let in the Third World, they’re going to jack up your taxes, and that’s what’s going to get people to come out to vote. You have to say, these people are scary and dangerous, you know what we're all about. And that’s really a choice."

Greg Gutfeld praised Watters’ analysis, saying, “Good for you, fear porn."

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From the October 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five

“Fear porn” is an apt characterization of the tenor of Fox demagoguery as the midterms approach and polls show Democrats poised for a wave of victories even in deep red states.

The network’s stars — apparently finding that their hagiographic coverage of the Trump administration isn’t doing enough to help the president’s party — are trying to inculcate a sense of panic in their viewers. They are warning in the strongest possible terms that if Democrats take control of Congress, their prosperity, freedom, and very lives are at risk.

Watters himself, for example, warned last month that “the Democrat party and its communist base are running against America” and “want to shatter the pillars of Western civilization.”

“They want to abolish the Senate, police, ICE, and of course the border,” he explained on the September 9 broadcast of his show. “Some of them are even calling for reparations and rent control. Others have a little bit of a problem with whites, and a majority of Democrats don't prefer capitalism. It's like we're fighting the Cold War here in our own country.”

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From the September 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

For Watters’ colleague Sean Hannity, the Trump political operative with a Fox primetime show, this is “the single most important, consequential midterm election in our lifetime” and “the stakes, they couldn’t be any higher, nor could the choice be any more clear.”

“We can vote to build on the successes of President Trump, his first two years in office, or you can shred your Constitution, allow our country to be taken hostage by this new radicalized leftist democratic socialist communist movement and their far-left extremist candidates,” Hannity claimed on his September 28 show.

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From the September 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

According to Hannity, Republicans may be “imperfect” and even “pathetically weak,” but “Democrats are completely insane.”

“They want to abolish, now, the family,” he told his Fox audience on September 17. “They want to seize your assets, they want to control the means of production, they want to control your healthcare, your food” as well as “your decisions, your children.” He went on to invoke “the 574 ‘mostly peaceful’ riots in the summer of 2020” before warning viewers not to “let perfect be the enemy of good, especially when the alternative is socialism, communism, statism, shredding our Constitution, and outright insanity.”

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From the September 17, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Fox’s Laura Ingraham warned on Wednesday that Democrats are demanding the public “submit or be crushed.” She told her viewers that voting for them due to concerns about affordability “will only make things worse” because Democrats will “keep prices high permanently,” “want a war with Russia,” and have “horrid tax-and-spend policies.”

“While voting Democrat or not at all may punish Trump politically, the people you'll really be punishing are yourselves,” she added. “Oh, yes, the punishment is coming. They can't eliminate conservatives altogether, but they can and they will make your life as miserable as possible by taxing you, canceling you, and restricting you.”

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From the October 14, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Ingraham alleged last month that “Democrats are rethinking democracy.” According to Ingraham, “If the Democrats win the House, take the Senate, they intend to shred the Constitution and punish the country.”

She later added that the party’s leaders are “acting as mini-tyrants,” claiming: “If they had their druthers and they were in office, there would be no Fox News. They would regulate that out of existence. There would be no talk radio. There would be no alternative media.”

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MMA 10 26

How Fox News stars are covering the 2026 Senate midterm elections

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1ST TO 180 CYA?

MMA

Laura Ingraham is rewriting her mealy-mouthed acquiescence of the Iran war into opposition from the beginning

09/22/26

The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, 3/2/26

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham said on her September 21 show that she opposed President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, a position that would almost certainly come as a surprise to her viewers. Those who had watched her show in early March, as the Trump administration launched its war against Iran alongside Israel, heard something very different.

“I've not been for the war in Iran,” Ingraham said. “I'm not happy with high gas prices — I see a lot of other good trends, but I'm not happy with those at all.” She added that she’d been opposed to it “from day one."

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From the September 21, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Ingraham’s revisionist history is self-serving, as public opinion about the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran sinks and the MAGA movement lurches toward whatever form it may take after Trump is no longer sitting in the Oval Office.

It is true that prior to Trump launching the war on February 28, Ingraham was mildly skeptical of it by Fox News standards.

On January 12, Ingraham said, “We know that America does not have the best track record when it comes to regime change in the Middle East, so that can’t really be the goal here."

During an interview with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on January 14, she said about a war in Iran: “How does that help the average American who is still struggling to pay some bills?”

On the eve of the war on February 27, Ingraham worried about the possible spike in “energy prices, which could be affected if we get into some really protracted engagement in Iran."

Ingraham gets on board with the Iran war

None of that is a full-throated denunciation, of course, but it does evince some small degree of reluctance.

Within days, Ingraham’s weathervane had caught the breeze and her tone was markedly more hawkish. Her March 2 show was a full endorsement of Trump’s war of aggression.

“Only a few days into military strikes, none of the major objections to this action withstand serious scrutiny,” Ingraham said.

This is not a “pointless war,” she said, adding: “Trump has given us no indication that he is going to betray his supporters by asking them to make unnecessary sacrifices.”

Her guest and Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump falsely claimed that Iran was “very clearly on the path to making another nuclear weapon,” and Ingraham fueled baseless and Islamophobic speculation “about sleeper cells in the U.S.”

On March 5, Ingraham declared: “Trump has already won in Iran.”

On March 25, she cautioned that the conflict with Iran could be creating “a series of cascading problems for the region, including maybe outside the region — political problems for the president in a midterm election year.” Later in the episode, she warned that voters are “very impatient for victory,” and polling suggests “the American people are sending a message to President Trump that it's time to put the focus back on the home front.”

But by March 31, Ingraham had fully reverted to the Fox News neocon mean.

“Why are people calling this a quagmire after a month?” she wondered. “Trump is taking some big risks. But, with big risks come great rewards. Eliminating the Iranian threat is a gift to future generations.”

Ingraham has not been the loudest voice at Fox News in favor of the Iran war. But to claim she has opposed it “from day one” is a self-serving fantasy.

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COVID // CLIMATE DENIAL REBOOT AI 9 26

MMA

Right-wing media downplay AI safety concerns as a hoax by comparing them to climate change and “COVID hysteria”

Written by Helena Hind, Jane Lee & Evlondo Cooper

Published 09/15/26

Right-wing media are following President Donald Trump in dismissing calls to slow down AI development in the wake of multiple hacking incidents as a “hoax,” comparing concerns over AI to “climate change apocalyptic talk” and “COVID hysteria” including support for vaccines.

Reports have surfaced in recent months that rogue AI agents from OpenAI anonymously hacked into AI startup Hugging Face servers and into software service RubyGems. As Reuters explained: “Many incidents where AI agents from developers such as OpenAI and rival Anthropic have hacked or attempted to access external systems have heightened concerns over ​the increasing capacity of AI models and developers' ability to contain them.” On September 12, both Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly called for a slowdown in AI development, with Altman announcing that his company would be delaying its initial public offering until 2027.

Trump vehemently rejected the idea of an AI slowdown in a series of Truth Social posts on September 14, calling the push for caution a “hoax,” “scam,” and a “SICK conspiracy.” Trump wrote: “The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change.’”

The claim that climate scientists’ predictions have failed is not borne out by the evidence — warnings about greenhouse gases causing more warming have now come to pass, with over a decade of record-breaking heat and thousands of excess deaths across Europe in climate-driven heat waves this year alone.

Nonetheless right-wing media followed Trump’s lead, comparing concerns about unregulated AI development with supposedly fabricated climate change warnings and COVID-19 pandemic safety measures like vaccines. (In reality, researchers have repeatedly proven that vaccines limited the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic, reduced the rate of severe complications and death, and continue to be a safe, effective treatment.)

On his September 14 radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity accused former President Barack Obama of “urging Democrats to fearmonger AI just like Democrats fearmongered and flat-out lied about global warming,” claiming those concerns “turned out to be bunk.” Hannity then reassured his listeners that Trump said that “the U.S. has already put guardrails in place to regulate and prosecute AI companies.”

Dismissing AI warnings on his Daily Wire podcast, Ben Shapiro stated, “This is pretty redolent of the climate change apocalyptic talk. Like all the ice caps were going to be gone, the polar bears were all going to drown, all the rest of it.”

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From the September 14, 2026, edition of the Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show.

Fox host Will Cain referenced climate change while discussing AI warnings: “Vested interests did stop nuclear [power] and set it back half a century. And that same playbook of fears played out with climate change and COVID. So now, what is so scary about AI?”

Downplaying the “AI apocalypse alarm” during Fox’s The Five, co-host Jesse Watters referenced both climate change and the COVID vaccine, asking, “If I told you the world was going to end if you didn't take this vax, what would you do? Or if the world was going to end because of global warming, what would you do? Same thing's happening here — some people get rich and we all still survive.” B/C OF LIE/HYPE?

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From the September 14, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five

Fox’s Laura Ingraham echoed Watters’ comments later that evening, saying AI concerns reminded her of “the first several months of COVID hysteria.” She later evoked “fearmongering about climate change, same thing. Al Gore's film, Inconvenient Truth, oh my God. That still echoes in politics today.”

Hannity rounded out Fox's evening coverage with yet another comparison of AI fears to climate change and the pandemic.

Decrying “the climate alarmist cult religion,” Hannity said, “Al Gore was preaching from the pulpit of climate alarmism. … All these predictions have come and gone and the time frame he said it would happen, none of it came true.”

“We were lied to about COVID at a high level,” he added. “I just don't trust the government at all in that sense. But I trust America enough that we would use this for good.”

However, the over-the-top comparisons are not limited to Trump and right-wing media dismissing AI concerns. Joe Allen, previously the “transhumanism editor” on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, opposed AI at a debate held in Dallas during last week's GOP midterm convention by bizarrely referencing “algorithmic immigrants.” Semafor reported:

“You look at the data center, this incubator for algorithmic immigrants,” he said. “They’ve already broken out and invaded other companies. These immigrants are out of control.”

Allen was speaking at Forum, a policy discussion staged at a stylish venue fifteen minutes from the convention center to give the new American right an opportunity to debate some of the policy issues currently dividing it— in particular, the tension between populism’s activist promises and traditional small government, and the rise of artificial intelligence.

(Allen’s opponent at the debate, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, reportedly “compared complaints about AI to the ‘Black Lives Matter hysteria,’ and suggested they were driven by ‘psyops from China.’”)

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MMA

Fox News is treating the GOP's midterm convention as a very special episode of Hannity

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/09/26

“‘The vibes are very bad’ in Texas” is the headline of Politico Playbook’s dispatch from Dallas, where the GOP’s “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention has Republican attendees fearing “what could transpire on the stage — and what it might mean for lawmakers back home.”

But let not your heart be troubled, Fox News has the solution on hand — more Sean Hannity.

The Fox brass has decided to give its 10 p.m. timeslot during the convention to the network figure closest to President Donald Trump, “to make sure all the key speeches and anti-Dem video montages are seen,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Wednesday. That’s a shift from its coverage of the 2024 Republican National Convention, when Fox assigned chief political anchor Bret Baier and The Story’s Martha MacCallum to host a nightly special featuring a panel of the network’s political contributors

Hannity’s selection is a clear signal that Fox plans to produce a GOP infomercial, and it is functionally equivalent to simply letting the Republican National Committee program the coverage. Hannity is a confidant and adviser to Trump who uses his show to propagandize on the president’s behalf. Over the years, the host has appeared in a Trump campaign video; spoken at a Trump rally; scripted a Trump campaign ad; served as a White House back channel; sought, received, and carried out marching orders from the Trump White House about what to say on Election Day 2020; and strategized with Trump family members and White House aides.

The decision also raises questions about how Hannity will treat election denial when it emanates from the convention speakers. The host carried Trump’s speech from the White House on the subject in July, then offered a brief discussion of his claims. But despite promising “a deep dive into all this documentation in the days ahead for sure,” Hannity did not subsequently return to it — possibly adhering to the reported Fox ban on such discussions that reportedly played a role in longtime host and conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo’s departure from the network last week.

Hannity and colleagues try to manifest a GOP vibe shift

On the eve of the midterm convention start, Hannity and his colleagues are trying to raise Republican spirits by sheer force of will, highlighting Trump’s purported successes and warning of dire consequences if Democrats muster election victories.

Hannity opened his Fox primetime show on Tuesday with a segment on the convention, promising viewers that “we will be there” and urging them not to read anything into the numerous Republican candidates in tough races who aren’t appearing at the event. He assured the audience that he “was able to get confirmation” that the candidates attending “were invited and they're the most competitive races in the country. … Not every Republican that's running for office was invited.”

He went on to give viewers a pep talk, urging them to “take nothing for granted” because “the stakes have never been higher during a midterm election” and instructing Republican candidates to “treat every single day with the proper amount of urgency.”

Hannity reeled off a list of “promises made, promises kept by President Trump and his Republican allies,” which he contrasted to “what the radical socialist Democratic Party is now offering the country. They want to completely upend our way of life. They want to strip you of your very humanity. If they get their way, you — you will have domain over nothing. Not even your own family.”

“In 56 days, this November, the choice will be very simple,” he concluded. “You can vote for Democrats who believe America is fundamentally evil and want to humble and humiliate the American people, or you can vote for liberty, freedom Republicans, albeit many Republicans, far from perfect, but they're not DSA members. And by the way, they believe in lifting everybody up through the concepts of liberty and freedom and safety and security and opportunity.”

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From the September 8, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters similarly touted Trump’s leadership and emphasized that the midterm elections will be a referendum on his performance on their Tuesday broadcasts.

“Tomorrow in Dallas, Republicans kick off that first-ever midterm convention, and gavel to gavel, the Angle will be there,” Ingraham said. “We'll broadcast live from the American Airlines Center. Cannot wait. President Trump will headline both nights. Now, what's the goal? To fire up the base with his vision, the Republican vision for continued economic growth and rigorous border enforcement.”

While she spoke, on-screen text read, “History in the making in Dallas.”

Ingraham later claimed that “we always take these polls with a grain of salt … I mean, at this point, you don't even know what's what with the polls, but there does seem to be some pro-GOP movement in some of these polls, especially the ones that came out today.”

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From the September 8, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Watters launched his own broadcast with fulsome praise for the convention and the president at the top of his show the following hour.

“We're less than 24 hours from Trump-a-palooza where the Republicans are going to hold their first ever midterm convention right in the heart of Texas,” he said. “President Trump will be there, so will JD Vance, Bobby Kennedy, and a long list of big-name Republicans. The goal of the convention: You make this election between communism and common sense, and the commies are making it too easy.”

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From the September 8, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

Watters then offered a paean to what he portrayed as a laundry list of Trump accomplishments — over a chyron that read, “Republicans have a record to show off.” The host’s litany included that “jobs market has never been hotter for people with just a high school diploma”; “people took home big refund checks and realized if you start a family and open Trump accounts, your children will retire as millionaires”; “we just captured the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela”; “the border sealed, crime all-time low, and doctors aren't giving sex change surgeries to kids anymore”; and “MAHA is cleansing what we eat.”

He went on to praise the Iran war, saying, “Republicans will have to tackle high gas prices but they'll argue that President Trump stopped Iran from nuking up, killed the ayatollah, took out the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror, and our Navy in the strait [is] bringing prices down.”

“So the election is going to come down to Republican results and whether voters are going to buy what Democrats are selling,” Watters concluded. “They have no record to run on, no new ideas, just a mix of TDS with a whiff of communism. Republicans have to lock in these gains because there's a lot at stake.”

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Watters and his Fox colleagues will be doing everything they can over the next few days — and weeks, and months — to ensure that happens.

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MMA

As the Iran war teeters on the brink, let's revisit the numerous “Mission Accomplished” moments from right-wing media in early March

MAGA media’s Iran war hawks promised a cakewalk. The conflict is about to enter its sixth month.

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Helena Hind, Isabella Corrao & Jane Lee

Published 07/21/26

Within days of President Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran in late February, right-wing media figures began predicting a short, easy conflict that would be over quickly. Major conservative pundits unilaterally declared in early March that the war was a “wrap-up mission at this point,” a “done deal,” and “winding down.” Instead, the war is about to enter its sixth month with no clear end in sight, with the potential for escalation seemingly everywhere.

Where right-wing media promised a cakewalk, the Trump administration has delivered a quagmire, as recent developments make clear.

The U.S. military resumed striking targets in Iran in the middle of July, following the breakdown of a largely illusory ceasefire. Iranian authorities told The Associated Press that the recent wave of strikes have killed 50 and injured over 500. Over the weekend, the Pentagon announced the deaths of three U.S. service members, and The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is now on the verge of “all-out war with Iran after more troops are killed.” And according to The New York Times, the Defense Department has been withholding the full number of U.S. troops who have been wounded in the conflict.

CNBC reported that a maritime risk firm characterized the current state of the Strait of Hormuz as a “worse-case scenario,” with the key waterway nominally open but still a primary point of conflict between the two countries.

These grim assessments stand in stark contrast to the predictions Iran hawks made in the days after the U.S. and Israeli militaries began their joint campaign on February 28 — the pundits listed below may as well have unfurled a “Mission Accomplished” banner for all of their premature declarations of victory.

In early March, right-wing media figures predict imminent end to Iran war

Although some in right-wing media expressed early skepticism of the war, there was no shortage of hacks (and hawks) who got on board immediately.

On March 3, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham set a tone that others would soon match. “We've already knocked out so much of their capability,” Ingraham said. “It looks like this is just a wrap-up mission at this point.”

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From the March 3, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Two days later, her colleague Greg Gutfeld speculated on The Five that “maybe there's just nobody who can declare surrender because they're dead. I don't know, but I don't see how this thing can continue much longer.”

The Five returned to the topic the next day. “Do not lie about the war,” host Jesse Watters shouted at his liberal colleague Jessica Tarlov. “You know the war is going well.”

Fox News contributor Tyrus Murdoch added: “I’m willing to say this is a done deal.”

Some prime-time hosts at right-wing network Newsmax took the same line.

“I think we're at the end of serious U.S. involvement in Iran,” said host Rob Finnerty on March 9.

The same night on the same network, Greg Kelly said, “This time next week, we may be able to declare victory and warn Iran, don't do it again. But it could be over.” Kelly’s comments were illustrated by a graphic that read “I Predict: War Over Soon.”

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From the March 9, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

Finnerty doubled down the next night. “The war in Iran appears to be winding down,” he said. “I think it is.”

Also on March 10, Fox News’ Sean Hannity weighed in during his Premiere Radio Networks radio show. “I am a firm believer that this is going to end very quickly,” Hannity said.

As the month drew to a close, Hannity again saw the conflict’s end in sight, telling his radio audience, “It's going to be on the verge of wrapping up no later than three weeks from today is my prediction.”

That was on March 30.

Conservative pundits claim in March that Trump had won the war

Sometimes right-wing talking heads went even further, not just claiming that the war would end soon but declaring that Trump was already the victor.

On March 5, Ingraham stated flatly: “Trump has already won in Iran.”

In response to a press briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 13, Heritage Foundation senior counselor James Carafano said, “The reality is the U.S. has already won this war, period. Mic drop. End of statement.”

Although Kelly’s “War Over Soon” prediction hadn’t come to pass, on March 16 the Newsmax host tried to speak that reality into existence. “I think we kind of just won the war,” Kelly said, adding: “I think we got this.”

Carafano echoed Kelly on March 23, arguing that “it does make sense for the U.S. to say, ‘Hey let's wind this down.’ Look, from America's perspective, dude, we’ve already won."

It’s now been at least three and a half months since these pundits made their various rosy predictions. Contrary to their Pollyannish analysis, the war appears to be expanding, as Iran continues to bomb U.S. military bases in the region and the Houthi militants in Yemen impose a blockade on Saudi Arabia to mirror Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

In light of these developments, a recent Fox News guest offered a different timeline, drawing inspiration from operations the U.S. military conducted after the 1991 Gulf War.

“I do expect that we're going to be there a long time,” said Robert Spalding, a retired Air Force general. “You know Operation Northern and Southern Watch went on for, you know, almost 20 years, I think.”

“I think this is going to be something similar,” Spalding continued. “We're going to have to stay there.”

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Fox guest predicts the US will be in Iran “for a long time”

07/20/26

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mma omg

Fox blames climate policy for Europe’s climate-exacerbated heat deaths

Fox News and Fox Business figures applied that same framing to U.S. heat coverage to make fossil fuels look like the answer to deadly heat

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Published 07/09/26

As Europe reeled from a deadly heat wave, coverage on Fox News and Fox Business made air conditioning the story, claiming that climate policy had made it harder and more expensive for Europeans to survive the heat.

However, extreme heat is becoming more dangerous because of fossil fuel-driven warming, which makes climate policy more necessary. Fox networks instead used Europe’s deaths to argue against climate action, doubling down on the fossil fuel economy that is exacerbating dangerous climate impacts.

That argument is already being adapted to U.S. heat coverage. As American heat waves expose the strain on infrastructure built for a less dangerous climate, Fox figures blamed climate policy for making cooling more expensive, attacked climate mitigation and resilience planning, and defended more fossil fuel infrastructure. It is a convenient reversal: Fox casts fossil fuels as the answer to deadly heat, while eliding their role in making extreme heat worse.

Europe and the U.S. are both facing deadly heat made worse by climate change

Reuters reported at least 3,700 excess deaths during the June 20-28 heat wave that gripped France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. World Weather Attribution found that climate change made the European heat wave hotter and more likely, with a similar weather pattern now producing temperatures that would have been “virtually impossible” in June 1976 and still “highly unlikely at any time of the year.”

Europe’s lack of widespread air conditioning — which is shaped by its historically cooler climate, higher energy costs, and concerns about rising power demand from cooling — helps explain the death toll, but not in the way right-wing media suggest.

Much of Europe was built for a cooler climate baseline that no longer exists. As Mark O’Connell wrote in The Irish Times, “Our societies are not built, either figuratively or literally, for the world we now inhabit.” Europe is now the fastest-warming continent, warming more than twice as fast as the global average, and extreme heat is exposing the gap between the climate its systems were designed for and the climate people are now living in.

The American heat wave showed why the story cannot stop at air conditioning. Even though the U.S. has far more air conditioning than Europe, deadly heat is still outpacing the energy infrastructure that keeps people safe.

The New York Times reported that World Weather Attribution scientists also determined that the recent heat and humidity across the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada would have also been “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming, while Axios reported the event killed at least two dozen people, including 22 heat-related deaths in New Jersey.

Air conditioning saves lives during extreme heat, and more people will need it as heat waves become more frequent and deadly. However it does not solve the underlying danger. Instead, it moves part of the risk onto the power system, which is already being stressed by hotter summers, higher cooling demand, and climate-driven disruptions. During the recent heat wave, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order for PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, as extreme heat pushed electricity demand toward possible shortfalls.

In addition, widespread air conditioning cannot protect people working outside, people without stable housing, people who cannot afford reliable indoor relief, or people who lose power when demand peaks. The scale of the risk is already visible in the American Southwest. In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, heat killed at least 579 people in 2023, the county’s deadliest year on record. As United Nations climate assessments link rising extreme heat to worsening health risks in the region, more of daily life is becoming harder to sustain safely without major adaptation.

Right-wing media coverage strips this context away. Global warming is making dangerous heat more frequent, but their answer is to attack climate policy while directing people back to the fossil fuel economy that has already made extreme heat worse. More cooling will be essential, but expanding air conditioning alone is not the solution. It will need to be paired with clean power, more energy efficiency, and heat adaptation to mitigate stress on fragile grids and reduce the burning of fossil fuels that are driving these harmful impacts.

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Trump retreats to the Fox-Trump feedback loop as his polling craters

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 05/07/26

With Donald Trump’s Iran war driving his public support to its lowest levels of his second term, the president retreated on Wednesday night to Fox News, the propaganda channel he can always count on to tell him that he’s a historic success.

Trump spent part of his evening live-posting about and posting video of segments on that night’s editions of Fox's The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, and Hannity.

At 7:57 p.m. E.T.,Trump posted Laura Ingraham’s opening segment to his Truth Social feed.

In that segment, Ingraham, over an on-screen graphic describing the president as “Still the Champ,” denounced what she called media portrayals of Trump “losing influence,” calling them “just more wishful thinking.” She went on to say that Trump “vexes all of them because he doesn't play by their rules” and “never stopped fighting.”

Ingraham then interviewed GOP pollster Matt Towery, who called Trump “a force unequaled in the Republican Party” and claimed that “the polling that you're seeing come in on Trump is incorrect.” On-screen text during the interview read, “The MAGA Momentum Is Unstoppable.”

At 9:08 p.m. E.T., Trump posted, “Chuck Devore, Army Intelligence, was fantastic tonight on Jesse Watters. Thank you Chuck!!!”

Devore, during the segment Trump referenced, claimed:

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Citation

From the May 6, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

At 9:13 p.m. ET, Trump posted that “Washington D.C. CRIME is at its lowest point in 30 years, plus!” He was apparently responding to another segment on Watters’ show which used similar language.

Finally, at 10:59 p.m. ET, Trump posted Sean Hannity’s opening segment to his Truth Social feed.

Hannity’s monologue, citing President Barack Obama’s recent interview with CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, alleged that “Barack Hussein Obama” is “refusing to ride off into the sunset with grace and something called dignity” because the former president is “desperate for validation.”

He went on to accuse Obama of having “wrote the book on weaponization and politicizing justice,” through his purported attacks on Trump, adding that he “is now forced to witness his entire legacy go completely down the drain, compliments of the man that he tried to destroy.”

The president often makes or calibrates his decisions based on the network’s programming and posts about it in close to real time, a phenomenon I call the Fox-Trump feedback loop. And right now, his loyal supplicants are providing him with an endless stream of happy talk.

mma

//

  1. ### In Iran, the most consequential test of the Fox-Trump feedback loop yet

03/02/26 1:12 PM EST

  1. ### How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second

11/19/24 7:30 AM EST

  1. ### STUDY: Two years of Trump's Fox live-tweeting obsession, by the numbers

10/09/20

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MMA

Fox News’ knives are out for NATO as Trump’s Iran war deteriorates

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 04/02/26

Fox News’ MAGA stars, unable to acknowledge that the war in Iran that President Donald Trump launched with their support is spiralling into a strategic defeat, have landed on a scapegoat: NATO and its member states, which were not consulted by the United States before it joined Israel in starting the war and have since refused participation.

Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity respectively denounced NATO on Wednesday as “kind of a meaningless ally” that “we’ve had it with” for purportedly “abandoning us.” Hannity and Ingraham each suggested that Trump should withdraw the U.S. from the alliance (which he is barred from doing unilaterally under a bill Secretary of State Marco Rubio cosponsored in the Senate that became law in 2023).

Trump has spent the last several weeks raging over the refusal by U.S. allies to send their navies into the active war zone to escort oil tankers and other commercial ships after Iran, in an obvious strategic countermeasure to the U.S. attack, closed the Strait of Hormuz. Over the weekend, Spain, Italy, and France refused to allow their military bases or airspace to be used by U.S. or Israeli aircraft involved in the war, triggering a new wave of vitriol from the president and his top aides.

Trump claimed in a Wednesday interview to be “beyond reconsideration” of the U.S. role in NATO after “they weren’t there for us” in Iran. (NATO is a defensive alliance — in response to the 9/11 attacks, its members deployed forces alongside the U.S. military in Afghanistan but are not bound by the treaty to participate in offensive wars.) In an address from the White House that night, the president urged the “countries of the world” to “build up some delayed courage. … Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.”

The looming strategic failure of the U.S. war in Iran — its regime is intact and in control of its uranium stockpile and the strait, and altering those circumstances that would likely require a risky escalation involving American ground troops — has placed Fox’s hosts in a bind. They have assured their viewers that the war is an historic success and appear unable to break with Trump due to his support among their viewers. That makes our NATO allies an appealing target as the war grinds on.

The president regularly tunes in to Fox to guide his communication and policy decisions. If he was watching before or after his speech on Wednesday, he heard vigorous support for pivoting from his inability to defeat America’s foes to punishing its friends.

Hannity: NATO is “a one-sided alliance,” by leaving “we'll probably save a lot of money”

Hannity, of the network’s three major evening hosts, is the one most committed to the U.S. war in Iran (which he had demanded for decades), the closest personally to Trump, and the loudest voice currently denouncing NATO.

Following Trump’s speech, he panned NATO as “a one-sided alliance where we only go and protect Europe” and suggested its member states had become too culturally Muslim. In response, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) uncorked a screed in which he called for the redeployment of U.S. forces from Europe because “when we needed them the most and when the world needed them the most to stop a religious Nazi regime from having a nuclear breakout, they took a pass.”

“I think that there's going to be a reevaluation and I believe America's contribution just went down dramatically, and we'll know more in the weeks ahead as this now begins to wrap up,” Hannity replied.

Video

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From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Later in the broadcast, the host said it was “unimaginable to me that the NATO alliance would shatter” thanks to the purported refusal by its members to agree to what “should not be a controversial assist on their part.”

“I've got to imagine the ramifications of them abandoning us in this effort is going to — this is going to be deep, profound, and long-lasting,” he added.

Fox contributor Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in Trump’s first administration, characterized NATO as “feckless, not to be able to convince their own people” of the importance of the Iran war, while retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, another former Trump administration figure, said the U.S. should withdraw from the alliance and form a new one.

“Yeah, I think you're right and we'll probably save a lot of money,” Hannity replied to Kellogg. “But the fact that they did not have a moral clarity when you're dealing with the No. 1 state sponsor of terror potentially this close to acquiring nuclear weapons is breathtaking to me. And this will have reverberations, I believe, going on for decades to come.”

Video

Citation

From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Ingraham: NATO is “kind of a meaningless ally” due to “weakness in Europe”

Ingraham had recently warned about potential downsides of the war, but quickly pivoted back in line with her colleagues. While previewing Trump’s speech on Wednesday’s broadcast, she claimed that “NATO turned out, in this case at least, to be what Donald Trump had predicted: kind of a meaningless ally, if allies at all.”

Her guest, the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano, responded with the evening’s most vigorous defense of the alliance. “I don't think NATO is the problem,” he said, instead pointing to “some very weak leaders inside NATO who have made some very cowardly decisions” and “look like complete yahoos.”

“What we're going to see is not NATO disbanded,” Carafano. “That's nuts. But what we're more likely to see is NATO step back up to the plate under pressure from Donald Trump, and countries throw out their own leaders because they’re weak-kneed yahoos.”

But Ingraham responded by saying that disbanding NATO should be on the table.

“Well, I'm not sure I agree with that,” she replied. “I think there's just a lot of weakness in Europe, period. Period, there's weakness. … We're so lucky we have Donald Trump as president of the United States.”

Video

Citation

From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Watters: “We’ve had it with these people”

Watters joined in the NATO criticism on Wednesday, albeit in a somewhat less aggressive tone than his colleagues.

“The NATO allies, I put allies in quotes,” he said. “I mean, it's been a great alliance over the years. It's really kept the Russians off the continent until the Ukraine invasion. But it's been really one-sided, and now a lot of people are looking around at them saying no, you can't use the airspace. You can't use the base.”

“They've had it,” he added. “We've had it with these people. We love them, but we've had it.”

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INGRAHAM DEFECTS 1ST? THEN PIVOTS BACK

MMA

Fox News’ united front in support of Trump’s Iran war may be breaking down

Host Laura Ingraham warns escalation could produce “cascading problems for the region,” political turmoil for the GOP

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 03/26/26

Four weeks after President Donald Trump launched a poorly conceived war of choice against Iran, the lockstep support for the conflict that has characterized coverage from Fox News’ star hosts is beginning to fray. The power struggle is significant — it is not an exaggeration to suggest the course of the war might hinge on which Fox shows the president is watching.

Trump is clearly approaching a decision point over whether to further escalate the war. U.S. and Israeli forces have done a lot of damage to Iranian military targets, but its regime is intact, still controls its stockpiles of enriched uranium, and has closed the Strait of Hormuz, threatening the global trade in oil, natural gas, and fertilizer. The Pentagon is sending thousands of troops to the region and reportedly prepping options for a “final blow” — some of which would involve deploying U.S. forces on Iranian soil.

When Trump is considering policy options, he often takes guidance from his loyal propagandists at Fox. This Fox-Trump feedback loop has in recent months played a role in the president’s decisions to send White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee immigration enforcement in Minnesota; prioritize the SAVE Act over all other legislation; order the deployment of ICE agents to airports; and start the war against Iran.

Against that backdrop, Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned on Wednesday’s show that further U.S. action could produce devastating unintended consequences and suggested that Trump should refocus his attention on the domestic economy and political situation.

“Iran knows it cannot win militarily, so it's using the leverage it has by prolonging the conflict,” she said during her monologue at the top of the show. “Now, what do they want to do? They want to inflict maximum economic pain on the region, on the U.S., [on] the global economy as much as possible until they think Trump relents. But the White House doesn't seem to be blinking.”

The host then aired a clip of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warning at her press briefing that day that “President Trump does not bluff, and he is prepared to unleash hell” against Iran.

Ingraham did not seem impressed by Leavitt’s rhetoric.

“Well, the problem is obviously unleashing hell means destroying infrastructure, which itself causes a series of cascading problems for the region, including maybe outside the region — political problems for the president in a midterm election year,” she said.

:{Video

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From the March 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Her air of skepticism continued throughout the show.

While interviewing Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), she noted Pentagon reports of thousands of successful missions but commented, “I mean, this is a devastating blow, yet you know, we're still there.”

“It's not even a month old, obviously,” she continued, before asking, “But are you concerned about the public and people? Again, very short attention spans, very impatient for victory, as is President Trump, I might add. But in an election year, it's easy to say politics don't matter, but at some point politics do come into play.”

And in a third segment, she highlighted the disastrous polling on the Iran war, commenting, “It looks like people are pretty impatient. The American people are sending a message to President Trump that it's time to put the focus back on the home front.”

Ingraham is inching toward the type of dissent that has been virtually absent from Fox’s coverage of the war, even as the broader right-wing media has split. Her colleagues have played key roles in convincing Trump to attack in the first place and are pushing for risky escalations. Ingraham herself briefly quibbled with Trump’s handling of an apparent U.S. strike that leveled an Iranian school, killing scores of children, but had supported the war itself, which she declared three weeks ago that Trump had already won.

But if Ingraham is getting cold feet and trying to convince Trump not to escalate a war the public has soured on, she remains an outlier at the network. Indeed, if the president tuned in for the two hours following Ingraham’s program, he saw her prime-time colleagues Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity argue not only that the war is going well and that Trump will inevitably lead the U.S. to victory, but that anyone who disagrees must want America to lose the war because they hate the president.

Watters began his show with a 10-minute monologue whose thesis was that “the Iranian regime is losing leverage fast as we continue to carry out thousands of sorties over enemy airspace.” After detailing various tactical victories, he touted a potential escalation.

:{Video

Citation

From the March 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

“[President] 47 could be eyeing a knockout — Iran's crown jewel, Kharg Island,” he said. “The Republican Guard has been preparing for battle, laying mines, booby trapping, loading up on Stingers, but retired top brass says our military is ready to shock and seize the terrain by air, by sea. We don't know if it's going to happen, but if it does happen, the Iranians won't know it's coming.”

“Iran looks like this is their last gasp, but some people would rather America lose the war because they hate Trump,” Watters concluded. “So far, this is the cleanest, most surgical and one-sided operation in American military history. Now, anything could happen, war is hell, it's unpredictable, but people in the know in Washington think we're about to close it out with a pretty big blow.”

Hannity, in his opening monologue, likewise declared: “Many on the left are now rooting for America to lose. Others seem to be hoping for another Vietnam-style quagmire. Why? Because Democrats care more about their political ambition rather than the future, safety, and security of your children and your grandchildren.”

“But tonight, President Trump is ignoring all the hysteria and pushing for peace one way or the other,” he continued. “If Iran's obliterated regime will not agree to a lasting agreement, this president has pledged he will continue to decimate their resolve through force, but that's really going to be up to them. They might unleash hell, otherwise.”

After airing a clip from Leavitt’s press briefing, Hannity added, “The message from President Trump is clear: Work with the U.S. or you will be killed.”

:{Video

Citation

From the March 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

To which Ingraham might reply — what if killing them creates “cascading problems for the region”? As of yet, Watters and Hannity aren’t expressing any such concerns. And who the president is watching may determine the shape of things to come.

//

  1. ### How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second

11/19/24

  1. ### Fox’s biggest hawks are thrilled with the Iran war — and floating risky escalations

03/12/26

  1. ### Laura Ingraham: “Trump has already won in Iran”

03/05/26

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mma

Fox News’ biggest stars are desperately trying to turn the Trump administration’s execution and subsequent smearing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis into a story about how the political left is out of control.

Video analyses conducted by several news outlets show masked Border Patrol agents engaging, assaulting, restraining, and gunning down Pretti (who had been recording their activities on his phone) over a matter of seconds on Saturday morning. High-ranking administration officials subsequently branded him a “domestic terrorist” who had intended to “massacre” the agents, citing Pretti’s possession of a legally carried handgun that he never drew during the altercation.

Fox initially ran with and even went beyond the administration’s justifications for killing Pretti. But the network pivoted beginning Sunday evening as burgeoning outrage made their arguments untenable, with some commentators conceding that videos disproved the official statements and suggesting the administration shift tactics.

Monday night’s Fox programming provided a synthesis of the two narrative threads. Network hosts suggested that more investigation was necessary to determine what had happened to Pretti, and called for a retrenchment of sorts. But much of their focus was on attacking what they deemed a Democratic “insurgency” against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Fox host Jesse Watters condemned Gov. Tim Walz, telling viewers that he “has not made any effort to chill out his citizens” and has instead “been in open rebellion against the federal government” and “activated a Minnesota insurgency.”

“This insurgency is more sophisticated than you think, and it relies on a supportive population,” Watters added, claiming that “these people are giving aid and comfort to foreign criminals” and that “like jihadists, their leaders don’t care if they die.”

“This movement is lethal to the country,” Watters concluded. “Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if Minnesota would stop attacking the Trump administration for doing what voters put him in to do.”

:{Video

Citation

From the January 26, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

Laura Ingraham described immigration enforcement protesters as an “open-borders mafia” who “prattle on how they are protecting their neighbors, but they don't bat an eye when their neighbors' daughters are raped by an illegal or run over by an illegal with, you know, his second DWI.”

She added that “the hard-core communists who give the octane to these mobs have one overriding goal … to destabilize America by frustrating a key pillar of the Trump agenda. Now, of course, that's border enforcement.”

Ingraham went on to say that “certain elements” in Minneapolis were “hoping to provoke ICE” and “some, not all, hope to witness, I think, a violent response, then they would clip it for social media and then they can blast it out.”

“So the more tragic, in this warped mindset, the better,” she added. “The more fodder for their demand that ICE withdraw from the city and immigration arrests end immediately. They think they have that, this image, in the death of Alex Pretti.”

:{Video

Citation

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

And Sean Hannity insinuated that the media and “the left” were engaged in a “rush to judgement” regarding Pretti’s killers. Then, interviewing FBI Director Kash Patel, Hannity sought assurances that the administration was keeping its investigative resources focused not on Pretti’s killers, but on targeting his fellow activists.

“What do we know about this encrypted message group?” Hannity asked, referencing Signal chats used by Minneapolis activists to track immigration enforcement operations. He added, “When you have well-organized groups like those that are going after law enforcement, I would imagine that will fall under the purview of the FBI.”

Patel, who had previously divulged launching a probe of the messaging groups in response to a MAGA influencer’s post, replied that “this Signal chat is something that we, the FBI, are looking at and spearheading.”

:{Video

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From the January 26, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

This rhetoric, intended to dehumanize and criminalize Minneapolis activists, echoes years of demagoguery on Fox and throughout the right-wing media about the violent threat purportedly posed by the left — most recently following the killing of Renee Good by ICE agents on January 7.

//

  1. ### The Fox News response to the federal government execution of Alex Pretti sets a new level of depravity

01/25/26 11:50 AM EST

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

01/26/26 12:40 PM EST

  1. ### The incendiary and demonizing chyrons on Fox News evening programming regarding Minnesota, ICE, and protests

01/16/26

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mma

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

White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes said Europe should be “grateful that we don't take a whole lot more”

Written by Payton Armstrong, Reed McMaster & Jack Wheatley

Published 01/21/26

Many right-wing media figures backed President Donald Trump’s vow to take control of Greenland, a move that threatened the NATO alliance formed after World War II, telling Denmark to “just sell us Greenland” and arguing that it’s “worth talking about” taking Greenland by force because “that's the only way that America exists in the first place.” Some in conservative print media outlets came out against Trump’s threats, suggesting that some of his tactics were “dangerous,” calling it “Trump’s lesson in how to turn U.S. allies into China’s friends,” and asserting that his “foreign policy needs to distinguish between friend and foe.”

Trump vowed to acquire Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally

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Fox ignores Trump pardoning Honduran drug trafficker while accusing Dems of supporting Venezuelan drug traffickers

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Rob Savillo

Published 12/09/25 MMA

How do you spin the president you support pardoning a notorious drug trafficker amid your weekslong campaign to convince viewers that your political enemies are pro-trafficker? For the propagandists at Fox News, the answer is just to pretend it didn't happen.

President Donald Trump announced on November 28 his intention to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been serving a 45-year sentence in federal prison after a U.S. court convicted him of “helping drug traffickers send tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes that fueled his political career.” Trump claimed Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly,” though he later said he knew “very little” beyond what he had been told by “very good people that I know.” (Axios credited, in part, a “persistent lobbying campaign” by former Trump adviser and fellow pardon recipient Roger Stone, who touted his role in securing the pardon.) Hernández was released following the pardon’s issuance on December 1.

Fox has devoted just over 6 minutes of airtime to the Hernández pardon, according to a Media Matters review of the network’s programming from November 28, when Trump announced his intention to pardon Hernández, through Monday. Special Report, the flagship “straight news” show anchored by Trump golfing buddy Bret Baier, and the weekend daytime shows The Sunday Briefing and Fox News Live provided the bulk of the network’s coverage. Fox & Friends Weekend also ran a headline read.

The only other mentions of the story on Fox came when Democratic co-hosts on the panel show The Five raised the issue during segments about the Trump administration’s purported counternarcotics effort aimed at alleged drug trafficking from Venezuela, which Trump claims is directed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Since early September, U.S. military strikes undertaken at Trump’s behest, aimed at what the administration claims are boats trafficking drugs in the Caribbean, have killed at least 87 people and destroyed 23 boats.

Co-host Jessica Tarlov pointed out on December 2 that Trump’s pardon of Hernández disproves “the story about this administration being focused on eradicating American society of drugs.” On Monday, co-host Harold Ford Jr. similarly challenged his colleagues to state whether or not they approved of the president granting clemency to a convicted drug trafficker (Fox contributor Tyrus and co-host Dana Perino responded that they did not while co-host Kayleigh McEnany mocked Ford for landing on a “niche issue” she said she hoped Democrats would “hang on” in the midterm campaigns).

Video

Citation

From the December 8, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Fox’s chyron as Ford began talking — “Dems stick up for narco terrorists” — speaks to the tenor of Fox’s coverage of the U.S. strikes off Venezuela. While experts have described the U.S. campaign of extrajudicial killings as “patently illegal,” the strikes have been widely praised on Fox, where hosts and anchors regularly accuse Democrats who raise legal questions about them of supporting the traffickers.

“It's either you're pro drug dealers, drugs going throughout Europe and throughout this country, or you're for taking out those boats,” host Brian Kilmeade said on Friday’s Fox & Friends — a program which has so far not covered Trump’s pardon of a man actually convicted of helping traffic drugs “throughout this country.”

Likewise, Fox host Will Cain has said of Democratic criticism of the strikes, “Maybe it’s that they are against law and order,” while anchor Harris Faulkner asked of those questioning the strikes, “Are they working against America and for the drug cartels?” Neither has addressed the Hernández pardon on their program or questioned whether it shows Trump to be “against law and order” or working “for the drug cartels.”

And Fox stars Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity have not told their viewers about the pardon, even as all three have praised Trump for authorizing the Caribbean boat strikes.

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OOPS NO HANNITY BUT GUTFELD

MMA

Corporate broadcast news covered this year’s COP30 global climate summit for 2 minutes — cable networks covered it for just over 3 hours

Fox News used COP30 to attack Gavin Newsom and undermine climate science

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 11/26/25

COP30 — which proceeded without an official U.S. delegation — opened on November 6 while the main sessions got underway on November 10 and concluded on November 21.

This year’s conference sought to address numerous issues, creating a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and a landmark declaration on the threat of disinformation in addressing climate change and a newly proposed initiative to reduce deforestation.

As in previous years, the gathering was met with protests by Indigenous and civil society groups calling for stronger climate action. This year, although 2,500 Indigenous people gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the summit, only 14% (360 individuals) received credentials to attend negotiations. (No members were part of Brazil’s official delegation.) By contrast, fossil fuel lobbyists were overrepresented at the COP30 climate negotiations to the chagrin of climate organizers and Indigenous climate activists. In one demonstration on November 14, indigenous groups blocked the entrance to the conference and demanded to speak to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Reporting on the protests by TV news outlets was sparse, while the attendance of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was widely covered. CNN and MSNBC discussed how the U.S. is falling behind in the clean energy technology race while China gains ground. Additionally, 22% of segments mentioned Bill Gates’ controversial climate memo to world leaders. Meanwhile, Fox News coverage attacked Newsom and undermined climate science.

Two brief headline reports, one from ABC and one from CBS, focused on the protests at the conference. Much of the broadcast coverage focused on a fire that broke out in one of the convention halls on November 20 — though none of the coverage of the fire offered more details about the climate conference.

:{Video

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From the November 21, 2025, edition of NBC's Today

CNN’s coverage of COP30 featured several experts, including Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat who was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change during the 2015 Paris climate accord negotiations; Margaret Barry, a climate litigation fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University; Kim Cobb, climate scientist and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society; as well as former vice president and climate advocate Al Gore.

A key narrative through CNN’s coverage was the state of the clean energy transition and China’s role in it.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on November 8, Figueres explained some of the progress since the landmark Paris agreement in 2015: “Ten years ago, one in every hundred vehicles that were being sold was electric. Now, we have one in five. We have two times as much investment into renewable energy as we do into fossil fuels. Solar has been deployed 15 times faster than we ever expected 10 years ago, and on and on and on. There are many proof points that there is a new economy rising.”

Amanpour also interviewed Al Gore, who pointed out the cost of the U.S. ceding the clean energy economy to others.

“China is now exporting to other countries more green technology like electric vehicles and windmills and solar,” Gore said. “The value of their green tech exports now far exceeds the exports from the United States to the rest of the world. … We’re seeing this transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and electric vehicles and batteries and these exciting new technologies that are pollution-free, they create three times as many jobs per dollar spent compared to the old dirty fossil fuels, and that’s where the economic future is.”

Climate scientist Kim Cobb made a similar argument on CNN Newsroom With Fredricka Whitfield*:

“China, of course, [is] transitioning its economy very, very quickly to clean energy sources. About 84% of the demand last year in China for electricity was met by clean energy sources. They are owning EVs, batteries, and solar cells to the tune of 78% of global manufacturing taking place in China for a $2 trillion industry. So right now what we’re looking at is China taking a very bold leadership role and charting its clean energy future. The U.S., in the meantime, swimming very much upstream against the global currents of deployed renewables, which are cheaper than fossil fuels right now.”

While MSNBC covered the climate conference for roughly 13 minutes, its coverage included similar narratives about clean energy. On his November 16 show, host Ali Velshi noted: “Now, in America's absence, China is stepping up as a global leader in climate science. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported last week that China's carbon emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months straight. Part of that is attributable to a record amount of renewable energy expansion in China. In 2024, the country installed 333 gigawatts of solar power capacity — that's more than the rest of the world combined.”

Video Citation}:

From the November 12, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Discussing COP30 earlier in the same segment, Greg Gutfeld declared that the “climate agenda has been fully discredited” and that “the climate computer models have been shown to be corrupt.” He went on to falsely claim, “They are wrong on predicting everything from the temperature increases to the snow or ice melting.”

Laura Ingraham announced that scientists’ warnings on climate change have been “total scams.”

The network also hosted its usual round-up of climate contrarians and skeptics including Marc Morano, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, and Victor Davis Hanson, and Fox coverage continued to cite the controversial October 28 climate memo from Bill Gates to global leaders ahead of COP30 to suggest that climate change is no longer considered a crisis requiring immediate action.

Video{Citation

From the November 15, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Journal Editorial Report

“I think what Bill Gates is really saying is something reasonable,” Lomborg agreed. “Talk about how you think about climate — he’s saying sure, it’s a problem, but it’s not the end of the world.”

In reality, 2025 is set to be the “second or third warmest year on record,” the World Meteorological Organization reports. The warmest year overall remains 2024, which was likely “the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.”

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Right-wing media praise Trump’s made-up excuses for war against Venezuela

Trump massively inflated threat from Venezuelan “narco-terrorists” smuggling fentanyl into the US

Written by Zachary Pleat

Research contributions from Jane Lee

Published 11/24/25

President Donald Trump and right-wing media have been quick to cite fentanyl interdiction as the supposed justification for the administration’s likely illegal strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which they have blamed on so-called “narco-terrorists” tied to the regime of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. But reporting has shown the Trump administration’s excuses are built on lies — with virtually no fentanyl arriving in the United States via routes currently being targeted by the military in a bombing campaign that has already claimed at least 83 lives.

This isn't the first time Trump and his media allies have used fentanyl as an excuse for his out-of-control policies, as it was used to justify his instigation of a trade war with Mexico and Canada earlier this year. The Trump administration’s military buildup also follows multiple actions that undermine efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking into the U.S.

Reporting based on government data makes clear that Venezuela is not the source of the fentanyl problem America faces

MMA //

  1. ### Fox parrots Trump's “drug war” justification for Canada/Mexico tariffs, even as he weakened fentanyl smuggling enforcement

03/05/25 2:56 PM EST

  1. ### Right-wing media outlets are claiming regime change in Venezuela would be easy. Evidence and history suggest otherwise.

10/29/25 4:26 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox praised and validated Trump's legally questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean

10/29/25 3:31 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media's campaign for military intervention and regime change in Venezuela

09/05/25 6:34 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media concoct their own legal justification for Trump’s extrajudicial strike on Venezuelan boat

09/05/25 10:00 AM EDT

  1. ### An intelligence report debunked MAGA media claims about Tren de Aragua and Venezuela. A Trump official is now under fire for reportedly ordering the report be redone.

05/28/25

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MMA

Calls for retaliatory prosecutions are the next phase in the right’s rewriting of January 6

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/08/25

The MAGA right’s cynical effort to rewrite the history of January 6 reached a new but seemingly inevitable low this week, as right-wing media figures, the GOP, and the Trump administration teamed up to demand retribution against those who attempted to impose consequences on the perpetrators of the event.

In late 2020, President Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party and right-wing media attempted to overturn the results of the election that he had lost, using false claims of widespread voter fraud. That campaign’s final phase relied on Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral count based on a nonsensical legal theory. When it became clear Pence would not cooperate, a mob of Trumpists — summoned to Washington, D.C., by the president who told them “we will never concede” — assaulted scores of law enforcement officers as they stormed the U.S. Capitol, sending Pence and the assembled Congress into hiding and delaying the counting of electoral votes.

This January 6 insurrection faced widespread public condemnation in its immediate aftermath. But right-wing propagandists, led by then-Fox star Tucker Carlson, went to work dismantling what turned out to be a fragile consensus. In the insidious counternarrative they created, January 6 was either righteous or something of a nothingburger, and the true scandal was the subsequent efforts to punish its perpetrators. Four years later, that version of events is the dominant one on the right, with special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over his role treated as part of a Democratic plot. And as a result, efforts to achieve accountability for the crimes of January 6 have become partisan almost by definition.

Fox News star host Jesse Watters said the day after the storming of the U.S. Capitol that “people that think it wasn't that big of a deal” were wrong. “You can't smash windows, spray police with chemical agents, assault police officers, loot, and vandalize.”

But this week, Watters declared that “the Democrat reaction to January 6 was worse than January 6.” Watters pointed to the new revelation served up by Trump law enforcement appointees that Smith had received the phone records of several Republican senators from the period around January 6 as part of his criminal investigation of the events and baselessly concluded that “what they were probably trying to do is cast this wide net to create some grand criminal conspiracy and indict the entire Republican Party.”

Watters then demanded retribution against Smith and other federal law enforcement figures involved in the January 6 investigations. “This guy should be in prison,” he said. “And what they need to do is either appoint a special counsel or have some sort of Senate select committee to go up, do hearings, put Wray, put Garland, put Smith under oath, and if they lie, you throw them in prison.”

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From the October 7, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Legal reporters and experts have noted that seeking phone records of Republican officials who might have been in communication with Trump around the time of January 6 was an obvious step for the investigators, who ultimately indicted the president over what they alleged were attempts to use “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” But that conclusion presumes that investigators should have been investigating at all, and the current position of the Trumpist right is exactly as Watters pitched it: After Trump’s return to the presidency, he pardoned January 6 perpetrators and purged law enforcement who helped prosecute them.

On Tuesday night, Fox hosts and the Republican guests they hosted pushed falsehoods about Smith’s probe in order to justify retaliatory investigations into his effort. The sequence of events is roughly analogous to the crusade by Trump, congressional Republicans, and propaganda outlets like Fox to secure investigations into special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. That resulted in years of content for Fox’s stars — but the resulting four-year probe failed to garner prison time for a single person.

Here we go again.

Jack Smith did not “spy” on Republican senators in a scandal “worse than Watergate”

Fox stars Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all used the same false characterization on Tuesday as they sought to stir up outrage about Smith’s January 6 probe.

Watters claimed that the “big story” was “that Joe Biden's FBI was spying on top Republican senators”; Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the senators whose records were included, subsequently told the host that the FBI “got wiretaps essentially” against them. Ingraham claimed the senators “were all spied on” in “an attempt at partisan surveillance.” According to Hannity, Smith had been “using the federal government to spy on several U.S. senators.”

Hannity and Ingraham also ran with with Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) absurd characterization of the report as “WORSE THAN WATERGATE”: Ingraham termed it “arguably worse than Watergate,” while Hannity claimed more definitively that the report was “worse than anything alleged against Richard Nixon during Watergate.”

These claims are baseless and absurd.

The Watergate scandal featured operatives associated with Nixon’s reelection campaign attempting to break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee on the orders of a White House official, most likely in an effort to place equipment to actively surveil the president’s partisan opposition for explicitly political purposes. This is obviously very different from legitimate investigative steps taken as part of a duly promulgated criminal investigation.

And the FBI document at the root of the claim does not say anything about active or real-time surveillance — it references only a “preliminary toll analysis on limited toll records associated with” nine members of Congress.

The records were reportedly obtained from major telephone providers responding to a subpoena Smith obtained. And according to Grassley, the record the FBI reviewed “shows when and to whom a call is made, as well as the duration and general location data of the call” but “does not include the content of the call.”

Fox uses false premises to call for criminal investigations

All three shows featured calls for further investigations into Smith’s probe.

“It's time Pam Bondi appoint a special counsel to investigate Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, and Chris Wray,” Watters declared. “At the very least, we should have a Senate special select committee hold hearings and have these goons testify under oath, and if they lie to Congress, off to prison. As they said, no one is above the law.”

Hawley, in his interview with Watters, likewise called for “a special prosecutor who's going to go at this hard,” adding, “We need hearings in public. Put these people under oath. Start with Jack Smith. Let's hear from Merrick Garland. Let's hear from Christopher Wray -- and anybody who broke the law needs to be prosecuted.”

“I think the time has come for criminal prosecutions,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) told Ingraham. “I think indictments should be coming here. We can't tolerate this and the Democrats try to act like President Trump's weaponizing. It's not what's happening.”

And on Hannity’s show, FBI Director Kash Patel declared that such probes were ongoing.

“We're just warming up,” he said. “But we are running our investigations to the ground. We are finding every single person involved. We will not leave a single room locked.”

“This is what Donald Trump was put in place to do,” he concluded. “And I'm honored to be his FBI director to lead this charge. And the men and women at the FBI, we're all in on this mission.”

That doesn’t include, of course, the FBI agents fired or reassigned because they worked January 6 cases. Because for this administration and the propagandists who support it, those who tried to get accountability for January 6 are the saga’s true villains.

//

They did it and will do it again – if no one stops them

07/22/22 11:12 AM EDT

  1. ### How Fox News and the right-wing media made Jan. 6 revisionism great again

01/03/24 8:57 AM EST

  1. ### Why the right-wing media apparatus is suddenly yelling about Jack Smith supposedly spying on GOP senators

10/07/2

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A Trump-appointed judge just demolished right-wing fearmongering about Portland

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/06/25 MMA

Fox News propagandists cheered last month when President Donald Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to send 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, claiming the move was necessary because, in host Jesse Watters’ words, the entire city “has been under siege by antifa for four months.” But a Trump-nominated federal judge blocked the deployment on Saturday, noting that protests in the city have been “small and uneventful” for months and writing that the president’s order “was simply untethered to the facts.”

After Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., in August and suggested he would do the same in other U.S. cities, right-wing media spent September trying to turn Portland into the president’s next target. They created and fed the narrative that Portland is a “chaotic city” consumed by “civil insurrection” in which “every weekend is war.” While news reports from the city portrayed the protests as minor, MAGA pundit Steve Bannon told his audience, “Antifa's burning down Portland every night. … They've taken control of Portland.”

The president responded to the overheated commentary of his most zealous supporters. In a September 27 post to Truth Social, Trump ordered Hegseth to send troops to protect “War ravaged Portland” from “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” and claimed he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”

But after Hegseth directed 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to the city over the objection of Gov. Tina Kotek, the state of Oregon and the city of Portland sued in federal court, arguing that the president had exceeded his legal and constitutional authority.

District Court Judge Karin Immergut — a stalwart of the GOP legal community who worked on Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton, served as a U.S. attorney under President George W. Bush, and was nominated to the bench by Trump himself — agreed. On October 4, she issued a temporary restraining order which blocked the deployment.

Trump-appointed judge: Portland protests “were small and uneventful”

Immergut wrote in her ruling that Trump had not met the standard under the statutory authority he invoked, which only allows the president to federalize National Guard units in cases of invasion, rebellion, or when the federal government has been rendered otherwise unable to execute the law.

She explained that contrary to Trump’s depiction of the situation in Portland, her review determined: “As of September 27, 2025, it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in Portland. During this time frame, there were sporadic events requiring either PPB monitoring or federal law enforcement intervention, but overall, the protests were small and uneventful.”

The judge added that the federal government produced “only four incidents of protesters clashing with federal officers in the month of September preceding the federalization order,” calling these “inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces.”

She further wrote that the standard the federal government tried to set “would allow the President to call in the National Guard whenever one law enforcement office receives support from another office, which is a routine aspect of law enforcement activity. If the President could equate diversion of federal resources with his inability to execute federal law, then the President could send military troops virtually anywhere at any time.”

Immergut concluded that Trump lacked the statutory authority to federalize the guard in this case “because the situation on the ground belied an inability of federal law enforcement officers to execute federal law,” adding: “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

That’s not how Fox presented Portland to its viewers

Fox hosts pulled out the stops to present the city as a violent hellhole crying out for the federal intervention the president had ordered.

“Left-wing terror is at record highs,” Watters declared on his September 29 broadcast. “They're shooting at Teslas, Trump, Charlie, and ICE. After sending in the Guard into L.A. and D.C., Trump is going for round three — Portland.”

“This weekend, he directed the secretary of war to send 200 National Guardsmen to protect war-ravaged Portland, and he is authorizing them to use full force if necessary, because federal facilities in Portland have been under siege since the start of the summer,” Watters continued, adding, “Every weekend, antifa has been on the warpath.”

Watters claimed two nights later: “Portland has been under siege by antifa for four months. The Guard is there to get things under control, but Portland Democrats say they want to deport the Guard because the protests are mostly peaceful.”

On September 29, host Laura Ingraham similarly claimed that Portland was “getting a dose of Trump-style safety” because an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and “the areas around it have been under siege regularly in Oregon, and it continued this past weekend.” She added that Oregon was “rushing to court siding with criminals and against public safety.”

The same night, host Sean Hannity accused Oregon and Portland of “typical radical, predictable left-wing sanctuary state and city lies” because officials there supposedly won’t acknowledge that the “city’s on fire” and consumed by “a whole lot … of violence, lawlessness if you ask me.”

Their arguments are wildly overstated on the facts. But there’s so much more at stake, as Immergut pointed out in her ruling.

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” she wrote. “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.”

Fox’s star hosts apparently disagree, and are standing with Trump as he tries to send the nation hurtling toward martial law.

//

  1. ### Right-wing media cheer for Trump to deploy National Guard to other American cities after DC

08/14/25 10:52 AM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media’s dystopian Portland coverage feeds into Trump’s threats to deploy National Guard

09/29/25 5:48 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News' Kayleigh McEnany attempts to justify deployment of National Guard by declaring “a pretty clear rebellion” against the government

10/06/2

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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.”

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Fox News

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Fox Business

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Fox News

//

  1. ### Fox News has mentioned Obama over 3 times more than Epstein since Tulsi Gabbard released her report

07/23/25 4:07 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News since Monday: 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney, 3 minutes talking about Epstein

07/31/25 2:12 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News has aired 168 segments about Tulsi Gabbard's revisionist claims regarding Russia, Obama, and the 2016 election

07/30/25

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no hanty yet

// Laura Ingraham says Senator Alex Padilla was performing “a carefully choreographed stunt” at DHS briefing

06/12/25

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/laura-ingraham-says-senator-alex-padilla-was-performing-carefully-choreographed-stunt-dhs)

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MMA

Right-wing media call for “overwhelming force” and arrests in LA protests

Written by Chloe Simon & Reed McMaster

Published 06/12/25

Protests in Los Angeles have been ongoing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue to target migrant communities. In response, right-wing media have urged the Trump administration and law enforcement to crack down harder on protesters, called for Democratic officials to be arrested, and suggested the protesters were funded by outside groups.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham and others encouraged President Donald Trump to employ the Insurrection Act against protesters while Daily Wire host Matt Walsh said Trump should use “overwhelming force.” Fox host Sean Hannity and War Room host Steve Bannon have called for arrests of Democratic officials, and The Daily Caller blamed a “Pro-Chinese Communist Millionaire” for funding the protests.

Protests erupted after the Trump administration conducted ICE raids in LA and sent in troops

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mma

  1. ### Daily Wire's Matt Walsh: “The president should use his authority to immediately terminate all migration from the Third World”

06/10/25 2:01 PM EDT

  1. ### Steve Bannon: “All ten million have to go, not just the criminals and the insane asylum”

:{06/10/25

  1. ### Newsmax host on Democrats: “At what point are they declared to be a terrorist organization?”

06/10/25 9:24 AM EDT

  1. ### Laura Ingraham says Democrats are using immigration to “resettle America with new people in order to transform it completely”

06/09/25 7:55 PM EDT

  1. ### Greg Gutfeld uses Larry Nassar case to attack Simone Biles

06/09/25 6:28 PM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity says Gavin Newsom “should be arrested”

06/09/25

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FASCIST PRESS SUPPRESS

mma

Fox attacks Scott Pelley for accurately describing Trump’s war on the press

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Alicia Sadowski

Published 05/29/25

Fox News and Fox Business hosts are lashing out at CBS News’ Scott Pelley for criticizing President Donald Trump’s attacks on free speech and civil society, even as his network’s parent company reportedly prepares to capitulate to the president’s assault.

“Journalism is under attack,” the 60 Minutes correspondent said in a May 19 commencement speech at Wake Forest University that went viral over the weekend. “Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.”

While Pelley did not mention the president or the White House by name, no one missed the implication — including Fox’s stable of pro-Trump zealots.

The mainstream press’s purported Democratic partisanship and untrustworthiness is one of the pillars of Fox’s programming. On Tuesday and Wednesday, it was Pelley’s turn as the networks’ media hate object of choice.

Sean Hannity, the Trump political operative who also hosts a prime-time Fox News show, denounced Pelley’s address as “full of rage and anti-Trump rhetoric,” adding that the 60 Minutes reporter is not a journalist but a “biased liberal radical talk show host” and “a phony liar.”

Former Trump economic adviser turned Fox Business host Larry Kudlow’s take was that Pelley had “the worst bout of Trump derangement syndrome,” while Harris Faulkner claimed he was “fighting for relevance.”

On The Five, Greg Gutfeld attempted to defuse Pelley's comments about authoritarian attacks on the press by pointing out that the CBS newsman hadn’t been arrested after his speech — only for his co-host, former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, to respond that “he should have been.”

And Laura Ingraham not only panned Pelley as a “Trump-hating former anchorman” — she used the opportunity to tout the Trump administration’s effort to punish his network.

“There's nothing worse than someone who pretends to be persecuted while ignoring real persecution, or pretends to be the keeper of the truths when associated with a network that did everything it could to protect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, even editing an interview with the VP to make her look smarter,” Ingraham said.

“So, it was bad timing for Scott's commencement sanctimony about truth and justice when 60 Minutes’ alleged corruption is being now cited as a potential sticking point in Paramount's $8 billion sale to Skydance Media,” she added. “Whoops. But the press has no one to blame but themselves.”

Pelley is correct about the Trump administration’s assault on the free press.

The president has long sought to discredit critical journalism. He decries reporting he doesn’t like as “fake news” and tries to chill it through a combination of personal lawsuits, threats of criminal investigations, and the weaponization of federal agencies against news outlets and their owners.

Pelley’s show and network, as Ingraham indicated, are among the biggest targets of this strategy. Trump and his allies claimed during the 2024 election that by airing two different portions of Harris’ response to an interview question — one on 60 Minutes and another in a preview of the interview shown on Face the Nation — CBS News had committed, in the president’s words, “the biggest scandal in broadcast history.” Trump called for CBS to lose its broadcast license and subsequently filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the network and its parent company, Paramount Global.

The only thing more insane than a legal attack over the editing of interview clips is Fox’s willingness to carry water for the argument. First Amendment attorneys told CNN that Trump’s suit was “ridiculous junk” and “a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.” And in January, then-Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel tossed a similar complaint filed by a right-wing group, arguing that it sought “to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment” and turn the agency into “the president’s speech police.”

But while Rosenworcel warned against turning the FCC into “the president’s speech police,” her Trump-appointed replacement, Brendan Carr, apparently sees that as his mission. He said before taking the post that the complaint was “likely to arise” in the agency’s review of Paramount Global’s planned merger with Skydance Media, swiftly revived the probe afterward, and has slow-walked the merger ever since.

When the Trump administration tried a similar tactic in his first term, blocking Time Warner’s purchase by AT&T while the president railed against Time Warner subsidiary CNN, AT&T stood firm, fought it out in court, and won. Several law firms who fought back when Trump targeted them for retribution in his second term have also found success.

But Paramount and its chair, Shari Redstone, who reportedly “stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount,” are apparently setting a different, more craven path. Reports have indicated for months that Paramount executives are eager to settle Trump’s lawsuit in hopes that his administration will then approve their deal. In April, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens stepped down in light of what Pelley suggested was increasing, inappropriate Paramount scrutiny of CBS News reporting. CBS News President Wendy McMahon was forced out in May, saying, “It’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”

Paramount’s capitulation appears to be coming to a head. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the company has offered Trump’s lawyers a $15 million settlement, but “Trump’s team wants more than $25 million and is also seeking an apology from CBS News.” The apology, the Journal reported, had been a sticking point for McMahon. Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team reportedly “threatened another lawsuit against CBS related to alleged bias of its news coverage,” while Trump himself responded to a different 60 Minutes broadcast by calling for the network to lose its license and directed Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment.”

If Paramount folds in the face of Trump’s extortion, Redstone may get her big merger payday. But the result will only encourage the president to make more attacks on CBS News and other news outlets. His aim is to quell negative reporting by any means necessary, and his appetite for humiliating and delegitimizing the press cannot be sated without news outlets becoming as servile as his Fox propagandists.

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mma

  1. ### Ben Shapiro says “China is perfectly happy” with Trump's trade war

04/30/25 12:49 PM EDT

  1. ### Ben Shapiro: “Head Start is one of the great fails in federal history”

04/30/25 12:37 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox spins economic contraction under Trump: “Some might say that wasn't as big a drop as anticipated”

04/30/25 12:28 PM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax host: “If he talks about 2028, suddenly he's not a lame duck”

04/30/25 9:05 AM EDT

  1. ### Jesse Watters to his co-host after she notes Oklahoma family mistakenly raided by ICE: “No one even believes your stories anymore”

04/29/25 7:04 PM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity: “The tariff war started with Canada”

04/29/25 7:01 PM EDT

  1. ### On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone describes how Project 2025 laid the groundwork for Trump to install right-wing media loyalists into “senior level positions”

04/29/25 6:17 PM EDT

  1. ### Stephen Miller: “Fox News needs to fire its pollster”

04/29/25 2:30 PM EDT

  1. ### MAGA media followed Trump administration in attacking Amazon for report it would display tariff costs

04/29/25 1:28 PM EDT

  1. ### Five ways MAGA media are spinning Trump’s poll collapse

04/29/25 1:23 PM EDT

Five ways MAGA media are spinning Trump’s poll collapse

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 04/29/25

President Donald Trump’s zealous propagandists have been unable to come to terms with his increasing unpopularity, instead offering a range of pathetic excuses for his cratering poll numbers.

Surveys conducted for The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and other news organizations in preparation for the 100th day of Trump’s administration show his support in freefall. The president’s overall job approval numbers are dropping into the low 40s and even high 30s, levels several pollsters found to be historic lows for presidents at this point in their administration.

Trump is underwater with the public on nearly every issue, with particular warning signs on the economy — ABC’s poll found a majority said Trump had made the economy worse and nearly three-quarters of Americans say his policies are likely to cause a recession.

But the audience of MAGA media outlets largely consists of Trump’s most loyal supporters — the ones who would be the last to abandon him, if at all.

That gives the right-wing stars at Fox News and similar outlets every incentive to deny the reality that the American public has quickly become disenchanted with Trump’s actions and behavior and come up with alternate explanations for his slide.

The polls are fake

Trump himself responded to the collapse in support by denouncing what he termed “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS.”

“The New York Times has only 37% Trump 2024 voters, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll has only 34% Trump Voters, unheard of numbers unless looking for a negative result, which they are,” he wrote, citing his pollster John McLaughlin in a Monday morning Truth Social post. “These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it.”

Partner Jim McLaughlin reiterated the point in a Monday night appearance on Newsmax.

“These are propaganda polls,” he said. “That's what they are. They're trying to lie to the American people. They're trying to sway public opinion.”

Host Rob Finnerty responded by suggesting it was a “coordinated takedown” of the president with “all five of these ridiculous polls coming out in the same day as the media continue to cheerlead against Trump.”

Pollster Matt Towery offered a similar analysis that night on Fox’s The Ingraham Angle.

“Now, last time I checked, Donald Trump got almost 50% of the vote,” Towery said. “So how in the world can that poll be correct? There’s no possible way.”

“He’s not in free fall,” Towery added. “He’s had a little bit of slippage because he’s doing a lot. He’s breaking a lot of eggs to make an omelet, but he is not dropping in any significant way. I can guarantee you, and I’m just not paying any attention to this nonsense.”

The polls are a “psyop”

Steve Bannon turned to Rasmussen Reports pollster Mark Mitchell to explain Trump’s polls on Monday.

“All day, Mitchell, they’re going to be bombarding us on the hundredth day that Trump is the most unpopular president in 100 years,” Bannon prompted him.

Mitchell responded by claiming that “there is a psychological operation going on.” According to him, numerous recent polls showing Trump’s polling swoon “all look the same” and large numbers of Google searches for “Trump approval” are “how I know it's a psyop. People are getting these stories shoved down their throats.”

The polls are only bad for now because Trump’s “agenda is not built for 100 days”

On Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade rejected the premise of looking at Trump’s poll numbers at this point in his administration.

“When you look at the hundred days of Trump, the problem with the hundred days and looking at the polls, this format and his agenda is not built for 100 days,” he said on Monday’s show. “He's redoing the base. He is framing out the house. A lot of it was rotted, and now he is replacing it. There’s not a lot of glory in framing out a house.”

Kilmeade added that Trump “is rebuilding and he has got a plan,” urging viewers to look ahead to potential trade deals and passage of Trump’s tax agenda.

Actually, the polls are “not bad”

Fox contributor Ari Fleischer highlighted Trump’s continued support from his political base and downplayed his low job approval numbers from the overall public.

“The base will not crack,” he told Ingraham on Monday. “The base is solid for Donald Trump, and they understand that he's got a lot of high hurdles because he's put high hurdles in front of himself because he's taking on consequential big issues that have been neglected for so long.”

Fleischer went on to claim that “the average of all the polls … shows that Trump has a 45% job approval. That is not bad. In our modern polarized era, a 45% job approval is middling, but it is not the stuff of doom, gloom, negativity, or decline. It's just the way modern politics is.”

It’s impossible to not see this administration is a “huge success”

Asked Tuesday about Trump’s “soft numbers” on Fox’s America’s Newsroom, Fox Business host and Trumpist shill Maria Bartiromo responded, “There's no other way to look at this first 100 days other than a huge success.”

The majority of Americans who disagree in Fox’s own poll are apparently just delusional.

  1. ### Fox anchor Dana Perino: Small-business owners have real concerns about losing their businesses due to tariff impacts

04/29/25 10:13 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax's Greg Kelly: “That 22nd Amendment about not being able to run for a third term just might be unconstitutional”

04/29/25 9:27 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox News’ many justifications for extending Trump’s tax cut for the wealthy

04/29/25 9:19 AM EDT

  1. ### Hannity: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “all but threatened half the country with violence”

04/28/25 10:33 PM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity defends cutting federal funding of cancer research: “That's where the private sector comes in”

04/28/25 7:10 PM EDT

  1. ### Alex Jones: “I think it's way more dangerous Trump saying we're looking to deporting citizens to El Salvador. Now, that's unconstitutional, and that is really bad.”

04/28/25 2:26 PM EDT

  1. ### Ben Shapiro defends the Trump administration after a judge noted a two-year-old US citizen may have been removed from the country with “no meaningful process”

04/28/25 1:25 PM EDT

  1. ### The Trump administration's war on the press is heating up

04/28/25 1:22 PM EDT

  1. ### Daily Wire host: “Civil rights are just leftism in blackface”

04/28/25 8:46 AM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity on Kilmar Abrego Garcia: “It is so obvious to me that this guy deserves what he got”

04/25/25

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mma

WSJ pundits demolish right-wing talking points defending Hegseth: “It all comes back again to this basic point that something's wrong at the top levels”}:

04/24/25

fox stars pass on defending Hegseth amid Pentagon “chaos”

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 04/25/25

Fox News’ biggest stars have stopped defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid the weeklong firestorm over their former colleague’s dysfunctional management of the Pentagon and his potentially illegal handling of classified information.

Three months after Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 Senate tie to install the historically underqualified Hegseth at the Pentagon, journalists routinely describe a department in “chaos.” Five top Hegseth aides have left the department since last Friday amid reports of “vicious rivalries,” and a “leadership vacuum.” Reporters further revealed that Hegseth had shared details about U.S. strikes in Yemen in a second unsecured Signal chat, potentially endangering U.S. service members, and had the app installed on his Pentagon computer.

Hegseth responded to his growing list of scandals with a combative Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends, whose hosts defended his conduct.

But other Fox hosts have been silent, even after rallying to support Hegseth when his nomination came under fire and again following the first revelation of his use of Signal to share attack plans.

Fox’s evening lineup of The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity, and Gutfeld!have ignored Hegseth’s struggles this week (a passing remark from guest Jimmy Failla to host Laura Ingraham was the only mention of the story on any of those shows).The Five, the Fox panel show which features Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Jeanine Pirro, and Dana Perino, also has not covered the subject.

Even Will Cain, who spent years sharing the couch with Hegseth as co-hosts of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, hasn’t mentioned his former colleague’s name on his afternoon show this week. (He did not comment on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke’s report about the Signal story during Monday’s program.)

As Fox’s stars take a pass, full-throated defenses of Hegseth’s leadership are coming from the likes of MAGA stalwarts like Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and Laura Loomer, while their corporate cousins at The Wall Street Journal editorial board savage his handling of the Pentagon.

Two explanations seem plausible for why Fox’s biggest stars have gone silent as their former colleague comes under fire:

Either way, this disaster was the predictable result of President Donald Trump putting a former Fox weekend host with little relevant experience in charge of the Pentagon. The secretary of defense oversees a massive budget and bureaucracy and has the authority under certain circumstances to launch nuclear weapons and end human civilization. The risks of handing the position over to someone because of their takes on TV are almost incalculably high.

Hegseth is currently struggling to manage the Pentagon when its biggest problem is a costly, ineffective, and apparently unending bombing campaign in Yemen. How will he respond if India and Pakistan start trading fire?

  1. ### Fox stars pass on defending Hegseth amid Pentagon “chaos”

04/25/25

//

  1. ### Trump used Fox to vet his defense secretary. It isn’t going well — but now the network is fighting back.

:{12/04/24

  1. ### Fox propagandists scramble to explain former colleagues texting war plans to a reporter

:{03/25/25

  1. ### The Pete Hegseth debacle was inevitable

04/23/2

---

---

tariff BS

mma

Steve Bannon and guest argue rising bond yields mean “tough times ahead” if Trump doesn't secure trade deals and “get government spending down”

04/10/25 2:52 PM EDT

  1. ### Ben Shapiro: “If you wanna see a real bull market, the president should fire Peter Navarro today”

04/10/25 12:32 PM EDT

  1. ### “Art of the Deal”: Fox propagandists spin wildly for Trump’s “huge” tariff “win”

04/10/25 11:51 AM EDT

“Art of the Deal”: Fox propagandists spin wildly for Trump’s “huge” tariff “win”

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 04/10/25

Fox News’ propagandists cheered President Donald Trump’s tariff climbdown as a “huge win” that shows he was playing “3D chess” and executing the “Art of the Deal.” Meanwhile, reporters at outlets including Fox pointed out that Trump had “capitulated” out of fear that his unilateral imposition of massive taxes on all of our trading partners was triggering a collapse in the bond market.

Trump announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on the massive tariffs he had proposed the previous week on dozens of countries and farcically described as “reciprocal,” with the countries instead subject to a still-high 10% tariff during bilateral trade negotiations. At the same time, he increased tariffs on China, the largest U.S. trading partner, to a total of a whopping 145%, and left unchanged sectoral tariffs he has proposed or implemented on steel, aluminum, and cars (he also proposed this week additional tariffs on lumber and pharmaceuticals).

The president and his top advisers had repeatedly said that no pause was being contemplated, and the abrupt reversal reportedly took even some close aides by surprise. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who had been defending the planned tariffs in a House hearing when Trump announced the pause, said he had not been informed of the policy change beforehand.

North Korean state TV anchors would blush at the fervor with which Fox’s hosts announced their support for the move on their programs that night.

“We begin with the art of the deal -- told you this was going to happen,” Fox host and Trump political operative Sean Hannity crowed at the top of his show. “It was inevitable. Donald Trump's in a perpetual state of negotiation. A huge win for the president. A huge win for the country. His biggest accomplishment of the second term and there have been many.”

:{:{Video}:

Citation

From the April 9, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Laura Ingraham trumpeted the tariff shift as “Trump’s 3D chess move,” claiming that the president was “on a roll” and “thinking three steps ahead” while his “naysayers” were left “grasping at straws.”

“Trump created maximum leverage for himself, and now his team’s sitting pretty, taking meetings and doing deals that put America first. And if we don't like how the negotiation is going, our partners have seen the kind of pain we can cause, and they're motivated to do what we want, or else we'll make them feel the same pain,” offered Jesse Watters.

Their narrative that Trump is cooly executing a deliberate plan is total nonsense — he was responding to “a mass sale of bonds” the night before which indicated that “people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy” and could have triggered a financial crisis, as Fox Business’ own senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino reported earlier that day.

“I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world,” Gasparino said on Fox after Trump’s announcement. “Trust me. I'm an American, I support my president. But that's not really what happened here from what I understand.”

“It's the bond market and the sort of lending markets that's the plumbing of the economy. And those markets were imploding last night and that's why we have a 90-day freeze,” he explained.

“It is the White House who capitulated, based on everything I hear, and all of my sources,” Gasparino reported in a second segment. “And the reason why is because of the bond market and what happened last night.”

IFrame Content

Gasparino’s reporting is consistent with that from outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN.

Indeed, Trump himself publicly acknowledged on Wednesday afternoon that his reversal came because people “were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” and in particular were “queasy” over the bond market.

That reality is apparently toxic for Fox’s Trump shills.

When Watters’ Democratic co-host Jessica Tarlov pointed to the bond market gyrations on Wednesday’s edition of The Five, he told her, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know what a bond is.”

Likewise, Hannity mocked the “stupid people” who deny that “this was the [Trump’s] plan all along,” which he claimed to have “pretty much understood because I know the guy so well.”

Rather than a brilliant plan carefully executed, we are left with a trade agenda that has unclear goals, will cripple small businesses, and will raise prices for American consumers on everything from coffee to cars — and could change at any time based on the whims of one mercurial man.

But that man is the focus of Fox’s cult, and so its high priests are genuflecting and offering sacrifices.

:{many vids?]

---

  1. ### Fox Business guest on results of Trump's tariffs: “The damage is done”

04/10/25 11:41 AM EDT

  1. ### Steve Bannon suggests the Trump administration “immediately revoke” all Chinese student visas

04/10/25 11:36 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox News keeps misleadingly telling its viewers Trump isn't a threat to Medicaid. A new poll helps to explain why.

04/10/25 11:04 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox host on White House capitulation on tariffs: “This is the art of the deal. This shows how strong our president is.”

04/10/25 9:33 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax's Greg Kelly says it's “totally legitimate” for Trump direct DOJ to investigate specific individuals

04/10/25 9:26 AM EDT

  1. ### Jesse Watters: “We didn't want to kill Barack Obama, we just didn't think he was legally qualified to be president because of where he was born”

04/09/25 6:28 PM EDT

  1. ### Jesse Watters interrupts and insults co-host describing the destructive repercussions of Trump’s trade policy

04/09/25 5:57 PM EDT

  1. ### As Trump and Fox cite the bond market for the pause of some tariffs, Sean Hannity mocks “stupid people” who deny that “this was the plan all along”

04/09/25 5:01 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Gasparino: “It is the White House who capitulated”

04/09/25 4:39 PM EDT

---

mma

CBS News reporting on immigrants deported to foreign megaprison blows up Fox’s “worst of the worst” spin

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 04/07/25

Fox News’ stable of pro-Trump propagandists have assured their viewers that the president was justified in deporting hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvadoran prison notorious for abuse because the deportees were “the most dangerous illegals” and “the worst of the worst.”

They credulously adopted the administration’s talking points, even as family members of deportees came forward to say that they were not criminals. But when CBS News actually did the legwork, its reporters found that the overwhelming majority of deportees had no record of committing violent crimes.

CBS obtained the names of 238 Venezuelan immigrants the Trump administration had claimed were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang and deported last month under a rarely used wartime authority for imprisonment in El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. The network “cross referenced that [list] with domestic and international court filings, news reports and arrest records whenever we could find them” and “found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.”

From Sunday’s report:

At least 22% of the men on the list have criminal records here in the United States or abroad. The vast majority are for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting and trespassing. About a dozen are accused of murder, rape, assault and kidnapping.

For 3% of those deported, it is unclear whether a criminal record exists.

But we could not find criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans - 179 men- now sitting in prison.

Those facts stand in sharp contrast to the claims of the administration — and those of the Fox personalities who regurgitated its talking points to their viewers -- used to push back on critics who pointed out that some had been sent in error to a brutal foreign megaprison.

Citation

Fox News screenshots

Fox host Laura Ingraham said that the deportees were “the most dangerous illegals.”

On The Five, Jesse Watters called them “illegal alien gangbangers,” while Greg Gutfeld described them as “the criminal element” and “thugs.”

Contributor Lisa Kennedy Montgomery alleged that they were “people who want to hurt, maim, and kill innocent Americans.”

Anchor Sandra Smith and contributor Liz Peek both called them “the worst of the worst.”

Fox & Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt said they were “alleged gang members” who “did something wrong,” while for Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, they were “terrorist-like people.”

For some, like Fox & Friends co-hosts Lawrence Jones and Brian Kilmeade, the purportedly obvious criminality of the deportees justified removing them from the country without due process.

All of them, apparently eager to believe whatever they were told, were willing to accept the administration’s claims without scrutiny. Their response likely emboldened Trump, who on Sunday endorsed the idea that American citizens could also be sent to the El Salvadoran prison.

And don’t expect Fox figures to change their tune following the CBS report — as of Monday morning, they were still uncritically adopting the administration’s spin.

//

  1. ### Fox keeps calling migrants sent to El Salvador prison “criminals” and “terrorists” despite reporting that several deportees were likely falsely accused

04/01/25 1:11 PM EDT

  1. ### How Fox is handling reports that the Trump administration may have erroneously sent people to a foreign torture prison

04/01/25 1:24 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media have decided undocumented migrants don't have the right to due process under the law

03/28/25

---

not hannity? but bartiromo see fox 9 anno

---

colbert called out z on reframe of epa mission BS

mma

How Fox manufactured legitimacy for Zeldin’s destructive climate and environmental rollbacks

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Research contributions from Harrison Ray

Published 03/13/25

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has used his extensive appearances on Fox News and Fox Business to justify freezing environmental programs and slashing climate-related funding. A Media Matters analysis found that Zeldin has made at least 22 appearances on cable news since his confirmation on January 29, with 21 of those on Fox networks.

This pattern of strategic media appearances has enabled the Trump administration to reframe essential climate initiatives as corrupt and wasteful while avoiding substantive media scrutiny of its climate and environmental rollbacks, shielding it from the consequences of these harmful policy shifts. Moreover, Zeldin has used these appearances to create a feedback loop in which harmful narratives aimed at climate funding are repeatedly echoed by Fox personalities until they become conventional wisdom across the network.

Fox provided Zeldin a shield from scrutiny, echoing past Trump EPA media strategies}:

Zeldin used his Fox appearances to create a feedback loop in which these talking points were introduced, echoed by hosts, and then repeated in later segments — laundering false claims and misleading narratives into conventional wisdom spread across Fox networks.

At the same time, Fox hosts consistently failed to challenge Zeldin on policy rollbacks targeting key environmental protections. Despite appearing on Fox twice after the Supreme Court’s March 4 ruling weakening the Clean Water Act, Zeldin was never asked about how the decision could impact the EPA’s ability to regulate pollution. Similarly, Fox did not press Zeldin on reports that he urged the Trump administration to reconsider the endangerment finding, the EPA’s determination that “planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare,” which forms the legal basis for regulating emissions.

This strategy doesn’t just obscure policy impacts — it actively misleads the public. By laundering misinformation through repetition and friendly framing, Fox creates an echo chamber in which attacks on climate programs are treated as fact while the real-world consequences of slashing climate funding are ignored, effectively shielding Zeldin from accountability for the full scope of his EPA agenda.

As the Trump administration advances its fossil fuel agenda, from gutting the Clean Water Act to dismantling the legal foundation for climate regulation, Fox's selective coverage ensures that the consequences of these policies remain hidden from public scrutiny — allowing the real impacts of these destructive environmental rollbacks to remain largely unexamined.

---

===

One Fox contributor called out RFK Jr.’s “lifetime spreading misinformation.” Fox's evening lineup then gushed over him.

Written by Isabella Corrao

Research contributions from John Whitehouse

Published 01/30/25 mma

On the first day of anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Senate confirmation hearings for secretary of Health and Human Services — where the nominee showed he doesn't understand how Medicaid works — most Fox News figures spent the evening fawning over Kennedy, despite his history of misinformation.

Meanwhile, other Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets are sounding the alarm about Kennedy's lack of qualifications, with one Wall Street Journal editorial board member appearing on Fox to emphasize that Kennedy “has spent a lifetime spreading misinformation.”

Fox News contributor Jason Riley: Kennedy “has spent a lifetime spreading misinformation"

On Special Report, Wall Street Journal columnist and Fox News contributor Jason Riley noted that Kennedy “has spent a lifetime spreading misinformation and enriching himself and trial lawyers by spreading this misinformation. I don’t think he’s the right person for the job.”

Video

From the January 29, 2025, edition of Fox News'Special Report with Bret Baier

The Wall Street Journal editorial page also called out Kennedy’s “clear conflict of interest” in making money on lawsuits against drug companies while head of HHS as flat-out “disqualifying”:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday to root out corruption between industry and government. Yet the man who wants to be the nation’s Secretary of Health and Human Services refused to rule out personally making money from lawsuits against drug makers. This ought to be disqualifying.

...

Mr. Kennedy’s disclosures show that he has received more than $2.5 million from law firms that have sued drug and vaccine makers. He also has a financial stake in a pending lawsuit against human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine maker Merck. Mr. Kennedy’s trial-lawyer ties and financial interests in litigation against drug makers pose a clear conflict of interest.

Indeed, Murdoch outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post have been some of the loudest critics of Kennedy's nomination, drawing criticism from the likes of Steve Bannon.

Nearly 100 million low-income Americans rely on Medicaid for their health care coverage, but it is one of many programs on the chopping block as Republicans prepare a massive bill aimed at cutting taxes for the rich. During his hearing, Kennedy showed ignorance of how Medicaid works. Perhaps the most devastating line of questioning came from a Republican senator:

> Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., repeatedly pressed Kennedy about proposed changes to the program and for his thoughts about Medicaid reform.

“Republicans, again, are looking at ways to potentially reform Medicaid to help pay for President Trump’s priorities,” Cassidy said. “What thoughts do you have regarding Medicaid reform?”

“Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy,” Kennedy responded. “The premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high, the networks are narrow.”

A 2023 poll from KFF, a nonprofit group that researches health policy issues, found that a majority of Americans have “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” views of the program. He made similar comments about the Affordable Care Act.

People on Medicaid generally aren’t charged premiums or deductibles at all.

Kennedy also reportedly made false or misleading claims about vaccines, chronic disease in children, and even his own previous remarks — such as when he was caught on video in 2023 pushing the deranged conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was “targeted” to “attack Caucasians and Black people” and exclude Jewish and Chinese people.

Kennedy has a troubling history of pushing false claims about public health and safety. He long has argued that “autism comes from vaccines,” despite many peer-reviewed studies concluding there is no link.

In 2019, then the chairman of the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children Health’s Defense, Kennedy traveled to the country Samoa and seemingly took advantage of two babies’ deaths resulting from improperly administered measles vaccines to emphasize the supposed dangers of vaccines and discourage vaccination efforts. Eighty-three people died from measles and thousands were sickened in the outbreak that subsequently swept Samoa.

Despite Kennedy's record of pushing misinformation and his questionable performance in the hearing — and despite the record of criticism of Kennedy from Murdoch outlets — Fox News’ biggest hosts unabashedly celebrated his nomination after the first hearing:

===

mma

After Trump sets January 6 rioters free, Fox News changes its tune on pardons for violent offenders

During a stretch of Fox programming full of backtracking and excuses for Trump’s pardons, Laura Ingraham hosted two pardoned rioters to rewrite their stories

Written by Alicia Sadowski, Jane Lee, Isabella Corrao & Helena Hind

Published 01/22/25

President Donald Trump has issued pardons or commuted the sentences of all January 6 offenders, violent and nonviolent, flouting the advice of Fox hosts who previously urged him to grant a narrower pardon. With this day one action, Trump has freed over 1,500 offenders, including “violent offenders who went after the police” and “some of the most notorious participants in the attack,” individuals convicted of conspiracy, a rioter who carried a firearm, and a rioter who faced a long list of assault charges.

Fox News hosts maintained for years that violent offenders should not be pardoned

In the immediate aftermath of January 6, Fox News personalities spoke out against the insurrection, with some privately begging the administration to stop the Capitol attack. Even after Trump changed his tune on January 6 offenders and began suggesting pardons for them, Fox News maintained that those who had physically attacked law enforcement should not be among the pardoned.

Even though these Fox hosts argued against pardoning violent offenders from January 6 as recently as December, since Monday, Fox hosts have clearly and at times explicitly supported Trump’s decision to pardon all offenders.

On her Fox News show, Ingraham hosted two people who were issued pardons by Trump and allowed them to rewrite their offenses. During the attack on January 6, Ingraham texted then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, imploring him to get Trump to take action, writing: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Four years later, she’s hosting participants and defending Trump’s blanket pardons.

Video

From the January 21, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

LARGE STEEL SCREW

---

===

no lnx

alternet-Fox News is the reason the race is close

Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryNovember 02, 2024

This is my last column before the election. I am as tired of writing about politics as most Americans are tired of reading, thinking, and hearing about it. The stress of this make-or-break Democracy test feels cruel and unusual. Cruel because of what’s at stake, unusual because it is unrelenting.

For people who inform themselves through fact-based media outlets, the most commonly heard question is, how is this race even close? Of all the craziness we’ve seen and heard, the Nazi-adjacent rhetoric, the venomous threats, the crazed narcissist making the nation’s struggles all about himself, how can half the country still support him? How can half our fellow citizens vote for him, knowing what they know about him? Are they crazy? Are they hateful?

The short answer, IMHO, is no. Most Trump voters are not Nazis, voting for Trump because of who Trump is. MAGA mostly just wants to be entertained, they enjoy the carnival of camaraderie. They don’t know who Trump really is, what his policies really are, because Fox News, again, deliberately hides it from them.

People who watch Fox News support Trump

Forty-three percent of the country watches Fox News, which correlates directly with the percentage of voters who support Trump over Harris.

ALSO READ: The 101 worst things about Trump's sham presidency

More telling, most Fox viewers don’t diversify the information they consume: Viewers with consistently conservative political views get them from a single outlet—Fox News—to a much greater degree than independents and liberals, who inform themselves from a variety of sources. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly half (47%) of consistently conservative Americans get their government and political news just from Fox News.

Fox News topped primetime viewership in August 2024. According to a recent Deadline Report, Fox News’ The Five was “the top regularly scheduled program in cable news, averaging 3.29 million viewers, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime with 2.97 million, Hannity with 2.61 million, Gutfeld! with 2.55 million and The Ingraham Angle with 2.44 million.”

Voters can’t act on what they don’t know

The high percentage of Americans hooked on Fox entertainment-sold-as-news escalates the risks inherent in Fox’s pro-Trump propaganda from fraudulent, to dangerous, to a national security threat. It elevates the stakes from “political speech,” protected by the 1st A, to weaponized disinformation. The difference is substantive, and both legislature and courts need to deal with it in a meaningful way.

For now, whenever there’s a news cycle unfavorable to Trump, Fox hosts either spin it in the opposite direction to help him, or, more frequently, they redirect their viewers to election topics deemed favorable to Trump, like the border. Over the past several months, Fox has focused obsessively on our broken immigration system, featuring dog whistles meant to frighten white people, but Fox hosts almost never mention how Trump intentionally killed the border bill just so he could campaign on it.

When Fox tires of showing black and brown people committing crimes, and lying about violent crime rates that have actually fallen, Fox programmers switch to pablum like popular hairstyles, dog breeds, and who eats ketchup on their omelets. Meanwhile, ominous and unprecedented national security warnings about the dangers of a second Trump administration, coming in from Trump’s own advisors, are hidden from Fox viewers.

Fox buried warnings from Trump’s own brass

Last week when news broke that John Kelly, Trump’s own Chief of Staff, wanted to warn Americans about Trump, including that Trump wanted generals more like Hitler’s and exhibited fascistic urges, Fox News re-directed viewers to Trump’s publicity stunt where he cosplayed at McDonalds. Fox ran dozens of insipid articles about Trump at McDonalds (Trump standing at the fry counter, Trump claiming Harris never worked there, Trump charming the customers at the drive-through window, etc.) Meanwhile, they reported almost nothing about John Kelly’s warning.

In one of two articles I saw about Kelly’s statements, Fox packaged it as a Harris ploy, reporting last week that, “The Harris campaign on Friday put out a letter penned by 13 ex-Trump administration officials seeking to bolster claims made by former President Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly…” The article then identified 13 fairly low-level Republicans who signed a letter warning about Trump, instead of the hundreds of high ranking Republican advisors issuing the same warnings. Fox focused on Trump smiling in an apron to bury dire statements from heavy hitters including Mark Milley, the highest ranking military officer and Trump’s own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fox News articles about other Republicans against Trump, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, are mostly led with misleading headlines against Democrats and Harris because the vast majority of people- 70 to 80%- read only the headlines. Even after Trump said Liz Cheney should have 9 rifles pointed at her (execution squad style). Fox headlines spun the story against both Cheney and Harris.

Over 300 high ranking Republicans, including military and political leaders, have issued warnings against another Trump administration. As the NYT reports, the list includes “former defense secretaries Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, former World Bank president; ex-CIA directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; former director of national intelligence John D. Negroponte; and former Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld,” and former Trump administration officials Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye.

Or, as Fox described the letter from 13 Republicans, “Mike Pence who has signed multiple letters from Republicans attacking Trump, signed this letter, as well.”

No matter what happens Tuesday, we need fairness in the news

One thing we know for sure about domestic politics is that when the pendulum swings, it always swings back, the question is when, and after what.

When the day finally comes that our Supreme Court isn’t ethically compromised—and that day will come— voters will challenge Fox News (and likely Elon Musk) for aiding and abetting election fraud, as Dominion did. The next time around, the outcome for Fox won’t just be the cost of doing business.

We’ve legislated truth in the news before, and we were better for it. In 1969, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Fairness Doctrine, which required all news broadcasters to give fair coverage and opposing views on matters of public importance. Balancing publishers’ first amendment rights against the right of the public to be well informed, the Red Lion Court ruled that the public’s right to access full information takes priority over the First Amendment concerns of broadcasters. “It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited market-place of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market.” This is the same legal analysis that should be applied to today’s “political speech defense.” Bottom line, there’s a difference between free speech and weaponized speech, and the law needs to catch up with rapidly changing social media, AI, and monopolized town squares.

Legal change will eventually come, it’s not if but when. We aren’t meant to hate our neighbors, as much as Putin, Xi and Trump want us to. As Harris said, there’s a better way. In the meantime, take a walk in the woods. Leave your phone at home. Vote, speak up, write a column, drive your neighbors to the polls. Then let it go.

ALSO READ: A stupefying poll shows Harris breathing down Trump’s neck in Kansas. Here’s what that means.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.

===

msnbc 10 24 NW DW tucker, ingraham and hannity had chance to do right on dominion/big lie but fail? i know LI is watching, she knows lying on kelly milley

===

mma

right-wing media falsely and dishonestly claim that Hurricane Helene survivors are only entitled to $750 in aid

According to FEMA, survivors can also qualify for “tens of thousands more dollars” in disaster-related financial assistance

Written by Alicia Sadowski & Isabella Corrao

Published 10/04/24

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, right-wing media falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration are ignoring millions of Americans impacted by intense flooding. Media personalities and MAGA influencers have falsely and dishonestly claimed that victims are only entitled to $750 in aid, when in reality that is just the start of federal benefits.

FEMA can provide assistance for victims of Hurricane Helene, but chronic underfunding and climate change, not undocumented migrants, threaten future aid availability

To wit, on Thursday, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters aired a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in hurricane-ravaged Georgia the previous day. As Harris spoke on Ingraham’s show, the Fox News chyron read, “Kamala: Here’s $750 that’ll do the trick.”

…

As X/Twitter super-poster Acyn Torbai noted in the video below, Fox News actually carried Harris’s speech live the previous day. The vice president explained that the $750 is just the beginning of the assistance available to impacted residents. Mediaite, [10/3/24]

* Anti-Muslim activist Brigitte Gabriel claimed that victims of Hurricane Helene would get “$750” but that a “criminal thug from South America” would get “a 4-star hotel with credit cards.” She posted, “If you lost your entire house during Hurricane Helene, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will give you $750. If you are a criminal thug from South America and cross the border illegally through Mexico, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will put you up in a 4-star hotel with credit cards.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]

===

===

mma

Right-wing media falsely insist there is no federal response to Hurricane Helene, while praising Trump for visiting victims in Georgia

The MAGA crowd is claiming that the administration is purposely ignoring Southern Appalachia, despite extensive aid efforts

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Research contributions from Allison Fisher

Published 10/01/24

After Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 storm, the Biden administration approved federal assistance to supplement state and local efforts in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia.

Dismissing these efforts, right-wing media have argued that the administration is more interested in giving aid to Ukraine than Appalachia, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is too concerned with equity to handle the aftermath, and that the Biden administration isn’t doing more for hurricane victims because they are primarily white, Republican voters.

The storm has caused mass destruction and killed at least 133 people across six states, while as many as 600 haven’t been accounted for. In Western North Carolina, many residents do not have power, cellular service, or drinking water.

Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to visit Georgia on October 2, while Biden said he is planning to visit North Carolina on the same day.

---

===

mma 9 24

Fox News raises false alarm about noncitizen voting

This narrative, which has saturated Fox News, was echoed by Donald Trump on the debate stage

Written by Alicia Sadowski, Isabella Corrao & Jane Lee

Research contributions from Pete Tsipis, Sage Hodil & Casey Wexler

Published 09/16/24

At the September ABC News presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump falsely claimed that there are “illegal immigrants coming” and that “they’re trying to get them to vote” in United States elections. Trump’s “great replacement” racist conspiracy theory echoes a far-right dog whistle blown repeatedly by Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests in recent months.

Even though noncitizen voting is both illegal and rare, Fox News has attempted to instill panic by suggesting that droves of noncitizens are voting as a result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies and political strategy and the legal ability of noncitizens to acquire driver’s licenses.

---

an ah may

Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have agreed to two debates: the first hosted by CNN in Atlanta on June 27, the second by ABC News on September 10.

June 27 is early for a presidential debate, as the Republican National Convention won't be held until July 15-18 in Milwaukee — and its Democratic counterpart isn't until August 19-22 in Chicago. Biden's supporters view the June 27 debate as a golden opportunity for the president, as it will give him a chance to hammer Trump issue by issue and, they hope, improve his poll numbers. Many polls released in May have showed Biden narrowly trailing Trump by single digits in key swing states.

But some far-right pundits at Fox News are furious about the debates, including Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters.

READ MORE:**Biden 'heavily' investing in these 3 states that are 'key to the whole election': analysis**

Ingraham complained that Biden needs a "game changer" performance and is hoping to get it "with the help of" CNN hosts Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.

Watters sarcastically commented, "Both moderators say Trump's Hitler, so the debate will be fair and balanced. Is Tapper going to cut the cameras away from Trump to fact-check him? We'll have to see."

Watters also attacked ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, saying that he "praised the deep state and said Trump's a threat to democracy" and adding, "I’m sure they'll be calling balls and strikes.”

READ MORE:[Biden campaign hammers Trump over infamous COVID comment

Hannity slammed Tapper as a "radical left-wing partisan talk show host" who is "masquerading as a journalist" and claimed that CNN "is filled with left-wing hacks who we know hate" Trump.

The Daily Beast's William Vaillancourt observes, "It didn’t take long at all for some of Fox News' most-watched hosts to frame next month's debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which was announced Wednesday morning, as unfair to the presumptive GOP nominee."

Although Fox News hosts have been attacking CNN and ABC News as too biased to be hosting the debates, they haven't had a lot to say about the controversy that surrounded the right-wing cable news channel's coverage of the last U.S. presidential election.

Fox News was sued by Dominion Voting Systems and its competitor Smartmatic after promoting the false, thoroughly debunked claim that their equipment was used to help Biden steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump. In 2023, Fox News agreed to a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion, although Smartmatic's $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News is ongoing.

READ MORE:[How Fox News' Trump trial coverage became an exercise in 'unintended hilarity': columnist

In an op-ed published on May 16, the Daily Beast's David Rothkopf doesn't agree with far-right claims that CNN and ABC News are too biased to be hosting the presidential debates. But he does argue that the debates could be a golden opportunity for Biden, as Trump is "out of practice" when it comes to debating as well as "bad at it."

Moreover, Rothkopf argues, the debates give Biden a chance to hammer Trump on issue after issue.

"In the view of those close to Biden," Rothkopf writes, "Trump's got a serious problem on the issues. He's on the wrong side of the American public on many of the policy questions most important to them. For example, Trump keeps proclaiming he is the one responsible for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. "

Rothkopf adds, "Almost two-thirds of all women and over six out of ten men support legal abortion according to a recent Pew report.… (Trump) loves Vladimir Putin, for example. In a Pew poll last year, 91 percent of Americans indicated they have an unfavorable view of Russia, with 62 percent having views that are very unfavorable."

READ MORE:**Mary Trump: Here's why Ivanka and Don Jr. haven't show up to their father’s 'tawdry' trial**

Trump still knows how to fire up his hardcore supporters at MAGA rallies. But Rothkopf stresses that the debate format is problematic for Trump given his lack of self-discipline.

"Trump's defective character is so clear, and the danger he presents is so great, that the current president will have a hard time looking worse in comparison," Rothkopf writes. "The contrasts between the two men and their beliefs could not be starker."

*Read the Daily Beast's full Fox News coverage at this link and David Rothkoph's Daily Beast op-ed here (subscription required).

READ MORE: Fox News suggests Trump 'force' court to throw him in jail — by quoting him

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accident day after hush money def implodes after fox pushed fail guy?

over a handful of hours on Tuesday, the right’s conspiracy theory ecosystem concocted a sinister plot by President Joe Biden to assassinate his predecessor out of the banal fact that FBI agents received standard instructions on the use of force before conducting a court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022.

Hundreds of pages of filings were unsealed on Tuesday in Trump’s classified documents case, revealing that the former president — who is charged with 40 federal criminal counts related to his alleged willful retention of documents after leaving the White House — had multiple documents marked “classified” in his bedroom that were discovered months after the 2022 search.

Credible outlets reviewed the documents and produced a wave of news stories detailing what a judge described as “strong evidence” of Trump’s allegedly criminal acts. Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA media supporters ginned up a counternarrative based on a credulous reading of a deceptive argument from Trump’s lawyers that was included in the unsealed documents.

The story that emerged from the right-wing media echo chamber posits that pro forma language provided to FBI agents before the 2022 search which stated that “law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary” was actually part of a Biden scheme to assassinate Trump. This is both a horrific accusation to make without evidence and facially absurd for any number of reasons. (Why would the Biden administration issue assassination orders in writing and then conduct the Mar-a-Lago search on a date specifically selected because Trump would be in New York instead?) But it spread quickly from its initiation by a key figure in the right’s January 6 disinformation community, through the ranks of MAGA influencers, to Trump himself, and then to the Fox News airwaves.

By Tuesday night, Trump’s campaign had issued a fundraising email in which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee alleged of the Biden administration, “You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

The startlingly quick adoption of an unhinged conspiracy theory shows how the right-wing media apparatus operates, dreaming up convoluted but inflammatory nonsense and bombarding their audience with it. Here’s how it happened.

Right-wing fabulist turns standard FBI policy into “mind-blowing” story

The right-wing writer Julie Kelly, in a series of Tuesday afternoon posts on X (formerly Twitter), purported to reveal the “bombshells” she had uncovered by scouring the unsealed documents.

“Tons of new unsealed filings on classified docs case--I will try to post as much as I can (there goes the workout) but this is mind-blowing,” she posted at 1:21 p.m. ET. “FBI authorized the use of deadly force at Mar-a-Lago.”

She included a screenshot of a filing from Trump’s lawyers which stated that the FBI’s “Operations Order” for the Mar-a-Lago search “contained a ‘Policy Statement’ regarding ‘Use of Deadly Force,’ which stated, for example, ‘Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.’”

IFrame Content

Kelly went on to post the “Policy Statement” and claim that the instructions show that “the FBI risked the lives of Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and MAL guests for a publicity stunt to make it look like Trump stole national security files.” She added, “People need to be arrested for this.”

In reality — and as more credible journalists pointed out — those instructions are standard for FBI searches.

“These are the rules that apply to FBI agents whenever they do anything,” Reuters reporter Brad Heath wrote in response to Kelly’s initial claim on X. He added, “Agents - like all cops - can use deadly force when met with a sufficiently serious threat. The policy the FBI followed here applies all the time; they are the same rules agents follow when walking down a sidewalk.”

“One clue that this is the generic DOJ use of force policy — not something cooked up for Mar-a-Lago, let alone ordered by the president — is that it talks about the use of warning shots in prison,” Heath noted in response to Kelly’s post with the “Policy Statement.”

The FBI would later issue a statement confirming that the bureau had “followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force.”

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Kelly is among the foremost proponents of the right’s January 6 counternarrative. She has argued that the violent rioting at the U.S. Capitol by Trumpists who assaulted scores of law enforcement officers “was probably the biggest instance of police brutality that this country has seen since the Civil Rights movement,” described a police officer who testified before the January 6 select committee as a “crisis actor,” and suggested that the FBI fabricated the pipe bombs discovered at the Republican and Democratic national headquarters that day because it is “an enforcement arm, a surveillance arm of the Democratic Party.” And her interpretation of the filings made no sense and was quickly debunked.

None of that slowed down the ranks of MAGA influencers, who quickly seized on her story.

MAGA influencers run with “assassination” nonsense

Within minutes, influential figures in the MAGA movement adopted Kelly’s interpretation and effectively began competing for the most overwrought response as they furiously posted on X. Many alleged that the document showed a Biden-directed assassination plot against Trump.

“The FBI authorized the use of **deadly force** when they raided Mar-a-Lago,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk commented. “You read that right. They were authorized to kill Trump employees, possibly even assassinate Trump himself, to exact their political revenge.”

“The FBI authorized the use of deadly force when they raided Mar-a-Lago?” wrote podcaster and former One America News host Liz Wheeler. “Were they hoping to assassinate Trump or his family or employees? This is insane.”

“So that was the real reason for the FBI raiding a president’s home: an excuse to use deadly force against Donald Trump,” offered The Federalist’s Sean Davis. “The court case was just plan B for the corrupt DOJ and FBI.” He added, “The FBI is a domestic terrorist organization.”

Trump ally Laura Loomer similarly argued that the document shows “a possible assassination attempt of President Trump by the Biden regime and FBI!”

Trump and the GOP lie that this shows Biden is “A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY”

Trump and his campaign are very attuned to the nonsense his online supporters generate, and within hours they adopted their bogus narrative.

At 5:21 p.m. ET — just four hours after Kelly’s initial post — Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”

Trump’s campaign posted his comment to X, where it was quickly reposted by an arm of the Republican National Committee.

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The former president’s most unhinged congressional supporters chimed in.

“The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light. Does everyone get it yet???!!!!” commented Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

His biggest media supporters were not far behind.

Fox “news” and “opinion” sides parrot the MAGA spin

Right-wing commentators have spent the last nine years figuring out how to respond to Trump’s massive lies. At this point, everyone who retains a major platform knows their role is to, at the least, soft-pedal his unhinged claims, and at most, to prove they are on board with the MAGA movement by treating them as truth.

That’s what played out on Fox’s airwaves after Trump declared that the FBI’s use of standard orders for the Mar-a-Lago search showed that Biden is “A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”

Fox could have provide credible reporting tamping down on the lies circulating online. The network employs people who report on the Justice Department and FBI and even has Kerri Kupec Urbahn, a former top aide in the Trump DOJ, on the payroll. If the network wanted to find out if the FBI orders were standard, it would be really easy to do so.

But Fox’s business model and its political agenda both depend on propagandizing for Trump, so that’s not what happened. Instead, around an hour after Trump’s Truth Social post, FoxNews.com sent the following push alert: “BREAKING NEWS New docs reveal Biden DOJ authorized ‘deadly force’ in Mar-a-Lago raid.’” Here’s how the story’s promotion looked on the website’s front page:

From FoxNews.com at approximately 6:23 p.m. on May 21, 2024.

When the network first discussed the story later that hour on the flagship “news” show Special Report, the segment focused on the same “deadly force” language Kelly had flagged.

Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, opened by highlighting that “former President Trump's attorneys argue the Biden administration Justice Department authorized the use of deadly force if necessary” during the Mar-a-Lago search. Correspondent Kevin Corke responded that the order is “quite shocking.”

Baier went on to downplay the notion that the FBI instructions were standard.

“There may be some people, Kevin, who say that this is just a policy statement of standard operating procedures put inside this operations order for this specific raid,” he said. “But obviously it's not standard operating procedure when you're going into the house of the former president, who happens to be protected by Secret Service.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 21, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Report.

When Baier offered a similar comment later in the hour during a panel segment, contributor Byron York described the situation as “kind of worrisome” because the FBI was supposedly “loaded for bear and prepared for the possibility of some sort of violent confrontation with the Secret Service. … The idea that it was prepared for this way, as opposed to, say, worked out in advance, is really troubling.” (In fact, the FBI ensured that “the Secret Service would receive a heads-up a few hours before FBI agents arrived to avoid any law enforcement conflict,” The Washington Post has reported.)

Fox’s “opinion” hosts have been running with the story ever since.

CitationFox News screenshots, 5/21/24 and 5/22/24

“They were actually thinking of using deadly force, or it's on the table that might be necessary at Mar-a-Lago?” Laura Ingraham asked Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO). “Deadly force? OK. It’s really lawfare, it’s not funny. Something actually could have gone down I guess at Mar-a-Lago, beyond just looking for the documents.”

Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro went even further on Watters’ show, with the host declaring, “Authorized armed agents to use deadly force in the Mar-a-Lago raid. That is insane. Is there any justification for that?”

“Absolutely not,” Pirro replied, adding that “my mind as a prosecutor goes to maybe they wanted the engagement of physical force. Maybe they wanted to come in without FBI, without DOJ, without all of that identifying so that they could engage in deadly physical force.”

Sean Hannity called the “deadly force” language a “shocking new revelation.” He acknowledged it was “boilerplate language” but nonetheless asked, “Why was Merrick Garland prepping for a possible, what, shootout?”

Fox was still carrying Trump’s water on Wednesday morning:...

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= gt replacement?

Fox News’ highest rated evening programs spread white nationalist rhetoric in nearly half of their immigration segments | Media Matters for America

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Right-wing media launch anti-democratic attacks on Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration | Media Matters for America

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mma 1123 nolnx

Right-wing media launch anti-democratic attacks on Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration

Right-wing media continue their election misinformation crusade as another state makes it easier for residents to vote

WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE

:{PUBLISHED 11/03/23

Automatic voter registration, a secure process used to increase voting accessibility and maintain accurate voter rolls, is being attacked by right-wing media after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that the state will begin automatically registering voters at the DMV.

On September 19, Shapiro announced that Pennsylvania will start automatically registering eligible residents to vote when they get a new driver’s license or ID card at the DMV, rather than asking if they want to fill out a voter registration form. The practice, known as automatic voter registration or AVR, allows potential new voters to “opt out” rather than “opt in.” [NBC News, 9/19/23; Spotlight PA, 9/19/23]

Automatic voter registration, which is now used by 24 states, has been found to decrease fraud, make voter rolls more accurate, and increase the accessibility of voting. Research shows that “in making voting lists more complete and accurate, states may make it easier for some population groups, especially minorities and poorer citizens, to vote.” [The Washington Post, 9/23/22]

Pennsylvania’s system will not provide non-citizens or other ineligible residents the option to register to vote. Republican Secretary of State Al Schmidt stated that “he’s confident that the system is fixed to ensure that those ineligible to vote will be internally flagged and will not be offered the voter registration screens.” [The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/19/23]

Former President Donald Trump blasted Pennsylvania’s decision to implement AVR on Truth Social, claiming that it “will be a disaster for our Nation, which is being destroyed by these Lunatics, Marxists, & Fascists, whose only real ability is to CHEAT on Elections.” He also wrote that AVR will be “a disaster for the Election of Republicans, including your favorite President, ME!” [Truth Social, 9/25/23]

Right-wing media falsely claimed that AVR could increase voter fraud and that Democrats are using it to rig elections

On Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter), Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton posted, “Leftist Pennsylvania governor decides to ‘automatically’ register ‘voters’ -- a legally-dubious and surefire way to make it easier for ineligible individuals to vote illegally.” [Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

Right-wing podcaster Kyle Becker posted, “This is unconstitutional. It is 2020 all over again. Either fight this now or be prepared to lose another election!” He also quoted Trump’s claim that “the Democrats are trying to steal Pennsylvania again by doing the ‘automatic voter registration’ scam.” [Twitter/X, 10/1/23]

Just the News reported that Pennsylvania embracing AVR “triggers new integrity fears.” The subheadline quoted the executive director of a conservative group advocating for restricted voting laws, who falsely claimed that “recent history proves that automatic voter registration is inherently problematic.” [Just the News, 10/1/23; NPR, 8/12/22]

The Gateway Pundit published an article claiming, “The steal is on in Pennsylvania. … Pennsylvania turned blue in 2020 after the Democrats violated the state’s constitution and allowed vote by mail.” The article concluded, “Democrats can’t win unless they cheat.” [The Gateway Pundit, 9/19/23]

Interviewing Republican Senate candidate David McCormick, right-wing radio host Mark Levin called Shapiro’s announcement of AVR “an edict which is intended to harm your election chances.” Levin also told McCormick that “the Democrat ruling class in Pennsylvania is frightened of you.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 9/29/23]

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles agreed with Trump’s Truth Social post, saying, “I think Trump’s point is correct … that we have got to focus on making sure that the libs don’t rig the election again.” He then claimed that AVR will cause “a lot of people in this country who don’t care about our form of government” and “shouldn’t therefore weigh in” to cast ballots, and that opposing automatic registration will “protect the right to vote” of the “kind of person that I do want voting.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 9/27/23]

Fox host Laura Ingraham called Pennsylvania’s implementation of AVR “an insurance policy” for Democrats and “a Joe and Kamala job protection plan.” The chyron during the segment read “WINNING, NOT GOVERNING, IS DEMS’ ONLY CONCERN.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/20/23]

Townhall published an article titled “Automatic Voter Registration Opens Door to Voter Fraud,” which falsely claimed that AVR’s history is “filled with many documented problems.” The article compared AVR to “ordering a sundae, and having the store employees just decide you want sprinkles and nuts without asking you. … Messing with my ice cream is bad enough, but for heaven’s sake, don’t mess with my freedom to choose when or if I register to vote.” [Townhall, 10/28/23]

Right-wing media cited the implementation of AVR to push bigoted rhetoric and claim that the system will allow undocumented immigrants or other ineligible residents to vote

Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former White House press secretary, incorrectly suggested that AVR will result in “illegal immigrants … checking the box” to register to vote. Host Jesse Watters also referred to eligible residents who have not yet registered as “low-information voters.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 9/19/23]

Newsmax's Greg Kelly called automatic voter registration “un-American” and said that striving for universal voter turnout is bad because “Saddam Hussein had universal voter turnout. That wasn't good.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 9/19/23]

The day after Shapiro’s announcement, right-wing grifter Tomi Lahren posted, “Beware of any state that gives drivers licenses to illegal immigrants and also has automatic voter registration. This is a tool used to auto send mail in ballots willy fricken nilly and then just ‘hope’ for the best.” [Twitter/X, 9/20/23]

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Lara Logan posted, “Automatic voter registration is one of the easiest ways to cheat … If you are acting as if 2024 will be a real election, you are both delusional and deceived.” She also suggested “states that allow illegal immigrants to get a drivers license have another way to beef up the voter rolls - is that what the open border is for?” [Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity asked McCormick, “What do you make of the governor, Josh Shapiro's plan to enact this automatic registration — is it possible, a lot of states have this, that illegal immigrants can get a license in Pennsylvania?” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/21/23]

Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk posted, “More mass mail-in ballots for Dems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile PA Democrats have been working for years to give illegals drivers licenses. Connect the dots.” [Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

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new bad trinity? all in for trump

mma 7 23

fox News’ evening lineup reshuffle, which rolls out next week withJesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld joining Sean Hannity in prime time, shows that the network’s executives are determined to stave off its recent ratings collapse by doubling down on its fealty to Donald Trump. Together, the trio secures Fox’s most-watched hours as a safe space for the former president that will help keep him on a glide path to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Fox’s programming typically reflects the leading elements and ideas of the Republican Party, and the new lineup reflects its reinvention as a Trumpist personality cult.

Tucker Carlson, the longtime prime-time star Fox cut ties with in April, was another Trump partisan, to a point. But he also had an independent, preexisting reputation and drew notoriety for his particular set of noxious ideas. Carlson championed foreign autocrats and the blood-and-soil nationalism undergirding their regimes, became perhaps the nation’s most prominent and pernicious opponent of COVID-19 vaccines, led the right’s vicious smears of LGBTQ people, and trumpeted white nationalist views on race and immigration, including the blood-soaked “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Carlson used his prime-time show to manipulate Trump into adopting his positions and even offered veiled criticism when he thought Trump undermined his aims. (Privately, Carlson claimed of Trump, “I hate him passionately.”)

While Watters, Hannity, and Gutfeld all have long records of toxic commentary, no one would describe them as men of ideas. Hannity is a down-the-line Republican Party propagandist, devoted to the success of his party above all else. And Gutfeld and Watters are associated more with a mean-spirited, sarcastic affect and an own-the-libs mentality than any distinct viewpoint.

What Fox’s new prime-time triumvirate demonstrates is that hardcore support for Trump remains the ingredient that unites the right. All three are Trump loyalists, albeit in somewhat different flavors, who have proved willing to defend the authoritarian former president across two impeachments, two indictments, an attempted coup, a series of attacks on the rule of law and constitutional order, and innumerable bigoted eruptions. And unlike Carlson, the three hosts are much more likely to fall in line with whatever Trump decides to do, no matter how abhorrent, rather than try to push him in any particular direction.

Sean Hannity, Trump’s “shadow” White House chief of staff

vid ]

hannity, who retains his 9 p.m. ET time slot in the shakeup, needs no introduction as a**notorious Trump sycophan**t who has had Trump’s back in virtually every major controversy since Trump announced his run for president in 2015. A right-wing media mainstay billed by his network as “the longest-running current primetime host in cable news in television history,” Hannity came around to Trump early in the 2016 primary, helped him to win the nomination and then the White House, and reached new heights of power and influence as a Trump presidential adviser.

The Fox host regularly offers Trump a platform for fawning interviews and generates (occasionally contradictory) talking points in his defense at a furious rate. The sprawling conspiracy theories Hannity concocts to explain away Trump’s flaws have dominated right-wing media discourse, spurred fruitless Justice Department inquiries, and even attracted enough of a response from Trump himself to trigger his impeachment.

All the while, Hannity has served Trump as a political operative of unprecedented scope for a member of the press, to the point where he was once deemed the “shadow” chief of staff by White House staffers. If you can imagine an unethical conflict of interest a TV host might have, Hannity has done it for Trump: policy adviser and communications guru, advertisement participant and script doctor, rally speaker and secret back channel, private confidant sharing nightly phone calls with the then-president and public shill taking coverage orders from his White House.

The depth of Hannity’s bootlicking loyalty to the former president can perhaps best be seen in his reaction to a January 2018 report from The New York Times that Trump had previously tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Hannity spent much of his show that night claiming that the Times’ reporting was likely wrong, stressing that his own sources were “not confirming that tonight.”

But by the end of the broadcast, after Fox News published a report lining up with the Times story, Hannity backpedaled furiously. He adopted a new talking point wholly inconsistent with his old one to maintain the position that Trump had done nothing wrong.

“So we have sources tonight just confirming to Ed Henry that, yeah, maybe Donald Trump wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict,” Hannity said. “Does he not have the right to raise those questions?”

“You know, we’ll deal with this tomorrow night,” Hannity added, before changing the topic to discuss a high-speed police chase.

Hannity will now be bracketed in the Fox lineup by Watters and Gutfeld. The new prime-time hosts and longtime Fox employees share not only his penchant for incendiary conspiracy theories and toxic commentary but also his Trumpist zeal.

Jesse Watters, an O’Reilly crony turned Trump loyalist [vid]

watters joined Fox as a production assistant in 2002 and spent years stalking and harassing the subjects of ambush interview segments for Fox star Bill O’Reilly’s show. But he catapulted to prominence during the Trump years, garnering a weekend show and a slot on The Five in 2017, before landing a weeknight program in Fox’s 7 p.m. hour in January 2022.

The timing of Watters’ ascension is no coincidence: He has provided the pro-Trump commentary Fox’s viewers demand. Trump drew rebukes for launching his 2016 presidential campaign with unhinged xenophobic vitriol — even from Fox founder Rupert Murdoch. But Watters, attuned to the sentiment among the network’s audience, praised Trump for having “tapped into the collective backbone of this country” and said that as president, he wouldn't “let illegal aliens come to the country and murder our women.”

He never looked back, declaring that Trump couldn’t be racist because he has socialized with Black people, defending his most bigoted comments, praising his immigrant child separation policy, and standing up for his family, his cronies, and his responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and police brutality protests.

As the Trump presidency wound down, Watters falsely told his viewers that fraud had permeated the 2020 presidential election, adding that “we used to storm the castle over abuses of power like this.” Days later, a violent mob of angry Trumpists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to subvert the election.

Watters continued standing by Trump following his 2020 election defeat, the subsequent insurrection he summoned, and the waves of evidence of his criminality. He called for Americans to take to the streets in protest after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, offered thinly veiled suggestions of a violent recourse to his indictment, and urged Republicans to impeach President Joe Biden and for a reelected Trump to indict him in response.

Watters’ sycophantic commentary helped him climb the ranks at Fox, but it also gave him entry into the Fox-obsessed Trump’s social circle. He dined at the White House with the then-president, a fan of his on-air commentary. Trump congratulated him on his 2019 engagement to Emma DiGiovine, and Trump’s adult sons attended their wedding later that year. (Watters had cheated on his first wife and the mother of his twin daughters with the bride, a former low-level employee on his show who is 14 years his junior; he later said on-air that he had “let the air out of her tires” when he “was trying to get Emma to date me,” though he subsequently claimed to have been joking.)

Greg Gutfeld, a Trump critic who became his champion [vid]

unlike Hannity and Watters, who were early, stalwart Trump supporters, Gutfeld was a convert. A Trump critic during the 2016 Republican primary, Gutfeld had decried the racist former game show host as a “RINO” and a “conspiracy freak,” calling out his “crass” behavior and his mockery of Sen. John McCain’s military service.

But after Trump sewed up the primary and the general election loomed, Gutfeld’s commentary shifted. “Gutfeld was in the position he had previously warned against: the position of defending and excusing Trump,” Brian Stelter wrote in his 2021 book on Fox.

Gutfeld himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that Fox CEO Suzanne Scott had counseled him to leave himself room to evolve his view of Trump. “She was like, ‘Greg, you should maybe prepare for what happens if he wins,’” he told The New York Times.

Gutfeld flipped to become a diehard Trumpist. Like Watters, he defended Trump’s vicious immigration policies, election subversion efforts, misogyny, deadly pandemic response, and racist comments. He is particularly devoted to mainstreaming Trump’s refusals to denounce his most extreme supporters, from the Proud Boys to white supremacists, including those whomarched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. And he distinguished himself with particularly absurd remarks about the then-president, like claiming that “he’s the president, he can do whatever he wants,” and, “I can't recall a single instance of Trump actually aggressively going after an individual.”

Gutfeld is particularly clear-eyed about Fox’s relationship with Trump. He repeatedly noted on-air the influence his network had on the man he dubbed “the Fox News president.” And Trump, in turn, warmed up to the Fox host as he became increasingly pliant, touting Gutfeld on the campaign stump and in afawning interview with him.

“Even Greg Gutfeld; he wasn’t good to me two years ago,” Trump said in 2019. “Now he sees all I’ve done, and he said 'Would you rather have a great President or a nice guy?’ I don’t know, I think I’m a nice guy.”

Without Gutfeld’s flip to Trump, and Trump’s subsequent support for him, it is difficult to imagine that the host would have continued climbing the ladder at Fox. As Stelter wrote:

The alternative could have hit Gutfeld in the wallet. Fox made him a millionaire several times over — between his TV shows, the books he promoted on TV, his ticketed speaking gigs across the country — so “Greg has made a cynical calculation,” an insider said. “There’s no point in being anti-Trump.”

For a taste of what the prime-time newcomers bring to the table, consider a July 2019 exchange between Gutfeld and Watters on their panel show, The Five, regarding Democrats’ criticism of then-President Trump’s friendly visit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“Let’s be honest,” Gutfeld admitted. If a Democratic president had met with Kim, “we would do the same thing.”

“How dare Obama meet with a dictator with no preconditions!” Watters replied, and the pair broke into giggles. Even they can barely believe the absurdity of their pro-Trump hypocrisy.

Fox’s Trumpist retrenchment will help him secure the GOP nomination

fox’s prime-time shakeup comes as the network faces the most sustained challenge to its dominance over the right-wing press in years. The new lineup suggests the network’s strategy for shoring up its right-wing hegemony relies on restoring its Trumpist credentials.

Fox ratings took a dive after the network cast off Carlson. Would-be rivals have responded to its weakness with relentless criticism in hopes of stealing away its viewers. Twitter’s Elon Musk seems to fancy himself as a potential successor to Rupert Murdoch as the right’s media empire builder and is amassing allies, albeit with what are at best significant growing pains.

The network's vulnerability is heightened by criticisms from Trump himself, who has used it as a foil. As I noted last month at MSNBC.com, the network’s posture toward the 2024 presidential primary has been an open question:

Fox’s alliance with Trump is currently in flux. After some initial ill will, the network’s endless promotion helped Trump to the presidency in 2016, and it effectively became state TV for his administration. Fox hosts gained unprecedented influence as the president regularly watched their shows, tweeted about their commentary in real time and took their advice. In turn, their assistance gave Trump a powerful propaganda tool. And since he left office in 2021, the network has continued rushing to the former president’s defense in his times of legal peril. But its support for his presidential bid has waxed and waned amid reports that the Murdochs prefer a fresher face for the Republican Party.

The decision by Fox executives to feature three Trumpists in what are traditionally its most-watched hours may help the network repair its relationship with the former president — but it will certainly shape the contours of the 2024 presidential race. Trump had already all but sewn up the GOP nomination, in no small part thanks to the work Fox hosts had done over the years in shoring up his vulnerabilities. A revamped Fox prime-time slate dedicated to supporting Trump at all costs now brings him ever closer to a return to the White House.

Fox prime-time hosts serve as tastemakers for the right-wing media and key validators for their large and loyal followings. Their support can make or break the Republican politicians who strive to win them over. Trump himself used hours of Fox appearances to win over viewers and seize the nomination in 2016.

Any of his GOP challengers who hope to replicate his achievement must somehow win over the network’s top talents, who owe their own prominence to the former president. That is a tall order, particularly with Trump already holding a large and steady lead in the polls. With Fox rallying behind him, Trump garnering the GOP’s nomination for the third consecutive election and running as a full-fledged authoritarian remains the most likely outcome.

UNCLEAR WHO TAKES TUCKER PLACE

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/response-wildfire-smoke-choking-new-york-city-fox-news-trots-out-tired-climate-denial

June 7, as smoke from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada turned New York City into a dystopian climate change movie, MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted: “I always thought there would be *some* kind of climate reckoning when it got bad enough but Covid has taught me that, no, people will just step on the gas and happily mow people down so they never have to admit taking a wrong turn."

Too little TV news coverage connected the code red air quality in New York and other impacted U.S. cities to climate change, but Fox News and other right-wing media figures retreated even further from a reckoning, stepping on the climate denial pedal by dismissing the link between global warming and wildfires, attacking those that did, and insisting on alternative explanations for why Canada is having its worst-ever wildfire season.

In fact, at 2 hours and 41 minutes of coverage, Fox News covered the wildfire story more than either CNN (2 hours and 19 minutes) or MSNBC (41 minutes) on June 7 and mentioned climate change (to deny it) more times in its coverage than its counterparts.

Fox News dismisses the link between wildfires and climate change, mocks those that do make the connection

Scientists say wildfires are becoming more severe as “forests around the world increasingly dry out amid the warming climate”, a fact even :{observed by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journa:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:l. Experts further note that Canada’s wildfire season is a “harbinger of our climate future” with the United Nations warning that by 2090, “global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change.”  But no amount of evidence, either experiential or academic, changes the tone of the reporting at Fox News when it comes to extreme weather and climate-fueled events.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade mocks AOC, climate change czar John Kerry, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for connecting the dangerous air quality to climate change: “Every time it’s real hot, climate change. Every time it’s real cold, climate change. When it rains a lot it’s because of climate change. And you guessed it, Canada, with burning forests, 400 separate fires, it’s because of climate change. AOC said it. Of course climate change czar John Kerry said it, and [Karine Jean-Pierre] KJP has one note, listen.” Fox News, :{Fox & Friends:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/8/23]

Fox News host Laura Ingraham suggests that coverage of the event is overblown and mocks those reporting the air quality from a climate angle: “Is this really a novel occurrence for our country or is it getting the coverage of the type it’s getting because it's happening along the East Coast where all the elites live?” Ingraham continued: “The apocalyptic coverage in the New York Times today was just absolutely knee-slappingly hilarious. … CNN's Bill Weir, no stranger to hyperbole himself, used the event to call for action to electrify every car in the United States for humanity’s sake." Fox News, :{The Ingraham Angle:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

Fox News host Sean Hannity accuses Democrats, including AOC, of politicizing the crisis to push their climate agenda: “Tonight, smoke from the Canadian wildfires, they blanketed the entire East Coast of the U.S. creating a scary martian-like scene in New York City especially. And as usual, Democrats, they wasted no time. They went right to politicizing the crisis, AOC using the wildfire and heat wave in Puerto Rico to once again push her radical Green New Deal or the climate alarmist religious cult agenda.” Fox News, :{Hannity:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

On Jesse Watters Primetime, climate denier and frequent Fox guest Mark Morano dismissed climate change and accused those making the connection of weaponizing the weather while smoking a cigar:“This is exactly what you would expect to happen. This is Canadian natural disaster mismanagement and now they are trying to blame global warming which makes it, what? Our fault. It's our SUVs. It's our gas stoves which, by the way, didn't New York ban them? Shouldn't we have -- shouldn't wildfires be a thing of the past? I thought they were banning them.” Fox News, :{Jesse Watters Primetime:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

On The Five, Jeanine Pirro accuses AOC and Democrats of “pumping up climate hysteria”: “While Americans choke on the smoke, the far left smells an opportunity. AOC thinks this is a great time to push her Green New Deal. She says that we must, ”Adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure and healthcare to prepare for what's to come". Other Democrats are pumping up climate hysteria and bringing back, you guessed it, mask insanity.” Fox News, :{The Five:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

On :{Outnumbered:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:,the panel mocks AOC for connecting the crisis to climate change while Fox contributor Kennedy suggests that because wildfires existed before “we started talking about the climate crisis” then the science is not settled: “There are a lot of reasons for wildfires. Wildfires have been happening for a long time. Before we started talking about the climate crisis. So, I want to make sure that the science is settled before we completely turf our economy and flush any innovation we have down the toilet because of a tweet from AOC.” Fox News, :{Outnumbered:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

Fox turns to its go-to explanation for catastrophic wildfires: It’s poor forest management. And it’s environmentalists’ fault.

Forest management has played some role in the unprecedented wildfire season in Canada — while the role of climate change is also evident and clear. But from watching Fox’s coverage of the fires, you would probably come away with the idea that it’s been Canada’s forest management policies alone driving the worsening fires.

Fox’s jump to shift blame to poor forest management as a tactic to downplay climate change goes back to at least 2018 when Trump first blamed California’s forestry policies while touring the aftermath of the deadly Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise. Fox revived the tactic in full force during California’s apocalyptic 2020 wildfires.

Helping drive the swift move to blame forest management and environmentalists this time around is News Corps darling, Fox News contributor, and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine who wrote a June 7 column, “Smoky New York isn’t climate change — it’s bad forest management,” which has been cited by Fox News personalities and amplified by right-wing media figures online.

Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy on Outnumbered: “The real blame is on the climate cult. … They are an anti-human group and they want to shut our forests and close them off to humans and to industry who know how to manage it. And that's what's happening right now.” Fox News, :{Outnumbered:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/8/23]

On the Faulkner Focus, Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz insists that poor forest management is liberals' fault: I hate to tell it you folks but there have been big forest fires for eons probably since the beginning of time. It's ironic to me because the same people who claim they want the Green New Deal, they fight us every single time on the mitigation efforts to manage the forests, clear out the underbrush, clear out the dead trees and clear out the fuel that makes these things so ignite in such big fashion. They will not do that as Democrats and these left-leaning liberals. Fox News, :{Faulkner Focus:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/8/23]

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy dismissed climate change and redirected the blame to “bad forest management”: “Climate change does not start a fire. It can create dry conditions, and they have really bad dry conditions up in Canada right now. In Canada they are blaming bad forest management because of a very dry winter and they did not get a lot of snow. … Apparently behind the scenes they have not been doing the controlled burns that they should have been doing. And back in 2024 environmentalists wrote a paper and said not enough is being done to fund this kind of forest management and there is going to be hell to pay.” Fox News, :{Fox & Friends:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/8/23]

Sean Hannity also suggested that forest management is the main culprit:“Here's what nobody talks about. There is a science. You can get an advanced college degree in forestry. There's something called the controlled burns that climate alarmist cult members are all dead set against. And you see, if you have a controlled burn that prevents the bigger fires like the one they're experiencing in little Justin's neighborhood in Canada that's now making it smoke all the way down here.” Fox News, :{Hannity:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

Host Jesse Watters claims that there are fewer wildfires now than 100 years ago to dismiss the role of climate change and prop up the forest management argument:  “You might be surprised to find out over the last 100 years, there have been less wildfires, not more. The Wall Street Journal says in the early 1900s about 4% of land worldwide burned every year by 2021 that was down to 2.5%. So instead of obsessing over climate change they should take a look at forest management.” Fox News, :{Jesse Watters Primetime:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

On The Five co-host Dana Perino blames wildfires on forest management and liberal policies: “Canada is experiencing really bad wildfires on their public lands. We have a similar problem, and it has to do with forest management. The Biden administration has policies that are in direct conflict with one another. … Wildfires can occur naturally of course, but if you are actively managing your forest, then you can prevent some of these things. The left has never wanted to do that.”  Fox News, :{The Five:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23]

Pirro suggests that since only half of Americans believe in climate change that Democrats shouldn’t be linking it to wildfires: Agreeing that poor forest management is the main cause of severe wildfires, Pirro questions why climate change is even part of the discussion: “We’re at a point when I think 49% of Americans believe climate change is caused mostly by human actions, the lowest reported apparently in many years.So why are Democrats, why do they keep pushing climate change over something that could’ve been prevented?" Fox News, :{The Five:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, [6/7/23] HUH?!

Related

National TV news chokes out the climate angle in coverage of Canadian wildfires

06/08/23 2:57 PM EDT

With Canadian wildfires, Fox News follows its COVID playbook

06/08/23

Fox News host Jesse Watters says it’s “normal” for the Northeastern United States to be engulfed in smoke from Canadian wildfires

06/08/23

3 23 prolly somewhat neglected but see indiv nodes; note dominion discovery revelations on lying , profit motive, fire fact checker Tucker

cf Cruz ~ Gigi state TV proved

//

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/foxs-laura-ingraham-participated-ron-desantis-donor-event-ahead-his-expected

mma 12 22

Fox News’ near-total silence on former President Donald Trump’s meeting with Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, points to the inroads that white nationalism and virulent antisemitism have made at the network — and the difficulty the Republican Party would have in trying to remove that faction from its coalition.

The news that Fuentes and Ye had dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home and resort last Tuesday triggered a stream of denunciations from civil rights groups and calls for Republicans to speak out. The friendly sitdown came in spite of a weekslong firestorm surrounding Ye’s increasingly open anti-Jewish rhetoric. Fuentes, meanwhile, is a white supremacist leader who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, called for a “white uprising” to install Trump as a dictator, and has generated a lengthy list of bigoted statements, including his recent exhortation for Jews to “get the fuck out of America.”

Republican leaders are divided over whether bigots like Ye and Fuentes should be shunned and the former president condemned for meeting with them. Ultimately, this argument is a proxy fight over the question of whether the white supremacists, Proud Boys, antisemites, and other deplorables who made common cause with Trump should be ushered out of the party. Some, like former Vice President Mike Pence, have spoken out. Others have criticized Fuentes while letting Trump off the hook, like potential House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), or remained silent, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Fox’s propagandists have joined the side of the silent. The network devoted a mere seven minutes to the dinner from the time the story broke on Friday through the weekend, and ignored it altogether on Monday. Notably, influential prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham have not mentioned the story at all. Fox is signaling to the viewers who trust it above all other news sources that the story is not important.

Fox’s quiet acquiescence points to a quandary for the network. It would apparently be a step too far for Fox to support Trump meeting with such despicable bigots – that could threaten its relations with advertisers and cable carriers. But the network is also too tightly intertwined with that world to criticize him for it. It has a Tucker Carlson problem.

Fox personalities condemning Trump for meeting with Ye would amount to a hairpin turn for the network. They were touting Ye’s bravery just weeks ago after Ye talked up Trump in Carlson’s fawning interview with him. But as they lavished praise on the rapper, the network was keeping under wraps some of the the anti-Jewish comments West made in the same discussion. When Ye started making similarly antisemitic remarks on social media, some at Fox criticized him – though not Carlson, who pretended that outburst hadn’t happened and continued to laud him.

Fuentes’ noxious racism and antisemitism are more explicit than what is typically found on Fox, and the network would seem to face less risk in condemning him. But Carlson in particular has made his show a clearinghouse for antisemitic tropes, white nationalist talking points, and fringe-right bigots. All the while, he has denied the existence of the white supremacists who praise him for mainstreaming their worldview. How could Carlson plausibly berate Trump for meeting with a white supremacist when he’s spent years telling his viewers that white supremacists don’t exist? And how could anyone else at the network convincingly draw a line between Fuentes’ commentary and what viewers see in its 8 p.m. hour?

Fox’s problem mirrors that of the GOP. Republican leaders believe that it needs the extremists Trump ushered into the party in order to win elections. Fox hosts and executives likewise recognize that if they aim at such deplorables, they may hit their own viewers. The result is that rank and file Republicans may not hear that the meeting ever happened – and if they do, the source will be a mainstream outlet that Fox has relentlessly trained them to ignore. If Fox creates the context through which its viewers interpret news, the message it is sending is that Trump dining with bigots is not important.

The Fox mantra is to “respect the audience.” In practice, that means keeping them cosseted from information that may displease them, no matter how extreme they become or what conspiracy theories they end up believing.

also tucker so trifecta

In April Vox reported that “while he hasn’t been hired by Fox, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller — known for helping to develop Trump’s nativist immigration policy — has become a fixture as a guest on Sean Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham’s shows.”

“Since the start of President Joe Biden’s term,” Media Matters reported in February, “Fox News has hired at least nine editors who previously worked for former President Donald Trump’s administration, Republican campaign offices, or Republican politicians. Many of those editors now cover politics for FoxNews.com.”

On Tuesday Conway appeared on Fox News and attacked Democrats, saying Hispanic voters “see a Democratic Party that’s openly hostile to religion. They can’t even give their thoughts and prayers when there’s a tragedy. It’s only thoughts now.”

Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida

On back-to-back nights during Florida’s Hurricane Ian nightmare, Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham cast doubt on climate science

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER

PUBLISHED 09/30/22

In response to Hurricane Ian, Fox News primetime shows sought to mislead viewers about how climate change is affecting hurricanes, using bad faith and often-repeated climate denier talking points.

More than 2.6 million people were without power across the state on Thursday morning, as extreme flooding left many residents trapped in their homes and on top of cars. At a press briefing, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Ian a “500-year flooding event” and added, “The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that has been done is historic. … We've never seen a flood event like this, we've never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.” There were at least 21 confirmed deaths as of Friday morning, but that number is expected to rise as recovery efforts continue.

Fox primetime shows recycle debunked or irrelevant talking points on climate

Meanwhile, Fox personalities attempted to gaslight viewers into complacency by describing any hurricane coverage that mentioned climate change as “alarmist.” Fox also cherry-picked information about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes to imply that the two are not related. Climate scientists and media outlets have acknowledged that there is not enough evidence to support the theory that climate change will increase the frequency of hurricanes. However, there is evidence suggesting that higher ocean and air temperatures are causing hurricanes and storms to intensify more rapidly instead of weakening as they approach landfall, as happened with Ian. Hurricanes are also absorbing more moisture and dumping more rain on affected areas. Fox ignored this crucial connection or refuted it all together.

On September 27, Tucker Carlson called severity warnings leading up to the storm a “scam” on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But the next day, he called Hurricane Ian “a catastrophe” and a “national disaster,” adding, “People will certainly be killed.” Carlson then tried to use an exchange between CNN’s Don Lemon and Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, to push his agenda. Carlson used Rhome’s reluctance to link climate change to specific events to suggest that for political reasons, the media is more concerned about climate change than actual climate scientists are. However, Rhome clearly agreed that climate change is having an impact on storms, which is consistent with mainstream reporting on the issue. In fact, on September 28, CNN meteorologist Tom Sater reiterated Rhome’s point and added, “Since 1950 there have been seven landfall hurricanes in Florida that were a category 4 or 5 … the first 4 were each in a different decade. The last three — all in the last 5 years.”

:{

}:

On September 29, Carlson devoted a good chunk of his show to ranting about climate change as well.He was obsessively focused on hurricane frequency, arguing that somehow, a decrease in the numbers of storms would cancel out the plethora of other evidence indicating that the storm events themselves are intensifying. After citing a NOAA research overview highlighting that hurricanes are predicted to become more intense, Carlson went on to insist that “the claim is never proven,” and that “there’s no science behind these claims.” Later in the segment, he implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. … they’re products of nature, God is in charge.”

He then discussed Hurricane Ian with Candace Owens, who has a long history of climate change denial.Owens reiterated that climate change does not exist because “if there was no human beings that walked the face of the planet, there would continue to be hurricanes, like there would continue to be blizzards, and like there would continue to be tornadoes.” She also used several other environmental concerns such as the hole in the ozone layer, which has diminished because of the Montreal Protocol, and ocean acidification, which remains a concern due to climate change, to try and argue that “they’ve been wrong over and over and over again.”

Video

CitationFrom the September 29, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

On September 28 edition of The Ingraham Angle, frequent Fox News guest and climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger and host Laura Ingraham told viewers that their personal experiences with extreme weather were untrustworthy and invalid. Ingraham implied that concerns about climate change only exist because people “feel that the ocean is warmer … but a feeling is not fact.” Shellenberger falsely claimed that hurricanes are “not intensifying right now, so any perception that hurricanes are more intense is just a perception fed by that relentless alarmist media.” Guest Mollie Hemmingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, later claimed that “the left” is pushing a “conspiracy theory” that “man-made climate change is the cause of hurricanes. … There’s just no evidence for this theory that people keep holding.” Hemmingway said this despite the fact that no one is claiming that climate change is the primary cause of hurricanes, rather it is one factor making them more dangerous.

Video file

Video CitationFrom the September 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Hemmingway and Shellenberger also latched onto the idea that hurricane frequency is apparently the only metric that should concern the public, glossing over the very real dangers of threats like higher rainfall rates, which is the main factor that drives deaths and damage during a hurricane. They were fixated on the number of hurricanes that have occurred over different periods of time, using various irrelevant data points to unsuccessfully support their climate denial. They also downplayed damage caused by storms by saying that nowadays more people live in the areas most affected by hurricanes. Shellenberger first said that damage caused by hurricanes “has not increased at all” but then claimed that the increase in damage is due to the fact that “there’s more wealth in harm’s way,” going on to claim that the extreme weather events of the last several decades represent “an incredible success story for America,” because, in his telling, they could have been worse. 

Before Ian made landfall, Sean Hannity hosted his favorite climate denier Joe Bastardi to emphasize that hurricane frequency in Florida has not increased. On September 28, Hannity said that the media should not discuss climate change because “this is hurricane season and during hurricane season, you usually have hurricanes like we did a hundred years ago.” Fox News contributor Lara Trump insisted that the Democrats' “marketing arm, the mainstream media” is “now trying to claim that one of the quietest hurricane seasons in 30 years is somehow due to climate change.” Finally, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, who was a guest on the show, said that people should reject the established science of climate change and instead of “worshipping that which is created rather than the creator … get back to the simple things of science and real faith and trust in God.”

The public is beginning to increasingly understand the dangers of climate change and the need for actions that not only reduce climate-causing emissions, but make our communities less vulnerable to the climate impacts that are already happening. But as the public and more media outlets are starting to connect extreme weather to the need for climate action, Fox News coverage seeks to break those links.

THE LATEST...

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Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida

09/30/22 2:52 PM EDT

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Climate deniers

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As Hurricane Ian hits Florida, Fox News undermines climate change

09/27/22 11:15 PM EDT

// hayes

Fox News’ prime-time shows are fixated on Pennsylvania’s Senate race as the post-Labor Day sprint to the midterm elections gets underway. The programs mentioned Democratic nominee John Fetterman more frequently during that period than the Democratic nominees in six other competitive Senate races combined, andRepublican nominee Mehmet Oz was referenced more than twice as many times as any of the other GOP candidates, according to a Media Matters review.

Fetterman appears to be the Democratic nominee Fox prime time hosts fear most. With their dramatic, ongoing fixation on Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, they are trying to bail out Republicans after Sean Hannity’s zealous promotion of Oz stuck the party with an unpopular nominee (Fox support was also crucial for the Republican nominees in Arizona, Georgia, and Ohio). The hosts’ deceptive attacks on Fetterman’s health and his record on crime have often aligned squarely with Oz’s campaign message.

Media Matters reviewed Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle* from September 6 through September 27 for mentions of the names of the Republican and Democratic nominees for Senate in the seven states FiveThirtyEight identified as most competitive: Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina,** Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

Fox personalities and guests uttered Fetterman’s name at least 120 times on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle, Media Matters found. The Democratic nominees in the other six states combined for only 96 mentions on those programs; Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) was referenced the next most frequently, with 34.

Oz’s 48 mentions led the field among GOP candidates, with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) mentioned the next most with 19. Oz himself appeared on the programs 5 times over the period, more than any of the other Republican Senate nominees Media Matters examined.

The Pennsylvania race is the most discussed Senate election on all three programs, by sizable margins in each case. Sean Hannity, the sometime GOP political operative and adviser to Donald Trump, has given the midterm races significantly more attention than his prime-time colleagues. His broadcast has mentioned the Democratic and Republican Senate nominees a combined 171 times, compared to 79 for Laura Ingraham’s program and 73 for Tucker Carlson’s show. [grf]

the network’s stars are seemingly more interested in tearing down Democratic nominees than promoting Republican ones, with their programs referencing the former more often than the latter in every Senate race except for Wisconsin.

*Jesse Watters’ show, Jesse Watters Primetime, was not included in the study because it does not air in primetime; regardless, he devoted substantially less attention to the Senate races compared to his colleagues.

**None of the three Fox prime-time shows has mentioned the Senate nominees in North Carolina.

8 22 gone for a yr?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/after-temporary-banishment-rep-matt-gaetz-once-again-fox-news-star-despite-his-situation

within the first three months of 2021, according to Media Matters’ internal database, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made 37 weekday appearances on Fox News daytime and prime-time programming. At the time, Gaetz and Fox News enjoyed a symbiotic relationship: Gaetz would appear weekly to biweekly to lend his firebrand personality and shameless distortion of the truth to whatever culture or message war the network was pushing, and in turn,  the network elevated his stardom and status as one of former President Donald Trump’s top henchmen.

On March 30, 2021, the relationship between the Trump loyalist and the network dramatically shifted when The New York Times reported that Gaetz was facing a Justice Department inquiry over allegedly engaging in a sexual relationship with an underage girl. Fox’s leading face, Tucker Carlson, responded to the bombshell report by hosting Gaetz for a softball interview in which the congressman professed his innocence and claimed the Times was “smearing” him based on a financial extortion plot against Gaetz and his family. (While a Florida businessman eventually pleaded guilty to wire fraud against the Gaetz family, the investigation into Gaetz’ relationship with underage women was separate, and The Daily Beastoutlined the numerous falsehoods Gaetz made in the interview.)

Gaetz also attempted to implicate Carlson by comparing his situation to false allegations against Carlson and suggesting Carlson had met a “friend” involved in the plot, leading the host to call it “one of the weirdest” interviews he’s ever done. This exchange landed Gaetz an informal excommunication from the network, forcing him off Fox airwaves until Carlson hosted him again, an exact year later, on March 30, 2022, to plead his innocence. Within the two last months, Carlson’s other prime-time colleagues Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingrahamhave all followed suit, hosting Gaetz with no mention of the scandal.

The Justice Department investigation is still ongoing, yet Fox has welcomed its former star back with open arms. As Gaetz’s scandals have deepened, it’s unclear what changed in the network’s calculation of the lawmaker’s suitability for its airwaves. At best, Gaetz’s increased appearances on Fox are another tool to fuel bad-faith Republican arguments, especially amid their desperate attempts to distract from the January 6 hearings. At worst, the network’s embrace of Gaetz represents a callous disregard for serious allegations, made particularly ironic given Fox’s recent homophobic campaign against the LGBTQ+ community under the pretense of protecting children from supposed groomers.

an 7 22

with thousands dying from extreme global heat in recent days, and as President Joe Biden announced new executive actions to address the climate crisis, right-wing media figures and climate deniers are downplaying the heat wave and the threat from human-caused climate change.

In Europe, extreme “red” heat warnings were issued in the United Kingdom for the first time, and Wales recorded its highest-ever temperature. Railroad lines, major highways, and airport runways in the U.K. buckled under the extreme heat. Multiple regions of Germany also set all-time highs, as did at least part of Denmark. Over 2,000people have died in Spain and Portugal due to the extreme heat, which has fueled wildfires there and in parts of France. These record-setting events are not contained to Europe. Parts of the U.S. and Central Asia are suffering from extreme heat as well.

Even though the extreme heat event in Europe is truly exceptional, and its connections to the climate crisis are unquestionable, multiple right-wing media figures used the extreme heat event to downplay and criticize any possible action to address the climate crisis.

Right-wing media also attacked Biden for considering declaring a climate emergency during this deadly heat wave. Instead Biden unveiled much more modest steps to address climate impacts, such as putting $2.3 billion toward community resilience and infrastructure and bolstering offshore wind development. The Federalist falsely declared that “Biden has no right to declare a ‘national climate emergency,’' though The Washington Post explained that such a move would “tap a variety of long-standing emergency authorities under the National Emergencies Act and other laws.” LifeSiteNews fearmongered thatthe emergency powers would result in “climate lockdowns.” And other right-wing media suggested that there is no crisis at all.

Right-wing media denied the existence of the climate emergency

Fox News host Dan Bongino questioned whether the planet is getting warmer and whether humanity played a role in it, asking: “What kind of a dunce believes that? Come on. Is it [the planet] getting warmer? The answer is maybe. … The question isn’t is it getting warmer; the question is what’s human beings' role in it.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/19/22]

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton wrote on Twitter: “There is obviously no ‘climate emergency'.” Twitter, [7/19/22]

Fox host Tucker Carlson devoted a monologue to undermining the existence of climate change, reducing climate predictions to: “It’s gonna be hot and then it’s gonna rain hard.” “No one really believes in global warming,” he continued, “and that’s why all of the liberals in the United States live on the coasts – because they don’t believe it… The entire theory is absurd and they know it. … The whole thing is a joke.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [7/20/22]

On Fox, conservative British political commentator Douglas Murray dismissed the urgency of the climate crisis, saying, “Whenever there is not an absolutely vital recent emergency, we can always fall back on – oh and the climate emergency.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/20/22]

Fox anchor Dana Perino asked: “What has changed with the science that would lead a president to need to declare an emergency?” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*[, 7/20/22]

Fox host Todd Piro said that climate impacts, particularly the ones affecting the most vulnerable communities, did not meet his criteria for an emergency: “While we all love clean air and clean water — I, in fact, use both … this is not an emergency that we need to focus on today. We got a lot of other problems in the world.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [7/20/22]

Fox host Sean Hannity responded to new actions by the Biden administration to address climate change by dismissing the role of human influence over global warming saying, “I think these might be acts of nature, and God, and way out of the realm of something that human beings can prevent.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/20/22]

Conservatives also downplayed the deadly extreme heat

Climate change denying author Bjorn Lomborg dismissed the dangerous extreme heat event, writing on Twitter: “Standard climate scare.” Twitter, [7/17/22]

Climate denier Steven Milloy on Twitter dismissed a Washington Post article linking the Europe heat wave to climate change, writing: “Hot in some places. Cool in others. Just weather. Not climate.” Twitter, [7/19/22]

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade dismissed the dangers extreme heat poses to human health, saying: “Don’t panic. It is summer. If it was December and this was happening, then I would say, this is a little weird. But it's just a little bit hotter than usual.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/20/22]

Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro said on his radio show that the heat wave and wildfires were being reported so fervently because “you always know that it’s the slow season newswise when you start getting weather reports from Europe. … The thing that they will never tell you, the media, is that more people die of cold every year than die of heat every year, but the cold narrative doesn’t tend to play into the climate change narrative that they wish to progmulate.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*,[7/19/22]

Fox host Jesse Watters dismissed the extreme heat event as regular seasonal weather, saying: “Joe Biden has seen more seasons than a lot of us. He knows that it gets cold in January and hot in July.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/20/22

Watters followed this up with an interview during which an on-screen graphic read: “Dems worried about weather, not real problems.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/20/22]

Fox host Greg Gutfeld said: “We are in a full-blown heat wave hysteria.” He said that while he does believe “it’s getting warmer,” climate advocates should “think about the opportunity cost of all the zealotry. You know? Panic didn’t work.” Fox News, *The Five*, [7/20/22]

Right-wing media also attacked the Biden administration for considering a climate emergency declaration

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed on his Infowars show that a climate emergency would be orchestrated by a “scientific global dictatorship whose aim is 90% world depopulation,” and that it would lead to a “dystopia”: “You’re gonna live in a 200-square-foot coffin apartment, you’re gonna be given forced inoculations five, six times a year, you’re gonna be sterilized, you’re gonna be killed.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*,[7/20/22]

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called a possible emergency declaration “a serious abuse of power.” The Wall Street Journal, [7/19/22]

Kilmeade called Biden’s executive orders tone-deaf and “agenda-driven,” insisting that they “will do nothing but hurt the price of oil and gas.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*,[7/19/22]

Hannity quoted climate denier Joe Bastardi, saying on his radio show that Democrats’ response to climate change is the “systemic dismantling of the American way of life. It’s not a rational response to a climate crisis.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [7/19/22]

Hosts of Fox’s Outnumbered claimed a possible climate emergency declaration from Biden “could cause a global depression,” is “suicide,” and is “going to kill the economy.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [7/19/22]

related: Tucker Carlson tells idiotic lie that “no one really believes in global warming”

07/20/22

Fox contributor calls for more coal plants as a solution to extreme heat

07/20/22

National TV networks mention climate change in 32% of segments on global extreme heat

07/19/22

mutual parasitism?  trumpista flip bird to libs by buying goods of patriot?  do his ads run next to him as gust? do host every ackn him as sponsor?

#8

an 7 22

the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol held its**final hearing** of the summer yesterday, focusing on choices Donald Trump made between concluding his speech on the ellipse at the “Save America” rally and when he finally told the mob to go home in a video posted on Twitter, 187 minutes later.

The July 21 hearing featured several explosive new pieces of information about Trump’s “complete dereliction” of his duty as president of the United States, resisting his entire inner circle’s efforts advice to him that he tell the insurrectionists to stop and go home -- instead, he spent much of his time stewing in the White House dining room, watching Fox News and making calls to GOP senators and Rudy Giuliani telling them to delay the counting of the electoral vote.

Fox News did not carry Thursday’s hearing. Instead, the right-wing network ran its regular prime-time programming, as it did during the first prime-time hearing the committee put on in June.

[twt]

during the hearing, Fox hosts decried women making their own health care choices, undocumented immigrants, a canceled Dave Chappelle show, and the committee that they refused to cover. They also played a Hillary Clinton interview from 2018 and sold some t-shirts.

Between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET, MyPillow -- the pillow company run by coup plotter Mike Lindell -- ran 6 advertisements for its products on Fox. Here’s some of the other companies that decided to advertise on Fox News prime time while it refused to air the January 6 hearing.

Tucker Carlson Tonight

On July 21, 2022, Tucker Carlson Tonight featured advertisements from MyPillow, Boll & Branch, Balance of Nature, Freshpet, and WeatherTech.

Hannity

On July 21, 2022, Hannity featured advertisements from MyPillow, Bayer,**T**rivago, Nutrisystem, and ReputationDefender.

The Ingraham Angle

On July 21, 2022, The Ingraham Angle featured advertisements from MyPillow, ADT, Bausch & Lomb, America’s Best Contacts & Eyeglasses, and Vitrazza.

5 22 no lnx twt

Steve Schmidt calls for 'venomous and dangerous' Rupert Murdoch to be stripped of US citizenship

Rupert Murdoch receiving the 2015 Global Leadership Award, Wikimedia Commons

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement May 18, 2022

Lincoln Project co-founder and former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt wants the United States to strip Rupert Murdoch of his U.S. citizenship, calling the 91-year-old Australian-born media titan “the most venomous and dangerous foreigner to ever arrive on American soil.”

Murdoch is the man behind News Corp, a massive multi-national conglomerate that in the U.S. owns Fox News, The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, book publisher HarperCollins, and even realtor.com.

But it is Fox News that Schmidt is focused on.

“The January 6 Committee will prove a massive conspiracy,” Schmidt tweeted Tuesday night. “That conspiracy will likely involve @foxnews hosts and personalities. @rupertmurdoch is responsible for what happens on @foxnews, which has long claimed in Federal Court that is not news but entertainment.”

Taking a dig at Murdoch and the birther movement which Fox News amplified, Schmidt says Murdoch “is not a Birthright Citizen like @BarackObama. He is a Naturalized Citizen. Though it happens rarely, there is a Denaturalization process that can lead to revocation of US Citizenship and removal from the country.”

Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in 1985 so he could own American television stations.

“There are conditions and requirements for Denaturalization,” Schmidt continues. “This should be studied closely by Attorneys. I believe a strong case could be made that @rupertmurdoch, the most venomous and dangerous foreigner to ever arrive on American soil meets it easily.”

Schmidt in his final tweet tags former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who over the past few years has accused Murdoch and his media properties of undermining democracy in the U.S. and in Australia.

Last November Schmidt said Murdoch “has been a pancreatic cancer on democracy, pluralism and decency.”

And in February Schmidt suggested Fox News was an enemy of the U.S., calling it “an American Fifth Column that has declared war on American patriotism.”

Timelines: The decimation of Fox's “news side”

05/11/21 12:24 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/timeline-decimation-foxs-news-side

Timeline-Tucker-Carlson-white-supremacy.png

Tucker Carlson's descent into white supremacy: A timeline

10/28/18 12:00 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-descent-white-supremacy-timeline

Tucker Carlson on COVID vaccine: “How are the rest of us supposed to respond to a marketing campaign like this? Well, nervously”

Timeline: Tucker Carlson’s unhinged COVID-19 coverage

12/27/20 11:08 AM EST

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/timeline-tucker-carlsons-unhinged-covid-19-coverage

There are no rules for Sean Hannity at Fox News

04/17/18 11:28 AM EDT

Presidential adviser reportedly scripted campaign ad

06/01/21 10:44 AM EDT

Sean Hannity is a Trump political operative and Fox News doesn’t care

01/21/20 4:08 PM EST

trifecta?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/free-base-pipe/

no lnx vid twt?

Right-wing website made up viral fake claim Republicans like Marco Rubio are now pushing: report

[Marco Rubio embarrasses himself again by doubling down on false attack of defense secretary]

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement February 10, 2022

This week Republican lawmakers and voters have had a great time pushing a false claim that the Biden administration is spending tens of millions of dollars to pay for "free crack pipes" for drug abusers. The claim came from a report by the right-wing website Washington Free Beacon, including a quote falsely attributed to an HHS spokesperson, according to The Daily Beast.

It's no surprise The Daily Beast is calling "a lie" made its way to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and a U.S. Senator's Twitter account.

"The Washington Free Beacon seemed to take a big leap to assert that free crack pipes would be part of a harm reduction package," The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberg reports, calling it "a lie rocketed around conservative media."

The report, published Monday and titled “Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ‘Racial Equity,’” cited an HHS spokesperson as confirming that a sweeping harm reduction package “will provide pipes” to smoke, quote, “any illicit substance.”

The Free Beacon's article reads: “A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’”

The Daily Beast reviewed the email chain between the Washington Free Beacon and HHS. It's unclear how the Free Beacon made the "any illicit substance" claim, given the HHS email specifically states no federal laws would be broken.

In fact, The Daily Beast reports the HHS spokesperson says the Free Beacon “omitted the information shared with him about the grantees needing to comply with federal, state, and local laws—the very language that would prohibit crack pipes.”

The damage has already been done. The "free crack pipes" claim is now one more myth in conservatives' false reality.

Arizona far-right Republican U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Lesko made the false claim on the floor of the House of Representatives:

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}:

Florida Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, linking to an article literally titled: "Biden administration denies funding programs that hand out crack pipes to prevent infection and promote 'racial equity'" says in a video posted to his Twitter account, "The Biden administration is going to be sending crack pipes and meth pipes, targeting minority communities," a claim he knows is a lie.

:{

}:

Fox News entertainers Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity both made the most of the claim, with The Daily Mail reporting: "Tucker Carlson slams policy to hand out free crack pipes and needles warning it 'will result in addicts shooting up on the streets.'"

The genie is out of the bottle, and no one on the right has any intention or desire to put it back.

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-warns-government-going-tie-you-down-and-put-jab-you

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-laura-ingraham-attacks-small-minded-control-freaks-implementing-vaccine-mandates

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-fully-embraced-white-supremacist-replacement-theory-and-fox-personalities

no lnx

Fox News personalities, guests, and elected Republican Party officials appearing on the network have launched nativist attacks that resemble the explicit white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory pushed by host Tucker Carlson.

In an interview with NPR, historian Kathleen Belew explained that the nativist arguments stem from the “great replacement theory,” which imagines “nonwhite people or outsiders or strangers or foreigners will overtake the United States via immigration, reproduction and seizure of political power.”

Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson has long pushed the theory with full corporate support from Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch. In the process, he has gained praise from white nationalists while the Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly called for his firing.

Fox's decision to enable Carlson’s white supremacist rhetoric has led to more Fox hosts and guests pushing similar talking points. But it's not a completely new look for the rest of the network. Back in 2019, the manifesto of the El Paso, Texas, mass shooter closely echoed nativist Fox talking points. And Fox News personalities responded to that shooting by defending their dehumanizing rhetoric and denying that white supremacy was a problem in the United States. The only question now is what tragedy will ensue this time.

Here are a few examples from just one week in September of the kind of rhetoric Fox airs, echoing nativist and the “great replacement” conspiratorial claims.

9/19/21

Fox’s Carley Shimkus claimed that the Biden administration looks at illegal immigration as “a political opportunity, especially when it comes to Mexicans, because Mexicans typically vote Democrat.” [Fox News, The Big Sunday Show, 9/19/21]

9/20/21

Co-host Brian Kilmeadecommented on Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, saying that “8 to 14 million would have been instantly legalized” and “that would have benefited, in theory, Democrats when it comes to voting because they were the ones who got it." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/20/21]

Fox & Friends hosted Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxtonto complain that the Biden administration “want[s] illegal immigration, they want what that brings.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/20/21]

Host Pete Hegseth argued, “Democrats don't care about protecting you or me or the border or our nation. They only care about protecting themselves, their political position, and their livelihood. And that's why they're ignoring the border. It doesn't affect them, except they hope in the future at the ballot box.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/20/21]

Guest Charlie Kirkwarned that through encouraging illegal immigration, the Biden administration is “trying to fulfill Barack Obama’s promise” of “a fundamental transformation of America.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/20/21]

Guest and white nationalist Stephen Miller said that the Biden administration’s “goal is as much immigration as quickly as possible, as fast as possible, to destroy the working class.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/20/21]

9/21/21

Tom Homan, Fox contributor and former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, fearmongered that migrants will “compete with low-level wage jobs and middle-class jobs. So this is not good for the American worker.” [Fox News, America Reports, 9/21/21]

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum emphasized the number of migrants compared to the population of Del Rio: “Del Rio has a population of 35,000 people — 35,000 Texans live there. Now, they’ve got 12,000 -- as many as 20,000 at one point -- refugees living in their town." [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 9/21/20]

Host Pete Hegseth called Haitian migrants coming into the U.S. a “full-scale invasion" of the country, warning that the migrants are “coming to a neighborhood near you. … They’re coming to our backyard.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/21/21]

Host Tucker Carlson declared that Biden’s immigration policy is an “attempt to change the demographics of the United States in order to give permanent power to the Democratic Party. That's all it is, no matter what they tell you.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/21/21]

9/22/21

America’s Newsroom hosted residents of Del Rio, Texas, who discussed their frustrations with what they called a “planned" crisis: “What frightens us is we have a madman and racist making -- who’s using people to advance his political agenda, to collapse our border, and change our style of government, and that's scaring us.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 9/22/21]

Co-host Jesse Watters opened The Five by fearmongering about a “large scale" release of migrants in the U.S. [The Five, 9/22/21]

Host Pete Hegseth accused the Biden administration of “releas[ing] thousands of residents of Bidenville” and complained that “family units and pregnant women [are] being allowed to stay, meaning more anchor babies and more illegals.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/22/21]

Frequent Fox guest Victor Davis Hansonaccused Democrats of being “unhappy with the present electorate” and allowing Afghan refugees and other migrants to “change the demography” of the country and “change the electorate” for the advantage of the Democratic agenda. [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/22/21]

Host Tucker Carlson called Biden’s immigration policy “the great replacement” and “eugenics.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/22/21]

Host Sean Hannitysuggested that Democrats were offering citizenship to migrants “in the hopes that they’ll vote for Democrats.” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/22/21]

Hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannitysaid that the Democratic National Committee voter registration desks were set up at the border. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/22/21]

Ingraham said the Biden administration is overseeing a “purposeful resettlement of -- it’s going to be millions of illegal immigrants" and complained that migrants get benefits like public schooling and health care. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/22/21]

9/23/21

Jesse Watters claimed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “[let] the truth slip” and revealed that Democrats want “the votes” from immigration and amnesty. [Fox News, The Five, 9/23/21]

Pete Hegseth said that the Biden administration was encouraging migrants to come to the U.S. because “they want more illegals" and warned viewers that migrants were being flown “to the destination of their choice, maybe your hometown.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/23/21]

On Sean Hannity’s show, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said -- without any pushback -- of Haitian migrants, “There are some folks that probably think this is the equivalent of an invasion.” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/23/21]

Host Laura Ingraham claimed that Democrats are “panicked that men of color are beginning to turn away from the Democrat Party. They need a new constituency. They hope [for] a constituency that may be dependent on the government.” White nationalist Stephen Miller agreed, adding, “This is all about … cheap labor for Biden’s wealthy backers, ... and it’s about new votes.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/23/21]

9/24/21

Fox & Friends guest Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) complained that the Democrats’ “grand strategy” is to “change America” and “replace the American electorate with third world immigrants.” He continued that Democrats will then give immigrants citizenship and “enfranchise them with a vote and have a permanent majority.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/24/21]

Faulkner Focus guest Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) claimed that Democrats have a “broader political agenda” to encourage illegal immigration to the size of “one of the largest cities in America.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 9/24/21]

Tucker Carlson Tonight guest Horace Cooper attacked the Biden administration for shirking its “number one responsibility … to protect us from invasion.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/27/21]

Ingraham Angle guest Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) said that Democrats “want to flood the United States with cheap labor and they want to grant amnesty to all of these illegals that are coming into our country and turn them into Democrat voters. That’s their last great hope for keeping the majority in the midterm election.” (Banks' communications director is Tucker Carlson's son.) [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/24/21]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/fox-news-media/

iam sorry to report I've had more than one conversation with progressives who, despite being savvy and well-read, are under the mistaken impression that Fox News has seen the light and has started to promote the COVID-19 vaccine. I've even witnessed speculation that Rupert Murdoch, who is himself vaccinated, had a come-to-Jesus meeting with the Fox News brass about the wisdom of encouraging their own audience to contract a dangerous disease. And while I always enjoy a cheeky opportunity to tell folks they should be reading my work more, overall, it's distressing to see that people are buying into the myth that Fox News has "pivoted" to being pro-vaccine.

But can you blame folks for believing this? Someone who prides themselves on a responsible, fact-based diet of mainstream media sources like CNN, NBC News and NPR likely got exposed in mid-to-late July to misleading stories hyping an out-of-context clip of Fox News host Sean Hannity saying, "I believe in the science of vaccination" and urging viewers to "take COVID seriously." The clip also got shared widely on social media.

Everyone likes a "scared straight" story, and it just felt goodto believe conservatives were on the verge of giving up this anti-vaccination nonsense. Unforutantely, the story was B.S.

As Iand reporters who cover right wing media for Media Matters and Vox pointed out at the time, Hannity's show that night was not only bookmarked by two other shows — Laura Ingraham's and Tucker Carlson's — that openly discouraged vaccination, but his supposedly "pro-vaccine" comments came in the middle of a segment that overall portrayed vaccines as dangerous and a threat to freedom. Even in the edited clip, Hannity instructed his viewers to "research like crazy," which is**a common anti-vaxx rhetorical trick**. As with creationists claiming they want to "teach the controversy," it's a way to seem reasonable while slyly directing people to engage conspiracy theories and suggesting those conspiracy theories are on equal footing, credibility-wise, as scientific fact. **As Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times** wrote, Hannity was basically "encouraging listeners to expose themselves to the wide variety of anti-vax conspiracy mongering accessible on social media via 'research.'"

But in case there was any doubt, a perusal of Hannity's programming in the weeks since his supposed conversion shows that, actually, Hannity is still largely focused on stoking confusion, spreading misinformation, and portraying vaccination efforts as a liberal conspiracy against his audience. As Media Matters documented on Tuesday, Hannity gave an entire hour of his radio show over to two anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists — men who use phrases like "the demon needle" and "poisonous jabs." Hannity presented them falsely as medical experts to people calling in looking for advice. He also sneered at Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, calling him "flip-flop Fauci" and declaring that his anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists were better experts. The conspiracy theorists discouraged vaccines for young people, implied that dangerous and unproven drugs are superior prevention to the vaccine, and lied about the breakthrough infection rate, implying it's high when it is not.

This in in line with the general approach to the vaccine question on Hannity's show. From the moment that his misleading "pro-vaccine" clip went viral, Hannity has aggressively downplayedthe claim that he's promoting the vaccine, declaring two days after the initial clipthat, "I'm not urging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine" and "I have never told anyone to get a vaccine." In the past few weeks, he's attacked vaccine passport programs, portrayed vaccine advocacy as "threats coming from Democrats," exaggerated the risks of breakthrough infections, and even claimed that vaccine passport programs are racist against Black people. (In reality, Black people are at a higher risk of dying of COVID-19, which is one reason why aggressive public health measures are necessary.)

A visit to Hannity's Facebook page is more of the same. It features a post mocking New York City mayor Bill De Blasio for supposedly playing doctor by instituting a vaccine passport system, **Blames undocumented immigrants for the COVID-19 spread** when the medical establishment is quite clear that the problem is willfully unvaccinated people, and celebrates Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is selling merchandise mocking vaccine advocates and whose state is paying the price for his idiocy with some of the highest rates of COVID-19 in the country.

Overall, Hannity viewers get a strong message that vaccines are ineffective, dangerous, and getting one is just giving into those damn Democrats. And his firehose of anti-vaccination demagoguery is in line with the rest of Fox News, which continues to take the stance that vaccines are "a menace", ineffective, and that refusing vaccination is a good way to prove one's right wing bona fides.

And yet, this notion that the network has changed its tune has become received wisdom in much of the mainstream media.

Googling "Hannity vaccines" turns up a darkly funny mix of Fox News headlines demonizing vaccination and mainstream media headlines praising Fox News for being pro-vaccination. One of those more recent ones, from Morning Consult, even announces, "Fox News Personalities Started to Promote COVID-19 Vaccines. Viewers Have Taken Notice." The article declares that "some conservative media personalities have gone all in on vaccines," falsely citing Hannity as an example. It credits this supposed shift in messaging for the fact that vaccine "reluctance fell to an all-time low this week among adults who watch Fox News: 27 percent of viewers now say they probably or definitely won't get vaccinated, down from 30 percent the week before and a high of 37 percent in mid-March." That's certainly an improvement, but hard to say if Fox News is really the cause, since their much-ballyhooed "shift" is an illusion propped up to bamboozle the mainstream media and not actually representative of the vaccine-negative messaging their audience actually gets. The comments from his fans on Facebook make quite clear what message they're getting, and it's definitely not that vaccination is good and that unvaccinated people are the cause of the current surge. Instead, it's fear-mongering about the shots, blaming immigrants and not the unvaccinated, and comparing vaccine passports and mandates to Nazi Germany.

As the New York Times reports, fears of the delta variant are also driving a lot of red state Americans to get the shot, clearly deciding that sticking it to the liberals isn't worth getting sick over. The article also points out that "employers and universities have started requiring the shots to return to work and class." Even the phrase "pandemic of the unvaccinated," which is being heavily (and accurately) promoted by the White House and the Centers for Disease Control, likely deserves credit for underscoring to the unvaccinated that it's they, not hated liberals, who are paying the price for listening to Fox News.

So this is probably not a matter of one pro-vaccine Hannity clip in a sea of anti-vaccine messaging changing minds. It's just that even the most devout death cults eventually have some members who start to question the wisdom of sacrificing themselves for some dumb ideology. Let's hope that the number of Fox News fans deciding they have their limits only continues to rise.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ron-johnson-vaccines/

no lnx

"Go get vaccinated, America," the president urged the nation last Wednesday in his State of the Union address. Joe Biden had a lot of good news to report to the US Congress on the COVID vaccination effort: 220 million shots have been administered in his first 100 days in office, everyone over 16 is eligible and 90 percent of Americans now live within five miles of a vaccination site. Vaccine manufacturing is booming. Supply will soon no longer be a limiting factor. Yet even as eligibility has expanded, demand has plateaued across the country and vaccination rates have dipped from their peak.

Time is of the essence. More transmissible variants of the virus mean a higher percentage of the population must be immunized to reach herd immunity. We're in a race between the finest that human civilization has to offer and venal dumbassery.

In one corner is science, bolstered by billions in public investment. Eighteen months ago, there were no vaccines for human coronaviruses. Today, there are multiple safe, highly-effective COVID shots. Better yet, thanks to wise public policy and all-hands-on-deck roll-out, they're available for free to any American adult. The president even announced tax credits to reimburse small- and mid-sized businesses that give their employees paid time off to get vaccinated and to recover from vaccine side effects.

In the opposite corner are demagogues, clout-chasers and magical thinkers. These operators think they can gain political power, attention and, in some cases, money by undermining vaccinations against a disease that has killed more than 588,000 people.

Power-hungry Republicans like United States Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin are positioning themselves as heirs to Donald Trump by opposing vaccinations. Johnson recently told a conservative radio host that distribution should have been limited to the truly vulnerable and he questioned the need for broad-based vaccination.

Johnson also attacked the civic-minded values behind the push for herd immunity. "What is it to you? You have got a vaccine and science is telling you it's very, very effective," Johnson asked, "So, why is this big push to make sure everybody gets a vaccine?" The answer is obviously herd immunity, which offers protection for those who can't get vaccinated or whose immune systems can't respond to the vaccine.

It's a shrewd bet. Forty-two percent of Republicans say they probably or definitely wouldn't get a shot, even if it's shown to be safe. The "even if shown to be safe" proviso speaks volumes. Some Republicans claim to be against vaccination as a matter of personal liberty, but nobody's forcing them to get vaccinated. It's all rationalization.

Vaccine refusal is a tribal touchstone, even as vaccine hesitancy ebbs generally. Indeed, last summer's heavily armed anti-lockdown sieges of state legislatures were the dress rehearsals for the January 6 insurgency. Rejecting vaccines is about values, not facts. These right-wingers reject vaccines because vaccines represent science, the welfare state and the common good, which are antithetical to everything they hold dear.

Johnson isn't the only Republican riding anti-vaccine paranoia. Perhaps the perfect example of how vaccine denialism furthers extreme right-wing political ambition is Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, who freely mixes anti-government and anti-vaccine sentiment. Mastriano beat the rush and came out against the COVID vaccine before it existed. He was also a central player in the bid to steal the election for Trump. (He actually had to be pulled out of a meeting with then-president Trump because he was found to be suffering from COVID.) But he recovered enough to organize bus transportation for the January 6 insurrection. Mastriano's antics have transformed him from an obscure legislator to a gubernatorial hopeful.

State legislators in 40 states have introduced bills that would undermine vaccine mandates. These bills are to legislating what vaccine denialism is to science. Few will become law, but they are potent messaging designed to further politicize vaccination.

Some entertainers are also milking COVID denialism for ratings and notoriety. Podcaster Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator better known for his takes on elk meat and DMT, and his willingness to host conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, opined that, "If you're, like, 21 years old, and you say to me, 'Should I get vaccinated?' I'll go no."

Rogan has 11 million listeners, many of them young. Predictably, Fox host Tucker Carlson defended Rogan's attempt to poison public understanding of vaccinations. Even Sean Hannity, who claims he's not anti-vaxx, flirted with vaccine denialism Tuesday, falsely suggesting there might not be any science behind the vaccine....

...tucker]

hannity continues his obsession with private jets

On the April 22 edition of his program, host Sean Hannity leaned into one of Fox’s oldest chestnuts --climate advocates who use private jets to travel are hypocrites -- and targeted one of the network’s favorite climate villains, John Kerry. In the segment, Fox News correspondent Trace Gallagher detailed the travel habits and calculated the carbon output of both Kerry and billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s private jet use. vid]

the segment calls back to a scandal Fox manufactured in February around Kerry’s private jet travel and falls in line with the network’s history of using private jet travel to pivot any discussion on the climate crisis to the “hypocrisy” of “elites” and “liberals” who advocate climate solutions. While attempting to falsely portray politicians and wealthy celebrities as the face of the climate movement, the attack ignores the millions of people around the world harmed by climate change and environmental injustice.

To be clear, use of private jets by those advocating for climate action should be critiqued. But whether or not using private transportation is hypocrisy by climate advocates is not the point. In reality, individual action is wholly inadequate for addressing the scale of the climate crisis when 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. The crisis requires, above all, systemic policy responses that can be implemented only by governments.

Laura Ingraham mocks young climate activists

On the April 22 edition of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham focused her monologue on “the big climate con.” Ingraham’s “con” list included misleading arguments against the benefits of climate action like job creation; attempts to discredit the role of -- and the need for -- global cooperation in dealing with the crisis; and false claims that the scientific warnings on climate are not sound or well understood. Her final point was targeted at young activists who are calling for urgent and bold action -- and she took specific aim at Greta Thunberg and a Mexican climate justice activist named Xiye Bastida.

Ingraham suggested that today’s youths are being “indoctrinated into critical climate theory just like critical race theory.” Not to be outdone by Carlson, Ingraham introduced the clip of Bastida talking about the role of justice in developing climate solutions like this: “What happens when you mix open-borders madness, critical race theory, and climate paranoia all together in one big bowl? You get this." vid]

ingraham’s callous attacks on climate and youth activists are not new. She received significant blowback in 2019 for comments she made about Thunberg and in 2018 for mocking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg.

The biggest problem with Fox’s “War on Earth Day'' is that it is not limited to once a year. Daily Fox assaults erode public acceptance of climate science and the need for urgent and bold action on climate change. Far from being a news outlet, the outlet is a key cog in the right-wing disinformation machine and climate obstruction is one of its main goals.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/right-wing-media-2649880889

...Media Matters has a good round-up of the various strategies being employed by right wing media to spin Wednesday's events as something less serious than an attempted coup spurred on by Trump himself. 

:{

}:

Fox News' Tucker Carlson is reframing the insurrectionistsas the real victims, subject to imaginary liberal incursions on vaguely defined "freedom." Laura Ingraham is working the "both sides do it" angle, falsely equating random and disorganized acts of vandalism during Black Lives Matter protests with the Trump crowd's direct attempt to overthrow the U.S. government and likely murder congressional leaders. 

**Sean Hannity is still working the "antifa did it!" lie**,even after the FBI announced no evidence linking anti-fascist activists to the Trump-motivated mob. And Rush Limbaugh is denying that the insurrection was violent, saying it was simply people taking "selfies," ignoring the fact that five people died, including a Capitol police officer who was beat to death by someone wielding a fire extinguisher. These tactics of deflection also ignore that the mob clearly intended more mayhem— rioters weren't carrying weapons and wearing armor for their health — and it was only a matter of luck that things didn't get worse.

Unfortunately, such right-wing media pressure campaigns have worked, going back at least to the 1990s, when a campaign by figures like Rush Limbaugh to downplay Timothy McVeigh's 1995 terrorist attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City effectively shut down needed discourse about the role that extremist rhetoric on the right played in the attack.

Similarly, feigned outrage on the right over an FBI reportin 2009 over the threat of domestic terrorism from returning veterans caused the Obama administration to buckle, withdrawing the report. Since then, there's been an air of heightened skepticism in mainstream media towards efforts by progressive activists to highlight the growing threat of domestic terrorism. Mainstream journalists have tended, all too often, to treat those warnings as hysterical, even in the face of terrorist attacks in El Paso and Pittsburgh.

Right-wing efforts to minimize right-wing violence can work, so Democrats need to act swiftly to take control of the narrative. Republicans must not be allowed to rewrite history to minimize the seriousness of this situation. And the best possible tool that Democrats have right now to evade right-wing gaslighting is impeachment.

The good news is that Democrats seem to understand this. After giving Vice President Mike Pence the whole weekend to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office, House Democrats announced that they would be introducing an article of impeachment on Monday, accusing Trump of "incitement of insurrection." Still, there still seems to be some desire on the part of House Democrats to give Pence another 24 hours, leading to a confusing timeline where the impeachment is likely not to be brought to the floor until Tuesday....

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-becoming-foxs-news-side-assignment-editor

Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ most influential prime-time star, announced on Monday that he would be taking on a bigger role at the network. Carlson claimed that he was discussing with Fox executives what he described as plans to “expand the amount of reporting and analysis we do in this hour across other parts of the company.” He told his viewers that “the people who run Fox News want more of it, not less.”

They are already getting it -- at the expense of the network’s putative “straight news” programs. In the two days following Carlson’s announcement, those shows aired clips from his nightly “opinion” show at least 14 times. Fox “news” anchors and correspondents have incorporated clips from Carlson or his guests into packaged reports; used them as the jumping off point for panel discussions; and featured them in news briefs.

This drastic change in Fox’s typical programming habits suggests that the wall between the “news” and “opinion” side -- often touted by the network’s executives and defenders -- has become increasingly permeable. Carlson effectively served as Fox’s assignment editor over the last two days, with the network’s purportedly independent “news” side adopting his story selection and framing.

Fox executives know that Carlson is not a credible source for “news” content. The network lawyers won a court case by convincing a judge that no “reasonable viewer” should take him seriously.He’s also a notorious demagogue, particularly on issues related to diversity and the coronavirus pandemic, and his “anti-Black rhetoric” has reportedly led to confrontations between the network brass and its Black employees.

But Carlson’s heightened profile during Fox’s “news” hours comes as the network tries to stave off far-right competitors by promoting its right-wing prime-time hosts. Over the last week, Fox “news” shows have featured on-screen promos, advertisements, and the equivalent of live ad reads for Carlson and his prime-time colleagues, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Fox’s “news” programs aired clips from those three “opinion” shows at least 17 times. Wednesday’s edition of the morning show America’s Newsroom was effectively a show about the previous night’s prime-time lineup, accounting for a whopping 10 of the segments over its three hours. Of those, seven came from Tucker Carlson Tonight, two from The Ingraham Angle, and one from Hannity.

Tucker Carlson Tonight clips were also featured twice on the Tuesday edition of America’s Newsroom, once each that night on the flagship evening broadcast Special Report with Bret Baier and late-night show Fox News @ Night, and three times on Wednesday’s Outnumbered Overtime.

Fox is deploying its “opinion” shows during its “news” hours in two ways, airing both comments from the monologues of their prime-time “opinion” hosts and remarks from their guests.

Clips from the monologues of the prime-time “opinion” hosts accounted for five of the “news” side segments, four of which came on Wednesday’s America’s Newsroom, which separately highlighted all three of the hosts. These segments show Fox treating its employees as de facto newsmakers whose opinions are inherently worth providing the network’s audience during its “news” hours. It’s also a way of giving those viewers more access to their favorite pro-Trump personalities -- lest they change the channel to one of Fox’s competitors.

Chief breaking news correspondent Trace Gallagher, for example, anchored a news brief on Wednesday’s America’s Newsroom that seemed to have little purpose other than to tell viewers what Carlson thinks about coronavirus restrictions.

Gallagher highlighted new limitations on private indoor gatherings that some Democratic governors have rolled out to slow the spread of the coronavirus during the Thanksgiving holiday and commented, “Tucker Carlson blasting the new measures.” He then aired a clip of Carlson saying on Tuesday night’s show, “Politicians have now decided they have total power over you. They can literally decide who comes to Thanksgiving dinner at your house and where they can stand. Well that's lunatic; it’s never happened in American history before." After pointing to some sheriffs who say they won’t enforce the measures, Gallagher concluded the segment.

likewise, the anchors twiceused a clip from Ingraham’s Tuesday monologue attacking “the Thanksgiving police” to frame Wednesday America’s Newsroom segments about the new coronavirus restrictions.

Twelve of the “news” segments, by contrast, featured clips of guests on Carlson’s show.Conservative guests could already expect softball treatment from Carlson when talking about the prime-time host’s particular grievances, like trans youth or the perfidy of social media companies. Now, their talking points are also driving and framing additional coverage on the network's “news” programs.

On Wednesday’s America’s Newsroom, for example, anchor Sandra Smith repeatedly aired comments that Tootie Smith, the incoming Republican chair of the board of commissioners of Clackamas County, Oregon, made on Carlson’s show the previous night attacking Gov. Kate Brown for tightening restrictions due to the coronavirus’s nationwide surge, including by limiting private gatherings.

“You look at what’s happening in Oregon, with this incoming Republican chair slamming these new COVID rules,” the Fox anchor said during one of the segments. She then aired a video of the Republican telling Carlson that Brown’s actions were “a travesty” and “hypocrisy” because the governor was going to “send the police into people's homes and arrest them and fine them for having a Thanksgiving meal with their family.”

that’s an overtly partisan and deeply questionable claim -- while violators of Brown’s order could technically face jail time, the same set of penalties applied to violators of her stay-at-home order in March, and “authorities said at the time that they intended to inform people about the laws rather [than] issue punishments, and it’s not clear those penalties were ever applied.”

Carlson didn’t push back of course, because he’s deeply invested in poisoning the well for any efforts to prevent mass death from coronavirus -- which is the same reason he decided to give airtime to a county official who had a viral social media post in the first place. And Fox’s “news” side decided to prioritize her comments from Carlson’s “opinion” show and air them unchallenged, rather than highlighting an expert voice who could have provided insight into how to stay safe during the holiday.

Despite Fox's best efforts, the United States will soon be transitioning to a Democratic administration -- and the network is sending every signal that it intends to respond by allowing its craziest elements to run the show, influencing the network’s programming well beyond their own timeslots.

==

fox jrnl/straight good on election (fox called az 1st) but bloviators went other way:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trumps-limp-coup-is-falling-apart-but-right-wing-media-and-certain-gop-politicians-dont-know-when-to-cut-bait/

amanda

Most still-rational Americans, watching Donald Trump's atrocity of a press conference on Thursday night, had two simultaneous reactions: Wow, that man really is the worst living American, and also, yeah, this is all over except for the paperwork.

It was an odd mix of emotions. There was the disgust of watching the actual president of the actual United States demand that legal votes be thrown out insinuating that millions of American voters were somehow fakes. But there was also the relief of seeing Trump's facade of bravado collapsing, exposing the loser that was always hiding behind that wall of bluster. Even many Trump voters knew, at that moment, that it was over. Trump's attempted coup is collapsing under the weight of his own incompetence and laziness.

We are now at the portion of the right-wing cycle of failure where the supporters of the corrupt and failed Republican president slink away and pretend that they were never that into him in the first place. (See: Nixon, Richard M., and Bush, George W.) But for whatever reason, a decent number of rats are clinging fiercely to the side of the sinking ship, insisting, as the water starts lapping against their skinny tails, that Captain Bleach-Injector can still somehow save himself.

Thursday night, a frantic Sean Hannity was on Fox News, baselessly claiming that Philadelphia election officials counting Pennsylvania ballots are "violating the law" and suggesting, apparently not as a joke, "a do-over in that state." On his radio show, Hannity begged for state-appointed electors who'll vote for Trump, defying the actual voters of Pennsylvania. (State GOP leaders have declined.)

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show and falsely claimed that "Trump won this election," demanding, "Everyone who's listening, do not be quiet." He then tweeted out the video clip, in case there was any doubt he was trying to rile up Republican voters with these lies. Twitter put a content warning on the video.

Ingraham went along with McCarthy's antics, demanding that other Republican politicians "better stand and fight" for Trump and claiming that "we have huge amounts of money from Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros and others flooding" into "canvassing, you know, states like Pennsylvania." This claim is not only untrue but also nonsensical: The apparent implication is that, while Republicans are allowed to canvass and organize, Democrats have no such right.

Tucker Carlson was relatively limp, trying to boost Trump's conspiracy theories and complaining about "the media" calling the election. The latter is a particularly shameless play, as Trump's entire coup plot — which he has laid out in great detail over the past couple of months— was to seize on the appearance that he was ahead in early media reports on Tuesday night as evidence he had "won," even though all votes hadn't counted.

On Hannity's show, South Carolina's Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham let loose with baseless accusations, which carried a strong whiff of racism, that Philadelphia's elections are "crooked as a snake" while Arizona's are to be trusted. (News flash: Trump will probably lose that state too.)

Even former football coach Tommy Tuberville, having defeated Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama, decided that one of his first acts as a senator-elect was to declare that "the game is over" but "the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other team's side of the scoreboard." It's a false analogy that elides the fact that votes are always counted after the polls close.

Salon's Sophia Tesfaye has an astounding list of other examples from GOP politicians, so readers can get the full scale of how bad this is.

Right-wing media whining has already drifted toward violent fantasies. Newt Gingrich, after letting loose with a racist rant about the "Philadelphia machine," the "Atlanta machine" and the "machine in Detroit," demanded on Fox News that Attorney General Bill Barr arrest election workers and menacingly declared that "federal agents can carry guns in the pursuit of people who are breaking the law."

While interviewing Rudy Giuliani on his radio show, Trumpian pseudo-fascist crackpot Sebastian Gorka declaredthat "we should just force our way in" to voting centers to keep votes from being counted. This was a bridge too far even for Giuliani, who suggested "that would require a fistfight, which I guess our people don't want to get involved in."

After falsely announcing that"Trump won an overwhelming victory" and was already "in his second term" in a Fox Business interview, disgraced former Trump adviser Steve Bannon went on his own radio show and fantasized about killing Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"I'd put the heads on pikes," Bannon said, "as a warning to federal bureaucrats."

All of this, it should go without saying, is deeply evil. These people aren't just undermining democracy and telling outragous lies, they're often trying to incite violence against their fellow Americans. But evil is, sadly, to be expected. That's what has become of the Republican Party after decades of dehumanizing propaganda and five years of Trumpism.

But what's more puzzling is how irrational this behavior is. All these pundits and politicians are out there, flailing around and lying for Trump, and for what? He's a dead man walking, and they know it. The lawsuits Trump's team are filing are unbelievably feeble, so much so that it's clear they're less meant as a serious effort to rescue Trump from electoral defeat than to bolster his delusions that he's being unfairly victimized.

There's no point in defending Trump now, especially not in the stick-your-neck-out way we're seeing from Fox News hosts and politicians like Graham or McCarthy. It's certainly not going to make it more likely there's some miracle where Trump pulls himself out of a nosedive.

The only purpose of all this nonsense is to soothe Trump's injured ego with pretty lies about how he should have won and it's all rigged and he's the real winner here and not the massive loser he looks like to the whole world right now.

And I have to ask: To what end? It's one thing to flatter Trump when he's the president — it's gross and cynical, but entirely rational, to want the power of having a president on your side. It's another thing entirely to keep at it when he's on his way out. It's especially weird to demonstrate loyalty to Trump, a man who will never return it and would sell out all his bootlickers to black-market organ salesmen if he thought that might save his sorry ass.

I'm forced to conclude that these people merely stunned and falling back on bad habits. After four years of relentless lying and toadying to this reality-TV villain who sleazed his way into the Oval Office, the Trump apologists don't know how to quit him. Even as the building collapses around them, they're carrying on as if Trump will somehow find a way to survive this, because that's what they've been conditioned to believe.

The saddest part? Their audiences and supporters will forget all this when Trump finally leaves office. That's when the right will move seamlessly into Phase II: Forget This Ever Happened.

==

trifecta on baby jail tucker 2x down:

biden debate cites new report 525 lost, dhs lied about trying to beep track alpha #

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-claims-parents-are-refusing-reunite-their-children-after-being

trifecta bad trinity:

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/tucker-carlson-hosted-qanon-conspiracy-theorist-noor-bin-ladin-talk-about  trump

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/roger-stone/roger-stone-antifa-and-black-lives-matter-thugs-are-going-be-clubbing-people-suburbs

Roger Stone: Antifa and Black Lives Matter “thugs” are going to be “clubbing” people in the suburbs to suppress voting

09/18/20 4:25 PM EDT

roger Stone continues to lay the groundwork for Trump to declare martial law

09/18/20 1:26 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/roger-stone/roger-stone-continues-lay-groundwork-trump-declare-martial-law

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/warning-left-wing-coup-trumpist-media-prep-their-audience-election-unrest

no lnx many

Warning of a left-wing coup, Trumpist media prep their audience for election unrest

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 09/18/20 10:25 AM EDT

Trump

Molly Butler / Media Matters

Nearly 5 million people were watching on Tuesday night as a Fox News host who claims that white supremacy is a hoax and a former speechwriter for President Donald Trump who was fired for speaking at a white nationalist conference spun out a wild-eyed conspiracy theory portraying mail-in voting as a sinister Democratic cabal’s coup attempt.

Tucker Carlson opened the segment by telling his viewers that Democrats were promoting mail-in voting not as a way to boost safe turnout during a pandemic, but because “they want the uncertainty over the outcome of the election, so they can manipulate the results.” His guest, Revolver News’ Darren Beattie, then explained that “a very specific type of coup called the color revolution” is “unfolding before our eyes.”

A color revolution, Beattie explained, is “a regime change model favored by many in our national security apparatus, particularly against Eastern European countries to overthrow target regimes that they don't like.” (They were actually peaceful protests that toppled despots in places previously dominated by the Soviet Union.) And now, he claimed, that model is being applied to the United States, with “color revolution professionals” deliberately generating election fraud in order “to use lawfare in order to overturn the 2020 election.”

Right-wing media figures generally push a baseline level of apocalyptic rhetoric about the purported predations of progressives. But Trumpist media have reached a dangerous fever pitch over the last week or so, even by that standard. With polls showing Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden following the party conventions and the election only weeks away, commentators like Carlson are preparing their audiences to treat a Trump defeat as a left-wing coup -- and encouraging the president toward an authoritarian response.

Their deranged statements are fed by -- and fuel -- the president’s own unhinged remarks. Trump has portrayed himself as “saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country.” He describes his political opposition as supporters of “angry mobs,” “far-left fascism,” and “left-wing cultural revolution” so dangerous that he has even endorsed extrajudicial executions.And all the while, he’s been openly claiming that he could not possibly lose a fairly held election, and that any defeat would be the result of a Democratic election fraud conspiracy.

Carlson’s show is the most prominent vehicle fearmongering about a Democratic coup, but it is not the only one. A new special from The Blaze TV’s Glenn Beck is titled “CIVIL WAR: The Way America Could End in 2020,” and it details how “the Left is grooming us for an Eastern European-style color revolution this election.” His complex plot sprawls over three chalkboards and features mail-in voting as a vector for “something dangerous happening in November if we don’t act now.” (Beck praised Carlson during the program for the way he has been “putting the puzzle pieces together.”) The Trumpist publication The Federalist has offered up a similar “coup” theory.

The right-wing “coup” talk is the natural result of their demagoguery and dehumanization of the political opposition. Months ago, Trumpist media figures began warning that civilization itself was on the ballot in the fall, with Trump standing as the only thing preventing the left from making America “unrecognizable.” That type of rhetoric has only escalated, producing ever-more-inflammatory claims about what Trump’s defeat might mean to the safety and security of his supporters.

Over the last week or so alone:

Carlson described Black Lives Matter as “poison” that “we have to fight” because “if we’re going to survive as a country, we must defeat this.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn explained that he bought a gun in case “100 or 200 people bent on violence” show up in his suburb.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham and the pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan baselessly attributed the massive western wildfires to left-wing arsonists, blasting false rumors circulating on social media to millions of viewers and listeners.

Fox contributor Dan Bongino claimed that “we're watching the greatest nation in the history of sentient beings collapse in front of our face.”

Fox host Sean Hannity said that U.S. cities have become “war zones” and that there is a “war on police now.”

And Charlie Kirk, a frequent Fox guest and head of the Trumpist youth group Turning Point USA, warned on his podcast that if Trump loses, leftists seeking “bloodthirsty revenge” will “come for us all. They will come for your children.”

Some are taking their hatred of the left to lawless, authoritarian conclusions.

Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of the president, said during an appearance earlier this month on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network that if Trump were to lose (illegitimately as a result of voter fraud, of course), he should try to retain power by having federal agents seize purportedly tainted ballots, using martial law or the Insurrection Act to carry out widespread arrests, and nationalizing state police forces.

Fox’s Mark Levin,meanwhile, has also urged Trump to consider invoking the Insurrection Act -- but he argued that it would be needed if he wins. “He will have to use it to put down the enemy,” Levin explained on his radio show last week.

“The enemy is antifa, the enemy is Black Lives Matter, and the enemy is anybody that is going to use rioting, arson, looting, violence against our country to try to overthrow our country,” he added. “Those are traitors. That's treasonous.”

Extremist violent rhetoric is nothing new for right-wing media. Glenn Beck made it a staple of Fox News during President Barack Obama’s first term. Before the midterm elections, Fox warned its audience members that they needed to vote for Republicans to protect themselves from being killed by Democratic mobs.

But this sort of demagoguery can come with a heavy price. Beck’s rhetoric inspired an attempted domestic terror attack against one of his regular targets that ended with a firefight with law enforcement. And in the days before the 2018 midterm elections, a Trump superfan sent bombs to leftist leaders whom Fox commentators had attacked.

There’s still six weeks to go before the election. How will this spate of violent rhetoric end?

IN THIS ARTICLE

Voter Fraud and Suppression

Voter Suppression

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07/08/20

aha: fox is a corp, and like all psychopathic robots, its function is maximize profit which meand max ratingh which means max activation of trumpistas via red meat; this is in conflict w/ mission/function of jrnlism, straight news provides cover/fig leaf

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/media-critic-fox-news-is-bigger-than-trump-if-he-fights-the-network-hell-lose

do executives at Fox News secretly hope that Donald Trump loses this November because that would be good for the network’s ratings? Before you dismiss that as crazy talk, given the record ratings Fox News has seen during Trump’s presidency, realize that Fox could see even higher ratings when it no longer has to defend Trump’s unpredictable words and deeds and can solely focus on what Brian Stelter calls its “secret sauce”: attacking Democrats and liberals.

Stelter, the host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” and author of the new book, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” raised that very scenario during our “Salon Talks” conversation. As he explains it, Fox News has always been more comfortable attacking Democratic administrations, which traditionally has yielded a ratings boon for the network. “The network in a Biden presidency is almost a situation where tails you win and heads you win,” he said. Fox News might face other problems with Trump as a former president, however. Stelter describes Trump as the Frankenstein monster that Fox News helped create, and as in the tale of Frankenstein, he could end up turning against his creator and starting a competing right-wing network.

In our recent conversation, Stelter also addressed Trump’s nonstop attacks on the media, which Stelter says have taken a toll on the credibility of the Fourth Estate: “He has said ‘fake news’ and ‘hoax’ so many times that it has poisoned the public discourse. It’s like a slow-acting poison that kind of gradually moves to the veins of the American body. And we can’t fully know what the impacts are of that yet.”

Watch my “Salon Talks” interview with Brian Stelter below or read the following transcript of our conversation — lightly edited for length and clarity — to learn more about “Hoax,” his harsh words on the Fox News obsession with ratings and his blunt advice for how larger media outlets can rehabilitate their credibility in a post-Trump America.

Your book “Hoax” is like a feedback loop. Does Trump drive Fox News, does Fox News drive Trump, or does it move back and forth all the time?

It is hard to tell where Fox ends and Trump begins. But if I had to choose one side of this, I would say Fox drives Trump more than Trump drives Fox. Fox has more of an agenda setting role than the President does,which is an astonishing thing to say. But when you look at the power of “Fox & Friends,” when you look at the power of Sean Hannity and recently Tucker Carlson, who is achieving policy goals based on segments he produces on his show. I think it’s clear that Trump is usually in a reactive mode, reacting to what he sees and hears on Fox.

Just this morning Trump was tweeting again about what was going on on “Fox & Friends.” It really is his morning briefing. You mention in the book that Fox News does not have a traditional standards-and-practices department like other news organizations do. Even I have encountered this as a columnist for CNN Opinion. Just this past weekend, the standards department made me rework an op-ed. I was like, “But it’s an opinion piece!” They still had issues because they had our common best interests in mind. Could you share with people what standards and practices do traditionally? And by contrast what is going on at Fox News?

Fox is described as a news operation, a news network, but it’s also a political operation. And right now the propaganda is winning and the news is losing. I had staffers at the network say to me that it’s like working at a place that’s anti-journalism. So you’re trying to produce journalism at a place that’s anti-journalism. I’m wearing my CNN hoodie right now. It says “The World Needs Journalists.” The sense that the world needs journalists, that should be a pretty basic concept. It’s hard to disagree with that idea. However, at Fox, there is disagreement. So Sean Hannity says journalism is dead. You’ve got all these folks on Fox denigrating the media every single day and saying the world doesn’t need these journalists.

That creates a real hostile environment for the actual reporters who do still work at Fox. I point out in “Hoax” that many have left. And I have a lot of stories about people that have left for various reasons, including Shep Smith, but a lot of other names you might not know. For the journalists who remain there, it’s this really awkward, tough, sometimes hostile environment. I think the lack of standards and practices speaks to this problem. There is not a unit, a desk or a division that’s charged with vetting news before it gets onto the air. There are some informal processes, but there’s not that official checks and balances system that CNN has. And every other outlet has — forget about CNN — at the New York Times or Washington Post, there are reasons why there are editors and vetters and researchers. That structure just doesn’t exist at Fox.

You make the point that at Fox, ratings are everything. Everyone is profoundly afraid of losing the audience. Does that then mean that the people bringing in a lot of money, Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham, can literally say anything they want on air, as long as it feeds the audience? Is there no one at Fox News who will say, hey, that’s beyond the pale of what’s acceptable?

There are some exceptions, but what you just said is broadly correct, broadly true and really problematic. There is not this kind of follow-through or accountability that I know happens at other networks and should happen everywhere. This is really most clear in primetime with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. When something really bad happens, when something really outrageous or racist happens on the air, there’s finger-pointing that goes on inside Fox. Some people will point the finger at the head of the network, Suzanne Scott. Others will point at a woman named Meade Cooper, who’s the executive vice president of primetime. Others will point at the executive producers for those specific shows, right? So they’ll shift the blame, no one agrees on who’s responsible or who’s at fault. And then there’s an attempt to move on and pretend that these embarrassing episodes didn’t happen.

That’s when they go on vacation, right. All of a sudden Tucker Carlson is on a pre-planned vacation?

Sometimes. Although I promise some of these vacations are actually scheduled, they’re just at bad times. Bill O’Reilly truly was always going to go to Italy when the scandal erupted about his secret settlements with women that accused him of harassment. So he decided to go on the vacation that he already scheduled, and then of course, he never came back. He was forced out when he was in Italy. But there are other times, yes, where Fox uses this vacation illusion where they’ll say someone’s going on vacation to let the noise subside around their program and try to preserve their advertisers.

One of the really interesting things in the book are the little details. You mention Bill O’Reilly going to Italy and meeting with the pope. It seemed like, at least the way you were shaping it, that perhaps the pope could save his job. Even that didn’t work out.

I think there’s so many stories about the last five years, these big stars at Fox, who thought they were kings of the world, who thought they were bigger than the network. And it turns out no, Fox is the star, not these individuals. No matter who’s on at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., Fox’s ratings are going to remain really high. It speaks to the fact that Fox has a monopoly position in this area of the media.

You write about how Fox got sued because of what some people viewed as misinformation regarding COVID-19 by some of the hosts. When it comes to Fox News and the misinformation that it has shared about COVID, do you feel that the network has responsibility for misleading Americans?

I think there’s a lot of blame and a lot of responsibility to go around about the pandemic, but Fox had the biggest platform on cable and President Trump had the biggest platform in the country. He has the loudest megaphone and he knows how to use it. So the failures of Trump and his media allies to warn the country and prepare the country for what was coming were absolutely shameful. That’s why we called the book “Hoax.” We were originally going to call it “Wingman.” But when Trump came out and said, “These Democrats, they tried to impeach me, now they’re hyping coronavirus, they’re politicizing the virus. It’s their new hoax.” And Sean Hannity said something very similar a week and a half later. They were viewing this as politics, not as a medical emergency. That was the fundamental problem.

And they were always two or three weeks too late, meaning that when Trump finally took action involving flights from Europe, the virus had already gotten in and it was spreading silently across New York City and several other states. And of course, when he announced the European restrictions, there were these long lines of people all shoved together at airports. Fox, to its credit, had a reporter who called that out and criticized the government for it. There were these moments on Fox where there was great reporting, excellent medical advice, excellent segments with doctors. But I think those segments were drowned out by the downplaying of the disease, by the attempts to politicize this and downplay it.

I’ve never seen a president make life and death a partisan issue. And it’s not over. In North Carolina, he and his supporters were not wearing masks. Donald Trump Jr. has been out there attacking the media saying that it’s a lie, that people were wearing masks. Last week, Trump made fun of Joe Biden for wearing a mask. If you take a step back and look at this is, does it feel surreal that you have a president dealing with a life-and-death pandemic in this way, where it’s all about him? Everyone’s doing things to hurt him as opposed to wanting to simply save lives.

It’s embarrassing. And sometimes you need a little bit of perspective, you need to zoom out a little bit. You need to think back six months — it’s been about exactly six months since all our lives changed and these lockdowns began. Now we’re slowly coming out of it and looking around and seeing what the world is like. And the words from the president six months ago sound even worse now, right? We had a sense when he was contradicting his science experts and health experts that he was doing damage. We had a sense when he was downplaying the disease that it was dangerous. We know now, much more clearly, how dangerous and damaging it was.

This is true for his media allies as well. His pro-Trump propagandists. Trump was calling up Hannity at the end of March and saying, “How are my ratings? How do we rate? I called into your show, Sean, how did I rate?” A good friend would have said to him, “Donald, don’t ever ask about that again, we’re in the middle of a crisis. We’ve got hospitals overwhelmed by the surge, we’re trying to order body bags. Don’t ask about your ratings. Please don’t tweet about your ratings again. Please don’t do it, it’s bad for you.” But instead, his so-called friends feed his ego rather than trying to actually help him. I would argue that they actually hurt him when they claim to help him by telling him about his ratings.

The book could have been called “Ratings, Ratings, Ratings” because that’s what Fox News is moved by. It’s a profit machine. When your only touchstone as a news outlet is ratings, what compromises do you end up seeing on screen?

Let me be clear, I’m in television, I’m on CNN. I care about ratings. I care about my show doing well. I look at the ratings every day. But there’s much more of a fixation at Fox on winning because this network’s been No. 1 for 18 years. Everybody knows what’s at stake and what’s on the line, and there’s this intense desire to feed the audience what it wants and keep the audience at all costs. I had producers at Fox describe this as a really unhealthy relationship, where sometimes they fear the audience. Sometimes they don’t respect the audience, but they’re desperate to keep the audience’s attention. What that leads to is Trumpier and Trumpier segments. Segments that are unhinged from reality, that are based in conspiracy theory, that are feeding the audience’s wants and desires and not what they need. And again, this is the problem across television. It is much more severe at Fox.

As you mentioned, at CNN, MSNBC and all the big media outlets, ratings are important. They are connected to profits. But when your only goal is ratings, it’s going to cause massive compromises. Shep Smith and others behind the scenes at Fox News understood that they were putting their careers on the line given that ratings are everything.

Well, also, the ratings also tell you what the audience wants, what the audience expects. Shep Smith’s show at 3 p.m. was the lowest-rated show in daytime, the lowest-rated hour of the day on Fox. It meant that viewers were turning the channel actively when he came on. They did not want to hear him with his corrections to what was aired earlier in the day and his fact checks of the president’s lies.

In the ratings for notable Democratic events, like Joe Biden’s speech or the funeral of John Lewis, you see dramatic declines in Fox’s ratings. Viewers turn it off when the Democrats are speaking and they turn it back on when the rebuttal from the Republicans is starting. So you end up thinking that the audience has been radicalized. What else can you say?

They’ve been served a diet of red meat. Fox News should come with a warning: It serves so much red meat that it’s not healthy. I mean, look, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier, they’re more news journalists. On some level, though, they’re part of the Fox News machine. Is it fair to say they’re also complicit in what is going on?

Well, that’s certainly what some of their friends say, or their former friends. The Trump era has done damage to those kind of gentlemanly, old-fashioned, courteous relationships that you see between television anchors and rivals and all that. And certainly throughout my reporting, talking to dozens of people that were complicit that came up a lot, this sense that the news anchors there are like fig leaves of respectability. One person once said to Chris Wallace at a Columbia event, “Do you think you are there to truth-wash primetime?” That was an interesting term, “truth-wash.” Wallace is on one hour a week, Sean Hannity’s on one hour, five nights a week, in a much, much higher-rated program. You’ve got to look at Fox and say that the identity of Fox is Hannity and “Fox & Friends,” these bigger shows.

But I still think the journalists there do serve important purposes. I understand why they stay. They want to be there for big events. They want to provide a reality check, a fact check to the rest of the programming. But let’s say Bret Baier’s show, for example, is on at 6 p.m. “The Five” is much higher rated at 5 p.m., and then the ratings drop at 6. Not everybody wants to see a newscast, but even his newscast is tilted to the right toward Trump. His panels, for example, in the back half of the show, are tilted to the right. Sometimes the lefty will be a journalist and then he’ll have a pro-Trump person and another right-wing figure.

He tells people that he does this because he wants to have left, right and Trump. And I get it that sometimes “right” and “Trump” are not the same thing, but those panels are not balanced. Those panels are not representative of where the country is, right? If you want to have a panel that represented the country, that’s not how it would look. My point is, even on the newscasts, these programs are tilted in Trump’s favor.

Clearly, Trump has had an impact on Fox News. You’ve mentioned that Trump is their Frankenstein monster, but I want to get a sense from you on how the rest of the media is doing. Do you think the media is better at covering Trump this time, in terms of using the right language? For a long time, people didn’t want to call him a liar, you probably remember that. Now we’re beyond that. We’re two months out from 2020, using terms like “white supremacist” about Donald Trump, using the term “fascist” in an academic sense, not a hyperbolic sense. Are we at the point where the media can speak bluntly about it? ...[much more]

mma 920

fox News prime-time shows spent over 3 hours displaying violent imagery in August
Fox’s prime-time evening shows -- Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and The Ingraham Angle -- spent more than 3 hours displaying violent imagery throughout August, often using images that were days or months old, as they discussed the ongoing protests against police brutality across America.

In Fox News’ 3 hours and 15 minutes barrage of violent imagery the network included images of looting, crime scenes, acts of violence, fires, and the aftermath of violence or destruction. Of the 252 instances of violent imagery, 81 instances included images of burning objects.

At least 50 times, Fox displayed images or videos that were over five days old. And on more than 20 occasions, the images or videos shown in August were from May or June.

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7/19/20

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/fox-news-peddled-misinformation-about-the-coronavirus-253-times-in-five-days-study/

A new study finds that Fox News peddled misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic 253 times in only five days. The documented instances included claims which undermined science and faith in experts, as well as demands that schools and businesses reopen at the risk of public health.

Primetime host Laura Ingraham, who has no medical or scientific background whatsoever, led the pack with about a quarter of the claims — 63 total, or just more than 12 per show. Additionally, the network’s “straight news” programs contributed about 35% of the misinformation.

The study, published Thursday by media watchdog Media Matters for America, was conducted from July 6 to 10 — the week after a Yahoo News report proclaimed that Fox’s coronavirus coverage had taken a “remarkable turn” for the better:

However haltingly and incompletely, the president’s favorite news outlet has started to acknowledge, across various programs and its news site, that the coronavirus is a far graver threat than even [President Donald] Trump himself will acknowledge.

That report cited two articles on the network’s website and two instances of Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Steve Doocy making remarks about masks that, while stopping short of endorsements, did not mock them outright.

The article also pointed out that Fox News requires its employees to wear masks at work most of the time. Additionally, the network appears to have canceled a Fox Nation show about the pandemic hosted by coronavirus conspiracy theorist Alex Berenson, though extant episodes remain available.

new study finds that Fox News peddled misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic 253 times in only five days. The documented instances included claims which undermined science and faith in experts, as well as demands that schools and businesses reopen at the risk of public health.

Primetime host Laura Ingraham, who has no medical or scientific background whatsoever, led the pack with about a quarter of the claims — 63 total, or just more than 12 per show. Additionally, the network’s “straight news” programs contributed about 35% of the misinformation.

The data in the Media Matters study flatly contradicts the isolated examples from the Yahoo report. Here is a quick breakdown:

The misinformation and the seeming coordination with official White House talking points has raised alarm among experts.

For instance, in a “Hannity” interview July 10, the last day covered in the study, Trump responded to a question about the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by saying “he’s made a lot of mistakes.”

That interview fed an ongoing White House effort to discredit Fauci, who pushed back by calling such efforts “bizarre.”

“Ultimately, it hurts the president,” he said.

Then there is the matter of schools. The network and the administration, including Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, for weeks trumpeted an American Academy of Pediatrics statement advising a measured reopening of schools.

The misinformation’s momentum eventually compelled the academy — together with with the two largest educators’ unions in the country and the School Superintendents Association — to clarify its statement. It now says that reopening “will clearly require substantial new investments in our schools and campuses,” and calls on Congress and the administration “to provide the federal resources needed” to safely educate and care for students.

In an earlier Media Matters audit of the cable network, Fox News posted a 20% decline in its coronavirus coverage between March and May.

But this unrelenting misinformation campaign comes amid a massive surge in COVID-19 infections, which has ravaged healthcare resources in Sun Belt states such as Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. In recent weeks, the U.S. has set seven records for daily new cases, topping 68,000 on July 10, the same day which Trump, who said on numerous occasions that the virus would “miraculously” disappear in April, told Hannity that Fauci had “made a lot of mistakes.”

Now, many states are walking back reopening measures. California closed restaurants, movie theaters and bars. Arizona also shuttered movie theaters and bars, plus gyms and water parks.

On July 13, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs wondered “what in hell is going on” as closures increased. Dr. Marc Siegel, a Fox medical expert, criticized the policies as “not consistent,” “punitive” and “draconian.”

However, there are some fractures within the network. A study from April showed that viewers of Hannity were more likely to die of COVID-19 than Carlson’s viewers. Now, the two seem neck-and-neck in misinformation.

Carlson, who in June broke Hannity’s all-time ratings record, recently claimed there was “no evidence” that masks help constrain the pandemic, in contradiction of guidance from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hannity, meanwhile, took the opposite view.

“I went to my grocery store every week. Guess what?” the host recently asked. “They wore masks. Nobody at my grocery store, thank God, got coronavirus.”

“I think they work,” he added.

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plandemic

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/qanon-coronavirus-disinformation_n_5eea6123c5b6a475b84c90c2

no linx great graf

QAnon’s Coronavirus-Fueled Boom Is A Warning Of What's To Come

The far-right conspiracy movement has flourished amid the pandemic, rendering its disinformation campaign stronger than ever ahead of the presidential election.

By Jesselyn Cook, HuffPost US

Hours after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity pondered the news on his radio show. It “may be true,” he mused to his audience of millions, that “coronavirus fearmongering by the deep state will go down in history as one of the biggest frauds to manipulate economies, suppress dissent and push mandated medicines.”

Once again, far-right conspiracy theories had broken loose from internet dens and shaped mainstream conservative media coverage. Hannity, a close confidant to President Donald Trump, was parroting a known promoter of QAnon, the online fringe movement that claims a “deep state” cabal of Satanist elites is running an international child sex trafficking ring, among an ever-expanding repertoire of other falsehoods.

The COVID-19 emergency has turbocharged QAnon’s ability to spread tactical disinformation and attract new followers. As the movement seizes on public anxiety surrounding the virus to lure more people into its conspiratorial web, new data compiled by HuffPost reveals shocking spikes in traffic for dozens of the most influential QAnon accounts across social media. Many have more than tripled in size amid the crisis.

With just months until the polls open in November’s presidential election,QAnon has gained a massive new audience for its unhinged propaganda.

“It’s very concerning,” said Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters who studies online extremism. “Whenever a conspiracy theory or falsehood is circulating on social media, you can usually track it to a QAnon figure playing a role in spreading it.”...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/theres-a-simple-reason-why-america-was-so-vulnerable-to-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/

The worldwide conspiracy is vast — so vast that most of the world’s scientists, journalists and political leaders are in on it. Somehow, in all this time, not a single one of the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of conspirators has grown a conscience and decided to blow the whistle on the conspiracy. Their goal? To ruin everything that right-wing America holds dear: the nuclear family, NFL football, needlessly enormous vehicles, the specials menu at Hooters.

To accomplish this dastardly goal, the conspiracy will fabricate a worldwide threat. They will falsify the data and use the power of institutions like governments and universities and scientific journals to perpetuate this hoax, tricking billions of people into believing this threat is real and needs a drastic response. The only people in the world who see through the hoax are right-wing Americans, of course, who know what lengths the “socialist left” will go to in order to destroy Mom and apple pie.

Coronavirus denialism has, in the period of a few short months, become one of the most serious political problems in our nation. It’s a major obstacle to both containing the virus and reviving the economy, which can’t happen until the virus is contained.

Coronavirus denialism isn’t just flourishing on social media, but emanating from both right-wing media and from Republican leaders, most notably Donald Trump. Over the weekend, the president declared that “99 percent” of coronavirus cases are “totally harmless,” a claim that isn’t just false but part of a larger pattern of Trump’s statements suggesting that the threat of the virus is being faked in order to harm him politically.

in other words, it’s a conspiracy theory, one that dates at least back to February, when Trump claimed that fears of the coronavirus were a “new hoax” designed by Democrats to ruin him.

The rapid spread of this conspiracy theory is puzzling, especially as it requires many leaps of faith, including the belief that literally millions of professionals who don’t know each other — scientists, journalists, government employees, health care providers and so on — are working to perpetuate this hoax.

There’s a simple reason why right-wing America was so quick to rally around a conspiracy theory that’s so utterly preposterous. They spent years training themselves by indulging in climate-change denialism.

It’s not a stretch to say that climate-change denialism and coronavirus denialism are basically the same conspiracy theory. In fact, it often seems like coronavirus denialists have simply copied and pasted their talking points about climate change and adjusted the wording a bit to be about virus spread instead of carbon emissions.

But the basic parameters are the same: a worldwide conspiracy, threats that are invented or exaggerated for supposed political gain, a sinister hidden agenda — whether that’s bringing down capitalism or ending Trump’s presidency.

The content of coronavirus denialism can be somewhat diverse. This article from the New York Times chronicling the struggles of nurses to convince family and friends that the coronavirus is a real threat gives a good overview of the range of different flavors. Some folks insist the virus isn’t real at all. Some accept that it’s real but believe the danger of death or serious injury is being wildly exaggerated. Some deny that it’s as communicable as public health officials believe. Some claim that deaths from other causes are being falsely attributed to the virus.

We see the same kind of diversity in the world of climate-change denialism. At first, conservatives flat-out denied that climate change or “global warming” was even happening. But as evidence for changing temperatures grew, the flavors of denialism did too, with some denialists claiming it was just a natural fluctuation not attributable to humans, others saying that the effects wouldn’t be so bad, and still others saying it was too late to do anything about it so we should just give up.

What holds all these flavors of denialism together is the conspiracy theory undergirding them: The people raising the alarm about this problem are in cahoots with each other, and have ulterior motives.

Climate-change denialists have long held that progressives, and the scientists and world leaders who supposedly share their radical agenda, aren’t really concerned about species loss or rising sea levels or the devastating effects on poor people or any of that. Instead, they argue, these concerns are being faked to create a justification for an all-out assault on capitalism and “freedom.”

Similarly, coronavirus denialists argue that health care workers and scientists warning about the coronavirus are insincere, but instead are part of a larger — again, worldwide! — movement to take down Trump by making him look bad.

The rhetoric between the two forms of denialism is almost comically similar.

In September, Fox News host Laura Ingraham declaredthat teenage climate-change activists were part of a sinister plot to seize control of “our economy, our way of life, our way of transport, how many children you want to have.”

In May, she made the same arguments about recommendations to wear face masks to slow the coronavirus spread, claiming it was about “control over large populations” that is “achieved through fear and intimidation and suppression of free thought.”

In case the link wasn’t obvious, Ingraham made it herself, saying, “They’ll say this whole mask thing is settled science, just like they do with climate change.”

It’s not possible that both things are just settled science, of course. It’s all just a massive conspiracy!

It’s the same story with Fox News superstar **Tucker Carlson, who argued**last September that climate strikes are “not about the environment” but are a left-wing scam meant to create “an emergency big enough to justify grabbing more power.”

Carlson copy-pasted those same arguments to deny the dangers of the coronavirus months later, claiming that the scientific evidence that it’s dangerous and communicable is overblown, and being exaggerated by people who are hungry for “power” and want to see Americans following “orders.”

Both climate change and coronavirus denialism are given a boost by the tribalist politics of right-wing America. For decades now, one of the ways for conservatives to indicate their skepticism of climate change and fealty to the right was to buy giant, gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks, making quite clear to anyone looking that they don’t care one fig about your fears of carbon emission.

The same logic is driving the anti-mask phenomenon, where some of the most fiercely loyal Trump supporters make a big show out of refusing wear a mask, because they don’t care one fig about your fear of catching a potentially deadly virus.

It was clever of Trump and his media followers to encourage his supporters not to wear masks. That kind of showy public defiance has helped normalize coronavirus denialism, and exerted pressure on other conservatives to follow suit to show their tribal loyalties.It serves the same function as mocking people for driving fuel-efficient vehicles did, using peer pressure to get people on board with a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen with climate-change conspiracy theories, once they take hold, it’s very hard to pry people free from their delusional beliefs. If you confront them with the evidence that the threat is real, they simply move to claiming it’s overblown. George Soros will probably be blamed. Or they’ll come up with excuses for why they personally won’t be affected and so shouldn’t care. Or they’ll just shift to casting aspersions on the motives of people who do care, whether that’s Greta Thunberg or Dr. Anthony Fauci, accusing them of being tools or power-hungry schemers. They’ll embrace any view, really, except admitting that the problem we’re all facing is real and that yes, we have to do something about it.

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7/20 tuck ingram cont covid BS in spike mma

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-cabinet-trying-get-fauci-fired

no lnx vid

the Fox cabinet is trying to get Fauci fired

Tucker Carlson: “Is this the guy into whom you want to vest all of your trust? Is this the guy you want to chart the future of the country?”

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 05/13/20 11:43 AM EDT

Hannity, Ingraham, Tucker, and Fauci]

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warning on Tuesday that reopening the country too soon could trigger “avoidable suffering and death” from the novel coronavirus drew a furious response from the Fox News hosts closest to President Donald Trump. The right-wing propagandists seem to be on a mission to force the top infectious disease expert’s removal from the administration amid an ongoing pandemic that has already killed more than 80,000 Americans, and they may have enough influence over the president to succeed.

Fauci, who as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has advised five presidents on pandemic response, said during a Senate hearing that states that ignore federal guidelines and prematurely reopen businesses and roll back social distancing measures risk causing new outbreaks of the coronavirus. Those spikes, he said, would both lead to more deaths and harm the economy. Fauci also argued that the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is likely higher than the recorded figure and that the virus would likely return in the fall and winter.

Fauci’s testimony contradicted Trump’s own push to “liberate” the economy without taking the steps public health experts say are needed to do so safely and successfully. And so, the president’s loyal supporters in Fox prime time lashed out at Fauci to one degree or another on their Tuesday broadcasts.

Tucker Carlson’s ranting was the most vicious, among other things saying he “may be even more off-base than your average epidemiologist” and calling him “the chief buffoon.” “Is this the guy into whom you want to vest all of your trust? Is this the guy you want to chart the future of the country?” he asked

Sean Hannity was milder, emphasizing his respect for Fauci’s work but nonetheless telling viewers that he “seems to favor what the Democrats want and that is massive restrictions with no end in sight.”

And Laura Ingraham also linked Fauci to Democrats, arguing that Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden would “would farm out critical decision-making to others like Dr. Fauci and other unnamed scientists” and displaying an image of Fauci as she mockingly claimed that Democrats wanted America locked down until “until the experts set you free.”

The Fox hosts carefully avoided criticizing Trump for listening to Fauci, instead suggesting that Fauci himself has total power and is using it unwisely. This disparity was emphasized on Wednesday’s Fox & Friends. After Brian Kilmeade complained that Fauci isn’t “factoring in what damage he's doing” to the U.S. economy, his fellow co-host Ainsley Earhardt responded that it’s Fauci’s job to speak to the public health concerns but actually Trump’s responsibility to “factor in everything.”

Fox’s pro-Trump hosts -- notably Carlson -- have previously criticized Fauci and other public health officials as part of the network’s push for a swift end to social distancing measures. But last night’s full-fledged assault on the nation’s top epidemiologist represents a drastic escalation.

That’s a very bad sign for those of us who think it’s a good idea for an expert with decades of experience dealing with pandemics to play a role in advising the president on the one currently killing Americans.

Trump not only watches Fox prime-time shows religiously, but he also personally consults with their hosts. Carlson played a role in former national security adviser John Bolton’s departure from the White House, and his personal meeting with Trump and a monologue he gave in March have been credited with the president taking the virus more seriously. Hannity reportedly speaks to the president nightly and has so much influence he’s been described by White House officials as the “shadow” chief of staff. And Ingraham dropped by the White House twice last month to advise the president and other top officials on the coronavirus response. If the Fox Cabinet turns Fauci into a regular target, it puts his job in jeopardy.

In late February, as Trump channeled Fox attacks on journalists and Democrats for purportedly politicizing the coronavirus outbreak, I warned that the Fox-Trump feedback loop could have dire repercussions if the network’s propagandists started urging the president to purge supposedly disloyal public health experts. Less than three months later, that day seems to have arrived.

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Even before Trump started to make a big show out of not wearing a mask, it was common, at least in my South Philadelphia neighborhood, to see MAGA-hat-clad white men walking around without masks, delivering contemptuous sneers to the rest of us suckers who are covering our noses and mouths. Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in her friendly competition with fellow host Tucker Carlson to see who can be the most obnoxious, has started to demonize mask-wearing by claiming that public health advisories are somehow a conspiracy to sow “fear and intimidation.”

(Considering that mask-wearing to protect others took off in Asia long before Trump even ran for president, Ingraham’s conspiracy theory doesn’t possess even the most remote logical consistency.)

amanda

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/theres-an-insidious-agenda-behind-the-anti-lockdown-protests

On Sunday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, appeared on CNN and declared that the protests against stay-at-home orders that plagued her state capital, as well as numerous others, “depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country,” pointing to the regular appearance of swastikas, nooses, Nazi slogans and the American swastika, also known as the Confederate battle flag. (We can safely assume that the usual excuse of “Southern pride” used to defend the Rebel flag doesn’t apply in Michigan or Ohio or Illinois, states where thousands of young men fought and died for the Union.)

Conservatives cried foul at Whitmer’s words, of course, but there’s little point in denying it. We all have eyes and ears, and no one is mistaking the protesters for people who would flinch if they heard a friend casually use the n-word in conversation.

The question isn’t whether white identity politics and racism are fueling the protests. The real question is why. Racism isn’t some kind of magical force that shields your body from the coronavirus. Even Donald “Inject Bleach” Trump hasn’t been fool enough to suggest you can defeat the virus by wrapping yourself in the Confederate flag. Yet there’s no denying that there’s a direct correlation between racist attitudes and the belief that the coronavirus is an overblown hoax and the lockdowns are the result of a widespread leftist conspiracy.

That isn’t just true of the protesters, either. The most prominent voices in media and politics who are egging them on and denouncing stay-at-home orders also happen to be the people who are doing their utmost to mainstream white nationalist ideology.

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Trump, of course, is the most prominent example of this. He has been eagerly cheering on the protesters, starting with his “LIBERATE” tweets last month that encouraged protesters who were defying social distancing recommendations.

This past weekend, Trump continued to publicly support the far-right protesters, who stormed the Michigan state capitol with guns in a clear bid to intimidate and threaten state politicians out of voting to continue the restrictions on commerce and movement that are meant to keep the coronavirus from spreading. Trump even called them “very good people,” an eerie echo of the words — “very fine people” — he used to praise the neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville in 2017.

In the media, two of the biggest lockdown opponents are also two of the loudest voices seeking to bring white nationalism into the mainstream of American politics.

Over the weekend, Laura Ingraham of Fox News retweeted propagandafrom a notorious white nationalist group, VDare. The tweet blamed immigrants of color for spreading the coronavirus at a meatpacking plant, in a blatant bid to racialize a virus that experts believe was primarily introduced in the U.S. by visitors from Europe, not by immigrants from Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Ingraham has been at the forefront of coronavirus conspiracy theory, denouncing everything from mask-wearing to scientific studies that debunk supposed miracle cures as part of a massive conspiracy to hype the threat of the disease. She even hosted a segmentdenouncing CNN anchors for reporting on their own experiences with COVID-19, clearly threatened by the way such reports make the disease seem both relatable and terrifying.

Ingraham is a major conduit of white nationalist ideology from the fringes to the mainstream, as documented by this 2018 Media Matters report that shows how she uses her perch at Fox News to stoke the belief that “demographic changes” — unsubtle code for growing communities of color — constitute a national emergency.

Same story with Tucker Carlson, whose white nationalist leanings have been thoroughly documented for years. Carlson initially took the coronavirus seriously, in distinction to many other Fox News hosts. But after stay-at-home orders became widespread, he took a hard right turn into denialism, doing segment after segment portraying the social distancing measures as an illegitimate power grab and implying that fears of the virus are being deliberately exaggerated to justify the shutdowns.

With this kind of prompting from Trump and major media figures, it’s no surprise that white nationalists and other far-right groups fueled by white identity politics have led the protests.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained in a recent report, while the anti-lockdown protests were organized and funded by wealthy right-wing donors, far-right groups like the Proud Boys “quickly realized” the value of the protests to amplify their proto-fascist views, recruit new members and further ingratiate themselves with Republican politicians.

:{Neil MacFarquhar :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{of the New York Times expanded:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}: on this in a piece on Sunday, reporting that thefar right sees the crisis as “a potent recruiting tool” its various groups can exploit “to bolster their white supremacist, anti-government agenda”.

David Neiwert, a journalist who has covered the far right for decades, wrote at Daily Kos that far-right groups are seizing on the crisis, hoping they can use it to kick-start “the long-sought ‘second civil war’ they believe is on the verge of erupting in the United States.” This partly illuminates the significance of Confederate flags at the protests, displayed by those who clearly hope the forces of racism and reactionary politics will win the second time around.

To a large degree, then, the marriage of racist politics to the anti-lockdown agenda is opportunistic. Trump himself has clearly indicated he thinks both that his re-election prospects hinge more on the economy than on the number of people dead from COVID-19 (partly because he still thinks he can cover up the latter) and that the economy will come roaring back to life if the lockdowns are ended. (This is doubtful!) Trump’s biggest champions, who share his racist agenda, are backing his play in the hopes that he’s right and that the combination of reopening the economy while minimizing or obscuring the body count will get him re-elected.

But as with so much of the horror show that is unfolding in the era of Trump, the rot runs deeper than political expediency. There’s obviously something deeply compelling to white identity ideologues about the idea that this virus is a hoax concocted by the “deep state,” beyond their desire to defend Trump.

The far right has grown increasingly hostile to the government in the face of social programs — most recently Obamacare — that they view as redistributing money from “deserving” white people to people of color. All the bellyaching about “tyranny” and patriotic cosplay is about creating a moral justification for anti-government views that are rooted in racist resentment and xenophobia. The lockdown protests are about further enshrining their hatred of Democrats, and their reluctance to pay taxes or share public goods with nonwhite people, as resistance to “tyranny.”

There’s no doubt in my mind, either, that the protests are fueled by the fact that thecoronavirus pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color and ravaging urban areas that have long been demonized by right wing media and Trump. While no one has stupid enough to suggest that white skin somehow shields you from the virus (at least not so far), a lot of rural and suburban white people who oppose the shutdowns are viewing it through a racialized lens. This is gently being referred to as the “urban-rural divide” on the issue, but should be understood as white conservatives who resenting having to give up their haircuts and dinners out at Chili’s to protect the health of people living in racially diverse cities.

Of course, what’s really happening is pretty much the opposite: The lockdowns are likely keeping the virus from spreading further into rural and suburban America (though the numbers in those areas are noticeably beginning to rise, despite the media’s focus on New York and other large cities). With Republican governors in many states beginning to ease restrictions to demonstrate their fealty to Trump, there’s a not-small chance that the relative safety that white people living in less dense areas currently experience will evaporate.

But if that happens, don’t expect right-wingers who oppose the lockdowns to apologize for not taking this seriously. They’ll just pivot to blaming cities and people of color for “spreading” the virus,even though those are the people and places who have most firmly supported the measures meant to contain the virus in the first place. The American right, like their feckless orange-skinned leader, will never accept blame for their failures, even as the corpses pile up.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-the-real-reason-bill-barr-has-re-emerged-to-give-us-a-double-dose-of-crazy/

no lnx

Here’s the real reason Bill Barr has re-emerged to give us a double dose of crazy

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon April 10, 2020

New White House chief of staff Mark Meadows announced this week that onetime Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany will become the White House press secretary. The campaign is looking for a replacement and it seems that Attorney General William Barr may be auditioning for the role. Judging from his two-night interview with Laura Ingraham, he is as enthusiastic about the boss as one of the famed Mar-a-Lago Trumpettes.

We hadn’t heard much from Barr since he was scathingly chastised by a federal judge last month for his  “lack of candor” in public descriptions of the Mueller report, saying that Barr had “distorted the findings” of the April 2019 report in his notorious press conference and a letter to lawmakers. The judge demanded a full copy of the Mueller report to review in order to decide whether to reveal the entire document, without redactions.

It’s not every day that the attorney general of the United States is personally castigated by a federal judge. But it was obviously too much to hope that Barr had taken his criticism to heart and had decided to play it straight. His return to the spotlight this week showed that while he may not have contracted the coronavirus, his Fox News brain rot is still raging out of control.

Ingraham has two main hobbyhorses at the moment. She believes that the response to the virus is an attack on civil liberties and that the quick cure for the disease is Dr. Trump’s magic elixir, hydroxychloroquine. She also believes that anyone who disagrees with this is part of a plot to take down her beloved president. So it was within that framework that Barr gave his interview, and he did not disappoint.

Under intense questioning about whether freedom of religion was being infringed by the shutdown, he managed to say that public health measures are acceptable for a short period and then went on to parrot Trump’s maxim that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease,” and even suggesting that more people will die of cancer because researchers are unable to continue their work during the shutdown. He made it clear that he thinks the government should be opened sooner rather than later:

I think we have to be very careful to make sure this is — you know, that the draconian measures that are being adopted are fully justified, and there are not alternative ways of protecting people. And I think, you know, when this — when this period of time is — at the end of April expires, I think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have and not just tell people to go home and hide under the bed,

The “adaptations” he had in mind were unclear, recommending vague “protocols” for restaurants and throwing around terms like “PPE” as if he were the head epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health.For all his alleged concern with civil liberties he seemed to indicate that he thinks restrictions on travel would be a positive consequence of this crisis. At least that’s what it sounded like, since he talked about stricter border laws being a good way to prevent pandemics. After all, viruses don’t recognize citizenship or nationality. If you can’t let people come in, in an attempt to protect yourself from infection, you can’t let people out either. Otherwise, they might bring it back.

It was obvious that Barr has been spending a lot of time watching Fox News. Unprompted, he let loose with a hydroxychloroquine rant worthy of Sean Hannity himself:

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Barr says he’s disappointed about partisanship during the pandemic because the President has acted statesmanlike and worked with all the governors while dealing with gotcha questions from the media.He goes on to accuse the media of leading a jihad against Hydroxychloroquine

Embedded video

Barr apparently missed this exchange on his favorite channel the other day in which Dr. William Haseltine, a renowned biologist and retired Harvard professor, took Fox News host Dana Perino to task for pushing this drug with little evidence to back it up.

Lis Power

@LisPower1

Fox anchor: Can you tell me your thoughts on the drug that is used normally to treat malaria.

Dr. Haseltine: It's sad to me that people are promoting that drug.

Anchor: But what about the anecdotal evidence?

Haseltine: That's complete and utter nonsense. Irresponsible.

Embedded video

The blowback over this alleged miracle cure being relentlessly touted by Trump and his friends at Fox News isn’t coming from the press or the Democrats. It’s coming from the medical community, which is appalled that the president of the United States would use his platform to push unproven drugs based on the recommendation of TV quacks and his own “feelings.”

I guess everyone’s an armchair epidemiologist these days, but the Fox News coronavirus coverage is actually dangerous. The fact that the president and the attorney general consider their blather as a basis for policymaking is kind of terrifying.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-how-fox-news-is-badly-misinterpreting-the-coronavirus-science

no lnx

Here’s how Fox News is badly misinterpreting the coronavirus science

Written by Alex Henderson April 10, 2020

While MSNBC and CNN have offered more than their share of high-quality, informative reporting during the coronavirus pandemic, one cannot say the same about Fox News — which seriously downplayed the pandemic’s severity back in January and February. Fox News’ tone has shifted considerably since then, and its hosts are no longer claiming that the pandemic doesn’t pose a major threat to the United States. But as Media Matters’ Eric Kleefeld explains in an article published this week, some Fox News hosts are calling for a premature end to social distancing — despite evidence that it is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and lowering the number of deaths.

“Fox News is continuing its effort to declare victory in the country’s struggle to get through the coronavirus pandemic, pointing to continued downward revisions in the projected death count to argue that the regular economy should be reopened,” Kleefeld writes. “In fact, those downward revisions are happening precisely because of the social distancing measures that Fox commentators want to start peeling back.”

Members of Trump’s coronavirus task force, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, have warned that based on some models, coronavirus could eventually kill 100,000-240,000 people in the United States. But on Wednesday, Kleefeld notes, CNN reported a more optimistic model of around 60,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. over the next four months.

The more optimistic projections, Kleefeld stresses, indicate that social distancing is working — and underscore a need for the U.S. to double down on social distancing, not let up on it. But some Fox News hosts, according to Kleefeld, want to let up on it.

One of the Fox pundits who is badly misinterpreting the 60,000 projection, Kleefeld reports, is Sean Hannity — who told his viewers, “No state has experienced a surge anywhere near what was told and expected. … Now, while we continue to fight COVID-19, this country must also harness its ingenuity, its brilliance, the free market system — and figure a way to get Americans safely back to work as soon as possible,where they want to be. You can’t allow America’s businesses to wither on the vine and die.”

Kleefeld points out that other Fox News pundits, including Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, have been insisting that the 100,000-240,000 projection was wrong from the beginning. But the more optimistic 60,000 projection, according to Kleefeld, doesn’t show that the 100,000-240,000 projection was inherently flawed — it shows that social distancing is a success and is helping the U.S. to avoid the deadlier scenario.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/are-trump-and-his-allies-setting-up-dr-fauci-as-their-elite-scapegoat/

no lnx

Are Trump and his allies setting up Dr. Fauci as their ‘elite’ scapegoat?

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 6, 2020

This has gotten buried under the pile of horrific news about both the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump’s multiple failures to handle the crisis, but there was a moment during Trump’s daily propaganda dump on Sunday that was even more disturbing than usual. It came while Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was speaking, which usually means a respite from Trump’s firehose of misinformation and self-aggrandizement and an opportunity to get real information from an actual expert who is not a sociopath.

A reporter started to ask Fauci about the use of hydroxychloroquine, the now-legendary anti-malarial drug, to treat COVID-19. Fauci was almost certainly about to say, as he does every time he’s out of reach of Trump, that there’s no real evidence that the drug works, much less that it’s the “game-changer” that Trump desperately wants it to be.

But Fauci wasn’t able to answer the question, becauseTrump stopped him. “You don’t have to ask the question,” the president said, stepping in front of the podium, waving his hand in the air and using his girth as a physical barricade between Fauci and the reporter.

Earlier in the press conference, Trump had offered yet another glowing recommendation of hydroxychloroquine, which has no substantive evidence to recommend it. He literally cited “rumor” as a reason to give it a spin and said, “What do you have to lose?”

People actually have a lot to lose, as the drug has been known to damage the nervous system, cause psychological trauma and lead to heart attacks.

During this exchange, there was a hint of one reason Trump is championing this drug as a of miracle cure, despite the lack of evidence: He’s starting to workshop the excuses he will use and the scapegoats he will sacrifice in order to escape the blame — which he richly deserves — for how badly this crisis spun out of control. And the person most in danger of becoming the primary scapegoat for Trump and his minions is Fauci himself.

“If it does work, it would be a shame we did not do it early,” Trump said about hydroxychloroquine during the press conference Sunday.

At that point, it became clear to me what Trump hopes to get out of this endless hype about an unproven and dangerous drug: A QAnon-style conspiracy theory he can roll out, after the worst of the crisis has passed, about his heroic efforts to save everyone with a miracle drug, which were thwarted by shady “deep state” forces who denied the public this lifesaving drug as part of a plot to make him look bad.

Unfortunately for Fauci, he’s the most obvious candidate to become the villain in this conspiracy theory, in much the same way former FBI director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller were framed as part of a sinister anti-Trump conspiracy during the investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.

Tucker Carlsonof Fox News has been leading the pack in the effort to cast Fauci as the villain in the right-wing conspiracy theories that will pour from the spigots as soon as the spread of the coronavirus and the associated death rate start to ebb.

Dr. Fauci is prescribing “national suicide,” Carlson claimedon his show last week, declaring that the economic collapse caused by social distancing protocols is “a far bigger disaster than the virus itself, by any measure” and declaring that our “response to coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation.”

There are plenty of people who must share the blame for this national disaster. Trump, for one, is to blame because he twiddled his thumbs and denied the virus was serious until it had exploded across the country. If he’d actually taken this seriously and contained the disease, it’s likely none of this would be necessary. Carlson, of course, isn’t blaming Republicans, who seem determined to stop the kind of New Deal-level federal investment in our workers that is needed not just to keep people from falling into dire poverty, but to get the economy back on the road to recovery.

But instead Carlson is blaming Fauci, saying that the doctor “has bulletproof job security,” with the clear implication that he doesn’t care about people who are losing their jobs.

To make matters worse, there are reports that Fauci is conflicting with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, a major booster of hydroxychloroquine. This isn’t surprising, since Trump’s right-wing economics advisers are eager to grasp at any thin straw to suggest that the economy can be “reopened” without causing mass loss of life from COVID-19. It just happens that this fantasy is not scientifically feasible.

It’s easy to see where all this is going. If the social distancing works to contain the virus, conservative pundits will point to the lower-than-feared death toll as evidence that the virus was never that serious — but not, of course, that the severe restrictions on daily life actually worked. They’ll claim that quarantine measures were never necessary, and suggest that hydroxychloroquine was a real solution that was available the whole time but got left on the table thanks of the “deep state” conspiracyagainst Trump. (Rather than because there’s no evidence this often-dangerous drug is actually a cure for COVID-19.) And Fauci will be held up as the straw-man villain in this conspiracy because he supported social distancing and was skeptical of Dr. Trump’s miracle drug.

Will this conspiracy theory work? In the sense of shoring up Trump’s support with his loyal base, there’s no doubt about it. There’s been a run on hydroxychloroquine from Trump supporters, who trust their president’s ill-founded rumor-mongering over any and all medical evidence. These are folks who feel justified in voting for a racist reality TV star and will cling to whatever nonsense Trump and Fox News dish up as a rationalization.

It’s unclear, however, how much traction this nonsense will have outside of that Trumpian bubble. There is definitely room for concern, since conspiracy theories about “secret” cures that regular doctors are holding back for mysterious reasons never seem to go out of style. But as Rutgers professor David Greenberg argued in Politico this weekend, “Politicians may be able in the short term to cover up their failed programs or weak leadership with clever messaging and images,” but in the end, with the economy down the toilet, the public is more likely to blame Trump than whatever scapegoat he and his propaganda team at Fox News serve up.

Still, this “deep state” theory seems close to inevitable, and the attacks on Fauci have already started. Trump’s opponents need to anticipate the twists and turns ahead and have a strategy to counter them. In an election that’s already being compromised by the pandemic itself, the prospect of widespread voter suppression and Trump’s apparently immovable popularity with his base, every weird Trumpian dirty trick could turn the tide.

no lnx an 420

Trump continues to base policy on what he hears on Fox News

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / The Washington Monthly April 4, 2020

On Thursday night, Donald Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act. He made the announcement on Twitter, of course.

We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. “P Act” all the way. Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing – will have a big price to pay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2020

According to a report from Kevin Breuninger, the president issued an order on Thursday night directing Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to “use any and all authority available under the Act to acquire, from any appropriate subsidiary or affiliate of 3M Company, the number of N-95 respirators that the Administrator determines to be appropriate.”

Here is the response from 3M’s CEO.

“The narrative that we aren’t doing everything we can as a company is just not true,” 3M CEO Mike Roman says, after President Trump criticized the manufacturing giant and invoked the DPA to force 3M to step up production of respirator masks. https://t.co/Lfa4xPqVwo pic.twitter.com/3cxA2FUDiu

— CNBC (@CNBC) April 3, 2020

In commenting on this, Kevin Drum identified the problem with Trump’s selective use of this authority.

:{

}:

The White House didn’t explain this, and it’s a little unnerving to see Trump using the DPA in such a gleefully punitive way. It’s supposed to be a technocratic tool for coordinating production, not a way for a president to score political points on Twitter.

:{

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All of this raises the question of what 3M did that earned the ire of the president.As it turns out, this segment of Tucker Carlson’s show aired on Fox News not long before Trump fired off his tweet.

Tucker Carlson & @JaredEMoskowitz Calling Out @3M Selling Masks to Foreign Governments Instead of to Americans

Jared: “I can’t & other emergency management directors can’t get this life-saving PPE because a company decided to make a Globalist decision and not put America First.” pic.twitter.com/wPoFQnm6ej

— The Columbia Bugle ???? (@ColumbiaBugle) April 3, 2020

Carlson’s guest, Jared Moskowitz, works for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis as his director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. He railed about not being able to get face masks from 3M.

It is difficult to sort out the truth from the lies in that segment. Some of the issues Moskowitz is pointing to surfaced after we learned that the federal government, probably under the direction of Jared Kushner, has turned the supply chain for these critical supplies over to the private sector. Josh Marshall documented the issues that raises.

:{

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First is that there’s no clear mechanism to allocate these supplies on the basis of need based on a coherent national plan or framework. Secondly, it opens the door to massive profiteering. Even if companies aren’t technically gouging, that’s what bidding is. And you really can’t call this a legitimate private sector market if every state is having to bid with private companies to secure medical supplies during a historic national health emergency. The private sector rationale is also undermined if the US military has taken over a significant part of the fulfillment process.

The man who turned around the Bush administration’s botched response to Katrina, Lt. General Russel Honore, explained why that is a recipe for disaster.

After hearing the White House say critical supplies are going to commercial distributors who are then selling them to the states which are begging for help, I called @ltgrusselhonore who commanded federal troops after Hurricane Katrina to get his reaction. Watch this: pic.twitter.com/x7u3qoQ0v6

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) April 3, 2020

Regardless of any complicity on the part of 3M, none of the issues Moskowitz complained about would be happening if this administration was taking charge of the supply chain rather than turning it over to the private sector. Those are the facts.

But beyond all of that, what we see is that once again the President of the United States took retributive action based on a segment he watched on Fox News. If you think his son-in-law, who has now been put in charge of managing this effort, will do any better, take a look at this.

Well, this is concerning.

Kushner says Trump finally acted on addressing supplies shortages after hearing about them “just this morning” from “friends of his in New York.”

:{

}:

Not the governor. Not the hospitals. Friends.

:{

}:

This is how Trump runs your country. pic.twitter.com/vlwDR86WWs

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) April 2, 2020

What we have is a president who, during a national emergency, is directing policy based on what he hears on Fox News and from his “friends.” Of course, that’s what he’s always done. In the past, it was bad news. But it is now unconscionable.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-why-the-tormented-conservative-mind-is-so-drawn-to-the-dangerous-allure-of-miracle-drugs/

no lnx

Here’s why the tormented conservative mind is so drawn to the dangerous allure of miracle drugs

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 3, 2020

In one of the oddest developments of the coronavirus crisis, there’s been a run on a pair ofantimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which are used primarily in the U.S. to treat arthritis and to prevent organ damage from lupus. The drugs are being sucked out of pharmacies at an alarming rate, thanks to Americans who have convinced themselves these drugs will save them if the develop COVID-19, and thereby leaving patients who actually need these medications in danger.

This is happening in the face of only thin evidence that these drugs work against the novel coronavirus, and plenty of evidence that they don’t work. At one Paris hospital that used the drug heavily — on the recommendation ofDidier Raoult, a climate change-denying French doctor with a shady reputation— the results suggest these drugs are not effective at all. Chinese doctors also concluded they were useless. These drugs are known to have some scary side effects, including sudden cardiac death in some patients. They are also notorious for psychological side effects, such as paranoia and nightmares. At least one person in the U.S. has died from swallowing aquarium cleaner that contains a similar chemical compound.

So why are so many people so eager to get their hands on drugs that are clearly dangerous and may do no good?

The most immediate reason is simple: The people rushing the pharmacies are Republicans, and both Donald Trump and numerous Fox News personalities have told them these drugs are a “game-changer” that can save them from the coronavirus.

But there’s a reason these false or unproven claims are resonating with the ordinary citizens of Trumpistan. The hope that there’s a hard-to-get miracle cure that will save them speaks directly to the poisonous social Darwinism that guides modern conservatism. It reflects deep hostility to the very concept of a shared public good and a fierce attachment to a racialized ideology of individualism that treats public goods such as health care as things to be hoarded by those with the privilege, money and status to do so.

Conservative ideology simply doesn’t allow for the possibility that anything, including pandemic management, is best managed with a “we’re all in this together” mentality. Instead they’re drawn to this fantasy that there’s a Platinum Member COVID-19 status that can be purchased, which will allow them to opt out of the suffering of the plebeian class that has to quarantine or risk sickness and death.

There’s no question that Trump and other right-wing figures are pushing this hydroxychloroquine angle hard. Trump has talked about these drugs several times during his daily propaganda-dump “press briefings,” as well as on Twitter.

Laura Ingraham of Fox News has been hyping this stuff heavily, hosting a doctor who misleadingly argued that “this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic” Wednesday night. She’s also had tweets removed by Twitter for promoting medical disinformation.

Sean Hannity of Fox News has been urging his millions of viewers to grab this stuff up as well, saying “I love the idea of off label use” and arguing that even if it doesn’t work, people have “right to try”— completely ignoring that these drugs are dangerous.

There are many other examples, carefully collected here by Media Matters. This kind of repetition works, and goes a long way towards explaining how enthusiastically right-wing audiences have latched onto these drugs as a possible miracle cure....

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3/22 mma

  1. ### laura Ingraham: Donald Trump “as usual, has sharp instincts. He see things that sometimes the intellectuals and academics” don’t see

03/20/20 10:50 PM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity defends Donald Trump's unhinged outburst at NBC’s Peter Alexander after he asked Trump to comfort the nation

03/20/20 10:23 PM EDT

where's tucker?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/fox-news-is-a-fascist-network-propping-up-an-incompetent-buffoon-of-a-leader-coronavirus-proved-it/

no lnx

Fox News is a fascist network propping up an incompetent buffoon of a leader. Coronavirus proved it

Written by Hunter / Daily Kos March 17, 2020

Only hours after Donald Trump on Friday gave a press conference begrudgingly admitting the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic he had been insisting was “under control” for nearly a month, Fox News’ most toxic hosts revised their own previously denial-heavy rhetoric to match. Once again, it demonstrates the status of the network as “state news” operation devoted near-exclusively to the needs of conservative propaganda.

If the line from Dear Leader is that alarm over the virus is a “hoax” intended to damage him, that is what Sean Hannity will also say—even knowing that his words will kill some of the network’s own viewers. If the line from Dear Leader is that alarm over the virus is now warranted, Sean Hannity is himself freed to declare that alarm is warranted. But this, too, will be used primarily as a launching point for further praise of the self-promoting, incompetent Dear Leader.

Here is Sean Hannity on Friday, the evening after Trump shifted tone from sneering at administration critics to declaring a national emergency, while still sneering at administration critics. “Tonight, we are witnessing what will be a massive paradigm shift in the future of disease control and prevention. A bold, new precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from America’s leadership. It will give us reason to be proud as a country. The federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together, under the president’s leadership, to stem the tide of the coronavirus.”

Note the use of the word “bold,” one of the otherwise near-illiterate president’s favorite adjectives. It is Dear Leader’s “leadership” that has allowed the United States to finally do what it has done in every similar crisis; declaring a national emergency is now not a longstanding designation allowing our or any government to take specific, defined steps to combat a new threat but a “bold new precedent” from Dear Leader, for the “benefit” of the world.

SeanHannity spent weeks lying about the virus, downplaying its dangerousness and its spread. Now that the game is up and members of his audience will, with near-certainty, be dying in large part due to Dear Leader’s inaction and Sean Hannity’s teleprompter, Sean Hannity will now spend weeks praising Dear Leader’s “boldness” with a North Korean polish and a distinctly Fox News sneer. The Washington Post notes that Hannity was matched in this new revision of state propaganda by Laura Ingraham, among others. Go only so far as Dear Leader himself is willing to; follow Dear Leader as Dear Leader meanders his mental way through each new moment of revelation. No further.

Devil-among-us Jerry Falwell Jr., a frequent Fox guest, was on the network Friday morning telling the Fox & Friends couch that his Liberty University would not be shuttering during the crisis, displaying the trademark Fox sneer while downplaying virus scares as “hype,” and saying “maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.” After Trump’s Friday declaration, Falwell changed his own tune to acknowledge the severity of the crisis—sort of. In practice, he defended his original decision but said that the Virginia governor’s ban on gatherings of 100 or more people “left us no practical choice.”

This week, after a “somber” Trump once again bowed to realities his advisers had never before been able to drill into his skull, Fox News hosts matched his new rhetoric as well. Useful network idiot Jesse Watters changed his tune over the weekend. Not because of the presidential about-face, certainly not. It was “mom.”

“She is suspicious that I might have coronavirus. I wore the gloves all afternoon in the house. That’s what it is. I didn’t take the social distancing that seriously Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, I went out to dinner here in the city. And I woke up this morning I realized that was not the right move.”

Do we really believe that Watters had not noticed that the world outside the Fox News studio was incongruent with the reports from inside until a morning revelation? Or was Monday morning the first moment in which it was safe to note it without penalty?

I am tired of this. I am very, very tired of the pretense that anything this scabby sore of a network does revolves around anything but propping up the most narrow and most radical of agendas; demonization of Dear Leader’s enemies and maudlin praise for Dear Leader’s boldness. It is a fascist network using the bog-standard rhetorical tools of fascism to prop up a fascist, incompetent buffoon of a leader. They will attack anyone on Dear Leader’s behalf. They will let their audience die—they will provide the crematory, if needed—if Dear Leader needs to just one more evening of adulation to get him through the next day without full-on emotional collapse.

Sean Hannity goads his viewers into support for ignoring even a pandemic until the moment it can no longer be ignored. He will goad his viewers again, this time into believing it was Dear Leader who limited the deaths to whatever horrific number they may rise to. Very, very rich men who want just a bit more money than they already have will watch him do it, and allow him to do it, and will pay him to do it.

They will, if anything, order that more flags be added to the network graphics.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-right-wingers-and-trump-apologists-could-get-people-killed-with-coronavirus-disinformation-columnist/

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How right-wingers and Trump apologists could ‘get people killed’ with coronavirus disinformation: columnist

Written by Alex Henderson March 10, 2020

As the death toll from coronavirus continues to climb — passing 4,200 worldwide on Tuesday, according to John Hopkins University in Baltimore — many figures in the United States’ right-wing media believe that their job isn’t to provide accurate information but to defend President Donald Trump at every turn. And by doing so,Never Trump conservative Max Boot asserts in his Washington Post column, they are helping to make a bad situation even worse.

“President Trump has been widely and correctly excoriated for the way he is dealing with the novel coronavirus,” Boot notes. “By minimizing the danger, he heightens it. Even on Monday, Trump was comparing covid-19 to the ordinary flu — even though its mortality rate appears to be many times higher and its economic effect infinitely greater.”

Boot quickly adds, however, that “Trump could not spread disinformation all by himself.”

“A herd of right-wing pseudo-journalists has jumped the shark along with him,” Boot writes. “They are promulgating narratives so at odds with reality that they are likely to get people killed.”

Boot goes on to cite some examples, including familiar Trumpistas at Fox News and Fox Business.

“On Monday,” Boot notes, “Trish Regan was on Fox Business denouncing coronavirus concern as ‘yet another attempt to impeach the president.’ In her demented view, Trump’s opponents are deliberately inducing stock-market losses — presumably, Democrats don’t own 401(k)s — in an attempt to ‘to demonize and destroy the president.’Naturally, Trump — Fox News viewer No. 1 — retweeted her diatribe.”

Breaking911

@Breaking911

Fox Business’ Trish Regan says coronavirus is a “scam” to “impeach the President”

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Boot is equally critical of Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who insisted on Monday that the president’s critics are trying to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax” and that they are “scaring people unnecessarily.”

“To a lot of viewers,” Boot asserts, “it will sound as if Hannity is calling the virus a hoax, even if that’s not what he intended.”

Boot also slams radio host Rush Limbaugh as “irresponsible” for claiming that reporting on coronavirus is a plot to hurt Trump’s reelection campaign. However, one right-wing media figure who Boot cites as an “outlier of sanity” on coronavirus is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Boot points out that although Carlson is “often the most rabid host on Fox,” he hasn’t been downplaying the severity of coronavirus and has correctly warned his viewers, “This is real.”

Boot concludes his column by stressing that whenever right-wing media figures try to make coronavirus seem less dangerous than it is, they are putting their more gullible viewers or listeners in danger.

“The ‘conservative’ media have long shown their contempt for facts and science — for instance, by playing down the danger of climate change or Russian election attacks,” Boot warns. “Never has their contempt for the truth been more dangerous than it is today. To defeat coronavirus, we must first combat the mental afflictions — irrationality, conspiracy-mongering and Dear Leader-like devotion to Trump — spread by exposure to right-wing media.”

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, Donald Trump will give his first nationally televised interview with a broadcast network in seven months when he appears on Fox Broadcasting Co. before the Super Bowl. He won't face any tough questions about his abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, or anything else for that matter, because he will be interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity, a loyal sycophant with deep ties to his administration.

Here's a brief rundown of Hannity's corruption in recent years:

Fox’s message is clear: When the stakes are highest and the spotlight is brightest, the network produces right-wing propaganda, not journalism.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/murdoch-family/fox-news-prime-time-avoided-covering-australian-bushfires-until-murdoch-paper

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Fox News prime-time avoided covering Australian bushfires until a Murdoch paper minimized the role of climate change

Instead of engaging with the reality of climate change, Fox hosts latched on to a false narrative about arson

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ALLISON FISHER & MADELINE PELTZ

PUBLISHED 01/21/20

According to a Media Matters review Fox News prime-time hosts completely ignored the devastating bushfires raging across Australia during the first three months of the crisis It was only after a Rupert Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper started pushing a misleading talking point about arson that Fox’s Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham picked up the story to distract from the role of climate change in accelerating the crisis.

Carlson has hosted one segment about the fires, referring to arson in Australia as “beyond” disgusting without mentioning the climate connection. Sean Hannity has not discussed the fires on air, but he tweeted a link to his own website pushing the false claim that nearly 200 people had been arrested for arson. And Laura Ingraham hosted two separate segments on arson in Australia.

The bushfires have taken the lives of at least 30 people, are threatening to push certain endangered species of animals into extinction, and have destroyed millions of acres of forest and residential areas. The link between climate change and the severity of the bushfires has been described as “scientifically undisputable.” In response, climate deniers have perpetuated a counter-narrative, casting arson as the primary culprit of the catastrophic fires. In reality, experts say “arson alone cannot explain the unprecedented blazes,” with one estimating “that only a handful of the hundreds of massive fires that have broken out in Australia since September were due to arson,” as NBC reported. That handful of fires were likely deliberately lit by a few dozen people -- 24 people are currently facing criminal charges -- and not a result of widespread arson, the red herring that climate deniers have intentionally spread.

Dale Dominey-Howes, a professor of hazard and disaster risk sciences at the University of Sydney, told HuffPost, “The majority of these bushfires have been generated by lightning strikes associated with weather and climate effects.” The fires then spread and burn more intensely due to conditions made possible by climate change.

Despite the evidence, Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham have intentionally misled their audiences and Twitter followers by ignoring the climate connections and hyping the anecdotes about arson. This effort fits with the broader pattern of climate denial that has been prolific across Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and it bolsters recent criticism about climate change coverage lobbed by his son James.

Tucker Carlson

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Citation From the January 8, 2020, edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight:

On January 8, Tucker Carlson hosted former Fox personality Anna Kooiman, reporting from the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, to discuss the impact of the bushfires on wildlife in the country. The segment irresponsibly did not mention climate change, but Kooiman did highlight arson arrests in New South Wales, which Carlson referred to as “beyond” disgusting.

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity has not covered the fires in Australia on his show. However, he did tweet an article published to his own website titled “AUSTRALIA BURNING: Officials Charge Nearly 200 with Arson, Looting as Wildfires Rage.”

Laura Ingraham

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CitationFrom the January 6, 2020, edition of The Ingraham Angle:

Laura Ingraham has repeatedly pushed the arson talking point on her show. On January 6, she closed the program by claiming of the fires: “It was arson, perhaps not climate change.” Earlier in the program, frequent Ingraham guest Raymond Arroyo was upset about celebrities at the Golden Globes talking about climate change and the fires, and he noted that police had “arrested 12 people in Australia for those fires; they were blaming it on climate change -- wrong again.”

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CitationFrom the January 8, 2020, edition of The Ingraham Angle:

On January 8, Arroyo again misled viewers when he called commentary on the role of climate change in accelerating fires “incomplete reporting,” saying, “It’s not correct to say climate change caused these wildfires. The New [South] Wales Police Force in Australia report they’ve taken legal action against 180 people who lit fires or discarded a match on land. There’s a complicated story here -- the media only wants to report one half of it.”

Methodology

Media Matters searched the Nexis database for television transcripts with any of the terms “bushfires,” “blaze,” or “fires” within transcripts that contained the term “Australia” from September 1 through January 20 on Fox News. We analyzed Fox News’ prime-time programming (8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time), which includes The Ingraham Angle, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and Hannity.

We reviewed transcripts for any mention of “arson” or arrests for arson. We counted a segment as discussion of the Australia fires if it included significant discussion of the topic, weather reports that mention the fires, or news briefs that reported on the fires. We excluded topic teasers, defined as a short blip from the host that mentions a segment coming later in the broadcast.

Related

From the sidelines, James Murdoch slams climate denial in Murdoch properties. The problem is even worse than he lets on.

01/14/20 3:10 PM EST

Amid raging bushfire, Rupert Murdoch's Australian media empire turns a blind eye to climate crisis

01/06/20 3:32 PM EST

Murdoch's flagship Australian newspaper pushes climate denial as devastating bushfires rage

01/17/20 11:57 AM EST

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