fox feedback loop efx
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PRIMARY KARO SPOX REV DR PENSION 10 26
NEGLECTED 2nd on trump cabinet
SEE IRAN 3 WAR --> CUBA? MADURO?
SEE ECO ESCAL
SEE JRNL FAIL
7/20 2 related phemon, one is trump fox feedback loop
note tulsi cannot get him to read pdb, so may make fake fox segments
the other is reality distortion field, eg covid death rates based on fox hosts
see trump whisperer
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AN 10 26
MAGA piles on Karoline Leavitt as she ditches family for Fox News stint
Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s move to Fox News drew mockery Monday from critics who pointed to her continued presence inside President Donald Trump’s political and media orbit just two months after she left the administration to spend time with her family.
Fox News has confirmed that Leavitt, who is 29 years old, will be joining the network as an on-air contributor with her start date being Nov. 1, and she will appear on both its news and opinion programs. Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, stated that Leavitt's experience gained during her time in the White House and on the campaign trail gives her a “distinct understanding of today’s political landscape.”
Amy Siskind took notice of the announcement, writing on X that "Karoline Leavitt is going to work at Fox News" and stating that "the cycle of MAGA life and reinforcement loop continues".
Siskind, author of The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year, has long been a critic of Trump and a political activist.
It also brought back doubts regarding Leavitt's reason for leaving the White House in August. Back then, she had stated that, after the birth of her daughter, she did not think it was possible to give her two young children the things they needed while at the same time spending the time and energy required of a press secretary.
President Trump also announced that Leavitt was resigning so as to spend more time with her children and family, adding that she would still remain one of his top external advisers.
A self-styled "MAGA patriot" on X referred to those statements following the announcement on Monday and claimed that Leavitt had abandoned the reason she had given for her departure.
“Sorry folks, no more integrity left here, someone sold out,” the user wrote, adding, “pray for her children and her family.”
Progressive commentator Jamie Bonkiewicz also hammered Leavitt on the same point, writing on X, "I guess Karoline Leavitt had enough of being a stay-at-home mom and taking care of her grandpa husband."
Greg Gutfeld had already made a joke about exactly this situation the day after Leavitt announced that she was leaving the White House.
“There is a concern that she will join Fox, which would then leave us with three women,” Gutfeld said on The Five in August, when referring to the Fox personalities Dana Perino and Kayleigh McEnany, who had both been White House press secretaries. Co-host Emily Compagno later made the joke that Gutfeld was trying to get her off the show “to make room for Karoline.”
Leavitt has stayed closely linked with Trump ever since she left office. She went back to MAGA Inc., the superPAC that supported Trump and where she had previously worked, and has continued appearing often on Fox.
She said that she intends to bring to her new position at Fox the "unique perspective and candor" gained during her time in the Trump administration.
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MMA
Donald Trump’s insatiable demand for Fox propaganda
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/01/26
President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News on Wednesday with a lengthy online harangue that made little sense but demonstrates the network’s impossible task in satisfying the president’s demand for pure propaganda.
“Why does FoxNews always put Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Jessica Tarlov, and every Democrat on, saying bad things about the Republican Party and, of course, me?” Trump posted to his Truth Social account at 12:15 pm ET. “I actually think they get more airtime than Pro Republicans. This is why MAGA, and REAL Patriots, will never like Fox! They repeat a completely negative narrative, on and on it goes, and then we get a quick retort.”
I’ve spent nearly a decade following the twists and turns of Trump’s symbiotic relationship with Fox, particularly the ways in which his social media activity often corresponds to what he sees on his television — and I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about. The president’s commentary about Fox typically blends praise for the hosts he loves and segments he appreciates with critiques of personalities who don’t meet his standard for sycophancy and attacks on the network’s accurate pollsters, but usually his complaints are more coherent than this.
The most plausible hypothesis I can come up with is that Trump looked up at his television at 12:09 p.m. ET, saw a brief clip that Fox Business was airing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) criticizing the GOP’s AI strategy, and flipped out — and that suggests that Trump doesn’t want his propaganda network to even air footage of the Democratic opposition (except, perhaps, to deride them).
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From the September 30, 2026, edition of Fox Business' The Big Money
Meanwhile:
- Schumer does not appear in Media Matters’ database of Fox News weekday appearances, which dates to August 2017.
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has made at least 5 appearances on Fox weekday shows since November 2018, with the most recent airing in January of this year.
- Fox’s Jessica Tarlov is the Democratic host tasked with matching up against four conservatives at once on the network’s weekday panel show, The Five. She made 2 guest appearances on other Fox shows in September; conservative co-hosts Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, and Dana Perino all have separate weekday Fox shows of their own.
- In September, weekday appearances on Fox News by congressional Republicans and Trump administration officials outnumbered appearances by congressional Democratic guest appearances by 148 to 7.
- Fox literally employs the president’s daughter-in-law, former Republican National Committee chair Lara Trump, as the host of a weekly program she uses to promote his administration. (And of course, his current defense secretary is a former Fox host; his U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is a former Fox host; his transportation secretary is a former Fox host whose wife still works for the network; his former campaign manager, his former secretary of state, and his former White House press secretary are on the Fox payroll; and so on and so forth.)
- The network relied on Sean Hannity — a confidant and adviser to Trump who uses his show to propagandize on the president’s behalf — to lead its coverage of the GOP’s midterm convention.
And that’s before we even get into the network’s sycophantic coverage of Trump and his administration.
Fox's coverage is animated by celebrating Trump's supposed successes and trying to will the GOP to midterm victories — but it's never enough for Trump
Fox programming — in the lead-up to the midterms in particular — is a non-stop exercise in assuring viewers that Trump is giving them everything they’ve ever wanted, while sidelining stories that could potentially upset them or harm the GOP’s election push.
On Monday night, for example, Jesse Watters opened his primetime show with a mash note to Trump that simply must be seen to be believed.
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From the September 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
Watters and his colleagues have spent substantial portions of their shows this week lavishing Trump with praise and issuing dire warnings to their viewers about what might occur if Democrats were to triumph in the midterm elections.
Just hours before Trump lashed out at the network, high-brow hack Hugh Hewitt said on Fox & Friends that the president would be a boon to GOP candidates because Trump is “the get-out-the-vote machine for the MAGA base and for everyone that doesn't want their inflation to go nuts.” (As of October 1, The New York Times poll average places Trump’s approval rating at a catastrophic 37-61.)
“Trump has won in Iran,” Hewitt explained. “He’s won in the battle of the Strait of Hormuz. He's won with his economic policies. I think the Republicans have a good case to make. They just have to make it every day, morning, noon and night, and I think they're beginning to get into that groove and they've got plenty of time to make the argument.”
Later in the program, the hosts highlighted different Trump policies that appealed to them, with Lawrence Jones concluding that the White House simply faces a messaging problem.
“I just think that maybe it has been bad producing from the White House when it comes from the message, but this story has not been told,” he said. “Maybe so much and so complex or the president is just focused on doing his agenda, but the communications need to do a better job letting the American people know exactly the benefits that they’ve been — because a lot of people don’t even know about it."
Examples like these are a dime a dozen — but apparently not enough for Trump. The president won’t be satisfied until every minute of Fox programming is indistinguishable from North Korean state TV — and every minute of coverage at every other outlet is as well.
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How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second
11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
Trump’s press grievances are based in their refusal to do propaganda
09/28/26 1:07 PM EDT
The North Koreans do a more nuanced show than Sean Hannity’s take on Trump’s State of the Union
02/25/2
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Angelo Carusone tells MS NOW's On The Line with Alicia Menendez: Where there used to be a Fox-Trump feedback loop, Trump is now “building his own feedback loop of really intense loyalists and AI slop”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 10/01/26
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From the October 1, 2026, edition of MS NOW's On The Line with Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): This is the danger, Angelo. Right? It's not just that he doesn't believe the polling and that he's going to a bunch of red states. It is about the fact that he is inoculating himself from the pain that Americans are feeling, even the pain his own supporters are feeling and articulating to someone like Jason. What is the danger, the substantive danger, not the political danger to Republicans, but the danger to us all of a president who lives in a different reality?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): So, we have two more years of him being president. So, you know, I think there's this idea, this to many people, I know my friends and others feel relief. Oh, it's just November. That's the finish line. No. That's not the finish line. That's just the halfway mark. We have two more years.
And why that matters is your question. Because one of the things that he's done is not just insulate himself and sort of, you know, avoid all this stuff, but create this sort of cycle that Ruth Ben-Ghiat describes as autocratic backfire, which is that you actually lean in and intensify all of the most destructive impulses, not just to the politics, and that's the smallest ball, but to all of the larger policy issues. And you — there's nothing to stop you or even to dissuade you or disconnect you from that.
And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that when he is not using AI to manufacture a visual or video reality for himself, he's surrounding himself— these campaign things, I think of them more like a production schedule than a campaign rally, because what he's basically doing is creating content that he's then going to post on Truth Social and on socials and possibly in these ads and distribute and reinforce the narrative that he's telling himself. And who is with him on this? Not just his own people, but Steve Bannon's production team is following him around for behind the scenes stuff and clipping.
So, he is really creating that own — what used to be the Fox News feedback loop. At least there was some filter. Now he's just building his own feedback loop of really intense loyalists and AI slop, which is going to intensify the autocratic backfire that we're all going to have to suffer over the next two years.
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STUDY: Figures on Fox News' key programs have called for escalation in the Iran war more than 250 times since the initial ceasefire
Mark Levin, Brian Kilmeade, and Gen. Jack Keane accounted for nearly 90 calls for escalation
Written by Harrison Ray
Research contributions from Isabella Sherk, Rob Savillo, Tyler Monroe & Casey Wexler
Published 08/26/26
In the four months since the initial ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, Fox News figures have continuously warmongered. Throughout the cycle of ceasefire violations and stalled peace talks, individuals on Fox have urged the president to “decapitate and destroy this regime,” send Iran “back to the Stone Age,” and urged him to “send the SEALs in and blow something up just for grins.”
Media Matters found that 7 key shows on Fox News — which includes Fox's evening programming as well as some shows hosted by commentators whom President Donald Trump has praised or promoted during the Iran war — called for escalatory action in the Iran War at least 252 times since the initial ceasefire agreement on April 7.
Key Findings
From April 7, when the U.S. and Iran reached the first ceasefire of the war, through August 6, network personalities and guests called for the Trump administration to escalate its war in Iran at least 252 times. Over the period, figures on Fox frequently argued for military strikes, ground invasions or seizing territory, regime change, arming Iranians, or attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Just 5 individuals — host Brian Kilmeade (35 calls for escalation), host Mark Levin (32), Fox News senior strategic analyst retired Gen. Jack Keane (22), former national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (16), and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen (13) — accounted for nearly half of all these calls for escalation. These 5 figures have all played a prominent role at some point in informing Trump's foreign policy, at times specifically on Iran. Trump has discussed Iran with Kilmeade directly and encouraged people to watch Levin's coverage of Iran, while Thiessen and Keane reportedly have his ear on Iran strategy as well. Kellogg has played high-level national security roles in both Trump administrations.
Top 5 warmongers on key Fox News shows
The network's flagship 3-hour morning show, Fox & Friends, led all shows in our study with 92 calls for escalation, followed by Life, Liberty & Levin (50), Hannity (35), and Jesse Watters Primetime (32). Laura Ingraham's show The Ingraham Angle, which has notably pushed back on the war at times, produced only 8 total calls for escalation in our study.
Key shows calling for escalation in Iran war NO GRAPH
Calls for escalation consisted of several types of arguments
The arguments within these calls for escalation fell in 1 of 5 categories — Fox figures arguing for resumed or expanded military strikes, ground invasions or the seizure of territory, further regime change, arming the Iranian populace, or attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure.
All together, there were 299 unique arguments made over the course of the study period (calls for escalation could — and often did — include more than one argument).
Arguments calling to escalate Iran war
Speakers consistently advocated to resume or expand military strikes
As the Trump administration repeatedly announced imminent peace deals throughout the four-month period, network guests and personalities argued for the resumption or expansion of military strikes. Over that period, speakers on the 7 Fox News programs argued for resuming or expanding military strikes at least 119 times.
Brian Kilmeade, who was the network's chief advocate pushing for military strikes, argued 21 times in favor of additional strikes. Kilmeade frequently argued that the U.S. should resume military action, saying he doesn’t “see any scenario” in which the Trump administration would not have to “go back in and finish the job.” The Fox & Friends host argued that “the quicker we start again, it’s the quicker we end it.”
Fox & Friends led the key shows by a large margin, arguing for resuming or expanding strikes at least 65 times.
Jack Keane (14) and Marc Thiessen (11) followed Kilmeade with the most arguments to resume or expand military strikes. On June 5, in the middle of the supposed ceasefire, Keane said, “Let's go big, take down as much of their capability as we possibly can, and get these guys as close to collapse as a military operation can possibly achieve.”
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From the June 5, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Speakers frequently suggested deploying ground troops or seizing territory
Throughout the war, network guests and personalities frequently advocated deploying ground troops or seizing territory. Suggestions from these figures included seizing Kharg Island or other islands in the region, taking further military action in the Strait of Hormuz including reclaiming or occupying the waterway, and for the Trump administration to go in and physically seize enriched uranium. In total, network guests and personalities argued for deploying ground troops or seizing territory at least 63 times.
Brian Kilmeade led all speakers, arguing at least 13 times that the U.S. should deploy more troops or seize territory, often focusing on U.S. control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Keith Kellogg argued to deploy ground troops or seize territory at least 12 times, the next most of any speaker, often focused on seizing Kharg Island. Kellogg acknowledged in his appearances that he has "repeatedly" and "consistently" argued for taking Kharg Island, adding the president should “put a provisional government in charge.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Speakers often advocated for further regime change in Iran
After the initial assassination strikes on the first day of the war, network guests and personalities continued to argue for further regime change at least 51 times.
Mark Levin led all speakers, arguing for this at least 11 times. His show Life, Liberty, & Levin led the charge with at least 21 such arguments. Levin frequently argued for the Trump administration to “eliminate” the regime, insisted that nothing would change Iran “except its destruction,” and argued that “the regime itself must be pulled out by the roots.”
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From the April 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin
Speakers pushed for arming Iranians
Network guests and personalities argued for the Trump administration to arm or fund the Iranian populace or Iranian opposition groups in their fight against the Iranian regime at least 42 times.
Life, Liberty, & Levin (27 arguments) led all shows by a large margin, followed by Hannity (12).
Mark Levin was seemingly the network's chief proponent of arming Iranians, arguing for this 22 times. Levin leaned on comparisons to the Reagan administration, saying in one segment, “We need to arm the Iranian people the way we armed other entities, freedom fighters, throughout the world under the Reagan administration,” and in another, touted the “success” of the Reagan administration when they “armed the freedom fighters.”
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From the May 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin
Speakers advocated for attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure
With network guests and personalities seeming to grow frustrated with stalling negotiations, speakers resorted to arguing for attacks on civilian, oil, or other non-military infrastructure at least 24 times over the four month period.
Fox News host Sean Hannity proposed a campaign to “take out 10%” of Iran's infrastructure every three days until “everything is wiped out.” Keane argued to “destroy and dismantle” the country's energy infrastructure “on the mainland.” And Fox host Jesse Watters repeatedly touted Trump's so-called “bridge and power plant day.”
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From the April 7, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
Fox News' warmongering rhetoric has real-world implications
Donald Trump's close relationship with Fox News has blurred the line between the network's political commentary and unofficial policymaking. The president watches the channel “religiously,” its personalities have direct access to him, and their on-air demands often worm their way into the administration's political agenda.
And while the promised “four to five week” war — which has strained household budgets, failed to achieve its stated objectives, and killed thousands overseas, including at least 18 U.S. troops — ran on, many of Fox News' personalities and guests spent their time on air encouraging the president to dig in his heels and escalate.
Methodology...
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July 16, 2026, edition of MS NOW's All In with Chris Hayes
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): This is interesting, Angelo. This was Matthew Gertz at — your colleague pulled this up, this is the Fox website. They are not going big on, like, again, in line with this theme of the people who sort of are like most invested in Republican political electoral success in the midterms. They're not going huge on this. It does seem like there's a general recognition of people around him. This is not what you want to be doing.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, and look, they got burned really bad, in particular the last time when they carried water for a bunch of election attacks. Because a lot of what we're going to hear tonight, and that's the tell, is going to be retread from the 2020 election lies. But in effect, you know, it used to matter a lot what Fox was doing, especially in this context because of the feedback loop. You needed them to act to get the party and the populace motivated, and that would then create action. But it's one in the same, John Solomon, as it was mentioned, you know, this is a guy that's running the task force. He can do a podcast on and a segment on Steve Bannon in the morning, and then walk into the White House and begin to execute and implement. The lines are gone. You no longer need that power. And that's what's different this time than last time.
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Why Fox News is sticking with Trump’s wildly unpopular Iran war
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 05/21/26
My latest for MSNOW explains why Fox News hosts continue to provide lockstep promotion of President Donald Trump’s Iran war, even as it threatens to weigh down the GOP’s chances in the 2026 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump’s Iran war is a global strategic debacle and a domestic economic disaster that has taken his public support to new depths. With the president’s job approval hitting second-term lows, some Republicans are warning that he may hurt the party’s chances of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
But even as some MAGA pundits are sounding the alarm about the war and its political implications, Fox News’ coverage of the Iran war remains consistently glowing. Trump is depicted on the network as a steely-eyed negotiator who had “the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime,” in the words of one host. He now “holds the cards” against Iranian officials who are “grasping at straws,” a Fox correspondent said. On rare occasions when Fox hosts buck that narrative and express concern about the war’s impact on the country and the GOP, they quickly pivot back to the pro-war propaganda Trump craves.
Fox’s lockstep promotion of Trump’s war reflects two crucial factors: The influence of current and former Fox hosts on the Trump administration, and the network’s desperate desire to hold on to its MAGA viewership at all costs. And because Trump’s own worldview is shaped by the network telling him that he’s engaged in a globally historic victory that just needs more time — and perhaps further escalation — the result is a doom loop without a clear exit.
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05/13/26
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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:
- Trump is negotiating a “strong” “deal” with Iran.
- Trump’s foreign policy is “like clean up on aisles two, three and 11” and “anyone that doesn't trust President Trump or doesn't give him the respect or the consideration that I think is due, given his track record, I think that they would be sorely mistaken.”
- “The economy is hitting on all cylinders now” and the spike in the price of gasoline will end soon.
- “Voters are going to see” the impact of that “tremendous” economic boost by the midterm elections, giving Republicans “a pretty good chance” to hold the House and Senate.
- “It's a complete wild card as to whether” the Iranian regime “survives the year.”
:{Video:
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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
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03/02/26 1:12 PM EST
11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
10/09/20
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Trump’s shambolic policy-making by Fox segment hits the airports
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 03/23/26
President Donald Trump threw his administration into chaos on Saturday by demanding the stationing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at U.S. airports in response to long lines triggered by the expiration of funding for the Transportation Security Administration.
Top administration officials offered disparate explanations for what those ICE agents would be doing — explanations which also seemingly diverted from Trump’s own vision — as they scrambled to turn the president’s social media posts into some sort of coherent policy.
Meanwhile, ICE and Department of Homeland Security sources are grumbling to the press that the deployment will reduce their ability to focus on the president's deportation agenda.
The president-mandated mayhem appears to stem from Trump’s habit of governing based on policy ideas he gets from his television, particularly the MAGA talking heads at Fox News. This Fox-Trump feedback loop has at various times driven everything from administration staffing to legislative and communications strategy to presidential pardons and federal contracts.
Both the problem — long airport lines caused by Trump’s opposition to funding TSA — and his response — stationing ICE agents at the airports — seem to have their origins in Fox segments he had been watching.
A government shutdown is hitting TSA and it’s Trump’s fault (with a Fox assist)
A partial government shutdown which impacts DHS is causing major disruptions at some U.S. airports, including long security lines. And while that shutdown originated with Democratic opposition to the Trump administration’s lawless immigration enforcement, it continues because of the president’s Fox-fueled demand that future appropriations come stapled to his unrelated legislative priorities.
Senate Democrats have refused to support appropriations for ICE or Customs and Border Protection absent reforms to their operations in light of the rampages by those agencies, while Senate Republicans have to date blocked Democratic attempts to separately fund TSA and other DHS agencies. And Trump is reportedly standing in the way of a deal pitched to him by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in which “Senate Republicans would support funding all of DHS except ICE,” funding for which would be handled separately on a partisan basis via reconciliation.
What explains Trump’s intransigence, which has become the primary cause of the airport lines? He is using the TSA funding as leverage as he tries to ram through the SAVE America Act, legislation otherwise stymied in the Senate that would rewrite the nation’s election laws. And he is doing so in response to something he saw on Fox.
On March 8, the president declared on Truth Social that he had been so moved by MAGA activist Scott Presler’s comments about the SAVE Act on Fox & Friends that morning that he would sign no other legislation until it was passed.
“It must be done immediately,” he posted. “It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION - GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY - ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION FOR CHILDREN!”
The implications of this pledge for TSA funding seem to have largely gone unnoticed. But on Sunday night, Trump explicitly tied the two together.
“I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,’” Trump posted to Truth Social, claiming, “It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate.”
After denouncing what he portrayed as the Democratic position on DHS funding and rattling off a list of the SAVE Act’s provisions, he urged Senate Republicans to combine the two, writing: “Lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary.”
Right-wing radio caller -> Fox segment -> presidential post -> policy
ICE agents are currently patrolling some U.S. airports after a right-wing radio caller proposed the idea, the show’s host took it to Fox, and the president adopted the policy in a social media post, as Semafor’s Ben Smith first detailed in a Sunday report.
“Linda from Arizona” called into The Clay and Buck Show on Friday afternoon proposing to “bring in ICE agents” as “a solution to the TSA problem.” Clay Travis, the show’s co-host, liked the idea so much that he brought it up that night during a hit on Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime.
“I had a caller on the show, The Clay and Buck Show, today, Charlie, had an interesting idea,” Travis told guest host Charlie Hurt. “What if President Trump announced that ICE agents were now going to be supplementing TSA agents inside of all of the airports? The ICE agents are still being paid. How quickly would Democrats panic if he said hey, we're going to put some ICE agents in line with the TSA, help to expedite everybody?”
“And oh, by the way, if we think you might be an illegal when you're coming through to try to get on an airplane, we're going to go ahead and arrest you at the airport, too,” he added. “I think that might solve things in a hurry. It was a great caller suggestion. But it also goes to let's let people actually do something normal, go through security and get on airplanes — Democrat, Republican and independent, I think it connects with everybody.”
“Yes, it absolutely does,” Hurt replied.
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From the March 20, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
Hurt and Travis weren’t the only ones enamored with “Linda from Arizona’s” idea — the next morning, the president adopted the proposal. In a Saturday morning Truth Social post, Trump stressed — just as Travis had — that the ICE agents would be used both for security and for arresting undocumented immigrants.
“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” he posted, “including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota.”
Trump made clear that the plan was moving forward in another post two hours later, writing, “I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!”
“The White House hasn’t commented on whether Trump did, in fact, hear the TV segment and act accordingly,” CNN’s Brian Stelter noted Monday. “But Trump has a decade-long track record of watching Fox and posting his reactions on social media.”
In another sign that the policy process driving this policy is the Fox-Trump feedback loop, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's “first post Saturday came as a surprise to officials inside ICE and at DHS, who have spent the weekend trying to figure out how it could work, according to three people familiar with the matter.”
Indeed, in Sunday interviews, two top Trump officials one would expect to be involved in executing the policy offered starkly different explanations for what ICE agents would be doing at the airports.
White House “border czar” Tom Homan, who Trump posted Sunday morning is “in charge” of the ICE deployment, stressed that the agents would be assigned to tasks like guarding airport exits, which he said would free up the TSA officers doing that work to do screening to reduce lines.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that, but there are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs and help move those lines,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash.
But the same morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy suggested that the ICE agents would be screening passengers alongside TSA officers.
“TSA agents are law enforcement,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “They know how to pat people down, they know how to run the X-ray machines because they are, again, under Homeland Security with TSA. So if we can bring in other assets and tools to assist TSA to get rid of these lines, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.”
Notably, both Homan and Duffy are in their administration roles at least in part due to their Fox ties. Homan, who has gone through the revolving door from the first Trump administration to a stint as a Fox contributor and then back to the second Trump administration, has taken on a larger role overseeing ICE operations after a Fox & Friends co-host suggested increasing his responsibilities. Duffy, meanwhile, is a former Fox contributor and host (he is also married to a current Fox & Friends Weekend co-host, who worked in that role alongside the nation’s current defense secretary).
Homan and Duffy both seem to be trying to salvage some sort of workable plan from the president’s Fox-stoked half-idea. Notably, neither pitched what Travis initially floated and Trump actually asked for in his initial post — ICE agents specifically tasked with arresting undocumented immigrants en masse. And that’s what the president still says is going to happen.
A reporter asked Trump at a Monday morning gaggle, “Will we see ICE arresting illegal migrants at airports?”
“Yeah,” he responded. “That's why the Democrats are going crazy.”
The president added that ICE agents “love it because they're able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That's very fertile territory.”
That’s not what the Journal is hearing. “Officials at ICE and DHS expressed frustration with the plan, saying it will distract from Trump’s core goal of deporting as many people in the country illegally as possible,” the paper reported.
It’s no wonder they are concerned. Either the ICE agents have been moved away from positions supporting the president’s mass deportation effort and are not going to be arresting immigrants at the airports, or they are going to be carrying out their brutal arrest operations in front of airport crowds and end up further damaging the agency’s reputation. The president has put ICE in a no-win situation, all to support a policy of holding TSA funding for ransom to secure unrelated legislation.
That’s what happens when you govern via Fox segment.
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11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
11/13/24 11:34 AM EST
01/26/26
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Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 06/18/25 mma
President Donald Trump appears to be careening toward a U.S. military strike on Iran as current and former Fox News figures — from posts on the network’s airwaves, elsewhere in the right-wing media ecosystem, and within his administration — fight to influence his decision.
For years, Trump's obsession with the Fox universe has driven policy decisions, administration staffing, and countless stream-of-consciousness social media posts. Now, the network will have an outsized role in determining America's potential involvement in a spiraling regional military conflict.
The George W. Bush administration spent months “following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein” before finally launching that war in March 2003. That strategy — based on cooked intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction dishonestly sold to American people — resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. service members and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians as well as a massive financial cost.
Two decades later, Trump seems poised to join Israel's attack on Iran, with the stated goal of preventing that country from acquiring nuclear weapons that the U.S. intelligence community says it is not seeking. The president on Tuesday threatened to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bragged that the U.S. is involved in securing the airspace over that country, and called for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” all while the U.S. military is marshalling forces in the region. And that push has come with little effort to convince the public, which overwhelmingly opposes U.S. military involvement in Iran, of the necessity of such a course.
The Fox propaganda engine is driving this chaotic process. Trump reportedly became more interested in U.S. military action because he saw favorable Fox coverage of Israel’s initial attacks on Iran, while more recent segments have stressed the importance of U.S. involvement. Fox host Mark Levin and his former colleague Tucker Carlson are waging a scorched-earth battle for Trump’s ear, with Levin apparently gaining the advantage. And top administration officials with roles in a potential conflict — including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — are in their positions in the first place because Trump approved of their previous work at the network.
It remains unclear what the president will decide to do and how any of it will play out for the country and the world. What seems likely, however, is that the Trump administration will undertake its Iran policy with the same inconsistency that characterized his tariff policy; the same low quality of staff work that got a reporter added to a text chain where top officials shared info about a forthcoming U.S. strike; the same lack of care for the lives of foreigners that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people; and the same disinterest in following the law on display in his deportation plan.
And Trump’s action, regardless of what it is, will receive sycophantic cheers from his propagandists at Fox.
The Fox-Trump feedback loop is powering Iran policy
A June 17 New York Times story detailing how Trump had shifted from trying to restrain an Israeli attack on Iran while overseeing negotiations with its leaders to supporting Israel’s strike and considering U.S. involvement highlights the role of a key player: Fox.
“When he woke on Friday morning, his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall-to-wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel’s military genius,” the Times reported. “And Mr. Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself.”
Under typical circumstances, a U.S. president shifting the nation’s military posture based on a few cable news segments would sound fantastical. But under Trump, major aspects of federal policy regularly turn on what he is hearing from his favored TV personalities. Fox hosts understand their influence and regularly seek to influence Trump’s decisions, both through their programs and in private conversations with the president.
Fox’s hosts thus wield incredible power over Trump’s actions. And in recent days, those figures have been using their platforms to tell the president that U.S. strikes on Iran are both important and likely to succeed with little cost. They know which buttons to push and are banging on them as hard as they can.
“Trump's favorite TV network has staked out the pro-war position – and it isn't making as much room for debate,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported on June 18. “Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump's ego — simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen.”
Carlson and Levin go to war
Carlson and Levin are waging a scorched-earth campaign against each other, with each presenting their own views as the true America First position as they seek to influence Trump’s decision-making.
Carlson, a proponent of the right’s white nationalist and Holocaust-denying wing who tends to oppose foreign military interventions in favor of attacks on domestic enemies, claims that bombing Iran would “shut down Trump’s three core promises.” Levin, a staunch advocate for deploying U.S. power in the Middle East, argues that American intervention would be consistent with Trump’s policy of “peace through strength.”
Levin currently appears to have the upper hand. Politico reported last week that Levin made his case to Trump directly at a June 4 meeting:
During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the president is not accurate, according to an intelligence official as well as another Trump ally familiar with the matter. Levin urged Trump to allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would torpedo the diplomacy.
Carlson subsequently lashed out at Levin and other Fox figures whom he (accurately) described as “warmongers.” He wrote on June 13:
The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran. On that list: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson. At some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.
Levin replied, calling Carlson “a reckless and deceitful propagandist” who “promote[s] antisemitism and conspiracy nuts” (all obviously true). He added: “It doesn’t occur to you that your supposed sources are disloyal to POTUS. You and they are undermining him and you just declared your break from the President.” In a series of subsequent posts, he denigrated his former colleague as “Chatsworth Qatarlson” and accused him of “rooting for Iran” and “trashing our president.”
Carlson responded in a June 16 appearance on his ally Stephen Bannon’s program in which he claimed that Levin is “terrible on TV” (true) with a screen presence reminiscent of “listening to your ex-wife scream about alimony payments” (sexist but at least directionally correct). He further claimed that Levin’s appearances on Fox demonstrate that what the network is “doing is what they always do, which is just turning up the propaganda hose to full blast and just trying to, you know, knock elderly Fox viewers off their feet and make them submit to where you want them to” (extremely accurate).
Trump, for his part, weighed in on Sunday, June 15, saying of Carlson’s critique of his Iran policy, “I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” In a Monday night post, he described Carlson as “kooky” (another accurate characterization), adding, “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Levin swiftly highlighted both comments on social media.
Levin took a curtain call on Hannity’s Fox show on Tuesday night, screaming, “You’re either a patriotic American who’s gonna get behind the president of the United States – the commander-in-chief, or you’re not!”
Many key administration roles are filled by former Foxers
Several senior administration officials who will play key roles in advising Trump on whether and how to conduct military strikes and then implement that policy are wildly unqualified people who got their jobs because the president liked their Fox appearances. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the 23 former Fox employees Trump has appointed to his second administration.
Gabbard, a former Fox contributor from the Carlson wing of the MAGA movement who lacks “the typical intelligence experience of past officeholders,” said in congressional testimony earlier this year that it was the conclusion of the intelligence community that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
Trump, however, apparently preferred Levin’s lunchtime claim that Iran was actually days away from a bomb, telling reporters on June 17, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having a weapon.” The president, Politico reported Tuesday, “has increasingly mused about nixing Gabbard’s office completely” and, according to one source, “thinks she ‘doesn’t add anything to any conversation.’”
Trump promoted Hegseth from Fox & Friends Weekend co-host to the leadership of the Pentagon, and based on his past Fox commentary, he is likely a voice in favor of military action. His early leadership of the Defense Department is not encouraging for how such action might go — he has driven off his senior staff, discussed U.S. strikes in private texts that subsequently leaked, and oversaw a costly and ultimately ineffective campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Other relevant former Foxers include Mike Huckabee, the former network host Trump installed as U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Tammy Bruce, the former Fox contributor currently ensconced as the State Department spokesperson.
No matter what happens, this much is certain: A bunch of current and former Fox News employees are essentially deciding whether the U.S. is going to war.
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11/13/24 11:34 AM EST
11/19/24 7:30 AM EST
04/23/25
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mma 9 22
Then-President Donald Trump ordered Alex Azar, then his health and human services secretary, to immediately approve the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment because Fox News host Laura Ingraham had said it was effective, according to a new book.
Trump, an avid Fox viewer who regularly turned the network’s programming into White House policy, became transfixed by the drug after his trusted Fox hosts started talking it up in mid-March of 2020, as the novel coronavirus swept across the country. If hydroxychloroquine had worked as the COVID-19 miracle cure Fox claimed, it would have allowed Americans to swiftly return to normal life without fear of becoming seriously ill from the virus. Unfortunately, hydroxychloroquine is not an effective coronavirus treatment, according to numerous studies as well as U.S. and international health agencies.
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser shed new light on the role Fox played in convincing Trump that hydroxychloroquine would be a COVID-19 “game changer” in their new book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.
They chronicle a phone call between Trump and Azar that took place on March 18, 2020, two days after Ingraham had praised the hydroxychloroquine’s potential during an interview with the Long Island lawyer Gregory Rigano, who championed the drug.
“Laura says hydroxychloroquine works. It’s perfectly safe, so just approve it,” they write that Trump told Azar during the phone call.
When Azar protested, the then-president told him, “Laura takes it. It’s safe,” Baker and Glasser report.
“I want it approved today. That’s an order,” he ultimately demanded, according to the book.
After Trump publicly touted hydroxychloroquine at a press briefing the day after his call with Azar, the Fox-Trump feedback loop went into full swing: Fox ran hundreds of segments talking up the drug’s benefits; Trump tweeted praise of the drug in response to the coverage and successfully pressured health officials to issue guidance supporting the use of the drug as a coronavirus treatment; and Ingraham visited the White House with two members of her “medicine cabinet” to meet with Trump and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and push for additional support for the treatment.
The federal government ultimately amassed a stockpile of 66 million doses of a drug that is not effective in treating COVID-19 because Fox hosts told Trump that it worked and he believed them. Meanwhile, the network moved on to peddling ivermectin, another drug studies show is ineffective in treating COVID-19, while slandering the actually effective COVID-19 vaccines. The results for Fox’s viewers have been devastating.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-trump-fox-feedback-loop-triggered-federal-probe-john-kerry
no lnx many vid
How the Trump-Fox feedback loop triggered a federal probe of John Kerry
WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ
PUBLISHED 09/08/22
Geoffrey Berman, a former top federal prosecutor during Donald Trump’s administration, reportedly writes in a new book that a spurious investigation of former Secretary of State John Kerry was set in motion in response to then-president Donald Trump’s May 2018 tweet accusing Kerry of “potentially illegal shadow diplomacy” with Iran. Trump’s tweet came in response to a report the then-president was watching at the time on Fox News, according to a Media Matters review.
As president, Trump reportedly watched hours of Fox programming a day and regularly tweeted his responses to what he was seeing on television in real-time or on tape-delay, as Media Matters extensively documented. The network’s commentators and coverage shaped the former president’s worldview – and thus his administration’s actions, including presidential pardons, federal contracting, legislative and communications strategy, pandemic policies, and much more.
Now it seems we can add a federal probe of one of Trump’s political opponents to the list. The New York Times reported Thursday that in a new book, Berman wrote that while he was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Justice Department officials ordered him to investigate Kerry after Trump criticized Kerry’s “possibly illegal” behavior on Twitter. Those tweets have their roots in Fox’s coverage.
On May 7, 2018, Washington, D.C., was abuzz with the prospect that Trump might withdraw from the Iran nuclear accord that Kerry negotiated during the Obama administration. The president, meanwhile, spent the morning tweeting along with Fox & Friends, the Fox morning show, which he was apparently watching on tape-delay.
At 10:08 a.m. ET, Trump tweeted, “The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one who created this MESS in the first place!” As I noted at the time, that tweet tracked with the content of a segment that had aired on Fox’s America’s Newsroom roughly an hour earlier.
During that segment, Fox correspondent Griff Jenkins discussed a Boston Globe report from a few days earlier about Kerry’s behind-the-scenes effort to salvage the Iran deal. Kerry “has been engaging in what some are calling shadow diplomacy,” Jenkins reported, using the same term Trump would in his subsequent tweet.
Immediately after Jenkins’ report, anchor Bill Hemmer turned to contributorByron York, who said that Kerry’s actions were “a big deal” because Kerry was “meeting with foreign governments in an attempt to undermine the current U.S. administration.” York added that while “you will hear” that Kerry may have violated the Logan Act, “it likely does not apply here.”
Video From the May 7, 2018, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom.
Indeed, conservatives were raising the prospect that Kerry had violated the Logan Act – including Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy earlier that morning, in a segment the then-president likely watched. But as University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck explained in the Globe report, that statute would not apply in this case, since Kerry was acting to maintain what was (at the time) current U.S. policy.
Trump’s tweet set off his supporters at the network, particularly Sean Hannity, who maintained dual roles as a close Trump adviser and primetime host. On his show that night, Hannity suggested that Kerry was “violating the law, the Logan Act,” and asked, “Where are the agents in the FBI and the DOJ breaking down John Kerry's door? Another blatant example of a two-tier justice system sadly in this country today.”
Later in the program, Hannity polled members of his panel as to whether Kerry had violated the Logan Act. After they all agreed that he had, Hannity said, “Let's see when that investigation begins.”
Video From the May 7, 2018, edition of Fox News' Hannity.
Fox’s criticism of Kerry continued into the next day on Fox & Friends, including a segment in which co-host Brian Kilmeade claimed his action “seems to be a violation of the Logan Act,” while his guest compared the former secretary of state to the Taliban. Roughly an hour after that, Trump tweeted, “John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it! Stay away from negotiations John, you are hurting your country!”
Later that day, Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Iran deal.
Trump’s tweets had a major and immediate impact, Berman explained in his book. The Times reported:
On May 9, Mr. Berman writes, Justice Department officials told his office that it would be responsible for an investigation into Mr. Kerry’s Iran-related conduct. The F.B.I. would join the inquiry.
The focus was on the Logan Act, a rarely invoked 1799 statute barring private citizens from unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments, which has been criticized as unconstitutionally vague. Mr. Berman notes that no one has ever been successfully prosecuted under the law.
But, as he puts it, “The conduct that had annoyed the president was now a priority of the Department of Justice.”
Although Mr. Berman says he does not know what prompted the Justice Department to seek a Kerry investigation, “No one needed to talk with Trump to know what he wanted. You could read his tweets.”
According to the Times account, Berman wrote that in subsequent months, the Justice Department repeatedly pressured his office to move forward with the investigation of Kerry, particularly after Trump again tweeted about the purported crimes.
“They were asking us, basically, what’s taking so long? Why aren’t you going harder and faster at this enemy of the president? There was no other way for me to look at it,” he wrote.
Berman said that when his office told the Justice Department it would not be prosecuting Kerry following a year-long investigation, the case was passed to another U.S. attorney’s office. When that office also determined the case lacked merit, he wrote, “the Kerry investigation just quietly died — as it should have.”
Trump ultimately fired Berman in June 2020 during a purge of federal prosecutors seen as insufficiently loyal to him.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-conservative-media-are-killing-trumps-campaign/
Even close allies of Donald Trump are flummoxed about why he hadn’t grasped earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic that it was in his own best interests to “at least pantomime[ a sense of command over the crisis or convey] compassion for the millions of Americans impacted by it,” according toThe Washington Post.
Part of the answer, per the report, was “his almost pathological unwillingness to admit error.” But another factor was the existence of “a positive feedback loop of overly rosy assessments and data from advisers and Fox News.” Trump, a malignant narcissist, is known to lash out at aides who provide him bad news so it appears that they’ve fed him a steady diet of the kind of Pollyannaish stories that are a mainstay of the conservative media’s coverage of the pandemic, and of his regime’s response to it.
Trump is running a historically awful campaign for re-election. At present, his twin pitches for a second term are his ability to pass a rudimentary test designed to diagnose dementia and a promise to deploy thousands of unidentifiable and poorly trained federal paramilitaries to American cities, against the protests of state and local officials, in the name of protecting statues and federal buildings from vandalism.
For anyone who consumes a balanced media diet, these strategic choices are inexplicable. While it’s true that as we approach 150,000 mostly avoidable deaths from the pandemic and millions continue to file for unemployment, he doesn’t have a lot to run on, a competent candidate would make an effort to show that he understands how this crisis is impacting people and demonstrate that he’s focused on containing the outbreak and rebuilding–whether or not it’s true. This is politics 101.
polls find that Trump is losing to former Vice President Joe Biden on both of the quixotic issues he’s chosen to litigate the race; more voters question his cognitive abilities and physical stamina than do Biden’s, and while a majority of Americans oppose the removal of Civil War memorials, Biden is nonetheless more trusted to “effectively handle law enforcement and criminal justice issues,” AKA “law and order.” And polls aside, Democrats cleaned Republicans’ collective clock running on healthcare against Trump’s argle-bargle about invading refugee caravans in the 2018 midterms, long before the pandemic hit.
But what seems like an incomprehensible strategy on its face makes perfect sense when you consider that, according to multiple reports, Donald Trump is an avid consumer of conservative media who tends to be impervious to advice from experienced Republican campaign hands. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that he’s been led astray by the conservative press.
I’m sure that if you look hard, you could find a conservative commentator or two who acknowledge the existence of peaceful protesters standing against systemic discrimination in policing.But you’d have to really look for them. The overwhelming majority of right-wing discourse about these protests is premised on the belief that everyone out in the streets are rioting, looting or engaging in vandalism. It is also a given in these circles that the protests are motivated by Marxism or a desire to destroy the “American way of life” or whatever other fanciful idea occurs to the conservative commentariat–anything other than racial injustice.
That discourse leads to a significant reality-gap. While there were scattered instances of vandalism and rioting early on, real reporters on the ground in cities across the country consistently describe mostly peaceful protests, with small numbers of people occasionally crossing the line and damaging property.
Meanwhile, those of us who aren’t ensconced within the right-wing media bubble have been alarmed and appalled at an endless stream of reports–almost always accompanied by viral videos–of unprovoked police violence against reporters, legal observers and of course protesters who were only “guilty” of refusing to disperse when ordered–or in many cases, guilty of nothing at all. That police brutality has contributed to an extraordinary shift in public opinion toward the Movement for Black Lives and away from Trump’s preferred narrative of what’s happening in American cities.
A similar dynamic may be driving Trump’s mystifying decision to make his ability to pass a simple dementia test–and his bragging that the doctors who administered it were shocked that he passed–into a news story. It’s the kind of attack that would be condemned as dirty and vicious if it were delivered by an opponent.
For those of us outside the conservative epistemic bubble, Joe Biden stutters, is prone to gaffes and suffers from occasional “senior moments” when he flubs a date or gets a number wrong. Most of us have had an older relative or acquaintance who was perfectly sharp and entirely “there,” as Biden pretty clearly is, but who had similar lapses. (My late grandmother did eventually develop dementia in her mid-90s, but she started having those “senior moments” 20 years earlier, when she was about the same age as Biden.)
While this line of attack is born of desperation as the Trump campaign has failed to land solid punches on Biden–a white man who’s been around forever and is well known as a moderate, mainstream Democrat–it’s also a matter of faith in the conservative press that the “liberal media” are covering up Biden’s dementia, and that Trump would have a good chance of turning his campaign around if only he manages to expose the former Vice President as the drooling dotard they claim he is. As Greg Sargent reported a couple of weeks back, “Fox News has been relentlessly pushing the line that Joe Biden might be suffering from dementia.”
It would be wrong to attribute Trump’s stunning decline in support among seniors–long a reliably GOP-leaning constituency that he needs to remain competitive in the must-win state of Florida–to these hamfisted attacks on Biden’s cognitive acuity. That decline is clearly a result of his gross mismanagement of the pandemic, and of his party’s consistent refrain that we must sacrifice the elderly and infirm on the altar of the stock market. But those attacks certainly can’t be helping.
The carefully constructed alternate reality presented by the conservative media is a double-edged sword. They keep the Republican base engaged by maintaining a constant state of anxiety about the horrors of immigrants, socialists, modest expansions of public health insurance, tax increases on the wealthy, etc. But while savvier Republican operatives rely more on polling and focus groups to devise strategy, Trump’s ego drives him–and the sycophants he surrounds himself with–to embrace their partisan propaganda as reality. And that appears rendered him and his campaign incapable of making the substantive and enduring course-correction that they so desperately need.
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