webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

FOX11 BAK

OOPS --> BAK

ESTB 2 26

MERRI OK

SEE FOX AND FRIENDS ON TARIFF bs BIZ?

SEE CRM

ALT FACT EARTH2 ECHO ESCAL

SEE BAD TRINITY

JRNL FAIL IRAN WAR?

SEE ENERGY DOMINANCE

BAK 3 26

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// GT REPLACEMENT OPEN BORDER BS

MMA

Right-wing media are calling for ICE to “surround the polls” in midterms

Right-wing media figures claim Democrats are “basically admitting they're cheating” by opposing ICE at polling stations. But noncitizen voting is a fake problem and ICE has racially profiled US citizens.

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Published 03/27/26

Right-wing media personalities are pushing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be deployed to polling stations during the 2026 midterm elections, claiming it will “fix the fraud” of alleged noncitizen voting and suggesting the only reason Democrats oppose the idea is that “they want to cheat” and “protect illegals’ voting rights.” Department of Homeland Security officials, meanwhile, have put out mixed messaging regarding whether or not the department will consider this course of action.

In reality, according to experts, instances of noncitizen voting are negligible and the presence of ICE agents at polling stations would be illegal, as it could intimidate voters into staying away and have a “chilling effect” on elections due to ICE’s history of racial profiling and harassing and detaining U.S. citizens.

//

  1. ### Right-wing media use the SAVE America Act to undermine the upcoming midterm elections

:{03/20/26

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

:{02/18/26

  1. ### Daily Wire host admits if the SAVE Act becomes law, “fewer actual American citizens will end up voting”

02/12/26

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MMA

  1. ### Even Fox personalities are struggling to defend the Trump administration's move to lift sanctions on Iranian oil

03/27/26 9:33 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax host: “I know it stinks, but please bear with the $10 to $20 more for a tank of gas for another week or two”

03/27/26 9:20 AM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity’s 180 on ground forces in Iran: from “no boots on the ground” to “I can see two scenarios where there might be a necessity”

03/27/26 9:07 AM EDT

  1. ### Divisions emerge in right-wing media as Iran war stirs anxiety about food production, fertilizer

03/27/26

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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

Citation

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

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.

:{Video

Citation

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.

//

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

11/19/24 7:30 AM EST

  1. ### A comprehensive review of the revolving door between Fox and the second Trump administration

11/13/24 11:34 AM EST

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

01/26/26

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MMA

Fox used California's climate policies to deflect from gas price spike driven by Trump’s war on Iran

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

:{:{Published 03/23/26}:

Fox News and Fox Business coverage of rising gas prices nationwide has singled out California, blaming the state’s climate regulations for skyrocketing fuel costs while downplaying global oil shocks from the Trump administration’s war with Iran.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, opening what has quickly become a large-scale and open-ended conflict, started without congressional authorization, that has been widely criticized as an illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression. The U.S. has joined Israel in targeting Iranian leadership as well as civilian and military infrastructure, while President Donald Trump has signaled an explicit willingness to pursue regime change. These attacks have triggered Iranian retaliation, including efforts to restrict transit through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints, helping drive a sharp increase in global crude prices and U.S. gas costs.

Fox's coverage has largely echoed the Trump administration’s framing of the conflict and its economic fallout. Even when Fox has acknowledged that U.S. strikes on Iran have disrupted the global oil supply, that connection is not sustained. Instead, Fox’s coverage has dispersed attention about rising gas prices across a range of explanations, moving between domestic policy factors, claims that price increases will be temporary, and arguments that higher costs are a necessary “sacrifice.” Taken together, these talking points diffuse the link between Trump’s decision to launch the conflict against Iran and the resulting price spike, shifting scrutiny away from the source of the disruption.

However, the focus on California serves a distinct narrative function — by emphasizing the state’s climate regulations, Fox networks depict a global, war-driven supply shock through a familiar domestic political lens, recasting climate policy as part of the problem behind high gas prices rather than a solution to it.

Fox framed California’s high gas prices as a warning about Democratic climate policy during a war-driven price spike

Lying at the entrance to the Persian Gulf from the Sea of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important oil trade routes, carrying roughly one-fifth of global supply. As the conflict with Iran continues to escalate and shipping through the strait is disrupted, oil prices have soared above $100 per barrel and gas prices have risen sharply across the United States. Analysts have described the conflict as a major supply shock, and the International Energy Agency has called it the largest oil disruption in history.

Rather than linking rising prices to the disruption in global oil supply, segments on Fox News and Fox Business repeatedly shifted attention to California’s long-standing fuel costs, presenting them as evidence that Democratic climate policy is responsible for higher prices.

During the March 9 episode of Fox Business’ *Varney & Co.*, Stuart Varney, introducing Chevron executive Andy Walz, warned of an “economic collapse in California under Gov. [Gavin] Newsom’s climate policy.” Walz picked up the thread, claiming California could eliminate in-state refining and increase dependence on foreign fuel sources. He continued by describing the state as “heading down a path of relying on imports” and predicted that its climate policies could add another $1.20 per gallon to gas prices, which “hurts the people that can least afford it the most.”

On March 11, Fox Business’ *The Evening Edit* acknowledged rising global oil prices tied to the Iran war but pivoted to California, highlighting soaring in-state gas prices. The segment featured a clip from an earlier interview with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who assailed California's climate policies and concluded that the state has “restricted supply and killed their own economy.”

Later that day, Fox News @ Night reinforced the same frame, with guest and former Trump adviser May Mailman claiming that California's policies are designed “not just to make gas more expensive, it's to make gas unavailable. … So when President Trump says he's brought oil prices down, he has created the policies that have allowed energy dominance to thrive in this country.”

On March 14, Energy Secretary Chris Wright invoked the Defense Production Act to order the restoration of drilling operations off the California coast, describing the move as necessary to strengthen domestic supply and energy security. The order provided a new policy rationale for arguments already circulating on Fox.

On March 16, *The Big Money Show* broadened the argument beyond California, with co-host Dagen McDowell pointing to Democratic-led states more generally and claiming that gas taxes imposed “in the name of Mother Nature and climate” are driving up fuel costs for working Americans. On the March 17 episode of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham opened an interview with Sable Offshore chairman and CEO Jim Flores by pointing out that California, under Republican leadership in the 1980s, produced “a million barrels a day.” Now, Flores claimed California's declining oil production was “the reason why Trump invoked the Defense Production Act … to make sure that our military is well-fueled.”

By March 18, the narrative framing had hardened further. During the March 18 episode of *The Evening Edit*, host Elizabeth MacDonald lamented that “gas is headed to $8 a gallon in parts of the state, … but now California Democrats are suing to stop the Trump White House from reopening a pipeline offshore from Santa Barbara.” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) agreed with a statement from Wright that California had “strangled its own oil and gas production.” He continued, “We used to be a net exporter. We can produce all of our own oil and natural gas. We've chosen to shut them down, to regulate them out of business,” before concluding, “We clearly are a state in a downward spiral.”

That same framing persisted in the days that followed. During the March 21 episode of Fox Business' The Journal Editorial Report, host Paul Gigot acknowledged that the Iran war was disrupting global energy markets but quickly pivoted to California, telling viewers that gas prices are “much higher” in the state because “Gavin Newsom’s anti-fossil fuel policies make the state more dependent on foreign oil.”

This coverage treats California’s climate measures as unjustified drivers of higher prices, portraying the state as expensive, constrained, and vulnerable. In reality, California's gas prices are often higher than other states' because of policies aimed at cutting pollution, addressing climate change, and reducing reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets. But these regulations are not driving the current spike in gas prices, which follows weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that have disrupted the entire region. Oil markets responded. Prices followed. This is a global supply shock driven by war, not a sudden change in California policy.

Fox used California to redirect blame away from Trump’s war on Iran and U.S. reliance on the fossil fuel economy

Fox's focus on California gas prices comes as another long-running Fox narrative breaks down. For years, the network argued that U.S. “energy independence” would shield Americans from global oil shocks. The current spike, driven by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz despite record domestic production, directly contradicts that claim. Rather than reckon with that failure, Fox has largely ditched the “energy independence” framing that was so central to its narrative explanation for price spikes under the Biden administration.

Now, the Trump administration’s decision to launch a new conflict in the Middle East becomes less central to how rising prices are understood on Fox, replaced by a familiar domestic argument about Democratic governance. However, this shift does more than redirect blame; it cuts against the reality that energy shocks like this one are a direct consequence of our reliance on fossil fuels and the vulnerable supply routes that sustain them. This is not an abstract risk — it is already happening now, and the global community is increasingly alarmed for the future.

By recasting a war-driven price spike as the product of climate policy, Fox turns that reality on its head, treating a crisis rooted in fossil fuel dependence as evidence against moving away from it.

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MMA

As Iran war drags on, right-wing media lash out at NATO and Iranians who haven’t overthrown their government

When it comes to assigning blame for the Iran war spiraling out of control, MAGA media have found convenient scapegoats who aren’t named Trump

Written by John Knefel

Published 03/20/26

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran lurches into its fourth week without any clear endgame, signs of frustration are beginning to show among President Donald Trump’s right-wing media allies. These outside figures, some of whom function as kitchen Cabinet advisers both on- and off-air, still support the war, but as it continues to escalate across the Middle East they have started to find scapegoats for the elusive easy victory many were predicting.

Two primary targets are the United States’ NATO allies, which so far have refused to deploy their militaries to open the Strait of Hormuz, and the Iranian people, who have not overthrown their government. The nexus of these two seemingly distinct critiques is that ordinary Muslims are supposedly at fault in both cases, with some right-wing pundits specifically blaming European Muslims for NATO countries’ reticence to join Trump’s war. Fox News has been leading on both fronts, but former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro have weighed in as well.

Since March 15, Trump has criticized NATO countries for declining to join his war of aggression, saying they were “making a very foolish mistake” and claiming that the United States “will protect them, but they will do nothing for us.” (The only time NATO’s collective self-defense clause has been invoked was after the attacks against the U.S. on 9/11.) Trump has also acknowledged that Iranians looking to take to the streets would face serious danger even as he has urged protesters to “take over your government,” a call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made as well. (Israeli intelligence reportedly determined that in the event of a popular revolt, Iranians would be “slaughtered.”)

Whether or not the exasperation voiced by right-wing media about NATO and the lack of a popular Iranian uprising foreshadows broader concerns about Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war remains to be seen. But as civilian casualties mount — especially in Iran and Lebanon — and markets sink, some of Trump’s allies may continue searching for people to blame, just so long as they aren’t named Donald Trump.

Fox News leads anti-NATO charge

Trump’s criticisms of NATO countries’ refusal to open the Strait of Hormuz migrated to Fox almost immediately.

On March 16, speaking over a chyron that read “The ‘alliance’ that isn’t,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham latched onto the talking point.

“If anyone watching tonight is surprised when America stands alone, well, you haven't been paying attention,” Ingraham said. “Now, of course as usual, liberals claim that Trump is the reason that any alliances are frayed. That is a joke.”

Ingraham went on to blame Muslims for Britain’s reluctance to get involved militarily. “As usual, they don't need to take out their wallets or risk any political heat at home, especially with the burgeoning Muslim population in the U.K,” she said, before airing footage of Trump complaining about the longtime U.S. ally. “All this proves is that President Trump was right all along about these friends — well, they’re friends who took advantage of us for about 80 years.”

:{:{Video}:

Citation

From the March 16, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

The following morning, Fox & Friends picked up the baton. “It's pretty amazing that Germany goes no, I'm not going to do anything; U.K. says no, I'm not going to help; France says I've got some in the area, I'll see what I can do; Japan says no,” host Brian Kilmeade said. He then downplayed the scope of the energy crisis before taking another shot at U.S. allies.

“We're going to be fine. It's going to be just a little — a couple more weeks that maybe there's more shooting going on,” Kilmeade said. “In the big picture, this backs up what the president has been saying about our allies in times of crisis.”

Kilmeade’s co-host Lawrence Jones added: “Not a good look.”

The same day, Bannon took a shot at “our great allies in NATO telling Trump yeah, I don’t know, this Iran thing’s not really our deal — keeping the Red Sea open, the Suez Canal, Straits of Hormuz, that's not really NATO's problem.”

He added: “It’s outrageous what the allies have told us.”

:{:{Video}:

Citation

From the March 17, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro took aim at NATO countries “exorbitant regulatory and welfare structures,” adding: “We don't need different allies. We need our allies to be better.”

“President Trump was always right to force NATO countries to pay up for their own defense,” he continued. “But if NATO countries want America to help them out in times of common need, they need to step up as well when one of the world's chief shipping lanes is closed by an internationally recognized terrorist regime.”

Back at Fox & Friends, on March 18 Fox political analyst Guy Benson joined Ingraham in laying blame at the feet of Muslims in Europe. “In a lot of these countries, there is a growing Muslim population where there are sectarian politics that are increasingly driving decisions that are being made about not offending that group of people on a whole host of fronts,” Benson said. “I think that is inescapably part of the calculus here.”

Jones said of NATO countries, “I was always raised — no one likes a freeloader.”

Jones agreed and replied that the “radicalization that’s happening in a lot of these countries” is “inspired … by Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of terror.”

Later that morning, Jones said of NATO countries, “I was always raised — no one likes a freeloader.”

On his Premiere Networks radio program, host Sean Hannity adopted his Fox colleagues’ rhetoric in targeting European Muslim communities. “Great Britain that has sharia courts. France has no-go zones — I am telling you, Europe is collapsing before your eyes,” Hannity said. “Unfettered immigration, they don't demand assimilation. It is now an unmitigated, out of control disaster.”

Hannity suggested punishing NATO countries for thus far staying out of the military campaign, telling his audience: “I can tell you right now, this is not going to end well for Europe. It just isn't. We'll just ignore their conflicts. We'll just ignore what they go through.”

Fox’s Mark Levin — who, along with Hannity, has been one of the network’s major Iran war boosters — praised Israel and lashed out at European countries.

“Israel is a great ally,” Levin said. “They're fighting alongside us. Look at the British. Look at the French. Look at the Spanish. They're doing nothing. Effectively nothing except undermining us.”

On his March 19 radio show, Hannity used even stronger language. “We were just speaking about how our NATO allies are pathetic, didn't I just say that?” he asked his producer, adding: “I'm frankly disgusted with Great Britain and France and Germany and even Italy. … On the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, we get 1% of our oil from going through that strait — not much — and all the president said is hey, you want to help us here?” Of the European countries which haven’t joined the U.S.-Israeli war, Hannity was blunt: “There will be a price to pay in the end. Just like they have had unfettered immigration without assimilation, they will pay a price for that.”

Fox blames Iranian citizens for the lack of an uprising: “Freedom is costly, right?”

It’s not just Muslims in European countries who have supposedly let down the war effort, according to right-wing media; the Iranians living under a repressive regime and suffering from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have as well. For these conservative pundits, Trump’s war with Iran cannot fail, it can only be failed.

Responding to her guest’s discussion of a possible popular uprising in spite of the dangers posed, Ingraham said on March 10, “They’re going to have to do it, because freedom is costly, right?”

“Our soldiers are dying in this,” she continued. “We’re paying a big price, so the Iranian people need to stand up.”

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Citation

From the March 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

On March 16, Fox Business anchor David Asman lamented that “we haven’t seen the popular uprising that we were hoping for — that can take years to happen.”

Fox anchor Harris Faulkner responded by invoking a longstanding Orientalist trope, arguing that Iranians are consumed by an ancient, irrational hatred of the West. “Their grievance is that they hate us, and I don’t really think that there’s a date on the calendar,” Faulkner said. “They could literally go thousands of years and still be at the point where they are now — I mean, they have been.”

“So I’m not sure we can generationally change them, but we certainly can take some things out of their hands,” she continued. “Like oil, and other things we’re so dependent upon as a country.”

Faulkner returned to the topic on March 18, prior to Trump attending the dignified transfer of six U.S. service members killed in the Iran war. Faulkner described one of the war’s aims as “to perhaps win a space for the people of Iran to step up into their own freedom.”

“We cannot do it for them,” she continued. “But we can be part of the solution in terms of making it possible.” More than 1,348 Iranian civilians have been killed since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli campaign, according to an Iranian official.

The New York Times reported March 19 that “a small team of British military planners has been sent to the United States to help draw up options to reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” though the effort stops “short of the sort of major military action President Trump has demanded, such as sending warships to the waterway imminently.” Similarly, Axios reported that seven countries supported a vague coalition to open the strait, but that it was “largely a gesture to placate President Trump.”

Whether there is any appetite for deescalation among the parties to the conflict remains unclear. But what is glaringly obvious is that right-wing media are already seeking scapegoats for the cascading catastrophe set off by Trump's war with Iran.

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MMA // HEGS TRUMP

  1. ### Fox host Charles Payne: “One of the worst things for the market hasn't been the war, it's been the media's coverage of the war”

03/23/26

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MMA

Right-wing media use the SAVE America Act to undermine the upcoming midterm elections

Right-wing pundits have falsely claimed Democrats oppose the SAVE America Act because they are “cheating” and “want the illegals to be able to vote”

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Published 03/20/26

For example, in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, right-wing media were peddling election conspiracy theories and insisting the 2020 election was rigged. Ahead of the 2024 election cycle, right-wing media deployed that same playbook, spreading false information about undocumented immigrants voting, accusing Democrats of rigging the system, and attempting to undermine the validity of mail-in voting.

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, right-wing media figures are yet again claiming that Democrats are trying to cheat and want undocumented immigrants to vote, even though instances of noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare. Still, right-wing media figures have advocated for Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at polling locations, President Donald Trump to declare a “national emergency” to enforce his preferred election policies, and Congress to pass the SAVE Act (since modified and rebranded as the SAVE America Act).

Though the SAVE America Act appears to be doomed in the Senate, the controversial bill, which aims to rewrite election laws nationwide, would, if passed, create new barriers for people attempting to register to vote by requiring them to provide documents such as a passport or birth certificate as proof of citizenship. But as the Brennan Center for Justice points out, millions of citizens lack access to these documents, and “roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport.” As an example of the potential effects, the Bipartisan Policy Center examined a similar law requiring proof of citizenship passed in Kansas and found the law prevented roughly 12% of applicants from registering to vote. The SAVE America Act could also place additional burdens on married women who have changed their last name from the one that appears on their birth certificate.

Nonetheless, right-wing media have been using the bill to sell a false narrative that Democrats have “nefarious intentions” and are “petrified about having safe and secure elections” because “they want the illegals to be able to vote.”

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  1. ### Newsmax host discusses a Senate filibuster against the SAVE Act: “This is why people need guns in this country, because a government is willing to go 80% against the country”

03/18/26 10:15 AM EDT

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

02/18/26 4:25 PM EST

  1. ### Daily Wire host admits if the SAVE Act becomes law, “fewer actual American citizens will end up voting”

02/12/26

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MMA

Prime-time Fox shows gave less than a minute of airtime to the Pentagon’s $200 billion Iran funding request

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Rob Savillo, Harrison Ray & Tyler Monroe

Published 03/20/26

Fox News isn’t bothering to sell the staggering cost of the ill-conceived war President Donald Trump launched against Iran.

The Trumpist propaganda network provided roughly 11 minutes of coverage through Thursday to the administration’s request for an eye-popping $200 billion in supplementary spending from Congress — and less than 1 minute of discussion on its prime-time block, according to a Media Matters review.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that the Pentagon “has asked the White House to approve a more than $200 billion request to Congress to fund the war in Iran,” a figure subsequently confirmed by other news outlets. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not dispute the number at a Thursday morning press conference, though he indicated it “could move.”

The request “is expected to face a rocky path in Congress,” according to The Wall Street Journal, as lawmakers say “they want to see more details of the proposal amid concerns that the U.S. could become embroiled in another costly long-term war,” and even Republicans are expressing skepticism about its odds of passage.

But so far, Trump’s Fox propaganda wing isn’t engaged in trying to make the case for the funds.

The $200 billion figure has not been mentioned on the programs of Fox stars Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, or Greg Gutfeld, or on the panel show The Five.

On Jesse Watters Primetime, guest host Charlie Hurt spent 44 seconds of Thursday’s show accusing Democrats who refuse to support the spending of siding with Iran and against the troops.

“The Pentagon is asking for more money to eliminate the bad guys, and it's not just for Iran,” Hurt claimed. “Trump says it's for keeping the whole world safe. And guess whose side the Democrats are on?”

He then aired a video of a reporter telling Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), “They're asking for $200 billion now for this war,” and Ocasio-Cortez responding that she won’t support the request because “this administration has plunged the American people into a war that we don't want to be in.”

“Soldiers are risking their lives to do what every president of either party, going back decades, said had to be done,” Hurt responded. “The Democrats don't want to give them the money to finish the job.”

That was the only discussion of the $200 billion war funding figure on Fox’s 8-11 p.m. prime-time block.

Video

Citation

From the March 19, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

The request for war funding drew only 19 seconds of coverage on Thursday’s edition of the popular morning show Fox & Friends, with co-host Brian Kilmeade noting the $200 billion figure and asking, “Are Democrats gonna look to defund a war again?”

The remainder of the network’s coverage of the figure through Thursday consisted of reports from correspondents on America’s Newsroom and Special Report; a handful of passing mentions; and panel discussions on Special Report and Fox News @ Night.

Such lackluster coverage might suffice to help Trump ram a war spending bill through Congress if the war were popular, the consequences at home limited, and Republicans lawmakers united. But under the present circumstances, the network’s propagandists are going to need to develop some talking points if they hope to pull it across the finish line over the weeks to come.

Methodology...

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MMA

  1. ### Fox's John Roberts calls Trump's Pearl Harbor comment to the Japanese prime minister “a cheeky response to that that I think a lot of people are applauding”

03/19/26

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MMA

Fox host: Arkansas restaurateurs who asked Gov. Sanders to leave are “culinary tyrants” exercising “Soviet hospitality” | Media Matters for America

March 20, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY (FOX HOST): I'm going to say this, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is right, this is not southern hospitality, this is Soviet hospitality. It's very revealing of who they are. And the owners of this restaurant, who are LGBTQ, and angry about these kinds of things, they are culinary tyrants. It's not that they are snowflakes and they can't handle it -- no, no, no -- they're tyrants. So if you don't agree with their political ideas or ideology, they are going to dehumanize you, they're going to kick you out of their restaurant, they're going to humiliate you, and that's just the most tolerable of the punishments they have for you. By the way, every conservative, prominent conservative, who goes into a liberal restaurant wonders if their food is going to be spit on, everyone knows that. But that's not the only thing, if you don't agree with them, BLM, they will burn your business down. If you don't agree that you want to take a vaccine during COVID, they'll take away your job or tell you your kid can't go to school. And it goes all the way up to Charlie Kirk who was basically killed for his political ideas.

And so I think it's really important that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas expose this. The reason is we have a decision to make as citizens, what kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country run by people like this, who have no tolerance for other people's opinions, who don't even think someone should come in and have a meal without being harassed because they don't agree with them, or do you want to live like we lived basically back in the '80s, where we agreed to live peacefully with each other and we didn't have to agree on everything. So, I'm glad she exposed it.

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  1. On Fox News, billionaire CEO John Catsimatidis suggests that homeless should “live in Uganda”

03/19/26

March 19, 2026, edition of Fox News' America Reports

SANDRA SMITH (ANCHOR): They want more money for this homeless population. They are now saying in the city, you just heard it, more per homeless person than the average person makes in the year.

JOHN CATSIMATIDIS (GUEST): Why should we pay that $81,000 I saw on the screen, for a homeless person where they can leave for— live in Uganda for $8.13 a day. We'll give them the check for $8.13 a day, let them live some place else.

SMITH: It would be one thing if proving that spending all this money would be helping the homeless population get off the streets and get back into work but there's no sign of that. In fact, the homeless population is only growing.

Per Forbes, John Castimatidis is the owner of a New York City supermarket chain and an oil refinery, and has an estimated net worth of $4.8B.

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MMA RETALIATE DEFECTOR IRAN WAR

3 26

Fox News is the bus Trump is driving over Joe Kent | Media Matters for America

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MMA

Fox personalities used to claim that energy independence would shield the US from potential retaliatory action by Iran — such as closing the Strait of Hormuz

As gas prices rise, the network has scarcely invoked the concept of “energy independence,” mentioning it a fraction as often as it did during the start of the Russia-Ukraine war

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 03/18/26

In reality, America has never truly been energy independent, and such a policy is not even truly possible. Energy prices are determined by a global market, meaning the United States will never be free from oil and gas price fluctuations no matter how much oil it produces domestically. Indeed, this moment represents the most definitive rebuke yet of the idea of American “energy independence.”

Even as the U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and the Trump administration pursues a voracious pro-fossil fuel agenda, the national average price of gas reached $3.45 a gallon on March 8, with The New York Times reporting that oil prices rose “above $100 a barrel for the first time in roughly four years, more than 40 percent more expensive than it was before the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28.” As of March 18, gas has climbed to a national average of $3.84 a gallon.

But rather than conceding the point that oil markets have always been and will likely always be volatile, Fox personalities are moving the goal posts on what “energy independence” means compared to the network’s narratives in 2022 and 2020. They’re now suggesting that energy independence can be achieved by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that it means disruptions to gas prices caused by conflicts overseas are only temporary, or that energy independence enables the U.S. to start new wars that “wouldn't even have been possible if Joe Biden was president.”

In fact, Fox News mentioned “energy independence” at least 329 times in the first two weeks of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and it continued to be a central narrative of Fox’s coverage after that, with mentions increasing to 632 one month into the conflict. Now, as prices skyrocket in response to Trump’s war on Iran, that talking point has been far less prevalent. In the first two weeks of the conflict, from February 28 through March 13, the terms “energy independence” or “energy security ” were mentioned just 12 times on Fox News programs.

Part of the 2022 narrative on Fox was also attacks on the Biden administration for releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. Fox’s Maria Bartiromo claimed the move “tells you that they were blindsided” because the SPR “is supposed to be a reserve for crises and emergencies.”

Now, on the March 13 edition of *Fox & Friends First*, co-host Carley Shimkus claimed that “President Trump is restoring America’s energy independence [by] ordering 172 million barrels of oil to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” calling it an example of how he is “battling back” against “the economic impacts of war.”

Notably, Fox correspondent David Spunt pointed out on March 9, before Trump decided to tap the reserves, that Biden was criticized by the right for releasing oil from the SPR in 2022 to offset sanctions against Russia by putting more oil in the global market.

In 2022, energy independence meant maintaining low gas prices during a foreign conflict. Now, Fox and others in right-wing media suggest price hikes driven by the fighting are only a temporary “sacrifice” for attacking Iran.

One Fox host, Tomi Lahren, did seem to acknowledge that energy independence has not shielded the U.S. from price shocks, though she still worried that people would grow impatient with gas costs.

It’s “really such a shame too because this president has worked so hard up until now on getting those gas prices down,” Lahren said. “American energy independence, still obviously a priority, but this kind of shakes the boat a little bit.”

In 2022, Fox personalities suggested energy independence was about insulating us from foreign conflicts. Frequent Fox guest and former Trump adviser Steve Moore now suggests it's about enabling us to start new wars abroad, claiming during a March 5 appearance on *Fox & Friends* that “this incursion wouldn't even have been possible if Joe Biden was president, because we didn't have the energy capacity to do it.”

“Thanks to drill, baby, drill, and Trump's America energy independence plan, … we produce more oil and gas than any other country in the world today,” he continued. “Thank you, Donald Trump, for making that possible. It’s really made it much — we're much less reliant on the Middle East than we used to be.”

And Fox anchor Shannon Bream tried to quickly move past the connection between rising global oil prices and Trump’s domestic energy policies during a March 1 interview with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), calling it “a whole ‘nother conversation.”

Kaine rebutted that it “does connect — the president wants energy independence, so he says, while he is terminating offshore wind projects and alternative energy all over the United States. If you want U.S. energy, why are you doing that?”

Video

Citation

From the March 1, 2026, edition of Fox News Sunday

In a January 4, 2020, op-ed for Fox News, Daniel Turner with the pro-industry think tank Power the Future argued that the “US can withstand Iranian attack on global oil supplies, thanks to Trump energy policies.” He wrote: “Fortunately, President Trump has aggressively pursued deregulation and other needed policies that have led to big increases in U.S. production of oil and natural gas. This makes us far less vulnerable to Iranian threats to block the Straits of Hormuz."

Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis said on the January 3, 2020, edition ofFox News’ *Outnumbered* that Trump’s oil deregulation efforts were a “national security strategy.”

“Yes, the Strait of Hormuz, about 25% of the world's oil comes through there, so we'll be watching that closely,” she said. “But the U.S. just hit 12.6 million barrels a day in production. ... So when I look at the Trump administration rolling back regulation, what they’ve done with the oil strategy, I really look at it as a national security strategy.”

Fox Business host Stuart Varney even claimed on the January 3, 2020, episode of Fox & Friends that because of Trump’s energy independence policies, “if you took out Iranian oil installations, I don't think it would have that big an impact on us in America.”

Now, Trump is threatening to target the centerpiece of Iran’s oil production facilities on Kharg island — a major escalation that analysts warn risks “accelerating a structural shift in how energy supply chains are priced.”

“War-risk insurance premiums will likely remain elevated long after the last missile is fired,” wrote Jeff Currie of Carlyle Analysis. “And the behavioral response — hoarding, contract renegotiations, the scramble for alternative suppliers — permanently reprices the supply chain.”

The reality is that the U.S. cannot drill its way to “energy independence.” Becoming truly energy independent means weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels and adopting clean, renewable energy sources. That was true in 2020 and 2022, and it's even more important now.

Methodology...

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MMA

Fox host warns that if Mamdani doesn't do anything about people throwing snowballs at NYPD it will lead to “Game of Thrones where everyone is just robbing everyone, taking their purse”

02/26/26

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MMA

Dire Strait: Trump’s Fox Cabinet ignored Hormuz in the month before the U.S. attacked Iran

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 03/13/26

It’s little wonder that President Donald Trump didn't seem to worry about the Strait of Hormuz in planning his war of choice against Iran: His Fox News advisers utterly ignored the possibility that Iran could respond by closing that critical shipping lane as they urged the president to launch the attack last month.

Roughly 20% of global crude oil and liquified natural gas, along with a “dominant” share of global fertilizers, reach world markets by flowing from the Persian Gulf through the narrow strait between Iran and Oman and into the Indian Ocean. A few days after U.S. and Israeli forces launched their campaign, Iran said it would attack any ship attempting the passage, effectively grinding shipping to a halt and triggering a spike in global energy prices. This week, Iranian forces have struck oil tankers and reportedly began mining the strait.

While closing the strait in response to hostilities is a well-known aspect of Iranian strategic doctrine, the Trump administration apparently did not plan for it in the lead-up to the February 28 attacks.

“The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter,” CNN reported Friday.

The report continued:

President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.

While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.

...

The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.

“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”

The president’s official advisers weren’t the only ones who missed this. The Fox pundits Trump regularly watches on his television provide an alternate source of information and counsel which often shapes his worldview, including with regard to the Iran war. But Trump’s Fox News Cabinet, in the weeks leading up to the attack they urged him to launch, largely did not clue the president in to the risks posed by Iran closing the straits in response.

Sean Hannity, the Fox star and Trump confidante whose program the president reportedly cited in conversations about the prospective war, referenced the “all-important Straits of Hormuz” during a discussion of rising tensions in the region on his February 3 show. But Hannity did not detail why the passage is important, and he subsequently threatened Iran’s leaders not to mess with Trump.

Video

Citation

From the February 3, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Tensions are once again rising just off the coast of Iran where American — an American F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. Meanwhile, in the all-important Straits of Hormuz, six Iranian gunboats tried, but they failed, to intercept a U.S.-flagged oil tanker before a U.S. Navy vessel arrived on the scene.

Mark my words, the ayatollahs, the mullahs, they’re now playing a very dangerous game, one that they’re not going to win. President Trump, he does want peace, but he’s also a man of his word. He did promise he would take out their nuclear program if they didn’t negotiate, and he did. After vowing to do so, it happened. A hostile Iran will not be met with Obama and Biden-like appeasement.

That was nonetheless the most detailed treatment of the strait on Hannity’s program in February, according to a review of the Nexis database. Hannity did not mention the strait again that month, and while a handful of correspondent reports that aired on the show in February did so in passing, none of those detailed the possibility that Iran could close it.

And Hannity’s coverage of the strait, while glaringly insufficient, nonetheless stands out compared to other Fox propagandists favored by the president. The strait was not mentioned on the February editions of Fox’s Life, Liberty & Levin — the weekend show hosted by Mark Levin, an influential (and abrasive) voice in the president’s Middle East decision-making — or the programs of Hannity's evening weekday colleagues, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters, according to a review of the Nexis database.

Fox & Friends, the weekday morning show beloved by Trump that is co-hosted by Iran hawk Brian Kilmeade, also produced scant coverage of the strait. The passage was mentioned only a handful of times on the program in February, all glancing mentions — except for a single segment, nearly a month before the attack, in which a retired U.S. admiral pooh-poohed the risks posed by Iran attempting to close the strait.

Video

Citation

From the February 6, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Kilmeade, on that February 6 broadcast, read a comment from an Iranian official stating that “the Strait of Hormuz will be the place of a massacre” and said the official had “warned that if we do attack, they’re going to block that.”

“Well, look, Iran has been very good on rhetoric,” Kilmeade’s guest, retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, replied. “They are always talking. The capabilities are not the same as their rhetoric.”

“Sure, they can challenge the Straits of Hormuz, they can strike that, they can put mines, but we have the capability to counter that and so I think they are pretty weak at this point,” he continued. “I think that’s what everyone needs to keep in mind: Iran is at the weakest position they have ever been. They have been neutered in terms of the ability – ”

“Admiral, I agree with you,” Kilmeade replied, moving on.

Whoops.

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

03/02/26 1:12 PM EST

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

03/12/26 1:57 PM EDT

  1. ### The final case for US strikes on Iran from Mark Levin and Sean Hannity

02/28/XX

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MMA

  1. ### The US economy has lost jobs since Trump’s “Liberation Day.” Fox is still celebrating his destructive import taxes.

03/06/26

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mma

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

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 03/02/26

President Donald Trump, across both of his terms, has regularly shaped federal policy in response to the propaganda he hears from his sycophants at Fox News. But his decision over the weekend to launch a war of choice against Iran without a clear goal may prove to be the most consequential example of this feedback loop to date.

Trump is deeply immersed in the Fox universe. He famously consumes the network’s content; highlights particular segments that strike his fancy on social media; hires its employees to run his administration; consults its personalities for advice on domestic and foreign policy; and doles out contracts and pardons alike based on what he sees on its airwaves.

And for decades, the Fox stars Trump trusts most have consistently called for military strikes and regime change in Iran.

That campaign took on new urgency when Trump returned to the White House.

Last June, Fox personalities — particularly Trump loyalists Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade — used their programs to urge Trump to follow up on Israeli attacks on Iran by launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. They warned that Iran is, as Kilmeade put it, “our enemy,” that it posed an imminent threat to American citizens and that, in Levin’s words, “force” is the “only thing to stop” Iran.

Other MAGA media figures from non-Fox outlets opposed U.S. involvement in the conflict. But the overwhelmingly pro-war Fox coverage — and a White House meeting Levin had with the president — were apparently dispositive.

And after Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack three Iranian nuclear sites, Fox’s war hawks rewarded the president by showering him with praise for what Hannity said would “go down in history as one of the greatest military victories.”

The same pattern appears to be playing out eight months later, albeit on a much larger scale.

A Fox-fueled push for war with Iran

Over the past weeks, as U.S. military forces converged in the Middle East, the same Fox figures again urged Trump to attack. Notably, their argument was noticeably light on defining a goal for U.S. military operations after the bombs began to fall.

Instead, they argued that because Iran could, at some point in the future, pose a threat, Trump should act now while he is empowered to do so — and that the result would be an easy U.S. victory. “I cannot think of any reason not to take this regime out,” Levin argued. The U.S. would “lose credibility forever” without a strike, Kilmeade claimed. For Hannity, “The world is going to be better and safer.”

While some on the network seemed to shy away from the topic, criticism of potential strikes largely took place elsewhere in the MAGA media — outside of the Fox programming the president himself watches.

On Friday, hours before the attack began, the trio made their final pitch.

“I hope the president chooses to go at it,” Kilmeade said Friday morning. “We have been looking at these headlines for 47 years, and we have an opportunity to end it. And this president likes to make history.”

“This president knows right from wrong,” Levin told Hannity that night. “He knows good from evil. He knows that this regime is a death cult. And he knows that there's only really two countries that are prepared and willing to put an end to this.”

“We don't need to put up with their crap,” he concluded, as Hannity nodded along. “It's time to put it to an end.”

They got what they wanted: The U.S. and Israeli militaries began attacking Iranian targets that night. Since then, hundreds of Iranians have reportedly been killed, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Pentagon has reported the first U.S. casualties in the conflict. There is no end currently in sight — the Iranian government remains defiant, while the U.S. is sending more troops to the region.

The propaganda war has an aim. The real one doesn’t.

Trump, meanwhile, has had trouble articulating what he’s trying to accomplish.

He first suggested his aim was regime change when he urged the Iranian people to “take over” the government in his first public statement after the attack, but in interviews since then, he just seems to be riffing. He told The Washington Post he is seeking “freedom for the people” of Iran, but he bemoaned to ABC News that regime figures he expected to take over the country had also been killed in the initial strikes. Trump also stressed to The New York Times that his model was the U.S. attack on Venezuela, where the dictatorial regime remained in place after U.S. forces seized its leader. But he also suggested that the Iranian military could turn over its arms to its public. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he explained.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, added to the incoherence of the administration’s message when he said at a Monday morning press conference, “This is not a so-called 'regime change war,' but the regime sure did change.” But the Iranian regime currently remains in place, and according to at least some of his statements, Trump may prefer it that way.

Perhaps the reason there doesn’t seem to be a clear goal for the U.S. bombing of Iran is because the goal, as laid out by Trump’s Fox propagandists, was for the U.S. to bomb Iran. That is the aim the likes of Kilmeade, Hannity, and Levin had in mind, and now that they’ve goaded Trump into following through, they are cheering him on.

“Donald Trump did what nobody else could do for half a century,” Levin marveled on Saturday. “How do you like that? And you know why he did it? Because he loves his country.”

So what happens next in Iran? That’s beyond the remit of Trump’s Fox Cabinet. Instead, they are gearing up for a propaganda war in which they declare Trump a world-historic victor and paint his critics as terrorists and traitors. For them, the details of what happens to the Iranians is for someone else to handle.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone within the official Trump administration has answers either.

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  1. ### Fox continues longstanding push for war against Iran

:{:{11/17/23}:

  1. ### Trump’s Fox News obsession is driving the U.S. toward war with Iran

:{:{06/18/25}:

  1. ### The final case for US strikes on Iran from Mark Levin and Sean Hannity

02/28/26

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mma

March 2, 2026, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom

JENNIFER GRIFFIN (CORRESPONDENT): I was in the Pentagon briefing this morning, but we were not called on for a question. We had assigned seats and Fox News was put in the back row. And there was no outside-cuts camera allowed to show who was asking the questions. The Pentagon wanted to control all of that.

These are the questions I would have asked if called on: Why was this an imminent threat? Oman's foreign minister said there was progress in nuclear talks. Was there any evidence that Iran was planning a preemptive strike? U.S. officials now say that was not the case. Do you know where the highly enriched uranium is? That is the question Sec. Hegseth did not want to answer last summer after claiming Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated in Operation Midnight Hammer. The secretary said this war is not about regime change, even though the president called on the Iranians to rise up and remove the regime.

My follow-up would have been how are unarmed Iranian civilians expected to overthrow Iran's security forces? And is this success if the same regime stays in place after this war ends? One question that was shouted at the end and left unanswered: How do you keep this from becoming an insurgency?

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GRIFFIN: Sec. Hegseth would not rule out having U.S. troops on the ground in Iran but said it would not be 200,000 troops like in Iraq. The secretary said the four U.S. troops killed yesterday took a direct hit to the tactical operations center they were manning and took offense when reporters asked him to articulate why the American people are sending their men and women to war and if he is concerned about it spiraling into a longer war.

The Reliable Sources newsletter had more information about the Pentagon press briefing, with CNN's Brian Stelter writing, “Hegseth only answered questions from his chosen outlets. I'm told he had a pre-selected list of questioners, and all the reporters were in assigned seats, so he knew who to call on”:

The Pentagon has severely restricted access to information in the past year. You'll recall that Pete Hegseth credentialed a MAGA media “press corps” last fall after traditional news outlets rejected new press pass rules that media lawyers said criminalized routine reporting. The MAGA crew does relatively little reporting, so most coverage of the US military is now happening from outside the Pentagon's five walls.

Journalists from traditional outlets were allowed to attend this morning's press conference with Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine. But Hegseth only answered questions from his chosen outlets. I'm told he had a pre-selected list of questioners, and all the reporters were in assigned seats, so he knew who to call on.

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// BOEBERT HILLARY PIX?

MMA

Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress

Benny Johnson and Brian Kilmeade appear to have more information than just about any elected representative

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Sophie Lawton

Published 03/02/26

A defining feature of President Donald Trump’s second term is its symbiotic relationship with media allies, both at traditional right-wing outlets like Fox News and among the newer cohort of MAGA podcasters and online influencers — in some cases, these figures know more about Trump’s upcoming policy decisions than members of Congress. That dynamic was fully on display in the lead-up to the unprovoked bombing campaign the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February 28.

Prior to Trump’s initiation of the war, MAGA streamer Benny Johnson and Newsmax host Greg Kelly appeared to have insider information about when the first round of strikes would occur. Beyond them, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and contributor Jack Keane claimed to have been involved in high-level briefings on the campaign.

Johnson, who was fired by Buzzfeed for plagiarism in 2014 and later disciplined by the Independent Journal Review for publishing false information, appears to have had unusually close access to officials in the Trump administration responsible for the decision to go to war.

On February 21, Johnson told his audience, “We are going to war with Iran. … I've been asking — I think that the cake's been baked.” It was unclear at the time whether he had inside information or was speculating, as he later added, referring to the publicly reported military build up, “the maps don't lie, OK? It’s happening.”

Johnson returned to the subject on February 27, just hours before the U.S.-Israeli campaign began. He began his show saying he’d just been “on the phone with top-level — let’s just say very high-level administration officials — moments ago to discuss what the plan is” for attacking Iran. Later in the same episode, Johnson claimed that he’d been talking with someone who is at the “top, top level of the administration, and we were yelling at each other — not yelling, but having polite conversation — about, like, what’s about to pop off in the Mid East.”

Ultimately, Johnson told his audience, “This is not a drill. It is actually happening,” adding: “I think in the next 24 hours we are going to see the world change. It may be the next 24 minutes, we're not exactly certain."

Newsmax host Kelly was even more precise. “A very well-informed person told me” the attack on Iran will happen Friday “after Wall Street closes,” Kelly said February 26.

By contrast, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on both the Senate committees on intelligence and on foreign relations, told reporters on February 28 that he was “learning like you are as the news unfolds exactly what's happening." The Trump administration reportedly briefed some congressional staff the following day, with a full briefing to Congress scheduled for March 3.

Johnson and Kelly weren’t the only right-wing media figures enjoying extraordinary access to high-level information. Over at Fox, Kilmeade — a weekday Fox & Friends host who came in to cover a weekend shift — said on March 1 that he “was fortunate enough to be in a briefing with high-ranking Trump officials” a day earlier.

The same morning, Keane offered more granular detail, implying a high degree of insider information. “The [Persian] Gulf states are adequately defending themselves,” said Keane, a retired general and former Army vice chief of staff. “Three of them are preparing for combat, offensive operations. One has already started and two others are about to get going. I'm not going to talk about who they are, but that is being coordinated with Adm. Cooper and Central Command. These will be coordinated, selected targets, and they will contribute to the offensive nature of what’s taken place."

Keane’s comments on Fox the next day suggested he’d been provided with high-level briefings that everything is going smoothly. “The military has got a plan here that I have been privy to understand and it is very comprehensive,” Keane said. “And we're going to stick with that plan until the conditions of these military objectives are met. So far, the plan is exceeding all expectations."

The access to White House war plans that Johnson, Kelly, Kilmeade, and Keane appear to have is even more noteworthy given that the Pentagon tightly controlled its first press briefing of the war on March 2 — having already largely replaced the traditional Pentagon press corps with a series of lackeys, grifters, conspiracists, and cranks. According to CNN’s Brian Stelter, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — formerly of Fox News — “only answered questions from his chosen outlets” and had a “pre-selected list of questioners.” Those approved outlets didn’t include Hegseth’s former employer, whose correspondent was relegated to the back row and not called on for a question.

All administrations leak and try to manage public opinion through press operations. But the alignment of messaging and interests between the Trump White House and its media allies is unlike anything the United States has seen in recent memory. Sometimes that looks like providing right-wing influencers with embeds alongside Trump’s deportation agents; other times it looks like inviting MAGA media trolls to the White House to discuss antifa. Now, it looks like some of the most slavish voices in right-wing media are getting better information more quickly than members of Congress as the United States and Israel unleash yet more destruction in the Middle East.

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MMA

Fox & Friends really does not want viewers to understand that Trump’s tariffs are taxes paid by Americans

Donald Trump illegally raised your taxes. Fox would rather not talk about it.

Written by Craig Harrington

Published 02/25/26

For the second time in a week, a Fox News personality went to bat to protect President Donald Trump from the fallout of the Supreme Court overturning his unpopular tariff policies, falsely reassuring viewers that they are not paying for Trump’s import tax scheme.

During two February 25 segments of Fox & Friends, co-host Lawrence Jones responded to criticism of Trump’s tariff policies by repeatedly (and falsely) telling viewers that the president’s critics were lying when saying his tariffs had cost American families money over the past year. His comments followed a segment last week wherein Fox host Harris Faulkner had wondered aloud whether foreign countries would seek refunds for tariffs they paid to the U.S. — before she was informed that tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers, not foreign exporters.

During today’s Fox & Friends segment, the hosts aired a portion of newly inaugurated Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’srebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union speech where she said that “everyday Americans are paying the price” of Trump’s tariffs and described his latest tariff proposal “another massive tax hike on you and your family.” Jones scolded Spanberger: “Just to be clear, what she said is 100% false,” claiming that “there has been zero inflation based on the tariffs” and that “you cannot say that it caused inflation on the American people.”

Video

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From the February 25, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Later, Jones returned to the topic during a segment with pollsters Kellyanne Conway and Mark Penn, discussing a portion of Spanberger’s rebuttal when the governor noted that Trump’s “reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs.” Jones responded that Spanberger's statement was “not true” and again added that tariffs had not been inflationary. Conway was even more direct, simply claiming, “Those are lies.”

Jones wrapped up his performative outrage by acting aghast that Spanberger would claim tariffs cost American families money. “To say it was inflationary, that it's costing you more money, the data doesn't support that, yet she told the people that,” he said.

Video

Citation

From the February 25, 2026, edition of Fox NewsFox & Friends

Americans are absolutely paying the cost of Trump’s tariffs.

As economists and experts have repeatedly explained, foreign countries do not pay tariffs. Tariffs are import taxes paid by American consumers.

Trump massively increased tariff receipts compared to 2024, raising a record-breaking amount of tariff revenue in his first year in office. The money had to come from somewhere.

And last November, The Budget Lab at Yale estimated that Trump's tariff policies had at that point cost the average American family roughly $1,700. An analysis by the Joint Economic Committee's minority staff released just last week estimated that “American consumers overall paid more than $231 billion in tariff costs between February 2025 and January 2026, an average of roughly $1,745 per family.”

Far from misleading viewers with her speech, Spanberger actually did Trump a favor by rounding the cost of his tariffs down.

And this isn’t just a question about whether or not tariffs are generally inflationary (they are) or whether Trump’s tariffs have shown up in consumer prices (they have). This is about real costs that have been passed along to actual Americans as a result of Donald Trump illegally raising their taxes.

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  1. ### Some Trump apologists struggle to comprehend that Americans are the ones paying Trump’s tariffs

02/20/26 4:46 PM EST

  1. ### Fox Business viewers might not realize Trump's tariffs are massive taxes that have disrupted the economy

10/17/25 3:58 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox scrambles as Trump tariffs start to show up in prices and inflation accelerates

07/15/25 2:19 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox & Friends praises Trump for “quick fix” on affordability by lowering his tariffs — which Fox used to celebrate

11/14/25 12:02 PM EST

  1. ### Fox & Friends admits “coffee prices are soaring” due to Trump's tariffs

10/07/25 10:04 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox asks, “Where’s the tariff inflation?” It’s in the coffee Americans are drinking.

08/12/25

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MMA}:

The North Koreans do a more nuanced show than Sean Hannity’s take on Trump’s State of the Union

The Fox host raved about Trump’s “iconic,” “uplifting,” “patriotic,” “glowing,” “powerful,” “very unique” speech

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 02/25/26

The Wall Street Journal published a report from Korea Bureau Chief Timothy W. Martin early Wednesday morning detailing how the “unbridled flattery” North Korean state media provides Kim Jong Un “underscores the dictator’s need to establish cult-of-personality supremacy as a smokescreen for his nation’s woes.”

That also happens to serve as a handy description of the role performed by the Journal’s corporate cousins at Fox News, the propaganda outlet whose servile treatment of President Donald Trump helps the deeply and increasingly unpopular American leader rally his core supporters.

Martin wrote that Kim had received “lavish praise in the regime’s largest newspaper” for a meaningless accomplishment, citing an editorial which called the dictator “the greatest person in the world,” praised his “unimaginable achievements,” and stated, “Our future is infinitely bright and promising!”

Such language, while overwrought, frankly pales in comparison to the unabashed sycophancy Fox star and Trumpist operative Sean Hannity provided in response to Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday. His coverage was with that of his fellow Fox propagandists, but serves as an instructive window into how the network works to “establish cult-of-personality supremacy,” as Martin put it in the North Korean context.

Hannity launched his post-speech show by declaring that “moments ago, President Trump wrapped up yet another iconic, uplifting, patriotic State of the Union,” and devoted the rest of his broadcast to lavishing the president with praise and hosting others to do the same.

In a monologue interspersed with lengthy clips from the president’s speech, the Fox host said Trump had “championed our country and the achievements of you, the American people.”

“Now clearly tonight was not about the Democratic Party, in fact it wasn’t about either party,” Hannity claimed of a speech in which Trump called Democrats “sick” and “crazy” and accused them of “destroying our country.”

“Instead,” the host continued, “President Trump delivered a glowing speech highlighting the triumphs, the struggles, the bravery of so many American people.”

Hannity concluded his monologue by declaring, “Now, under President Trump’s leadership, America's full potential is on lock, and the state of our union, thankfully, is strong.”

Video

Citation

From the Feburary 24, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

The Fox host kept laying it on thick during a series of interviews with Republican leaders, who likewise showered the president with accolades.

“Let's go to some observations,” he told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). “The president said the nation is back, bigger, stronger than ever before, golden age of America, that he inherited a nation in crisis, a turnaround for the ages, talked about the border, talked about inflation, talked about interest rates, talked about gas prices, talk about mortgage rates, talked about safety and security around the globe.”

“This was not your typical laundry list that you often get at a State of the Union. This was deep, impactful, profound success stories and he took the time to tell all of them in a very different manner,” he continued. “I thought it was very unique tonight.”

Johnson replied, “I thought it was unique. I think it was the best State of the Union speech I’ve seen.”

“What made tonight so powerful is he did everything he said he was going to do and then some,” Hannity later marveled to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). “A lot of politicians use words, he’s actions.”

Like Johnson, Jordan told Hannity that Trump’s “amazing” State of the Union had been “by far the best one” he’d seen.

Hannity closed out his coverage with more fawning over the president’s address from a panel of former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (“one of Trump's best speeches”), Fox host Trey Gowdy (“it was almost like our 250th birthday party started tonight”), and former Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus (“one of the greatest, most triumphant speeches ever given by a president").

Hannity has taken over the role played in Trump’s first term by then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who told viewers that Trump’s White House featured “sunlight beaming throughout the place, and on almost every face” and at one point signed off, “Have a great weekend. The president makes such a thing possible for us all.”

As Fox News President Jay Wallace said of Dobbs at the time, “The North Koreans do a more nuanced show.”

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an 2 26 Fox News just distorted CNN's documentary on Christian nationalism - Alternet.org

Fox News just distorted CNN's documentary on Christian nationalism

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not incl tariff scotus bs so far

mma

Watch how Fox covered today’s weak GDP report

02/20/26

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mma

Right-wing influencers pushed the Trump admin to ignore judges. New reporting shows that's what's happening — especially in immigration cases.

Since the beginning of Trump’s second administration, right-wing media have encouraged an “all-out war” on judges and dismissed the “so-called rights of illegals”

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Jack Winstanley

Published 02/18/26

Recent reporting shows how the Trump administration — particularly the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — “has slow-walked or outright defied” numerous court orders as it continues its nationwide crackdown against immigrants.

Politico highlighted several instances of judges speaking against the Trump administration over its defiance of judges and efforts to undermine due process for immigrants. The New York Times reported in January that ICE has violated nearly 100 court orders, and last summer, The Washington Post examined over a hundred cases on various matters and found “the administration is accused of defying or frustrating court oversight in 57.”

Meanwhile, since the beginning of Trump’s second administration, right-wing media figures have repeatedly encouraged a hostile approach to the courts, attacking judges who challenge Trump’s actions, calling for judges to be impeached, and encouraging the administration to deny noncitizens their due process rights.

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MMA

  1. ### Compared to other cable news channels, Fox News is hiding the latest Epstein revelations from their audience

02/18/26

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MMA

  1. ### Newsmax host calls out Fox News for not covering the Epstein story

02/18/26

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SHOT FIRED THRU DOOR?

MMA

Right-wing media hyped a supposed “shovel” attack against ICE. Prosecutors just dropped the charges.

After a federal agent shot and killed Renee Good, MAGA pundits seized on the supposed shovel attack to change the narrative

Written by John Knefel

Published 02/13/26

In mid-January, right-wing media figures seized on a story that could serve as a narrative reset after a Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. Amid rising backlash to the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation across Minnesota, MAGA pundits hyped claims from the Department of Homeland Security that Venezuelan immigrants had attacked federal agents with a shovel and broomstick. Federal agents shot in response, the story went, wounding one of the men accused in the attack.

Since then, those claims have totally fallen apart, and on February 12 prosecutors asked the presiding judge to dismiss the case with prejudice. The prosecutor wrote that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations” put forward by the government in official filings and testimony.

Right-wing media coverage of the story was unhinged, and it followed a clear, established pattern of hyping dubious initial government claims that would later turn out to be false.

As news of the incident broke on January 14, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin called in to Sean Hannity’s show to read a DHS statement he’d been given “literally 45 seconds ago” and to lay the foundation for the coverage to come, a role he often plays in the conservative media ecosystem. ESCALATOR?

“While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle,” Melugin read. “As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broomstick.”

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life,” Melugin continued.

The narrative was set, and the next morning Fox News’ Fox & Friends weighed in on the story.

“You come at these guys and these women with a shovel and if you are being apprehended and try to run away or drive over them, you will be featured in retaliation videos,” said host Brian Kilmeade. “That's what this is about."

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From the January 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Kilmeade’s co-host, Steve Doocy, also bought the government’s line. “You cannot hit a cop with a shovel or a broom. You just can't do that. It is against the law,” Doocy said. “It is terrible when anybody gets shot. But, unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize, if you break the law -- when you're breaking the law, there's going to be repercussions.”

Co-host Ainsley Earhart suggested capital punishment should be on the table. “When we were growing up, if you harmed a police officer, if you killed a police officer, in South Carolina you got the electric chair,” Earhart said. “When we were growing up, you didn't go after police with your car. You listened to what they said.”

Guest Trey Gowdy, who hosts another Fox show, said the supposed attack and the broader resistance to ICE’s presence gave President Donald Trump “all the justification” he needed to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, thereby deploying active military units against civilians.

The tenor of the coverage was similar elsewhere, and sometimes even more irresponsible.

On the podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Kevin Posobiec — brother of MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec — said an immigrant was “shot in the leg because he was trying to kill an ICE agent with a shovel.”

At The Daily Wire, host Matt Walsh claimed that after a foot chase, “the illegal alien began attacking the officers and then two individuals, apparently family members of this person, came out of a nearby apartment and began ambushing the officers with a shovel and a broom handle.”

Walsh called it “another clear-cut, totally justified shooting by law enforcement.”

Walsh’s colleague, Michael Knowles, said, “The poor ICE agents now getting ambushed — they take out shovels, they start beating this guy with a shovel, and, so, luckily, happily, the ICE agent was able to get his gun out and shoot the Venezuelan.”

Although the exact details of what happened in the incident remain unclear, the prosecutor’s own words make it plain that the government's account was false. Less than two weeks after the shooting, two Border Patrol agents would shoot and kill Alex Pretti. Right-wing media tried to justify that shooting as well.

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These Fox News figures claimed to be deeply concerned with presidential corruption. Now they work for Trump.

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Pete Tsipis, Isabella Corrao, Jane Lee & Helena Hind

Published 02/11/26

“We have a president of the United States who was potentially involved in all of those entanglements with foreign entities,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “which could lead to complications or compromise as the president now.”

Hegeth’s comment serves as a searing indictment of his current boss, President Donald Trump, whose “entanglements with foreign entities" deepen with each new investigative report on his family’s sprawling business interests and attempts to cash in on the presidency.

But of course, Hegseth wasn’t talking about the recent Wall Street Journal investigation revealing an apparent quid pro quo in which a Trump family company received a half-billion dollar investment from an Emirati prince days before the president took office, then the Trump administration funneled AI chips to the prince’s firm. The quote is actually from July 2023, and it shows Hegseth using his prior role as Fox News host to denounce then-President Joe Biden.

It is not an overstatement to say that arguing against foreign money influence on the White House was a defining principle for right-wing media during the Biden years. But their arguments were based in fantasy, and the Trump family’s corruption is both much more straightforward and involves sums of money that are larger by orders of magnitude.

Thanks to Trump’s propensity to hire the people he saw on his television, many of those who loudly complained about the purported corruption of the Biden family — and even called for the criminal prosecution of President Biden — are now working within the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Fox smear machine that once went into overdrive promoting conspiracy theories about presidential corruption has gone quiet.

The Trump family’s corruption is orders of magnitude worse than the Biden allegations

Fox’s effort to turn Hunter Biden’s foreign business interests into a political liability for his father dates to Trump’s first administration, but became an obsession once Joe Biden took office in 2021. While the network’s narratives were never credible — and some even appeared to be the result of a Russian disinformation campaign — the pressure of its all-consuming coverage and its media power within the GOP eventually goaded congressional Republicans into an ill-fated impeachment effort, at which point the whole edifice collapsed.

But the Fox conspiracy-mongering takes on a new light given that some of the people who pushed it now work for a president who embarked on self-enrichment schemes of staggering scale and eye-popping corruption in his first year back in office.

While feverish claims of a “Biden Crime Family” involved a total of less than $7.5 million paid to Biden family members over the years — and nothing to Joe Biden — Trump had already “used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion,” the editorial board of The New York Times reported on the anniversary of his second inauguration.

Trump and his adult children oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign and includes international real estate deals through the Trump Organization; his social media company and its parent, “which trades like a meme stock”; immense holdings in cryptocurrency; and an array of consulting and venture capital positions held by his sons that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency even as they frequently conflict with U.S. policy (by contrast, the right’s core allegation of Joe Biden aiding his son’s foreign business interests involved him carrying out U.S. policy as vice president).

Reporters and researchers who examine the various Trump tentacles are constantly uncovering new scandals and conflicts of interest. But perhaps the most nakedly corrupt involve the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, which was founded shortly before his 2024 election and has since driven a huge increase in his personal wealth. The Wall Street Journal reported last month:

Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy, while accusing the Bidens of “corruptly profiteering off Joe Biden’s political power and influence,” nonetheless noted that the Trumps’ actions were worse by orders of magnitude.

“You know what the difference is between the Biden family business and the Trump family business?” he asked in a Saturday piece for National Review. “You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE.”

Fox News’ rants about the “Biden crime family” perfectly describe Trumpian corruption

Hegseth is just one of several top Trump administration officials who participated in Fox’s yearslong campaign to turn conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings into a political corruption scandal for his father.

“The real story here though is all of the nasty work that he [Hunter Biden] has done across the world, how much money he has made, and the fact that he was able to make, what, $80,000 a month from Burisma in Ukraine because his dad was the vice president — it calls into question Joe Biden's motives,” Treasury Secretary Sean Duffy said back in 2022, when he was a Fox Business host. “Is Joe Biden looking out for the American people or is Joe Biden looking out for Hunter Biden's interests?”

As a Fox host, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro railed against “the corruption that was going on in the Biden crime family” and Joe Biden’s purported efforts to “enrich his family.” And when she was asked about whether there was any “comparison” between what the Bidens did and Donald Trump’s businesses receiving millions of dollars from China while he was serving as president, Pirro stressed that there was not.

“Donald Trump wasn't involved in the business once he became president,” she explained. “The bottom line is he had properties. He was entitled to have someone else monitor those properties and make money from those properties.”

For then-Fox contributor Leo Terrell, now a top Justice Department official, Joe Biden was “the meal ticket for the family” who “makes the money for the Biden family,” and the lack of DOJ attention to Hunter Biden’s purported crimes indicated “favorable treatment because his father is in the White House.”

And when Pam Bondi was merely a lawyer and lobbyist who frequently appeared on Fox instead of an attorney general who frequently appeared on Fox, she argued that the foreign business dealings of the president’s son were “a matter of national security” that was “so important” that it required the appointment of a special prosecutor to ensure the Justice Department acted properly in the case.

They called for Biden’s prosecution; now they run the DOJ under Trump

Several Fox pundits who joined the Trump administration — including some who now serve in senior Justice Department posts — even argued at the time that Joe Biden’s actions warranted a criminal probe.

Fox host Sean Hannity asked Bondi — then a frequent Fox guest and now Trump’s attorney general — during an August 2023 segment whether anything would “ultimately happen to Joe and Hunter Biden.” Bondi replied that “when we have a new administration, absolutely Sean, it has to,” adding that a criminal investigation “must be opened” and that the Bidens would be “prosecuted” under a future Trump presidency.

Bondi also stressed in 2022 that if Trump had been president under the same circumstances, he would have “right away, recused himself” and had “a special prosecutor take over.”

Duffy argued that the FBI and Justice Department should be investigating the “shady” dealings to determine whether Joe Biden is “corrupt” and has “made money off of this.” But he claimed that “they won't do a forensic audit because they know that the money goes from foreign countries to Hunter Biden into Joe Biden's pocket.”

“There was a major scandal with this administration and it starts of course with Joe Biden and his involvement with Hunter,” Pirro said in 2023. Citing what she claimed was a ream of evidence that “just goes on and on,” she concluded, “You don't need any more than what we have now to convict them.”

And Terrell claimed in 2023 that an aspect of the pseudoscandal was “sinister and criminal,” adding that the “totality of all the evidence” showed that “the walls have fallen on Joe Biden.” He added that prosecutors were ignoring Hunter Biden’s crimes because if “you prosecute Hunter Biden, you prosecute Joe Biden,” and “everyone knows that the Department of Justice, the FBI is in bed with the Democratic Party and they have weaponized the departments.”

When media ignoring presidential corruption was a sign of “propaganda”

In his piece for National Review, McCarthy wrote, “Now that self-dealing has achieved heights so astronomical that $27 million would barely be a rounding error, Republicans have lost interest.” The same is true of his colleagues at Fox, who barely discussed Trump pardoning Zhao and still have yet to provide substantive coverage of the UAE’s “spy sheikh” purchasing a huge stake in the president’s company.

Why might that be? Hannity asked Pirro a similar question about coverage of the Bidens back in 2023. After she claimed that the Bidens were running an “organized criminal enterprise” in which “Joe Biden is the front man, Hunter Biden is the bag man,” he asked her why “the media” wouldn’t follow up on the story.

“Because they are Democrats,” she replied at the time. “We are now living in a country that is changed. These are crimes not just by the Bidens, these are crimes against America. This is what is going on in this country — and the truth is that they don't care anymore.”

Pirro is now the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Some of her colleagues in the Trump administration offered similar critiques of coverage of the Biden family back when they worked at Fox.

“When will the media ramp up their scrutiny of Joe, of Hunter, of these payments, of these associations, of the whistleblowers, of the 1023s, of the WhatsApp messages, of the bank exchanges?” Hegseth asked in 2023. “We only know of this because of the House Republicans for a year and a half. What if the media actually examined it, too?”

The Bidens, Hegseth told Hannity, “are counting on a complicit press, which we’ve almost seen universal besides your show and this channel and a few others willing to dig into all the smoke that’s there.”

That purported lack of coverage, Duffy claimed, ensures that “people don’t look to mainstream media as a news source — they’re a propaganda source.”

MMA //

  1. ### Fox won’t tell viewers that the UAE bought off Trump

02/03/26 11:00 AM EST

  1. ### Another massive Trump corruption scandal for right-wing media to bury

09/16/25 12:15 PM EDT

  1. ### There’s finally evidence for right-wing claims of China corrupting a president

01/04/24

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