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Named To VOA, Lake Hates 'Fake News,' Called Fox 'A Globalist Network'

Named To VOA, Lake Hates 'Fake News,' Called Fox 'A Globalist Network'

Donald Trump's pick to lead the federal government's international news agency is an unhinged conspiracy theorist who lashes out at the press, hobnobs with far-right and antisemitic extremist outlets, and has criticized Fox News as “a globalist network.”

Trump announced Wednesday that he wants Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor who was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate and governor in Arizona over the last two election cycles, to serve as the director of the Voice of America in his next administration. VOA claims a weekly international audience of more than 350 million people across TV, radio, and digital platforms; U.S. officials say it promotes democratic values, including the free press, and serves as a counterweight to foreign propaganda.

It’s unclear whether Lake will ever actually ascend to the VOA post. It is unusual for a president to name someone for the position and there are statutory and bureaucratic guardrails that could stall or prevent her installation, as CNN’s Brian Stelter noted.

But Trump’s selection of Lake — who he asserted will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media” — is a nakedly partisan assault on journalistic values that demonstrates the level of fealty he expects from the press.

Lake’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign was a Fox-fueled fever dream. An obsequious backer of Trump and supporter of his election fraud lies, she campaigned alongside MAGA extremists and drew support from figures linked to QAnon and white nationalism.

She habitually attacked reporters during the campaign, describing them as “the right hand of the devil” and running an ad in which she said “it’s time to take a sledgehammer to the mainstream media’s lies and propaganda” before smashing several televisions depicting cable news hosts, whom she accused of following “a communist playbook.” On Election Day, she promised journalists that after she won, she would “be your worst fricking nightmare.”

Lake lost. But in true Trumpian fashion, she spent the next two years claiming the governorship had been stolen from her, even as courts savaged her complaints.

As she prepared to run for Senate (even as she claimed to be Arizona’s rightfully elected governor), Lake expanded her attacks on the press to Fox itself. “Fox has proven that they are a globalist network,” she said on its competitor Newsmax in July 2023, adding that Fox supported the “uni-party swamp.” Speaking at this year’s Republican National Convention, she continued to go after the “fake news” for “lying about President Donald Trump and his amazing patriotic supporters.”

What type of media does Lake prefer? She is a friend and supporter of Laura Loomer, the deranged pro-Trump sycophant; praises the “massive following” of a QAnon show; embraces antisemitic streamers who sympathize with Nazis and claim that Jews are “taking over the world,” control the media, and “control us”; and cozies up to Brenden Dilley, the far-right podcaster who heads Trump’s “meme team.”

Lake would replace the journalist Michael Abramowitz if she actually becomes head of VOA. Abramowitz previously served as head of Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that supports journalists and human rights advocates, after more than two decades at The Washington Post. But Trump wants U.S. journalists pumping out propaganda, and Lake represents his bid to get it.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Pete Hegseth

Fox News Hosts Fight To Save Embattled Hegseth From Scandals

The nomination of Pete Hegseth — the weekend Fox & Friends host Donald Trump selected to serve as defense secretary — is in trouble. Weeks of disturbing stories about Hegseth’s character and competence have Republican senators sitting on the fence, while Trump himself is reportedly contemplating other options.

But Hegseth’s Fox colleagues, who initially ignored the reports, have finally come to his defense over the last day, setting up a potential test of the influence the right-wing propaganda network will hold over the second Trump administration.

Hegseth is wildly underqualified to lead the Pentagon. The defense secretary’s job is to oversee a massive bureaucracy with millions of military and civilian employees and a budget in the hundreds of billions, and while Hegseth is a decorated military veteran, he has no experience managing such a large organization.

For Trump, however, Hegseth has the skills and experience required for any position: The former president likes his work on TV.

Hegseth spent the past decade as a Fox talking head. In that role, he pontificated about the perils of allowing women to serve in combat roles, defended U.S. service members and contractors who had been accused or convicted of war crimes, and floated military assaults on Iran and North Korea.

Along the way, Hegseth relentlessly propagandized on Trump’s behalf, which made him an influential figure during Trump’s first presidency. His selection to run the Pentagon was not an aberration — a slew of current and former network personalities could join Hegseth in the second Trump administration thanks to the incoming president’s Fox obsession.

But relying on Fox to vet cabinet nominees has left something to be desired when it comes to Hegseth, who has been battered by a series of devastating reports:

  • Days after Trump named Hegseth as his pick for defense secretary, local officials in California confirmed that the former Fox host had been investigated for sexual assault in October 2017 after speaking at a convention of the California Federation of Republican Women. A woman told police that Hegseth had “physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she ‘remembered saying “no” a lot,’” while Hegseth said they had a consensual encounter, CNN reported. No charges were filed, but Hegseth later paid a settlement agreement which included a confidentiality clause because “he didn’t want to lose his job at the network if the accusation became public,” according to Hegseth’s lawyer.
  • The New York Timesreported last week that in a 2018 email, Hegseth’s mother wrote to him, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” The paper noted that she emailed her son amid his “contentious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children,” who had been his co-worker at Vets for Freedom and that “Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce after her husband impregnated a co-worker,” a Fox executive producer whom he married the following year.
  • The New Yorkerreported last Sunday: “A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events.”

Fox’s right-wing propagandists and “news side” reporters alike remained silent about these controversies, as CNN’s Brian Stelter reported on Tuesday, instead using euphemisms about how Hegseth was facing “problems about his personal conduct” and is “headed for a tough confirmation.”

“In effect, Fox has insulated its conservative audience from reports that might dim their perception of Hegseth and Trump, instead offering viewers a safe space where their existing beliefs are reinforced by sympathetic hosts and guests,” Stelter wrote.

With Fox on the sidelines, GOP senators backed away from supporting Hegseth’s nomination. Trump himself reportedly began looking at other options for the Defense Department, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Fox favorite.

But Hegseth’s Fox colleagues finally rallied to his defense on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, as his nomination reportedly faced an “absolutely critical” juncture.

After NBC News reported Tuesday night that Hegseth “drank in ways that concerned his colleagues at Fox News, according to 10 current and former Fox employees” and had at times smelled of alcohol on the set, Hegseth’s Fox & Friends weekend co-host Will Cain organized public denials from network employees and testimonials to their former colleague’s character.

Fox & Friends’ co-hosts on Wednesday morning offered several minutes of praise for Hegseth, denials of the reports about him, and attacks on what they termed a media “witch hunt.” “No, we will not succumb to the left’s playbook,” Emily Compagno said. “We will not succumb to Kavanaugh becoming a verb in that the left likes to wield the media and a very public witch hunt to thwart the possibility for actual success.”

They hosted Hegseth’s mother later in the show, who defended her son, saying that he “doesn't misuse women” and that while he “has been through some difficult things. … I would just say that some of those attachments or descriptions are just not true, especially anymore.”

She also made a direct appeal to Trump himself.

Hegseth himself remains defiant, and he will reportedly sit down tonight with Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier for an interview aimed at an audience of one — Trump, who will almost certainly be watching as he decides whether to keep pushing for Hegseth’s nomination or cut him loose.

With Hegseth’s Fox friends trying to preserve his spot at Defense he has a chance, but their effort may be too little, too late.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Trump Hiring Fox's Medical Contributors To Oversee Health Policy

Trump Hiring Fox's Medical Contributors To Oversee Health Policy

Then-President Donald Trump repeatedly favored the Fox News hosts and guests he saw on his television screen over federal health policy experts as he managed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and it had calamitous consequences. He's going even further as he prepares for his second term, picking familiar faces from the right-wing propaganda network to run the government health bureaucracy.

Trump, a Fox obsessive, staffed his first administration with at least 20 former Fox personalities, and he continues to rely on that method as he stocks his second one. But the network’s dominance among Trump’s announced picks to carry out his second-term health policy is nonetheless striking.

Anti-vaccine activist and Fox hero Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He will potentially oversee former Fox contributor Dr. Marty Makary at the Food and Drug Administration, Fox medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as U.S. surgeon general, and frequent Fox guests Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

These picks, to an extent, show Trump aligning his health policy hires with his own Fox-molded views.

As president during the pandemic, he clashed with his official advisers when they contradicted what he was hearing from Fox personalities. The result was often chaos in decision-making, implementation, and public messaging.

Makary, Bhattacharya, Oz, and Nesheiwat received regular Fox airtime because on issues like the use of untested drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or nonpharmaceutical interventions like office and school closures, they tended to hew close to the Fox line — which also became the Trump line. If another pandemic hits, it is possible that they will be able to mitigate Trump’s worst impulses; they have real medical credentials, and Trump is likely to have greater confidence in them due to their shared past views.

But while Trump’s promotion of COVID-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed was an unalloyed triumph in his first term, Kennedy is a crank who was openly hostile to the drugs. And other members of the second-term team regularly went on Fox to warn about the purported health impacts of the vaccines and criticize mandates to ensure their use. That does not bode well for the prospect of a successful response should another pandemic hit during the next four years.

RFK Jr. at HHS is a Fox-fueled disaster for health policy

Fox hosts and other right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson spent 18 months irresponsibly championing Kennedy as part of a strategy to return Trump to the White House. The network regularly promoted him as a Democratic candidate, then showered him with praise and vouched for his health views after Carlson ensured that he endorsed Trump.

The result is that Kennedy — who has pushed debunked claims about childhood vaccination causing autism, questioned the well-established science over whether HIV actually causes AIDS, and promoted kooky conspiracy theories about 5G cellular towers and chemtrails — is Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy was among the biggest U.S. sources of anti-vaccine misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, terming the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Other noted anti-vaccine figures and fringe crackpots claim to be advising him on the transition.

He also suggested that the pandemic may have been “planned,” that public health efforts taken in response constituted “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare,” and that the virus itself had been “ethnically targeted” to afflict “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."

Trump picked other people he saw on Fox to run health agencies

Several other Trump picks for top health posts were heavily featured during the Fox’s coronavirus coverage.

Oz, the television personality and grifter Trump selected to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, became a Fox regular in 2020. He made scores of network appearances at the start of the pandemic, particularly championing hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that right-wing media figures promoted as a treatment for or preventative to COVID.

Oz’s commentary attracted the attention of Trump, who reportedly urged aides to consult with the TV doctor about the outbreak. Oz subsequently ran for the U.S. Senate with the support of Fox star and Trump adviser Sean Hannity, but he came up short in the 2022 midterms.

Makary, Nesheiwat, and Bhattacharya also seemingly became Fox regulars because of their willingness to contradict COVID-19 guidance from federal public health agencies on its airwaves.

FDA selection Makary — who argued in a February 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed that the U.S. would reach “herd Immunity by April” — used his Fox platform in the months leading up to the emergence of the deadly delta variant to criticize public health officials for warning of new strains of the virus. He also criticized vaccine mandates, particularly for children, citing the vaccine’s purported health risks.

Reported NIH pick Bhattacharya — a signatory of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which called for building up herd immunity through “natural infection” — likewise used his time in Fox’s spotlight to criticize vaccine mandates. He agreed with Fox host Laura Ingraham during an August 2021 segment that the FDA approved COVID-19 vaccines “too fast,” saying, “The FDA approval does not change the fact that we don't have long-term safety data with the vaccine."

And Nesheiwat, the Fox medical contributor Trump selected as surgeon general, promoted the use of supplemental zinc as a COVID-19 treatment and repeatedly highlighted the purported health risks of vaccination for children and young men.

Their commentary was part of a massive and effective effort by Fox to undermine the COVID-19 vaccination program. Now, if confirmed, they will be running major federal health bureaucracies.

The last pandemic — and the next one

Trump regularly leaned on Fox’s programming and personalities for advice, and the network shaped both his worldview and his administration’s actions. No event demonstrated the extent of the network’s influence more than his response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump didn’t treat COVID’s initial spread as an emergency because Fox was telling him that the media and Democrats were deliberately exaggerating the danger it posed.

He propped up hydroxychloroquine because the network told him it could be a miracle cure, refused to wear masks or socially distance because its hosts said those interventions didn’t work, and then urged the swift reopening of the economy they demanded.

He cut off support to the World Health Organization because one of Fox's stars suggested it and selected a White House adviser from the network’s green room to implement a “herd immunity” strategy.

The result was mass death.

The saving grace of the Trump pandemic response was Operation Warp Speed, an innovative program that sped the development of safe, effective vaccines against the virus. But Trump was out of office by the time the vaccines were deployed, and Fox responded with a yearslong campaign against the drugs. Fox regulars like Makary, Nesheiwat, and Bhattacharya pitched in by criticizing the safety of the vaccines or mandates for their use.

The four doctors Trump picked from Fox’s airwaves do have real medical credentials, and their selections have received some praise from public health experts.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, said Nesheiwat is “a good appointment,” describing her as “very smart, thoughtful, interested in learning.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, who served in President Joe Biden’s White House, called the appointments of Makary, Oz, and Bhattacharya “pretty reasonable,” adding: “I have plenty of policy disagreements with them. They are smart and experienced. We will need them to do well.”

Indeed, they may take office as H5N1 bird flu spreads in American livestock and from livestock to people. If that virus makes the jump to human-to-human transmission, the U.S. health bureaucracy will be forced to grapple with another deadly pandemic.

Focusing specifically on Bhattacharya, Slow Boring’s Matt Yglesias offered the best-case scenario for how Trump’s health appointees could impact a pandemic response:

Bhattacharya’s criticisms of nonpharmaceutical intervetions during 2020 went further than I would have, and I don’t agree with him per se. That said, he is well-credentialed and smart and also aligned with Trump on the substantive question.

Four years ago, Trump had a lot of people in place who he didn’t have confidence in and didn’t listen to, and then he had a lot of unqualified people articulating his views.

Bhattacharya can do what an executive branch official is supposed to do and channel Trump-style views in a professional way.

What’s more, precisely because his anti-NPI credentials are unimpeachable, if a much deadlier virus comes around that shifts Trump’s sense of the cost-benefit balance, he would be the right person to deliver that message.

But as he further notes, “the most effective weapon against Covid was pharmaceutical interventions” — and in Kennedy, Trump has selected “an anti-vaccine crank” as Bhattacharya’s boss.

That means things could get bad fast.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Donald Trump

How Fox Shaped Trump's First Term -- And Now Propels His Second

Fox News dominated wide swaths of federal decision-making during Donald Trump’s first presidency, as his administration effectively merged with the right-wing propaganda network that had propelled him to power.

It’s currently unclear how the battle for Trump’s attention will shake out in a second one — but here’s how his media diet influenced the U.S. government the last time he was in the White House.

Trump owed his 2016 political ascent to that right-wing media ecosystem. A longtime Fox regular, he was obsessed with the network’s programming and channeled its demagoguery on the campaign trail, winning over its audience, as well as upstart alt-right organs like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart.com. He dominated Fox’s airtime on the way to his primary campaign win, bending the network and the GOP to his will before garnering a narrow Electoral College majority.

Once Trump was in office, Fox became a state TV outlet that lavished him with praise and denounced his foes, and in doing so it gained unprecedented influence over the U.S. government. The hours Trump spent each day consuming the network’s content and speaking privately with its stars shaped his worldview and dictated his reaction to various events. Hundreds of his hyperaggressive, seemingly stream-of-consciousness tweets came in response to what he was seeing on his television, a phenomenon I dubbed the “Trump-Fox feedback loop.”

Fox’s employees affected wildly important policy decisions on matters of war and peace, and they turned right-wing tantrums into matters of national importance because the president of the United States happened to be tuning in.

It’s impossible to overstate how ridiculous — or dangerous — this Fox-Trump pipeline could be. At one point, after a Fox contributor turned to the camera and urged Trump to renounce his support for a bill, the president appeared to do so on Twitter, causing chaos on Capitol Hill. Later in his term, Trump put the full force of government behind a purported coronavirus “miracle cure” that he had seen touted on Fox but proved ineffective against the virus.

Below, I detail how Trump's communications, his administration’s personnel, and his administration’s actions on executive clemency, law enforcement investigations, domestic policy, and even military strikes all came to revolve around Fox during his first term.

Communications

Journalists struggled in the early days of Trump’s presidency to explain his Twitter activity. The sitting president’s often-hyperaggressive tweets would begin early in the morning and continue late into the night, skipping from topic to topic with little clear rhyme or reason.

While some attributed the pattern to strategic genius and others to mental instability, the truth was more prosaic: Trump was spending much of his days watching cable news, particularly Fox, and responding in real time to segments that captured his fancy.

I ultimately traced nearly 1,300 Trump tweets back to Fox News and its sister channel, Fox Business. He live-tweeted dozens of different Fox shows, with hundreds of his missives attributed to his favorite program, Fox & Friends, alone, on a bevy of topics. These live tweets — and thus, Fox’s coverage — often set the agenda for the broader news media, as reporters dropped whatever they were working on to cover the newsworthy comments from the TV-addled president.

Some of the Fox live tweets were a humorous sideshow — a June 2019 tweet about Mars and the moon that baffled journalists turned out to be Trump giving feedback to a NASA official he had just seen on Fox Business.

But Trump’s reactions to the network were often deadly serious: Based on what he saw on Fox, he raised tensions with foreign adversaries; demanded investigations of his political foes; lashed out at public officials with racist invective; denounced an array of journalists and media outlets; undermined the public health response to the coronavirus pandemic; and fueled the election fraud conspiracy theories that ultimately triggered the January 6 insurrection.

While Trump has in recent months at times feuded with Fox, that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to promote segments from its programming.

Personnel

Trump’s unprecedented relationship with Fox created a revolving door between the network and his administration during his first term.

Trump relied on Fox as a staffing agency, filling the ranks of the federal government with familiar faces from his TV screen. At least 20 former Fox employees ended up working for the Trump administration in some capacity, a tally that included multiple Cabinet secretaries (Ben Carson and Elaine Chao), top White House aides (Kayleigh McEnany and John Bolton, among others), and U.S. ambassadors (Scott Brown and Georgette Mosbacher). Fox, in turn, hired at least 16 members of his administration for roles at the network or its parent company during his presidency or after it concluded.

Trump also relied on advice from Fox personalities who remained at the network. He reportedly spoke with Sean Hannity so frequently that White House aides described the Fox host as “the unofficial chief of staff.” He also brought Laura Ingraham into the White House to brief administration officials, patched Lou Dobbs into Oval Office meetings via speakerphone, and privately consulted with Jeanine Pirro, Pete Hegseth, and Tucker Carlson.

These relationships proved so strong that some of the unofficial Fox advisers dislodged official Trump appointees: Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned after losing a power struggle with Pirro, as did Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen with Dobbs, U.S. Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer with Hegseth, and Bolton with Carlson.

Trump appears to be returning to the same source as he begins filling out his second administration. His initial spate of picks included five former Fox employees: Fox & Friends Weekend host Hegseth for defense secretary, former host Mike Huckabee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, and former contributors Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Homan, and Michael Waltz as director of national intelligence, “Border Czar,” and national security adviser.

Policy

Fox’s coverage and the influence of its personalities permeated every aspect of federal policy during Trump's first term, including but not limited to:

Domestic actions. Trump blew up a potential immigration deal after consulting with Hannity. He abruptly changed his trade policy with China due to criticism from Dobbs and Brian Kilmeade. He triggered a partial government shutdown after goading from Fox hosts; awarded a contract to build border wall due to a Fox PR campaign. He backed an ineffective treatment as a coronavirus “miracle cure” because it was championed by Fox stars. And in response to critical Carlson segments, he terminated a federal antisegregation plan, abandoned police reform legislation, and launched an administration-wide turn against diversity training.

Foreign actions. Trump launched the Ukraine abuse of power scheme that resulted in his first impeachment in response to coverage from Hannity. He publicly criticized South Africa’s government after seeing Carlson promote false white nationalist talking points, leading South African to condemn his statement. He responded to a Fox segment about North Korea by threatening nuclear war. And he both cut off funding to the World Health Organization and repeatedly called off military strikes on Iran due to Carlson monologues.

Executive clemency. Fox influenced at least 25 of Trump’s acts of executive clemency. He gave pardons and commutations to individuals whose cases had the support of Trump-loving network personalities and to clients of prominent pro-Trump lawyers who regularly appeared on its shows. Individuals seeking clemency and their family members and lawyers used the president’s favorite programs to request clemency from him directly. Hegseth in particular played a key role in lobbying for clemency for alleged and convicted war criminals.

Law enforcement investigations. Trump repeatedly demanded — and received — law enforcement action against his perceived foes in response to coverage he saw about them on Fox, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Google, and the Russia probe.

Who knows what the second term will bring.

This post is adapted in part from my op-ed at MSNBC.com.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Fox News Has Become Trump Transition's Staffing Agency

Fox News Has Become Trump Transition's Staffing Agency

Incoming president Donald Trump’s unprecedented relationship with Fox News is once again creating a revolving door between the right-wing propaganda network and his administration. Trump has named three current or former Fox employees to high-ranking positions in the week since he was elected president — and more seem sure to follow.

Trump, an obsessive Fox viewer whose worldview is shaped by the network’s programming, stocked his first-term White House and federal agencies with familiar faces from the network. At least 20 people with Fox on their resumes joined his administration over the course of his tenure, including Cabinet secretaries, top White House aides, and ambassadors.

Trump also consulted privately with an array of Fox stars, creating a shadow Cabinet of advisers with immense influence over government affairs whose key credential was their ability to attract attention via right-wing bombthrowing. And he frequently made important decisions based on what people were telling him on his favorite network — at times with disastrous results.

As Trump ramps up his second term, he is once again plucking top administration officials from the network’s stable.

The list below will be updated as additional former Fox employees join or leave the Trump administration.


  • Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence

    Gabbard is a former Democratic member of Congress who ran a quixotic campaign for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020. Fox hired her as a contributor in 2022 amid a political transformation that saw her become a favorite of Tucker Carlson and the MAGA movement, adopt increasingly hard-right rhetoric, and ultimately endorse Trump’s presidential run. Trump announced on November 13, 2024, that he plans to nominate Gabbard as director of national intelligence, a position that oversees the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.

  • Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense

    After serving in the Army National Guard and as executive director of a right-wing veteran’s organization, Hegseth joined Fox as a contributor in 2014 and subsequently became a co-host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition. In that role he caught Trump's eye, with the then-president reportedly considering him for secretary of veterans affairs and taking the Fox host’s advice in granting executive clemency to several service members accused or convicted of war crimes. On November 12, 2024, Trump announced that he plans to nominate Hegseth for defense secretary, which would give the cable news figure oversight of a sprawling bureaucracy staffed by nearly 3 million military and civilian employees that spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

  • Tom Homan, “border czar"

    Homan joined Fox as a contributor in August 2018, two months after his retirement as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (where he reportedly served as the “intellectual ‘father’” of Trump’s family separation policy). As a Fox employee, he staunchly supported Trump’s immigration policies and statements and called for draconian responses to the purported migrant “invasion.” Trump announced on November 10, 2024, that he is naming Homan “Border Czar” and giving him responsibility for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

  • Mike Huckabee, Ambassador to Israel

    Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, hosted a weekly Fox program for more than six years before stepping down in 2015 to explore a presidential run. He subsequently rebooted his show for the Christian cable network Trinity Broadcasting Network and has remained a frequent Fox commentator who the network sporadically identifies as a contributor. Trump announced on November 12, 2024, that he plans to nominate Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

  • Michael Waltz, National Security Adviser

    An Army veteran and Republican member of Congress from Florida who served as an adviser in the Pentagon and White House, Waltz became a paid Fox contributor in 2017, the year before he was first elected to the U.S. House. He still touts that credential on his campaign website. Waltz made at least 569 Fox appearances between August 2017 and Election Day 2024. His 176 appearances from January 2023 to that date were more than any other member of Congress over that period. On November 12, 2024, Trump named Waltz as his national security adviser.

  • Frequent Fox guests

    Several other people Trump plans to nominate for high-ranking positions in his administration have spent the last several years regularly appearing on the president-elect’s favored network.
According to the Media Matters database, from August 2017 through Election Day 2024:
  • Stephen Miller, Trump’s pick for deputy White House chief of staff for policy, made at least 374 weekday Fox appearances, including 174 since January 2023.
  • Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Trump’s pick for attorney general, made at least 347 weekday Fox appearances, including 26 since January 2023.
  • Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Trump’s pick for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made at least 307 weekday Fox appearances, including 92 since January 2023.
  • Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Trump’s pick for secretary of state, made at least 263 weekday Fox appearances, including 70 since January 2023.
  • Former Trump Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick for CIA director, made at least 180 weekday Fox appearances, including 71 since January 2023.
  • South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s reported pick for secretary of homeland security, made at least 135 weekday Fox appearances, including 46 since January 2023.
  • Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations, made at least 108 weekday Fox appearances, including 32 since January 2023.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

lachlan murdoch, tucker carlson

MAGA Propaganda Machine Revived Trump -- And It's Still Poisoning America

Donald Trump was reelected president on Tuesday, four years after fomenting a coup which saw a mob of his supporters storm the U.S. Capitol and then leaving the White House in disgrace. He owes his return at least in part to a rankly dishonest right-wing information ecosystem that helped carry him through countless scandals that would have ended the careers of most politicians, driving his comeback to the pinnacle of power.

Conservative audiences are dependent on a right-wing media complex that bombards them with falsehoods and grievances while dissuading them from consulting any alternative sources of information, be they legacy news outlets or government officials or medical experts.

Once Trump captured the GOP and ascended to the presidency in 2017, that bubble served him and his interests. Within it, for example, his supporters were convinced by a sprawling conspiracy theory portraying the then-president as the victim of a shadowy “deep state” cabal that justified vast retribution.

The January 6 insurrection presented Trump’s propagandists with a crossroads. Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes right-wing bastions like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, privately sought for him to become a “non person.” But Tucker Carlson and his allies at Fox and elsewhere instead went to work creating a counternarrative in which Trump was blameless. People who knew better either played along or actively participated in the whitewashing of that day.

Trump’s various indictments for a host of crimes provided additional hinge points. Right-wing media figures who could have used evidence of his abject criminality as a rationale for cutting him loose instead rallied to him and sought to delegitimize those seeking to bring him to justice.

The right-wing media bubble’s eagerness to excuse Trump’s actions gave him a dominant position in the Republican primary. As he romped to the nomination, his opponents complained that they were unable to gain traction because the party’s propaganda wing had united behind him.

Trump again became the nominee of one of the two major parties. He selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a Carlson favorite, as his running mate, and demonstrated the importance of the right-wing echo chamber by giving Carlson himself a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

With the general election set between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, right-wing propagandists went to work holding the GOP base together with a combination of grievance-mongering and silence.

They flooded the zone with a bogus narrative of “migrant crime” while ignoring evidence that violent crime was actually plummeting from its Trump-era high.

They instructed their audiences to treat immigrants as a scapegoat, falsely claiming that federal disaster aid desperately needed to respond to hurricanes had been siphoned off to benefit migrants and ginning up grotesque lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets.

They lashed out at the press, urging the Republican base to treat Trump’s poor showing in his debate against Harris as the result of media bias.

When an unprecedented string of former Republican officials and Trump’s own former administration aides came forward with dire warnings of what Trump did in his first term and could do in a second one, they hid the news from their audiences.

And they kept quiet on a host of unpopular aspects of Trump’s policy agenda, from Social Security to reproductive rights, while beating back burgeoning scandals over his alleged January 6 crimes, communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a political event at Arlington National Cemetery.

Journalists and political strategists will spend the next weeks and months grappling for explanations as to how Trump returned to the White House. But without the support of the right-wing propaganda machine, he would not have been in position to sweep his party’s nomination in the first place — and in an evenly divided country amid a global anti-incumbent wave, that provided a strong position to win the presidency.

Now, the same propagandists who helped him back to power are poised to help him carry out his extreme agenda of destruction and retribution.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

RFK Jr. and Sean Hannity

Fox Promotes RFK Jr -- Whose Lunacy Could Exact A Terrible Cost

Fox News irresponsibly championed notorious anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s potential role overseeing federal health policy in a second Trump administration. In the final days of the presidential campaign, the dire impact he could have on the American public has now come fully into view.

Fox hosts have spent the last 18 months building up in the minds of their audience members a wackadoo conspiracy theorist who has blamed self-described “cognitive problems” on having a literal worm in his brain as part of a play to return Donald Trump to the White House. The network promoted Kennedy as a potential spoiler in the Democratic presidential primary, then lavished him with praise when he ended his independent candidacy and endorsed Trump.

The network’s hosts even touted Kennedy’s health views as, in Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt’s words, “music to every mom’s ears,” while hiding from viewers his disturbing record of spreading unfounded claims falsely linking childhood vaccinations and autism and his attacks on the COVID-19 vaccine as “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Kennedy’s advocacy reportedly helped drive down vaccination rates in American Samoa, triggering “one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent memory.”

Trump and Kennedy have both said in recent days that Kennedy will play a major part in a potential second Trump administration. Trump has said that Kennedy will be permitted to “go wild on health” and “go wild on the medicines,” while Kennedy has alleged the former president “has promised” him oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services and agencies under its purview, which include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.

Kennedy’s public statements — and those of other Republican leaders about his potential role — suggest that the consequences could prove disastrous.

  • Kennedy’s “rising influence was reflected” in an appearance by Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, who said on CNN he had come to doubt the safety of vaccines following a conversation with Kennedy and that he approved of Kennedy getting access to federal data about vaccines and making recommendations. Jerome M. Adams, who served as U.S. surgeon general under Trump, said in response, “It’s hard to implement your other political priorities if you’re busy dealing with a measles or polio outbreak.”
  • Kennedy said on social media: “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” Water fluoridation, which federal officials endorsed more than 70 years ago, strengthens teeth and reduces cavities, according to the CDC. A federal agency said earlier this year that there is “moderate confidence” in a link between fluoride levels double the recommended limit in drinking water and lower IQ in children.
  • Trump told a reporter on Tuesday that advising water systems to remove fluoride “sounds okay to me” and that he is open to banning vaccines.
  • Kennedy has reportedly recommended Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to the Trump transition team as a potential candidate for HHS secretary. Lapado has fought with federal regulators over the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine and earned notoriety for spreading health misinformation and for his fringe associations.
  • Charlene Bollinger, a longtime Kennedy friend who recently said she is working with him to advise the Trump transition team, is a fringe commentator who describes cancer as “just an imbalance” and whose social media account endorsed threads praising Adolf Hitler and pushing claims about a “Jew World Order.”
  • Kennedy recently appeared in a pro-Trump ad for a group that works to oppose in vitro fertilization, which it has labeled “evil” and “immoral.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

How Trump Would Crush A Free Press If He Wins The Presidency

How Trump Would Crush A Free Press If He Wins The Presidency

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, the fate of the U.S. press may rest on whether corporate executives who control mammoth multimedia conglomerates are willing to prioritize the journalistic credibility of the news outlets they oversee over their own business interests.

Trump will put wealthy media magnates to the test, forcing them to decide whether they are willing to suffer painful consequences for keeping their outlets free of influence, or whether they will either compel their journalists to knuckle under or sell their outlets to someone who will.

Trump spent his presidency demanding that his administration target his perceived political enemies with federal pressure — from regulatory action to criminal investigations — and says he would be even less restrained in enacting “retribution” in a second term.

In recent months, prominent commentators have warned that the press could become such a target of Trump, whose own former top aides describe him as a fascist. New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger, in an extraordinary warning in the pages of The Washington Post, wrote last month that Trump takes as his model Hungary’s autocrat Victor Orban, who has “effectively dismantled the news media in his country” as “a central pillar of Orban’s broader project to remake his country as an ‘illiberal democracy.’”

These fears that Trump would use a second term to crack down on the press are rational. The former president demands sycophantic coverage and describes those who do not provide it as the “enemy of the people.” Trump’s rhetoric and record show that he is keenly aware of the vulnerabilities some news outlets have and is eager to exploit them if he returns to the White House.

Corporate media owners are vulnerable to Trump’s pressure — and some are already bending

Trump’s presidency revealed the dark playbook he and his allies use against perceived enemies such as individual journalists. Its potential tactics include publicly denouncing reporters, stripping them of access, inciting supporters to target them with violence, threatening them with investigation, and sending federal agencies like the Justice Department after them. These heinous maneuvers could and likely would be used against journalists in a second Trump term.

But perhaps the greater threat to the free press as an institution comes from Trump’s ability to target for retaliation the corporate barons who control the newspapers, broadcast and cable networks, and other outlets that employ those journalists.

While some publications like the Times are functionally standalone journalism businesses, many others are either small divisions within massive multimedia companies whose executives are ultimately responsible to stockholders or privately held entities that represent a tiny fraction of their owner’s assets.

CNN is part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company that also owns film and TV studios, streaming services, and a host of other businesses.

Comcast provides cable and internet services to consumers and owns and operates broadcast and cable TV channels and a movie studio, in addition to overseeing NBC News and MSNBC.

CBS News is owned by Paramount Global. ABC News is part of the Walt Disney Co.

Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post (where my wife works as letters and community editor) but his billions come from founding Amazon, which is the nation’s second-largest private employer with subsidiaries in industries from online retail to web services, artificial intelligence to groceries. Patrick Soon-Shiong used a fraction of the wealth he earned in biotech to purchase the Los Angeles Times.

Trump understands that those broader corporate structures create a host of potential vulnerabilities an authoritarian president with no interest in preserving the rule of law could utilize against the owners of news outlets that displease him. Individuals and corporations that own major news outlets have other business interests that may rely on government contracts or federal patents or regulators who oversee their mergers and acquisitions and other practices.

The former president knows that even if journalists want to stand up to him, he can force their outlets to change course by threatening corporate executives and owners who have different priorities.

Trump does not just lash out at the Post — he targets the “Amazon Washington Post.” When he goes after NBC and MSNBC, he calls out Comcast’s CEO by name. He shares attacks on Disney’s Bob Iger as part of his war on ABC News. He is telegraphing the future trouble he may bring down on the corporate owners if they do not bring their news outlets to heel — and forcing those owners to determine how much pain they are willing to endure over a division that likely provides a small fraction of the overall corporation's revenues.

Some media owners seem to be responding to Trump’s authoritarian message in advance of Election Day. Bezos and Soon-Shiong both reportedly overruled the editorial boards of the papers they own and spiked planned editorials endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in the final weeks of the race, while NBC will not air a documentary about the impact Trump’s administration had on migrant families until December. While all three have offered other explanations for their moves, observers have noted that their other business interests give each extensive exposure to a Trump presidency.

Corporate executives also know that there are rewards for knuckling under and following the paths of avowed pro-Trump figures like Rupert Murdoch, whose multimedia empire includes right-wing fixtures Fox News and the New York Post, and David Smith, whose Sinclair Broadcasting Group is a telecommunications giant that owns and programs scores of TV stations. Both received favorable regulatory treatment during Trump’s presidency.

Case study: How Trump could target CBS News in a second term


Others will come under increasing pressure if Trump returns to the White House. For example, the former president has decried the network’s editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris as “the biggest scandal in broadcast history” and said that CBS should be stripped of its broadcast license.

While Trump apparently lacks a clear understanding of how the government regulates news networks like CBS, he is making clear that he expects federal retribution against the network — and Paramount Global, its parent company, is acutely vulnerable to such retaliation.

Paramount Global, after a monthslong search for a buyer, agreed in July to a proposed merger with Skydance Media, the production company founded by filmmaker David Ellison. The deal will need to go through Justice Department antitrust regulators who, under a normal administration, are supposed to scrutinize its impact on media consolidation.

But Trump eschews the traditional independence of the Justice Department, seeing it instead as an extension of the president’s personal will. If he returns to the White House, it will be impossible to separate the DOJ’s handling of the Paramount-Skydance merger from his personal grudge with CBS News. And the executives of those companies will be pressed to respond.

What happens if Trump gets elected and the Justice Department derails the merger? If Trump’s associates tell Paramount executives that it might get back on track if CBS News provided more positive coverage of Trump’s administration, how would they respond?

Journalists at CBS News might resist that kind of pressure. But what would happen if Skydance’s Ellison suddenly got a call from Lachlan Murdoch suggesting that CBS News was holding up the deal and offering to buy it? If that hypothetical sounds far-fetched, consider that it is reportedly quite similar to reports about the Trump-era merger featuring the parent company of CNN.

Ellison doesn’t have roots in journalism; he’s a film producer and the son of the billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Does he — and other corporate owners like him — care more about the preservation of the free press than completing a megamerger?

We may find out.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters .

With Irrational Bluster About Victory, Right-Wing Media Prepare Trump's Steal

With Irrational Bluster About Victory, Right-Wing Media Prepare Trump's Steal

Right-wing media figures are displaying irrational levels of confidence in Donald Trump’s chances of winning the presidential election. While poll aggregators and models suggest the race is a toss-up, MAGA pundits are deluging their supporters with the message that Trump’s victory is inevitable.

Whether or not this is a deliberate strategy, the result is that right-wing audiences — which generally trust information only when it comes from right-wing sources — are not being prepared for the possibility of Trump’s defeat. That makes it more likely that they will disbelieve such an outcome and rally to a Trumpian effort to overturn it.

When the right-wing media ecosystem similarly presented Trump as an overwhelming favorite in the waning days of his 2020 campaign against Biden, I warned that they were laying the groundwork for a potential violent coup attempt by the then-president:

Fox’s effort is a necessary -- if not sufficient -- step toward enacting Trump’s openly touted plan to try to steal the election (if it is close enough to do so) by preventing the counting of ballots legally cast for Biden. And even if the network fails to keep Trump in the White House, its reckless disinformation could raise tensions to feverish heights, potentially leading to political violence.

Indeed, Trump declared victory on election night and, backed by the right-wing propaganda machine, used pretextual claims of voter fraud to try to overturn Biden’s victory, culminating with the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Four years later, the same scenario is playing out again.

Right-wing media aren't acknowledging the possibility of defeat

Polls currently show a tight race for president that could go either way. “In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast,” Nate Silver wrote in an October 23 op-ed. “Since the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that is more or less exactly where my model has had it.”

But it often seems that the U.S. commentariat has sorted itself such that the nation’s most hubristic optimists are all supporting the GOP while its most anxious pessimists are loyal Democrats. The result is that right-wing pundits spend every election cycle predicting victory, while left-wing pundits worry over the prospect of defeat. This election is no different.

In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, right-wing media figures embraced poll trutherism and told their audiences that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was going to defeat then-President Barack Obama in a “landslide.” The right was so primed for victory that Fox political analyst Karl Rove, who had predicted a sizable Romney win, ended up arguing with his own network’s decision desk over the state of the race as results rolled in on election night showing Obama had been reelected.

Trump epitomizes the right’s irrational confidence — but with the added twist that only fraud could explain any Republican defeat.

“We should have a revolution in this country!" he tweeted on election night 2012, calling the results “a total sham and a travesty.”

After eking out a narrow electoral vote victory in 2016, he falsely claimed that he had lost the popular vote only due to “millions of people who voted illegally.” And he asserts to this day that he won the 2020 election but it was robbed from him by fraud, a lie that has permeated his party.

The 2022 midterms brought more predictions of an impending “red wave” of Republican victories. Tucker Carlson, for example, told Fox viewers in the leadup to Election Day that only fraud could explain Democratic victories in races like the Pennsylvania campaign for U.S. Senate and the Arizona gubernatorial race.

Following the GOP’s lackluster showing that year, Carlson seemed chastened.

“Republicans swore they were going to sweep a red tsunami,” he said. “That's what they told us and we, to be honest, cautiously believed them, but they did not sweep, not even close to sweeping,” he complained. “How could there not be a massive Republican win nationally, wins everywhere? Well, there weren’t. … Joe Biden was not punished.”

But either Carlson didn’t actually learn anything from that experience, or he’s decided that projecting overweening confidence is strategically apt. The close Trump adviser and popular right-wing podcaster is again suggesting that the former president’s supporters shouldn’t accept the results if Trump loses.

“I think Donald Trump’s going to win, which is amazing,” he said at a pro-Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday. “Donald Trump's victory will be a triumph of the human spirit. It will be a triumph of Americans over the machine that seeks to oppress them. It will be a middle finger wagging in the face of the worst people in the English-speaking world."

Carlson analogized a Trump victory to a scenario in which “Dad comes home” and tells a “hormone-addled” teenage daughter (standing in for American liberals), “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now. … It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”

Later in the speech, he returned to the theme of Trump’s inevitable victory.

“I think Donald Trump’s going to win,” he said. "I think the vibe is so strong right now, I don’t think they can get away with pretending something else happened. I don’t think we can have another 2020 at this point. I just don’t.”

Carlson went on to suggest that “no matter what they pull,” “I don’t think they can get away with” saying that Vice President Kamala Harris won the election.

“I don’t think people are going to sit back and take it,” he added. “They need to lose, and at the end of all of that when they tell you they’ve won, no. You can look them straight in the face and say, ‘I’m sorry — dad’s home,’” he concluded.

Carlson isn’t alone in dismissing the possibility that Trump could still lose the election. Such sentiments are currently everywhere within the right-wing ecosystem.

Trump himself is reportedly “uncharacteristically buoyant, almost cavalier, convinced that victory is his,” and, bolstered by waves of favorable polls from GOP-linked firms, that belief is trickling down.

Loyal Trumpers are telling Fox’s audience that Trump’s victory is inevitable.

Host Jesse Watters has been predicting for months that Trump “is going to win” in a “landslide” and that evidence suggesting otherwise comes from “fake polls — Trump’s going to kill her.” His colleague Greg Gutfeld says, “The race is over, but the integrity of the election is still in question,” and “Donald Trump’s got this.” Contributor Joe Concha is also predicting a Trump “landslide,” telling viewers: “He wins this quite easily. Save the tape. Play it back if I'm wrong. This is how it's going to end.”

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk likewise says his viewers should “expect desperation out of the Democrats right now” because Trump’s “early voting numbers are great, as his odds in the betting markets are ascendant.”

MAGA influencers are dubiously claiming that Harris’ messaging suggests her internal polling must be “very alarming” — or even making up sources that they claim have access to those dire figures.

Even right-wingers who are occasionally skeptical of the former president are saying he has the election in the bag.

“I really did think for a good portion of the year that I’d be spending the last month of this election slowly building my audience of readers and listeners to a place where they could accept Trump's loss without immediately descending into stolen election conspiracy theories,” Erick Erickson wrote on Wednesday. “Instead, I find myself having to rein myself in from explicitly saying he has won thirteen days before the election. This is rather wild.”

As Erickson’s missive makes clear, there are few if any voices on the right preparing their audience for the possibility of Trump’s defeat.

All this has happened before

By way of preparing my own audience: It is possible none of this will ultimately matter. With numerous swing states polling within the margin of error, and the chance of a systemic poll error in play, Trump could very well win legitimately in November.

But if the election returns show that Harris has triumphed, Trump has a backup plan ready to go: He can attempt to subvert the election, as he did in 2020.

While elements of that plan could be different, the broad strokes of declaring victory, presenting himself as the victim of election fraud, filing pretextual lawsuits, and ultimately leaning on Republican officials at the local, state, and federal levels to hand him the presidency remain unchanged.

This strategy rests on Trump being able to convince the Republican base that he won the election. In 2020, he had the support of a vast right-wing media ecosystem that, with few exceptions, had already prepped its audience to disbelieve the results of the election if Trump won. The result was a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol that threatened American democracy.

Since then, the right has purged media figures and Republican politicians who had stood in the way of the plot. And now, in 2024, the same players are again laying the groundwork for a Trumpian subversion effort.

In a few weeks, the country could once more be positioned on the edge of the abyss.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

john kelly

Right-Wing Media Once Lionized John Kelly For Restraining Trump

Prominent members of the right-wing media elite touted John Kelly’s ability as White House chief of staff to impose discipline on then-President Donald Trump and prevent the nation from falling into chaos.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board and commentators like National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich praised the retired four-star general as an “indispensable” and “unflinching” figure who “deserves the nation’s gratitude” for stopping Trump from exercising his worst impulses.

Now, Kelly is publicly describing the former president as a fascist bent on ruling the United States as a dictator if he returns to power — while Trump is making clear that he will not allow himself to be surrounded by similar figures who could act as guardrails in a second term — and the same figures are still backing his candidacy.

Elite right-wing commentators lauded Kelly for keeping Trump under control

For a segment of the right-wing press that likes Trump’s support for cutting taxes, banning abortion, dismantling the social safety net, and other traditional GOP positions — but dislikes the chaos he brings with them — Kelly’s July 2017 appointment as chief of staff was a godsend.

The conservative editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journalwrote at the time that Trump, not Kelly’s predecessor Reince Priebus, had been “the problem” at the White House and expressed faint hope that Kelly might be able to “impose some order on the staff” — if Trump listened to him.

Their hopes were apparently vindicated; when Trump announced in December 2018 that Kelly would be stepping down, the board showered him with praise in an editorial titled “Thank You, John Kelly.”

“There are many unpleasant jobs in the world, but somebody has to do them,” the piece began. “One is being Donald Trump’s chief of staff, and so as he prepares to be liberated from White House bondage this month, John Kelly deserves the nation’s gratitude.”

“He tried to establish order in the President’s schedule and meetings, to the extent that is possible, as well as a regular process for policy deliberations,” it continued. “Mr. Kelly did that well enough, and long enough, that the White House could negotiate tax reform.”

The board went on to bemoan the potential candidates to replace Kelly, noting, “Mr. Trump’s chaotic style is so outside management norms that we hesitate to suggest any names.”

Lowry was even more fulsome in his praise in a February 2018 piece for National Review headlined “John Kelly Shouldn’t Go Anywhere; In short, it is Kelly or bust.”

Lowry wrote that Kelly “is as close as it gets to an indispensable man in the Trump White House,” touting his ability to “intimidate the White House staff into a semblance of order.”

“Kelly has indeed been a restraining influence on Trump, even if that is difficult to believe,” he added. “Just imagine a White House with all those who have now mostly been locked out — Corey Lewandowski and Co.— back on the inside to do their utmost to create the chaos and self-valorizing leaking sufficient for Fire and Fury: The Sequel.”

(Lewandowski, who Trump fired from his 2016 campaign, officially joined the 2024 effort in September, though the notoriously dishonest and violent political operative seems to have subsequently lost influence within its ranks.)

And Gingrich, discussing potential Kelly replacements on Fox in December 2018, similarly stressed Kelly’s ability to keep Trump under control and tell him when his desires could not be met.

“He needs somebody strong enough to say no,” Gingrich said of the then-president. “This is a very strong-willed personality. He will run over a weaker person and they will rapidly lose control of the building.”

“Gen. Kelly was terrific because he is a four-star Marine and they are pretty tough, they are pretty unflinching,” Gingrich continued. “No chief of staff is going to dominate President Trump, but he needs a chief of staff strong enough to look him in the eye and say, ‘That's not a very good idea.’ And I hope he will pick somebody who is that strong.”

Kelly served at the highest levels of Trump's administration and says he is a fascist

The Journal editorial board, Lowry, and Gingrich were correct to worry about the prospect of an unhinged Trump unrestrained by a competent chief of staff. Mark Meadows, a former congressman who served in that role, oversaw the final chaotic months of Trump’s administration, during which Trump led a shambling response to the COVID-19 pandemic, threatened to use military force against protesters, and ultimately sought to subvert the results of the 2020 election and triggered the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Now Kelly, who served Trump as chief of staff for a year and a half, is speaking out about what he saw in the White House and the urgent danger he says the former president poses to the country. In interviews with The New York Times, he said of Trump and his plans for a second term:

  • “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
  • “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
  • He “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
  • “I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.”
  • “He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.”

Kelly is one of several high-ranking national security appointees in Trump’s administration who are warning the country that the former president is a fascist. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described him as “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever,” remarks reportedly echoed by Jim Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense.

And on Wednesday, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on CNN that “it's hard to say that” Trump “doesn't” fit the definition of fascist, adding, “He certainly has those inclinations, and I think it's something we should be wary about.”

Trump would not be similarly restrained in a second term. They’re still on board.

Trump stresses on the campaign trail that the major difference between his presidency and a second term would be that he has learned to surround himself with loyalists who will not try to restrain him. His former aides spun up Project 2025, which aims to provide the former president with a vetted list of zealots to staff his administration and White House.

But none of this is giving pause to the people who praised Kelly’s ability to keep Trump in check.

The Journal’s editorial board is pooh-poohing the idea that Trump might be a fascist, claiming that “the evidence of Mr. Trump’s first term” purportedly shows that “whatever his intentions, the former President was hemmed in by American checks and balances” — but Trump is explicitly preparing to free himself from such checks in a second term.

Lowry is writing in The New York Times about how Trump could actually win the election “on character.”

And Gingrich is predicting that Trump would be “dramatically more managerial and practical” in a second term.

Meanwhile, the man they touted for keeping Trump under control is publicly warning that Trump could destroy the American system.

The defining feature of right-wing media during the Trump era has been that you either back the former president despite your better instincts and morality, or you get excommunicated from the movement. That incentive structure — and the right-wing commentariat’s craven responses to it — explains the resulting media ecosystem rallying behind a lying felonious racist and conman who launched an insurrection and whose own former top aides describe as a fascist.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Nonpartisan Study Shows Trump Would Bankrupt Social Security By 2031

Nonpartisan Study Shows Trump Would Bankrupt Social Security By 2031

Fox News host and Donald Trump adviser Sean Hannity claims that Vice President Kamala Harris is lying when she says Trump’s proposals would threaten the solvency of Social Security. But according to a new study, Trump’s tax plans would drain the Social Security Trust Fund in just six years, triggering devastating cuts to the payments seniors depend on if no further changes are made.

Trump’s “campaign proposals would dramatically worsen Social Security’s finances,” according to the analysis of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB):

President Trump’s proposals to eliminate taxation of Social Security benefits, end taxes on tips and overtime, impose tariffs, and expand deportations would all widen Social Security’s cash deficits. Under our central estimate, we find that President Trump’s agenda would:

  • Increase Social Security’s ten-year cash shortfall by $2.3 trillion through FY 2035.
  • Advance insolvency by three years, from FY 2034 to FY 2031 – hastening the next President’s insolvency timeline by one-third.
  • Lead to a 33 percent across-the-board benefit cut in 2035, up from the 23 percent CBO projects under current law.
  • Increase Social Security’s annual shortfall by roughly 50 percent in FY 2035, from 3.6 to 4 percent of payroll.
  • Require the equivalent of reducing current law benefits by about one-third or increasing revenue by about one-half to restore 75-year solvency.

Trump adviser and Project 2025 contributor Stephen Moore has argued such changes are good policy because “we want people to keep working. We want to keep incentivizing people once they turn 65, or 66, or 70.”

Democrats, meanwhile, typically favor extending the solvency of Social Security by increasing taxes on wealthy Americans rather than cutting benefits for vulnerable seniors.

Fox News and its right-wing counterparts rarely discuss Social Security because they want Republicans to win elections and they recognize that the right’s proposals are generally politically toxic. When Trump suggested in a March interview that he would consider cutting Social Security benefits — a mainstay of right-wing punditry -- Fox ignored the remarks.

But when Trump’s propagandists talk about one of the most successful federal programs in history, which sustains tens of millions of American seniors, they stress that he and his party are committed to defending it, claiming suggestions otherwise are lies.

“At multiple rallies today in North Carolina, Harris also continued her long-running lie that Donald Trump wants to cut your Social Security,” Hannity complained last month. “But the official Republican Party platform and Donald Trump in his own words over and over again say just the opposite. As you can see on your screen, a complete and total lie from Kamala Harris.”

Hannity may be willing to take Trump at his word, but CRFB’s analysis shows Harris is correct that the former president’s plans would devastate Social Security.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Trump, Harris

Trump And Harris Events Again Prove Fox Network Has No 'News Side'

Fox News’ Wednesday programming encapsulated the transformation of the network’s once-vaunted “news side” into an extension of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

In the morning, Fox aired what it had touted as a town hall with Trump featuring an audience of women voters. In reality, the event was functionally a pep rally for the former president, who was guided by Fox anchor Harris Faulkner through questions from a crowd Fox stocked with his supporters.

Vice President Kamala Harris received a starkly different reception that night when she sat down with Fox anchor Bret Baier, at one point catching him using a deceptive clip to downplay Trump’s rants about “the enemy from within.”

Fox’s “news side” has been in steep decline since Trump took over the Republican Party and the network rebranded as his personal propaganda outlet. But even by those standards, the partisan divide it displayed on Wednesday was striking and would be catastrophically embarrassing to Fox’s employees if any of them were still capable of humiliation.

For Trump, a Fox-branded campaign event

Fox announced last week that it was planning a town hall with Trump that would be taped in Georgia and moderated by Faulkner. The network’s press release stressed that the event would feature an “audience entirely composed of women” and highlighted Faulkner’s journalistic credentials. Politico’s takeaway was that by taking questions from members of “a demographic that has been largely repulsed by his temperament and abortion-rights views,” the former president would be “venturing into more challenging territory.”

In reality, Fox had stocked the audience with Trump’s supporters by inviting local Republican groups, as The Independent’s Eric Garcia reported.

This quickly became apparent when the edited broadcast began airing on the Wednesday edition of Faulkner’s show and Trump entered to a standing ovation from the crowd. The first questioner, who identified herself as “Lisa,” is the president of a local Republican women’s group.

Over the course of the broadcast, Trump fielded softball questions from people who were clearly voting for him; at least one was wearing branded Trump paraphernalia. He got help along the way from Faulkner, a committed shill for his campaign who has criticized journalists at other outlets for asking tough questions of the former president and avoided pushing back as he spread numerous falsehoods.

Notably, Fox deliberately deceived the public about the audience it hosted for Trump. While Faulkner described the crowd as coming from “every walk of life,” CNN subsequently reported that the network not only stocked the town hall with Trump’s supporters, the version it aired left out two key occurrences that exposed just how in-the-tank for Trump it had been.

A portion of one question “was edited by Fox News to remove her admission that she was voting for Trump,” CNN reported after comparing audio a reporter in the room recorded to the program Fox aired. “During another moment missing from Fox’s broadcast, Trump asked the crowd who they were voting for, leading to a chant of ‘Trump, Trump’ breaking out by the attendees.”

It’s easy to see why Trump might prefer such a supportive environment, even as his campaign reportedly canceled recent interviews with CBS, NBC, and CNBC.

But it is unfathomable that Fox figures would host such an event for Harris — and if they did, Trump would probably threaten that his administration would retaliate against the network.

For Harris, a deceptive clip soft-pedaling Trump’s authoritarian rants

While Baier has long enjoyed a largely unearned reputation as a credible newsman, he lives in palpable fear of his viewers abandoning his network. He spent the day leading up to his Harris interview telling agitated social media followers that he wasn’t going to give her the questions and the interview wouldn’t be edited to make her look good.

His subsequent performance was what you might expect from someone worried primarily about letting down Fox’s pro-Trump audience. Harris faced a barrage of hostile questions and frequent interruptions when she tried to answer them. Baier devoted the first third of the interview to Trump’s preferred topic of immigration. He spent more time trying to grill Harris on surgeries for incarcerated trans people — a focal point of recent Trump ads — than he did abortion, which did not come up at all.

These tactics made for a combative interview, one that probably would have helped Baier with his audience without hurting his reputation.

But at one point, Baier tried to downplay Trump’s recent fascistic comments about “the enemy from within.” He asked Harris to respond to a clip from Trump’s town hall on the subject — but left out the part where he cited “the Pelosis” as an example of who he was talking about, and added, “These people, they are so sick and they are so evil.” Harris caught him red-handed.

Baier’s attempted clean-up was blatant enough to draw criticism not only from his competitors at MSNBC and CNN, and from media critics like Poynter’s Tom Jones, but even from former Fox colleagues.

It is unfathomable that Fox personalities would do such a thing in an interview with Trump — and if they did, Trump would probably threaten that his administration would retaliate against the network.

For Fox’s “news side,” a years-long slide

Fox’s “news side” always functioned as a cog in the right-wing media machine that laundered its talking points into the mainstream press, and its claim to independence was demolished during Trump's presidency. But at this point the network seems to have all but given up on even pretending to employ a credible news apparatus.

The last few years have seen newsroom stalwarts with decades at the network leave and call their former employer a propaganda outlet.

Fox’s decision desk was neutered after the 2020 election, with top executives overruling and then firing its leaders.

The network has shortened its “news” hours and replaced newsroom staffers with GOP partisans.

Reporters who tried to tell viewers the truth about Trump’s election fraud claims were first chastised by their bosses and then took jobs at other outlets.

What remains are people like Baier and Faulkner who are comfortable with Fox — the whole network, “news” and “opinion” side alike — operating as an extension of Trump’s will.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters .

Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham Warns Of Economic 'Disaster' To Promote Her Gold Grift

When the going gets tough, right-wing commentators get grifting — though to be fair, they also rile up their audiences so they can profit off them in good times.

Take Laura Ingraham. On Tuesday morning, the Fox News host previewed the evening’s vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance by urging her X followers to buy gold and silver from her sponsor in order to avoid “a potential Harris/Walz disaster” to their personal finances.

Ingraham linked to a dedicated landing page featuring her endorsement of GoldPro, a precious metals investment company whose right-wing sponsors have included Ingraham’s Fox colleague Sean Hannity and Stew Peters, a white nationalist and antisemitic streamer who has called for the execution of journalists.

Ingraham’s LauraLikesGold.com testimonial states that “our current Administration has done nothing to make the lives of everyday American families better,” citing factors like “Rising Inflation,” “Increasing National debt,” and “a looming recession.”

“Will it ever get better?” she added. “Expert analysts are not hopeful, which is why I encourage you to learn how gold and silver can be a great way to hedge against these economic factors eating away at your nest egg.”

It is certainly amusing that in exchange for money, Ingraham is warning her audience both that former President Donald Trump may lose the 2024 presidential election and that even if he wins, his economic performance will prove so poor that they need to buy gold and silver as a hedge.

But Ingraham’s paid missive both defies what economists and other experts say about the relative merits of the plans put forward by Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, and provides a stark example of how right-wing pundits enrich themselves on the backs of their followers.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Fox News Killed Its Independent Election Night Decision Desk

Fox News Killed Its Independent Election Night Decision Desk

Fox News depicts the “decision desk” that calls elections for the network as an independent, data-driven body cordoned off from its right-wing propaganda machine. But the 2020 presidential election showed that this independence is a fiction: Top Fox executives are willing and able to overrule those calls if they think the results would anger Donald Trump and Fox viewers.

With the entire right-wing apparatus — including Fox figures — framing any potential Trump loss in November as a result of fraud, that scenario could easily repeat this fall.

The New York Times interviewed Fox decision desk overseer Arnon Mishkin for a Wednesday article on how outlets are “preparing to make calls in a very tight race — and ensure that viewers and readers believe them.” Mishkin said “that he and his team would be siloed off in a room inside network headquarters, and that he had no concerns about outside interference.”

“One hundred percent of the job is to look at the numbers,” Mishkin told the Times. “Just look at the numbers and report out what the numbers are saying.”

But the 2020 election showed that between Mishkin’s team reporting “what the numbers are saying” and Fox anchors presenting that information to the public, the network’s executives can step in to overrule the calls.

Fox’s election night call of Arizona for Joe Biden was controversial, the Times noted, angering Trump and ultimately triggering the exits of decision desk leaders Chris Stirewalt and Bill Sammon. As Fox viewers revolted following that call, the network went into overdrive pushing Trumpian lies about election fraud swinging the results — which its executives and stars didn’t actually believe — and eventually triggering a massive defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.

But the Times stressed that Fox refused to bow to Trump campaign demands that the network rescind its Arizona call, while leaving out the network’s subsequent decision — pushed by its top executives and “straight news” anchors — to slow-walk future calls if they might similarly anger viewers.

Fox president and executive editor Jay Wallace “overruled the Decision Desk team including Bill Sammon, Arnon Mishkin, and Chris Stirewalt, refusing to let them call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, a level of interference that had been unheard of in past elections,” Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported in their 2022 book, The Divider.

Wallace’s reason for overruling Mishkin and company had nothing to do with “the numbers,” according to Baker and Glasser. “Because of the Arizona projection, calling Nevada would give Biden enough electoral votes for victory,” they wrote. “Wallace did not want Fox to be the first to call the election and declare Biden president-elect.”

Fox CEO Suzanne Scott had wanted to go even further, Baker and Glasser reported, suggesting the morning after the election “that Fox should not call any more states until they were officially certified,” an unheard-of process that could take weeks.

Fox “straight news” anchors Martha MacCallum and especially Bret Baier emerged in post-election reporting as key figures who sought to stymie the decision desk’s calls.

Baier emailed Wallace that the decision desk’s Arizona call was “hurting us” and should be rescinded and in texts with Tucker Carlson said he had “pressed” for the network to slow down its calls.

And in a November 16, 2020, Zoom meeting with Fox’s top executives as well as the decision desk’s Mishkin and Sammon, Baier and MacCallum argued that “it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations, but that viewer reaction should be considered.”

“I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer,” Baier suggested, so they could “think beyond, about the implications” of election calls.

“There’s that layer between statistics and news judgment about timing that I think is a factor,” MacCallum added.

This is quite obviously not how a news outlet’s decision desk process is supposed to work — but Fox is a Trumpist propaganda outlet shackled by its audience. And with Sammon and Stirewalt gone, there will be fewer voices urging the network to behave responsibly this cycle.

We should assume that Fox’s 2024 election calls are subject to Baier’s “other layer,” with network executives overturning the decision desk based on their “implications.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Mike Davis

Trump Gang Threatens To Jail Journalists -- And They're Not Just 'Trolling'

Last year, after I criticized the Republican political operative Mike Davis, he publicly declared that he had added me to a list he maintains of Americans he would imprison if he led the Justice Department. I am far from alone: The former Senate Judiciary Committee staffer has issued similar threats to several of my colleagues as well as journalists at other outlets.

When Davis is challenged about his openly fascistic musings, he retreats to claiming that his deranged threats are only trolling. But two disturbing reports last week show that if Davis is just kidding about punishing the press and other presumed Trump critics, portions of the MAGA movement — including Donald Trump himself — are not in on the joke.

Indeed, Davis’ psychotic behavior helped turn him into a MAGA favorite who gets floated for a high-ranking role in a second Trump administration — perhaps even attorney general. The former president’s most zealous supporters, who frequently call for politicized prosecutions against his foes, can’t get enough of Davis’ authoritarian diatribes.

It’s not just trolling: Trump is an authoritarian leading an authoritarian movement, and if he returns to the White House, he will again try to carry out his authoritarian impulses. And journalists, whom the former president often describes as the “enemy of the people,” will not be spared.

Davis told a Politico reporter he was trolling. Then MAGA thugs cornered the reporter.

In a profile of Davis published Friday, Politico reporter Adam Wren discussed being accosted by Trumpist goons while he was reporting from the Republican National Convention.

Wren’s piece chronicles how Davis’ star has risen within the MAGA movement due to his willingness to defend Trump in the wake of his indictments on state and federal changes. Wren particularly highlights Davis’ incendiary calls for retaliatory prosecutions if Trump is elected in November, such as his August 2023 statement that he would use a “three-week reign of terror” as attorney general to carry out his “five lists” of people to fire, indict, deport, imprison, and pardon.

But in interviews for the piece, Davis maintained to Wren that his statements about sending people like me to a “gulag” shouldn’t be taken literally. From the profile (emphasis in the original):

Davis will admit to being quite serious about much of what he says in the media, including wanting to dismantle the power of the federal government, an idea he has held onto since his Gingrich days. But he told me he is obviously joking about some of the more inflammatory promises — putting kids in cages and detaining journalists in a gulag. He later told me the sound bite was “a self-inflicted wound,” but also said he “didn’t want to back down from it.”

“It’s hilarious that it’s so easy to trigger these people. I’m obviously trolling them,” Davis told me of Democrats.

Davis’ allies are apparently not quite so sure.

Wren writes that when he accompanied Davis to a ninth-floor hotel bar frequented by the Trump family and their hangers-on during the Republican National Convention, he observed Davis being “greeted by Republican revelers like a caesar” — and overheard Donald Trump Jr. telling the GOP operative, “I want you to be my father’s attorney general for all four years.”

Then a woman “demanded” that Wren either delete his notes of that interaction or hand over his phone, “recruited four men to block the elevators” when he refused, and issued a not-terribly-veiled threat. Unable to access the elevators to leave the bar, Wren wrote that he fled down the stairs, pursued by two of the goons.

Wren further described the incident in an interview with The Bulwark:

Davis, Wren explained in his piece, subsequently “confronted the aide near the elevators and dressed her down” and told the reporter what happened was “fucking shocking.”

The Politico profile concludes with an adviser to Donald Trump Jr. telling Wren that the behavior he had experienced was unacceptable — and also that Don Jr.’s comments to Davis about serving as attorney general were merely “trolling.”

Trump spent his White House years demanding — and getting -- probes of his enemies

In a lengthy investigation published over the weekend, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt reviewed the cases of 10 individuals who “faced federal pressure of one kind or another” following Trump’s “public or private demands for them to be targeted by the government” during his presidency.

Schmidt revealed:

  • In the spring of 2018, Trump told White House counsel Donald McGahn “that he wanted to order” Attorney General Jeff Sessions “to prosecute” Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey, “and that if Mr. Sessions refused he would take matters into his own hands.”
  • Lawyers in the White House counsel’s office subsequently authored a memo to the then-president which “made clear that Mr. Trump did not have the authority ‘to initiate an investigation or prosecution yourself or circumvent the attorney general by directing a different official to pursue a prosecution or investigation,’ as one draft memo put it.”
  • Nonetheless, “within a month, Mr. Trump plunged ahead with one of his most successful efforts to have a Democratic critic investigated. He publicly demanded and ultimately got an inquiry by federal prosecutors into” former secretary of state John Kerry.
  • “Through the rest of Mr. Trump’s time in office, he never let up on pressuring federal agencies to take action against his perceived enemies even as he was counseled against it by aides like Mr. McGahn and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff from the middle of 2017 until the beginning of 2019.”
  • “In a few of the cases where Mr. Trump wanted investigations, there was legitimate basis for action. But in many others, there was little or no legal justification. None resulted in a criminal conviction.”
  • “There is no record of the inquiries and other actions coming about as a result of a formal, signed order from Mr. Trump. Instead, he repeatedly signaled what he wanted, publicly and privately, leaving no doubt among subordinates.”
  • “At least two other West Wing officials defied Mr. Trump’s repeated instructions not to take notes and wrote down accounts of Mr. Trump’s eruptions about using the federal government to target his perceived enemies. Those notes were taken from the White House as well to ensure there was documentation.”

Schmidt’s list of investigations Trump demanded into his foes is lengthy but by no means exhaustive. It mentions, for example, that “federal prosecutors and a special counsel examined nearly all the issues and conspiracy theories Mr. Trump raised about Mrs. Clinton, her campaign and the Clinton Foundation,” but it omits the ultimately fruitless two-year review of her role as secretary of state in the sale of the company known as Uranium One that he had sought.

Nor does it reference every instance in which Trump sought government retaliation against his critics. Schmidt’s list notes that “the Justice Department obtained phone and email records for reporters for CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times” as part of leak investigations, but it does not detail Trump’s efforts to use federal regulatory powers to punish news outlets.

Nevertheless, it shows quite clearly that Trump’s impulse to prosecute his political foes found few restraints during his presidency — and could be even more dangerous in a second term.

The staffing plans developed under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 are intended to empower loyalists while keeping out people like McGahn, who reportedly tried to prevent Trump from exercising his whims. Meanwhile, presidential efforts to pressure Justice Department officials to take action were specifically rendered immune from federal prosecution thanks to the radical doctrine the Supreme Court enshrined over the summer in Trump v. United States.

Trump, for his part, continues to regularly accuse his political opponents of crimes. That has critics worried he would once again urge the Justice Department to initiate investigations if he returned to office. But Trump’s supporters say such claims are overwrought. “His defenders often seek to explain away Mr. Trump’s threats to take legal action against opponents as campaign trail bluster,” Schmidt wrote.

In other words, they’re claiming that Trump is just trolling.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Donald Trump Kamala Harris Debate

MAGA Media Explode Over 'ABC Whistleblower' Conspiracy Rumor

A wildly flimsy internet rumor launched by a random pro-Trump X poster about an “ABC whistleblower” who purportedly claims that the network rigged the September 10 presidential debate went viral in MAGA spaces over the last several days, with Donald Trump and his allies floating congressional investigations and potential regulatory retribution against ABC News in response.

The right-wing pundits and Republican politicians pushing the story don’t actually know who the “ABC whistleblower” is, if their claims are credible, or even if the person actually exists — but the purported document supposedly supports their preferred narrative that ABC News’ moderators were biased, so they’re running with it.

The saga, while laughable, shows the right's ongoing tendency to embrace and elevate anything that confirms their worldview. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) laid out that strategy in a Sunday interview on CNN, admitting that he pushed a debunked, racist, and demagogic claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets because he wants to “create stories” that drive news coverage of immigration.

In the instance of the absurd “whistleblower” claim, Trump's allies trotted it out as they tried to cover for his flailing September 10 debate performance. Right-wing media figures lashed out at ABC News and its moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis with deranged invective and absurd conspiracy theories. And Trump himself said in an interview the following morning that “they ought to take away their license,” reiterating his support for government retribution against news outlets that displease him.

Then on September 12, a “verified” but obscure X poster with the handle “Black Insurrectionist--I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS” claimed they would release “an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower” by the end of the weekend. “The affidavit states how the Harris campaign was given sample question which were essentially the same questions that were given during the debate and separate assurances of fact checking Donald Trump and that she would NOT be fact checked,” the poster wrote.

The saga, while laughable, shows the right's ongoing tendency to embrace and elevate anything that confirms their worldview. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) laid out that strategy in a Sunday interview on CNN, admitting that he pushed a debunked, racist, and demagogic claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets because he wants to “create stories” that drive news coverage of immigration.

In the instance of the absurd “whistleblower” claim, Trump's allies trotted it out as they tried to cover for his flailing September 10 debate performance. Right-wing media figures lashed out at ABC News and its moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis with deranged invective and absurd conspiracy theories. And Trump himself said in an interview the following morning that “they ought to take away their license,” reiterating his support for government retribution against news outlets that displease him.

Then on September 12, a “verified” but obscure X poster with the handle “Black Insurrectionist--I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS” claimed they would release “an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower” by the end of the weekend. “The affidavit states how the Harris campaign was given sample question which were essentially the same questions that were given during the debate and separate assurances of fact checking Donald Trump and that she would NOT be fact checked,” the poster wrote.

ABC News denied the allegations, with a spokesperson telling The Daily Beast, “Absolutely not. Harris was not given any questions before the debate.”

On Sunday morning, hours before the affidavit was to be released, a new wrinkle emerged as MAGA figures began suggesting the “whistleblower” had (conveniently for ABC) died.

“The ABC whistleblower who claimed Kamala Harris was given debate questions ahead of the debate has died in a car crash according to news reports,” wrote Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on X, echoing random accounts.

Please note that this makes absolutely no sense: How could reports detail the death of a person who had never been identified?

NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny ultimately tracked down the source of the story, an article headlined “ABC News Whistleblower in Kamala Harris Debate Question Scandal Dies in Maryland Crash” posted on a “junk AI-written website.” A few hours later, Greene acknowledged that “this story appears to be false and I’m glad to hear it” but added, “We need a serious investigation into the whistleblower’s report that Kamala Harris was given debate questions ahead of time from ABC!”

The totally implausible idea that news reports had revealed the mysterious death of a “whistleblower” who had never been publicly named served to drive more attention to the “affidavit,” as Greene demonstrated.

“Black Insurrectionist” then released what they claimed was the “affidavit” that afternoon. It appears to be a Microsoft Word document whose text features internal inconsistencies and grammatical errors. All identifying information about its author and any evidence it had been notarized or submitted to a court is redacted.

The purported affiant claims to have worked in “technical and administrative positions” but nonetheless offers detailed claims about communications between ABC News and the Harris campaign. And remember, the document was published by a random pseudonymous X poster with a history of unhinged statements.

“Black Insurrectionist” explained that the report could be trusted due to the poster’s record, which included apparently having prior knowledge of the July attempt on Trump’s life: “A couple days before Trump attempted assassination, I made a post (which I had never done before) was something big was about to go off.”

And indeed, that was enough for the likes of MAGA figures like Benny Johnson (2.7 million X followers) and Eric Trump (4.6 million) and Bill Ackman (1.4 million).

By Monday morning, Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) was telling Fox host Maria Bartiromo that Congress would investigate claims from the ABC “whistleblower.”

“Fortunately we now have a whistleblower, and I'm going to tell you something, Maria, we're going to do what we can to bring ABC in and have them answer some questions and as well as have this whistleblower and see what's going on as they're trying to tear down the First Amendment,” Meuser told Bartiromo on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria.

“I'm glad you mentioned this because Fox News is reaching out to ABC for response to that affidavit,” she replied. “We've reached out to ABC to verify the affidavit and for a statement on these accusations, congressman, but this affidavit and this whistleblower story is gaining traction.”

“Yes, absolutely, and as it should,” Meuser replied. “We actually don't need a hearing to know what we saw. But we're going to look to do it so as we can provide some evidence as to how manipulative they are.”

In the past, Bartiromo’s willingness to run with extraordinary but evidence-free claims that happened to bolster her preexisting views helped secure a massive defamation settlement from her employer.

Apparently that wasn’t enough to change her approach. But her behavior, while deplorable, is not anomalous — this total rejection of evidentiary standards in order to “create stories” is a hallmark of the conspiratorial right, from lies about election fraud to Haitians eating pets.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Tucker Carlson

Why The MAGA Movement Can't Dismiss Toxic Liabilities Like Carlson And Loomer

MAGA stalwarts Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer, and Benny Johnson spent the last week demonstrating that as long as you pledge fealty to Donald Trump, there’s virtually nothing you can do that will get you kicked out of his movement.

The trio of pro-Trump personalities drew significant shows of support from the top echelons of the GOP after dabbling in Holocaust denial and Nazi apologia (Carlson); describing Vice President Kamala Harris as “a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she's in today” and saying her “White House will smell like curry” (Loomer); and unwittingly receiving vast sums of laundered money that originated with the Kremlin (Johnson).

Right-wing media figures with bizarre fixations and extreme views became an increasingly potent power center within the Republican Party in recent years. The rising influence of these conspiracy-minded propagandists led GOP politicians to seek their favor by mimicking their affects and obsessions, which are toxic to normal people, thus weakening the GOP’s electoral prospects.

Trump’s Tuesday debate performance encapsulated this trend, as he ranted about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets and spread other lies familiar only to those steeped in the deep lore of Fox News prime-time hosts and right-wing online subcultures.

But Trump shows no signs of breaking out of that right-wing bubble. And his willingness to embrace anyone willing to give him their loyalty — no matter how extreme their views — has helped make it impossible for the GOP to separate itself from even the most depraved and corrupt MAGA figures.

By way of contrast, there is one thing that will get you purged from the modern right: forcefully arguing that Trump’s 2020 election subversion effort renders him unfit for the presidency.

Tucker Carlson promoted Nazi apologia. JD Vance is standing by him.

Carlson may be the single right-wing media figure with the most influence within the GOP. He spoke at the Republican National Convention, has Trump’s ear, and helped secure Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s position as Trump’s running mate. Carlson is currently touring the country for events featuring numerous Republican power players, including Vance.

So when Carlson touted Daryl Cooper as “the most important historian in the United States” at the top of their two-hour interview published September 2, he was effectively giving the podcaster the imprimatur of the GOP.

He then proceeded to nod along as Cooper complained that purportedly legitimate German grievances are treated too unsympathetically by historians, argued British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the chief villain” of World War II, and blamed negligence for how “millions of people ended up dead” in Nazi concentration camps. In a follow-up thread on X, Cooper suggested Churchill should have taken Adolf Hitler up on an offer to “work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem.”

Carlson has a long history of promoting white supremacist talking points — I noted a prominent neo-Nazi describing the then-Fox as “our greatest ally” more than seven years ago. But his eager platforming of Holocaust denial and Nazi apologia last week drew condemnations from some elected Republicans and numerous right-wing figures, with some suggesting that Vance and Trump should cut ties with him and that the right as a whole should cast him out.

“It is now incumbent on all decent people, and especially those on the right, to demand that Carlson no longer be treated as a mainstream figure,” wrote Jonathan S. Tobin, the editor-in-chief of Jewish News Syndicate and former executive editor at the conservative magazine Commentary. “Call it cancel culture, if you like, but the notion that someone who thinks it is acceptable or legitimate to question the truth about the Holocaust ought not to have access to a potential president, as Carlson appears to have with Trump, is entirely reasonable.”

But the revolt dissipated without forcing a break between Carlson and the upper echelon of the GOP. Carlson “laughed off the backlash,” while Vance “pointedly refused to join in the outrage over Carlson’s chat with Cooper” and even sat for an interview with the host. Kevin Roberts, the president of the powerful Heritage Foundation think tank which oversees Project 2025, kept his September 6 date on Carlson’s tour. Vance’s appearance is still on Carlson’s schedule for later this month.

By Tuesday, Carlson’s Republican critics were reduced to anonymously and impotently telling reporters that if Vance and Trump stick with the host, it might alienate “swing voters in the suburbs.”

Loomer’s Harris remarks are unprintable in a family publication. She campaigns with Trump.

The GOP’s situation grew more toxic that evening when an unexpected person disembarked from Trump’s plane when it arrived in Philadelphia for the night’s presidential debate: the pro-Trump influencer Laura Looomer, a notorious bigot and conspiracy theorist.

Loomer is a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who is “pro-white nationalism.” She has claimed there is a “genocide” of “native white populations,” which she says are “being replaced in this country by third-world invaders,” and accused “so many rich Jews” of having “a fixation on trying to destroy America.” She has accused the Biden administration of seeking to assassinate Trump; called for the execution of unnamed “Democrats who are guilty of treason”; said that “all of these communist secretaries of state who try to rig our elections” against Trump “belong in jail for election interference”; and shared a video which claimed “9/11 was an Inside Job!”

Loomer is “mentally unstable and a documented liar” who “can not be trusted” and is “toxic and poisonous,” according to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) (herself no stranger to bigoted and unhinged conspiracy theories).

But Loomer’s ardent support for Trump has made her a favorite of the former president, who has repeatedly praised her on the campaign trail, repeated her baseless smears on Truth Social, and reportedly attempted to hire her in the spring of 2023 before being dissuaded by “a firestorm” among some of his “most vocal conservative supporters.”

Loomer has in recent weeks described Harris, whose parents immigrated from India and Jamaica, as “a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she's in today,” said she “is NOT black and never has been,” said her election would ensure that “Ebonics will replace English as the language of our land,” and said that if she’s elected “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.”

That last remark — which Loomer posted to X on Sunday, days before going on the campaign trail with Trump — led Greene to respond, “This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump.”

Loomer’s direct contact clearly has some Republicans unnerved. Some are suggesting to reporters that her presence on Trump’s plane led to his unhinged debate rant about migrants eating pets. But she remained on the campaign trail with the former president on Wednesday — including at ceremonies marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — and the X account of the National Republican Senate Committee promoted one of her videos that same day.

Benny Johnson took money from Russia, then hosted the RNC co-chair

One might have expected Trumpist influencer Benny Johnson to have had difficulty finding guests for his streaming coverage of Tuesday’s presidential debate.

He was one of several right-wing YouTubers revealed to have unwittingly received significant sums that originated with the Russian government after the Justice Department indicted two Russia propagandists last week for allegedly directing the scheme.

Johnson described himself and the other influencers as the “victims” of the effort. Its existence, however, suggests that Kremlin operatives believed paying Johnson and his colleagues would result in the kind of divisive and extreme content that redounds to Russia’s benefit.

But top Republicans aren’t treating Johnson as radioactive following that revelation.

His “STACKED” guest list on Tuesday featured Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s election-denying daughter in law; Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who in his role as House Judiciary chair often pretends to be very concerned about the prospect of foreign money finding its way to Democrats; as well as Greene and Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL).

Lara Trump concluded her friendly interview by suggesting that Johnson had been the victim of a government conspiracy, saying, “You know we’re in election season, Benny, whenever they’re bringing Russia back up and trying to make some sort of a connection between Republicans and Russia.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.