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From Murdoch To Bannon, Right-Wing Media Blast Trump's Terrible Iran 'Deal'

From Murdoch To Bannon, Right-Wing Media Blast Trump's Terrible Iran 'Deal'

Right-wing media figures and outlets, including many that have been all-in on President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, are in open revolt against his proposed memorandum of understanding that seeks to deescalate the conflict.

On June 15, the United States and Iran agreed to a framework to bring the war to an end. The reported details reflect Iran’s relatively strong negotiating position, due largely to its ability to maintain and potentially extend its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The New York Times reports:

The terms of the preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and outline a $300 billon plan for Iran’s reconstruction, but push talks about its nuclear program into future negotiations, according to details described by a senior U.S. official on Wednesday.

The agreement has led to a palpable sense of betrayal from the White House’s hawkish media allies, who as recently as last week looked to be on the verge of persuading Trump to end the fragile ceasefire that’s been in place since April and restart the war.

Instead, the administration appears to be acknowledging the reality that this ill-conceived, unprovoked war of aggression — which the United States launched in coordination with Israel on February 28 — has been a failure on its own terms. It has also been a humanitarian catastrophe for people in Iran and Lebanon, which Israel has invaded and seeks to occupy. The global economic ramifications have been dire as well, with energy costs skyrocketing and food shortages looming — consequences the hawks apparently want to bomb their way out of.

The backlash to the deal from conservative pundits and outlets, especially those within Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has been swift and harsh. The day the agreement was announced, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote of the proposal: “Trump Stages an Iran Retreat.” The same day, the New York Post published an editorial that glumly concluded the MOU “seems to leave things right back where they were before the bombs started dropping.” A day later, the Post was even more critical, writing: “Trump’s Iran deal gives the Islamic Republic big wins upfront — and America nothing.”

Outside of primetime, the story was largely the same at Fox News, where Iran hawks have struggled to swallow the bitter pill of defeat. A day before the agreement was announced, Fox News host and Iran-warmonger Mark Levin said he was “very skeptical about any deal.” The next day, Fox contributor Marc Thiessen, who has reportedly advised Trump on the war, detailed his objections to ending the conflict at all, in part because “the Iranian regime, thanks to all those military strikes, is on its back and a deal, even a good deal, helps them get up.”

On June 16, Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones channeled the pro-war crowd’s displeasure with the MOU, saying: “I don't think it serves our audience by sugar coating it — there is some real dissent when it comes to this deal right now.”

The same day, Fox contributor Ben Domenech lamented: “This doesn't feel like a victory.”

“I do not think that this is a deal ultimately that achieves the high goals that the president set," Domenech said. Those supposedly lofty goals have in fact been notably fungible and contradictory since the outset of the war.

On June 17, Fox & Friends continued to throw cold water on the deal. Jones said that Iran getting financial help for reconstruction was “a problem,” even if “it won't be American money.”

Jones’ co-host, Brian Kilmeade, tried to draw a red line on a reported possible future point of negotiation that would allow Iran to dilute — rather than surrender — its enriched uranium, calling it “not acceptable.” He also called into question Trump’s decision to appoint Vice President JD Vance as a top negotiator, saying that maybe he “wasn't the right person to bring this conflict to an end.” Kilmeade was one of many in right-wing media who sought to absolve Trump by hanging what they think is a terrible deal on Vance.

A guest from conservative think tank the Hudson Institute said the “memorandum of understanding is worse than not having it.”

The critical coverage continued into Fox’s dayside programming, where anchor Dana Perino implicitly acknowledged that the war had backfired and endowed Iran with the power to close the Strait of Hormuz, “which is leverage that Iran didn’t have before hostilities.”

Perino’s guest, former NATO ambassador Kurt Volker, concurred. “You go back to January, shipping was moving, Iran's nuclear program had been bombed six months before and was largely destroyed,” Volker said. “We launched this war, the global economy took a big hit. Oil prices skyrocketed. Now we're winding this down but we have Iran now emboldened to exercise some kind of control over the Strait of Hormuz.”

The frustration extends beyond Murdoch media. On June 16, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, another major supporter of the war, expressed his own skepticism. “We'll wait to see the MOU,” Shapiro said. “I will say that the early returns do not look wildly promising at this point.”

Former Fox News host Eric Bolling, now at Real America’s Voice, was even more blunt in an appearance on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast. “In this deal, the biggest loser is the United States and India,” Bolling said, referencing high energy prices in both countries. He added: “In essence, I think we lost the most here.”

As is always the case with Trump, his position could shift, and then shift again, and then shift again, all over the course of a single day. Trump has a history of breaking contracts, and the MOU and subsequent negotiations could fall apart at any minute, not least of all because Israel may attempt to draw the United States back into open war. For now, right-wing media hawks seem desperate to blow up the deal and get back to the war they’ve wanted for decades.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

'JD's Deal': Right-Wing Media Hawks Scapegoat Vance For Iran Crashout

'JD's Deal': Right-Wing Media Hawks Scapegoat Vance For Iran Crashout

The right-wing media’s hawks recognize the reported memorandum of understanding that President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance signed with Iran on Sunday is a dog’s breakfast that fails to achieve the administration’s stated war goals and leaves the U.S. in a weaker geostrategic position than before it began. But they also understand that the cult-like structure of the MAGA movement means that criticizing Trump directly could trigger an audience revolt, and that Trump himself is unlikely to change course if he feels personally impugned.

The result is a truly pathetic effort to blame the MOU’s contents on Vance — who reportedly supported the agreement and is making the interview rounds defending it while Trump is in Europe — while absolving Trump of responsibility for the document that he signed and publicly describes as “a very strong deal.”

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade exemplifies this approach. A longtime supporter of military strikes on Iran, Kilmeade supported Trump launching the war in February. Over the past months, he has repeatedly urged the president to undertake risky escalations to “finish the job.”

He also laid down a marker by asserting that “we can't leave this conflict with the uranium in the ground and the strait in Iran's hands.” This reported agreement plainly does not meet that standard, and unlike his primetime colleagues Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity, who are lavishing Trump with praise for the MOU, Kilmeade is responding by being forthright about his concerns.

But while Kilmeade spent much of Wednesday’s program panning the MOU’s reported contents, he repeatedly placed the blame on Vance while suggesting that Trump may have been out of the loop and deceived — and now that he’s paying attention, could ultimately decide to blow up the deal at the last moment

“All I'm going to say, the vice president was here and did a wonderful job on every outlet, including The View,” Kilmeade said near the top of the show. “But this is his deal. It's not the president's deal. And it's his deal and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner together. I just hope they didn't let the president down. Because the president is putting a lot of stock in them. He can't do everything himself. I just hope they didn't let him down.”

Later in the program, after enlisting Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs to help criticize the MOU for relieving the U.S. blockade and helping to rebuild the Iranian economy while allowing Iran to implement tolls on the strait and leaving the regime in place, Kilmeade added: “Everything that you said, I think the president would say. I’m just wondering if the people that negotiated this have informed the president about what’s in the page and a half he is going to read publicly on Friday.”

He went on to say that he hoped Trump would “go in” and change the agreement to make it more favorable “in the next 24 hours.”

"It doesn't look like Iran has been brought to its knees,” Kilmeade complained in a third segment. “Iran got a lot out of it that many people weren't expecting. That's going to be the issue. And maybe the president wasn't even expecting, because he has got enough plates in the air that he can't be into every detail.”

“So, I just wonder if the vice president, who was against this by all reports, was against the conflict to begin with, maybe he wasn't the right person to bring this conflict to an end," he concluded.

In this telling, Trump — who has spent recent weeks planning a birthday bash featuring military flyovers and a UFC fight at the White House, ensuring that the bottom of the Reflecting Pool is painted “American flag blue,” and complaining about his name being removed from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts — simply lost track of the negotiations to end the war he started, is either too lazy to read the page and a half agreement or too stupid to understand its contents, and was hoodwinked by his perfidious vice president.

And this is the story he’s telling to avoid blaming the president!

Others have similarly sought to make Vance the “Iran Deal Fall Guy,” as The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone put it after speaking to Senate Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who described the vice president as “the architect of the deal.” On Tuesday, Ben Shapiro similarly characterized it as “JD’s deal.” Vance, meanwhile, is accusing right-wing media hawks who criticize the agreement, like Fox’s Marc Thiessen and Mark Levin, of believing “Iranian propaganda,” a characterization sure to widen the split.

Ultimately, the MAGA hawks are victims of their own success and their own hubris. They got the war they demanded, only for Iran’s obvious counterstroke of closing the Strait of Hormuz to prove just as damaging as national security experts had warned. Now the incompetent president they supported is careening that war towards failure, and they can’t even manage to say that publicly without further discrediting themselves and risking their position within the movement.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Facing Iran Fiasco, MAGA Media Figures Choose Propaganda Over Independence

Facing Iran Fiasco, MAGA Media Figures Choose Propaganda Over Independence

The right-wing media’s debate over the reported memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran provides a test of whether, ten years after President Donald Trump first took power, his supporters are still capable of independent thought. Some of the biggest names in MAGA propaganda are failing it.

The framework agreement Trump and Vice President JD Vance reportedly signed virtually on Sunday appears to leave the U.S. in a worse geostrategic position than before they launched the war with Iran in February — but the full terms of the U.S. surrender are unclear because the actual text of the memorandum has yet to be released. Trump said Monday that the American people won’t be able to see the “very powerful document” that he’s already signed on their behalf until “sometime after Friday,” when a formal signing event is scheduled. Vance, meanwhile, has been on a media tour purporting to describe in detail the contents of the agreement that he signed, which he claims is “about a page and a half” long and a “very general” document.

If you have two functioning neurons to rub together, this seems very suspicious. Why is Vance going on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show to talk up the MOU — while complaining that the U.S. press is adopting “talking points and propaganda” from the Iranian regime “that has no support in the text of the agreement that we've actually negotiated” — rather than simply putting out the document so the public can see it? Are the terms supposed to be so good for the U.S. that we’re worried about embarrassing Iran?

The lack of disclosure is raising concerns among some of MAGA’s hawks, who supported launching the war and prefer to see further escalation rather than an agreement that ends the conflict.

“I have asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?” Fox host Mark Levin posted to social media on Sunday night. “Not through people briefed by an anonymous person. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like this. If it is a great outcome for peace, then release it.”

“Alright, so, we still don’t have much information at this point,” Ben Shapiro complained Monday at the beginning of his podcast on the reported agreement. “No text to the MOU. Could have been released — I mean, it’s been signed. We know that because that’s been announced by the administration.”

“We still have a lot of questions,” Shapiro continued. “So here’s the thing: Just release it, then we can talk about things we know. Because that’s the really cool thing about written agreements. They’re filled with words, and those words, we can all read them and they mean things, and then we can understand what they mean, and then we can discuss them publicly. Either that or we don’t have any choice but to speculate.”

And Substacker Erick Erickson noted on Tuesday that “the administration has been conspicuously slow to publish” the text of the agreement, adding: “When a deal is good, you release the text. When you guard it, you are managing a story rather than reporting a victory.”

But plenty of big MAGA players are willing to help the administration manage the story by shilling for the MOU without showing much interest in why Trump won’t just release the text of the agreement they are cheering for.

Hannity interviewed Vance Monday night and had the vice president walk him through the purported ins and outs of the unreleased agreement. The host did raise the issue of the document text, though he presented it as an opportunity for Vance to rebut a critical talking point rather than an actual issue.

“A lot of people are questioning why not release the memorandum of understanding,” Hannity said. “You said it will happen this week.”

But when Vance responded by citing vague “sequencing” concerns and saying that Trump wants to keep it secret until the Friday signing, Hannity swallowed that without further comment.

“Trust in Trump” was MAGA shill Benny Johnson’s take on Sunday, acknowledging that he didn’t know the details of the agreement but nonetheless celebrating it as “historic,” “the deal that we all wanted,” an Iranian “surrender” and a “massive W” for the president.

And Fox host Jesse Watters, a similarly credulous buffoon, seemed to reel off the administration’s talking points while scoffing at the “fake news” and “Iranian spin.”

“The details of the deal, they'll be released after Friday. Everybody will be able to read it,” he said, apparently incurious about why the text wouldn’t be available sooner.

Trump has spent years culling his propagandists through scandal, corruption, crimes, and insurrection. What remains at the highest levels of right-wing media are the purest hacks.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

MAGA Hawks Split With MAGA Hacks Over Trump's Enigmatic Iran 'Deal'

MAGA Hawks Split With MAGA Hacks Over Trump's Enigmatic Iran 'Deal'

The aimless war Fox News hosts helped convince President Donald Trump to launch against Iran may be careening closer to an end. Trump and the Iranian regime say they have reached agreement on a memorandum of understanding that would reportedly extend a ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz while deferring further questions on Iran’s nuclear stockpile and other issues to future negotiations. But no text of the agreement has been released, Iran’s understanding of it may differ from Trump’s, analysts warn that further setbacks may occur — and the damage to America’s strategic position has already been done.

This vacuum of information about the reported agreement is deepening the rift between the MAGA movement’s hacks, who are eager to portray any deal as an historic victory for the president, and its hawks, who have called for further military escalation to destroy the Iranian regime and warn that any agreement could backfire and strengthen it.

Benny Johnson, a MAGA weathervane with no firm principles, epitomizes the former position. The right-wing influencer initially said he opposed launching the war because it wasn’t “America First policy,” and has occasionally warned against escalations. But last week, fearing the prospect of high gas prices impacting the GOP’s midterm chances, he called on the president to “go full dragon” and pursue “scorched-earth” strikes on Iran.

That’s obviously not what happened — but Johnson’s entire brand is based on supporting whatever Trump says and being rewarded by the administration for his sycophancy, so he is nonetheless elated with the results.

Recording from the White House on Sunday before the president’s birthday UFC fight, Johnson declared on Sunday that “something historic just happened that has changed the world forever — President Trump shocking the Earth by announcing a peace deal with Iran.”

Operating with no apparent information about the terms of the agreement beyond Trump’s Truth Social post declaring that “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. … I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” Johnson declared victory in the video, whose YouTube title describes a “Total Surrender From Iran.”

“What are the details of the deal?” he asked. “I don’t exactly know. I’m not certain.” But he added: “We won. I don’t know how else you could possibly frame this as anything other than America winning this conflict.”

“Again, we’re at the White House,” Johnson concluded. “This is a historic day. Hopefully the president will call us up and we’ll be able to actually listen from President Trump. What should I ask him if I get a chance to ask a question? It was a dodgy day, but it happened. Trust in Trump.”

“Iran surrendered,” Johnson announced in a second video.

“This is the deal that we all wanted, right?” he added. “President Trump has opened the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is — there’s stability back in the region. There is stability back in the markets. Iran is going to agree to not create a nuclear weapon, as President Trump has said time and time again. So this is just not an L as far as I’m concerned. This is a massive W, this is a surrender of Iran.”

Meanwhile, the MAGA hawks who support the president but have spent years campaigning for the overthrow of the Iranian regime are trying to pump the brakes.

“The question I have, with all the debate swirling around and so forth and so on, how will compliance be addressed and enforced beyond the Trump presidency? Isn't that the bottom line?” Mark Levin asked about the reported memorandum in a monologue on his Fox show Sunday night. Trump has taken advice from Levin on Iran and urged his supporters to watch the host’s coverage of the issue, which typically combines over-the-top praise of the president, furious denunciations of the Iranian regime, and calls for military escalation.

“Understanding further negotiations are to lead to a final deal,” Levin continued, “I am seeing precious little discussion or reporting or official statements about how the MOU or a final deal would be enforced to ensure compliance. In the end, this determines whether any deal can or will hold.”

Levin went on to question how the agreement would handle Iran’s nuclear stockpile, ballistic missile production, support for Hezbollah, and repression of its people. He praised Trump as “the only president in half a century to unleash our military” and touted his “unparalleled leadership,” but concluded the monologue by declaring himself “very skeptical about any deal.”

Likewise, hawkish Fox contributor Marc Thiessen expressed concern about a deal on Monday’s edition of Fox & Friends, the president’s beloved morning show. Thiessen, who has reportedly advised Trump privately about the war, called last week for a “decisive attack” on Iran to “finish the job.”

“We don't know the details of the deal yet,” Thiessen noted on Monday. “We don't know what has been agreed to, and the nuclear part is still to be negotiated. This is just an agreement to negotiate the nuclear side. So that's one problem.”

“Another problem is that Trump is only going to be president for two and a half years,” he continued. “At some point we could have another weak president like Barack Obama, like Joe Biden, and they're not going to comply with it. And the third problem is that the Iranian regime, thanks to all those military strikes, is on its back and a deal, even a good deal, helps them get up.”

Thiessen went on to say that lifting the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports provides “billions of dollars going into the Iranian regime's coffers without them having done anything,” in addition to reports of the MOU providing an economic “lifeline to revive their regime.”

“There is talk of a reconstruction fund of hundreds of billions of dollars. … That will be like doing the Marshall Plan for Germany while the Nazis were still in power,” he concluded. “I'm anxious to see what the details of the deal are and what gets negotiated, but I'm concerned.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Without Evidence, GOP Prosecutor Incites Right-Wing Media Over 'Election Fraud'

Without Evidence, GOP Prosecutor Incites Right-Wing Media Over 'Election Fraud'

First Assistant” U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli is on a right-wing media tour claiming to have evidence of election fraud in California that will lead to prosecutions soon. Essayli is encouraging people to send in tips to help the Department of Justice investigate the supposed election rigging. Essayli's comments have right-wing media outlets in a frenzy pushing unverified claims of fraud.

Essayli is a Trump appointee currently leading the Central District of California federal prosecutors’ office despite not having received Senate confirmation. Once Essayli reached the term limit for his initial post of interim U.S. attorney, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed him a “first assistant” attorney, essentially granting him the leadership role in the Los Angeles office without confirmation. According to the Los Angeles Times, Essayli has “struggled to achieve courtroom victories,” particularly in cases against protestors.

Since California held its primary elections on June 2, the Trump administration and Republican Party have led a surge of claims of voter fraud and election rigging by the Democrats. As CNN noted, there has been no evidence to back up such claims. But Essayli has begun a media tour maintaining that individuals will be prosecuted for voter fraud.

Three days after the primary elections, Essayli was interviewed on CNN's The Story Is, where he claimed, “Absolutely, there is evidence that people are cheating, 100 percent,” adding, “There will be charges. I'm not prepared to announce them yet.”

Essayli cited a story about a single woman who was caught offering money to homeless individuals to register to vote “at false addresses” but admitted “we don't know” if election fraud is widespread or if it would affect the outcome of an election. Essayli uses this prosecution of one woman as his concrete evidence of election fraud in most of his interviews.

Also on June 5, Essayli appeared on Fox News' Fox News @ Night, asserting that “you'll never find” fraud “if you don't look for it.” Fox host Trace Gallagher said that he hasn't heard of evidence of widespread fraud, but “it is hard to believe that something, somewhere is not happening.”

Essayli also did an interview with Salem News Channel's The Scott Jennings Show the same day, repeating the same claims.

In an appearance on The Glenn Beck Program on June 8, Essayli asserted, “We do have multiple ongoing investigations … regarding election fraud,” and complained that the California voter rolls are “dirty” because noncitizens may be included. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare and statistically insignificant.

He also told Beck, “I expect people will be charged, but we need a wide-scale audit of the California voter roll,” and plugged his office's official tip line email, saying, “We are looking for any sort of wide-scale conspiracy, if you will. Right now, I would say our investigations lean more into individual actors.”

On the same day, Essayli did an interview on WABC's Cats & Cosby radio show, claiming California's voter registration process allows noncitizens to vote and suggesting that the voter rolls are full of noneligible voters.

“You've got all these ridiculous things that do not prove that you are an eligible United States citizen who can vote in an election,” he said of the documents California allows people to provide to show their residence.

Again, Essayli claimed, “Will we be charging people with fraud? Yes, we will,” and then pushed for an audit of the voter rolls.

Essayli repeated the claims of fraud and intention to prosecute during an interview on The Charlie Kirk Show, where co-host Blake Neff said “we absolutely need to find” actual fraud but “it doesn't matter if there's no fraud in this case because they've done everything they can to make it look as shady as possible.”

On June 8 alone, Essayli also appeared on One America News Network's Real America, NewsNation's Cuomo, and Fox News' The Ingraham Angle, repeating the same claims. Essayli plugged his tip line on Ingraham, saying if “people have witnessed anything, any specific conduct of fraud,” they should provide evidence, and adding, “I don't think a republic can survive if the people don't have faith in the systems.”

Essayli's push to prosecute has been picked up by other right-wing media outlets. Gateway Pundit called it an “explosive update” and claimed “a suspicious late 'ballot dump' delivered thousands of votes to far-left candidates” in Los Angeles. Salem Media site RedState published an article touting Essayli’s efforts and claiming about election fraud, “The problem is more widespread than the politicians want to admit, yet they are still blocking the SAVE America Act.” The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire have also reported on Essayli's comments.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Trump's Latest Fox Interview On Iran Displays Perilous Propaganda 'Doom Loop'

Trump's Latest Fox Interview On Iran Displays Perilous Propaganda 'Doom Loop'

President Donald Trump called in to his old stomping ground of Fox News’ Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, using the surprise interview to denounce the “crooked” media’s coverage of the war he started with Iran, praise Fox’s own positive coverage, and listen to the program’s co-hosts urge him to escalate further by deploying U.S. ground troops on Iranian soil.

Trump watches Fox programming religiously, frequently takes action based on what he sees from its coverage through a phenomenon I’ve described as the Fox-Trump feedback loop, and treats its hosts like unpaid members of his cabinet. The network played a key role in convincing the president to launch the Iran war earlier this year.

That war has settled into a stalemate. The U.S. and Israel launched major strikes in late February and early March that decimated the Iranian military and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Iran responded by closing the vital trade route of the Strait of Hormuz, and after months of alternating periods of tit-for-tat conflict and diplomacy, the Iranian regime remains intact and in control of its uranium stockpile and the strait, leading experts to describe the conflict as a strategic debacle for the U.S.

The U.S. and Iranian militaries have traded strikes this week, and on Thursday morning Trump posted on social media that the U.S. will hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” adding, “At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.”

Minutes after issuing that threat, Trump called in to Fox & Friends, the program on which he used to have a weekly guest slot as he built his political profile before his 2016 presidential run.

The president told the co-hosts that his “preference has always been take Kharg Island” — a tactic people on Fox have been pushing for months which would require putting boots on the ground — but that he’s unsure whether “America has the stomach for it.” He repeatedly complained over the course of the interview about what he deemed the “crooked” media’s insufficiently supportive coverage of the war, a subject that has consumed him since shortly after he launched it.

Responding to one such salvo, in which the president grouched about “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” co-host Ainsley Earhart urged Trump not to “worry about” the coverage and to go ahead and escalate the war by seizing Kharg Island, promising that Fox’s viewers would support it.



“We know that America is winning this fight, but when they destroy or they shoot down one of our Apache helicopters and we strike Iranian targets and then they fire missiles at our bases in Bahrain and Kuwait and Jordan, we have to fight back,” she said. “So, when you say you don't think America has the appetite to do what we are seeing tonight, I think we do. I think we’re ready to see this.”

Trump responded by praising her network’s “great” coverage. He name-checked evening hosts Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Laura Ingraham, calling them “fantastic” and adding that “every single anchor has been great.” (Notably, Trump did not mention Mark Levin, the arch-hawk whose war commentary the president has previously touted but who has criticized negotiating with the Iranian regime even as he praised Trump himself.)

“You guys have been amazing, and Trey Yingst is a superstar,” the president continued, referring to the Fox correspondent who has been covering the war from Israel and said last month that Trump held “the cards” while the Iranians were “grasping at straws” and desperate to negotiate an agreement with the U.S..

“He just covers so accurately,” Trump added. “I don't know Trey Yingst, but, I mean, he covers it so accurately. It's so beautiful to watch. And he's got a level of excitement that's amazing. But the accuracy is so good, I just saw him on your show a little while ago, and I said that's exactly what’s happening.”

Indeed, Fox has produced near-lockstep promotion of the war, with hosts constantly lavishing the president with praise and touting the “major geopolitical win” he is supposedly achieving there. Its personalities have also regularly urged Trump to order risky escalations like seizing Iran’s refineries, claiming that victory is “two weeks” away if only he would unleash the military and “finish the job.”

Now the president, who is obsessed with Fox’s coverage and often makes decisions based on its programming, appears to be listening — and says he plans to carry out their strategy. In search of more compliments from his television, he’s trapping the U.S. in a doom loop.

Fox Anchor Said Network Must Report Trump Family Grift (And Did For Five Minutes)

Fox Anchor Said Network Must Report Trump Family Grift (And Did For Five Minutes)

Fox News’ Special Report has devoted only about five minutes of airtime to stories about alleged influence peddling by President Donald Trump’s family members in the 13 months since its anchor, Bret Baier, told an interviewer that the press “100%” had an obligation to report such stories with the same vigor with which they had pursued Republican allegations about the business interests of former President Joe Biden's son Hunter.

When Politico’s Dasha Burns asked Baier last year about reports on the international business dealings of Trump’s eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, the Fox chief political anchor laid down a marker that covering such stories was vital.

“If you're going to play it one way, you've got to play it another way, and you’ve got to cover all of those things,” he explained during the interview, which was published on May 9, 2025. Baier cited what he termed “real questions” about the “access” of the Trump sons and that of President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.

Such coverage is more than warranted — Trump and his family members oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign. It includes immense holdings in cryptocurrency and international real estate deals through business entities now controlled by Eric and Don Jr. Kushner and the president’s sons also hold an array of consulting and venture capital positions that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency — some even receiving direct federal contracts — while posing conflicts with U.S. policy.

But Baier was not living up to the standard he set. While Special Report had routinely covered Hunter Biden stories, its handling of the Trump family’s myriad financial conflicts over the first 81 episodes of the second Trump term (the period prior to his May 2025 Politico interview) consisted of only a single underwhelming segment about its cryptocurrency holdings, as Media Matters noted at the time.

And now, after Baier’s program has spent another 13 months all but ignoring the damning reporting from other outlets about these shady business dealings, we can say conclusively that he has not followed through on his promise to “cover all of those things.”

Here’s what little Special Report has said about the many Trump family business dealings

  • The five-minute sum of Special Report’s coverage of the conflicts of interest created by the Trump family’s business dealings in the 13 months since Baier’s remarks came over just four editions of the program that aired in November and early December of last year.In late October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, expunging Zhao’s 2023 conviction on charges related to Binance’s facilitation of money laundering for criminals and terrorists. The pardon — which set the stage for Binance’s return to the U.S. — came after Binance took steps following the 2024 election to bolster World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s then-newly formed crypto company. On November 4, 2025, Fox White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich addressed the pardon and briefly referenced “scrutiny over Binance's role in the Trump sons’ crypto venture.”Three nights later, Baier aired an exclusive interview with Zhao, roughly 2 minutes of which revolved around the Trump family’s business interests. The anchor repeatedly asked Zhao whether he had any business ties to the president’s sons and if those connections led to his pardon, only for Zhao to flatly deny any such relationship.

Special Report also briefly mentioned Zhao receiving a Trump pardon after Binance boosted the Trump family’s investment earlier in the November 7, 2025, program, and again on its December 5, 2025, edition.

The only other reference to the Trump family’s business dealings that we found on Special Report since last May came on November 19, 2025. Discussing a bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress, correspondent Rich Edson reported: “Some members want to extend stock trade prohibitions to those in the judiciary and executive branches as Trump family business interests have drawn more attention. The president says he has nothing to do with his family business.”

And that’s it for Special Report’s treatment of alleged Trump family self-dealing, corruption, and conflicts of interest from May 9, 2025, through June 2, 2026. Special Report’s treatment of the World Liberty Financial story notably failed to address a key aspect uncovered by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in February: Emirati Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is literally known as the “spy sheikh,” secretly paid $500 million for a major stake in the Trump family company just four days before Trump’s inauguration, and subsequently received approval from the Trump administration for “access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips” that the previous administration had blocked due to “fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China.”

“You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE,” National Review writer and Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy noted in a column on that story. And then there are the myriad stories that Baier completely ignored during that period, a sampling of which are included below:

    • The Wall Street Journal reported in October that “BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company that this year installed Trump Jr. as a board member,” was set to host an event featuring the president’s son, “the country’s top drugmakers,” and “senior Trump administration officials that regulate the pharmaceutical industry” which would “ conclude with a dinner at the Executive Branch, the exclusive new club founded by Trump Jr. and his close friends.”
    • After drone company Unusual Machines put Trump Jr. on an advisory board and gave him “shares worth millions,” the firm announced “at least $15.2 million in military-linked orders, including a direct U.S. Army buy,” Forbes reported in October.
    • The Associated Press reported after President Trump launched the war with Iran that military drone company Powerus — which counts Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as investors — was seeking Pentagon contracts and pitching its interceptors to Gulf countries “while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.”
    • Kushner has been moonlighting as a top U.S. negotiator before and during the Iran war — but there are questions about whose interests he is serving since his day job is running the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which “took a $2 billion investment from a Saudi fund led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”
    • In April, the robotics company Foundation Future Industries won a $24 million Pentagon contract; Eric Trump is the firm’s “chief strategy adviser.”
    • The Trump Organization, which is led by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, has embarked on international real estate deals in the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman in partnership with a developer who has ties to the Saudi government.
    • A joint venture between the Trump Organization and a local consortium is building a Trump Tower in Tbilisi, Georgia, “on land currently part-owned by the son of the US-sanctioned leader of the country,” The Guardian reported in May.
    • ProPublica reported last week that North Carolina startup Vulcan Elements received a $620 million loan from the Pentagon — at the insistence of the White House — three months after the venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner took a stake in it.

The context of Baier ignoring the Trump family’s corruption


Special Report’s paltry coverage of the Trump family’s business dealings is infinitesimal when compared to the program’s handling of Hunter Biden’s business interests before and during the Biden administration.

When Baier laid down his marker last May, we noted that after the New York Post broke the story regarding former President Joe Biden's son's laptop in October 2020, Special Report covered Hunter Biden's alleged influence peddling in at least 32 segments over 19 days that combined for more than an hour and a half of airtime. Other Media Matters research revealed that Hunter Biden’s name was mentioned on Special Report at least 679 times from January 2023 through April 2024.

Baier’s work reflects the broader shift at his network, which furiously demagogued the right’s thin claims of Biden corruption but has ignored or excused the allegations surrounding Trump, even as the latter often feature orders of magnitude more money and much more direct nexuses to the White House.

Indeed, some Fox personalities are even cashing in with the Trumps — star host Laura Ingraham is on a corporate board alongside Trump Jr. for a company whose CEO co-founded the venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, while contributor Brett Velicovich co-founded a drone company that counts the Trump sons as investors.

Baier has reaped substantial benefits from his lackadaisical coverage of what we should probably term the Trump crime family. The president regularly harangues and threatens journalists from more credible news outlets — but the treatment he gives Baier is closer to that reserved for Baier’s propagandistic evening-show hosts.

The Fox anchor has been Trump’s guest on the golf course and received highly sought invitations to White House galas like November’s lavish banquet honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the April state dinner for King Charles III of Britain and his wife Camilla, the queen consort.

Baier has also received a steady stream of interviews with top Trump administration officials, and just last month, he sat down with Trump himself during the president’s state visit to China.

Accompanying the president on that trip was his son Eric Trump (who is married to Baier’s colleague, Fox host and walking media ethics disaster Lara Trump). The New York Times noted that Eric’s presence “could blur the lines between government business and private enterprise” and “evoked parallels to Hunter Biden’s decision to join his father, then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., on a trip to China in 2013.” But the president’s son tagging along on the China visit went unmentioned during Baier’s interview and ensuing Special Report coverage of the trip.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Nexis database for all original episodes of Special Report with Bret Baier for any of the terms “Don,” “Don Jr.,” “Don Junior,” “Donald Jr.,” “Donald Junior,” “Eric,” “Jared,” “Kushner,” “Ivanka,” “Melania,” “Lara,” “son,” “sons,” or “family” within five words of either of the terms “Trump” or “president” from May 9, 2025, when Special Report host Bret Baier told Politico that the media should “100%” go just as hard after President Donald Trump's sons' business dealings as it had Hunter Biden's, through June 2, 2026.We timed segments, which we defined as instances when any allegations of influence peddling or financial conflicts against any of Trump's family (excluding the president himself) were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of such allegations. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed such allegations with one another.We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned any such corruption allegations without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about such allegations scheduled to air later in the broadcast.We rounded all reported times to the nearest minute.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters



Pulte DNI Appointment Dismays Fox News Pundits, But Steve Bannon Is Excited

Pulte DNI Appointment Dismays Fox News Pundits, But Steve Bannon Is Excited

President Donald Trump typically muscles through his unqualified selections with the help of Fox News. But early signs suggest that the propaganda network isn’t on board with Trump’s bid to install Bill Pulte, the administration’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director of national intelligence.

Fox devoted only 8 minutes of airtime to Pulte’s appointment in the first 24 hours following the president’s Truth Social post heralding it, almost all of which occurred on its “news side” programs. The network’s influential evening hosts and Fox & Friends co-hosts did not weigh in on the story at all, a conspicuous signal that they aren’t currently willing to disgrace themselves by claiming that the scion of a real estate construction empire with no national security experience whatsoever should be overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Indeed, contributor Byron York — the epitome of the replacement-level conservative pundit — went so far as to criticize the pick on Tuesday evening’s Special Report. “The only thing you can say for it is it's an acting appointment,” York said. Noting Pulte’s lack of qualifications for the post, he added: “It seems like a pretty poor choice here. So, I'm not sure exactly what explains it.”

Trump’s announcement is also drawing fire from Senate Republicans, several of whom expressed skepticism on Tuesday about Pulte’s obvious lack of relevant experience.

But Pulte’s selection is not entirely without support on the right — and the character of that support hammers home the purpose of installing someone like Pulte in that post.

War Room host Steve Bannon praised the Pulte pick on his show as a “wake up call” in which Trump is “signaling you what he feels he needs to execute on his plan for his second term” which is “action, action, action.”

And his guest, right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec, claimed that Pulte could “start digging in on the domestic side of terrorism” by using his authority over the intelligence community to target leftist groups and to “start pulling records” on Trump foes like Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and Georgia prosecutor Fani Wills.

As Bannon and Posobiec indicated, what Pulte lacks in national security qualifications he makes up for in willingness to creatively deploy his authority to go after the president’s enemies. Pulte’s raison d'être at FHFA has been sifting through the mortgage records of officials Trump dislikes, like Schiff, James, and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and pushing for their prosecutions on trumped-up charges.

As director of national intelligence, Pulte would likely oversee the same right-wing media chum cycle as his predecessor, former Fox contributor Tulsi Gabbard. In that role, Gabbard ginned up what she termed a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump, allegedly overseen by former President Barack Obama, that she referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. She also oversaw the FBI seizure of 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, as part of the administration’s “effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes.”

Pulte’s efforts at FHFA to criminalize the president’s enemies initially drew support from Fox and the rest of MAGA media — though even its dumbest and most sycophantic pundits could tell that the allegations he pushed were pretextual.

But the FHFA chair fell out of favor with the network as the Cook case fizzled last September. A regular presence on Fox in 2025, Pulte has appeared only once on the network’s weekday programming since mid-October, according to a Media Matters database tracking guest appearances on Fox.

Pulte’s pursuit of legal charges against then-Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, who received Justice Department subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment amid Trump’s demands that Powell lower interest rates, drew harsh criticism from right-wing commentators in January.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board, in pinning the blame for the Powell probe on Pulte, described him as “an especially eager toady” and urged Trump to fire him. But “an especially eager toady” is apparently the type of person Trump wants running the intelligence community, and so instead, he’s promoting him.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Trump's Fox News Cabinet Fractures Over How (Or Whether) To End War

Trump's Fox News Cabinet Fractures Over How (Or Whether) To End War

With U.S.-Iranian negotiations stuck in purgatory, the hawkish hosts and contributors whom President Donald Trump listens to at Fox News have been weighing in on a potential peace deal. While the group was united in urging Trump to launch the war, it is now fracturing over whether or how to bring the conflict to an end.

Prime-time Fox star and full-time Trump propagandist Sean Hannity is ready to brand any agreement the president makes as a victory. But contributors Jack Keane and Marc Thiessen and Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade are all calling for further military escalation if Iran won’t agree to Trump’s maximalist demands in exchange for minimal returns. And host Mark Levin has suggested that any negotiation that leaves Iran’s regime in place is a failure for the U.S.

Axios reported Thursday on purported progress toward an agreement to end the three-month-old war between the U.S. and its ally Israel against Iran, the latest reiteration of a familiar pattern. “U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, but President Trump has yet to give his final approval,” the outlet’s Barak Ravid reported.

Trump subsequently met with top aides on Friday for a two-hour meeting in the Situation Room but “did not reach a decision on any new deal.” Since then, the U.S. and Iran have reportedly traded new negotiating points and military strikes.

The president regularly shapes national policy based on what he sees on Fox, and he leaned on the network in deciding to go to war in the first place and over the subsequent months. But a social media post Trump issued just after 1 a.m. ET on Monday may suggest some frustration with the Fox Cabinet members whose counsel he typically seeks.

Trump, in that post, promised that Iran would agree to a “good” deal and said that unnamed “political hacks” should “just sit back and relax” rather than telling him to “move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever.”

(Iran’s state media reported hours later that “Iranian negotiators will stop exchanging messages with the U.S. through intermediaries in retaliation for ongoing ceasefire violations” and its forces would again fully close the Strait of Hormuz.)

Hannity predicts “a major geopolitical win”

Hannity has torn up every media ethics rule in the book as he pursues his dual role of Fox host and Trump political operative. A longtime friend and confidant of the president, he has at times been so influential White House aides described him as the “the ‘shadow’ chief of staff.” Trump reportedly cited commentary from “Sean” in internal deliberations with U.S. officials in the lead-up to the war.

The Fox propagandist is cheering on any prospective deal as a significant Trump victory — and preparing his audience to do the same.

Hannity opened his Friday show by announcing “terrible news for Democrats who are limping into the midterms: President Trump is now poised for a major geopolitical win in Iran. News of a significant deal is already driving down dramatically the price of oil while sending the stock market to one record high after another after another.”

Later in the program, Hannity touted the president’s negotiating abilities and Iran’s purportedly weak position.

“They're in desperate need of cash and one of the things the president is saying is you don't get any of your own money or to sell anything until we get the dust, the strait is open, the mines are removed, and if it doesn't work, I'm just going to blow you to smithereens,” he said, adding, “I don't think the president I would hesitate a moment if he felt the deal was falling apart.”

Keane, Kilmeade, Thiessen: “We can go back to military operations” if Iran doesn’t bend

Trump has consulted Keane, a retired Army general and Fox senior strategic analyst who sits on the boards of multiple defense contractors, and Thiessen, a Washington Post columnist and Fox contributor, about the Iran war, according to an April Axios report. Kilmeade, meanwhile, is the senior co-host on Fox & Friends, the Fox morning show that shapes Trump’s worldview.

Keane frequently calls for further military escalation against Iran in his Fox appearances, and he stressed last week the need to return to full-scale military operations rather than accepting an agreement that fails to meet the maximalist

“No matter what deal we put together, at the end of it, they are going to want to recover everything that they're losing and go back to their original goal,” he said on Friday’s Fox & Friends. “So, in the deal … we have got to have the provisions in there to prevent as much of that as possible from happening.”

He further suggested that “we can go back to military operations” if Iran did not agree to relinquish “fees” and “the implication” it controls the Strait of Hormuz, as well as “all” its uranium stockpile “regardless of the percentage” of enrichment, while receiving no “money upfront” in sanctions relief.

Likewise, when Kilmeade interviewed Thiessen on Monday, the pair touted Trump’s demands while mocking the Iranian responses as unrealistic.

Thiessen emphasized that providing Iran with access to money should be a nonstarter, saying that “the big problem with even a good deal” in which “we get the nuclear dust, we end their nuclear program, and possibly even get the Arab states to join the Abraham Accords” is that “if we give them money, it gives a lifeline to the regime.”

Each pointed to escalations the U.S. could take in place of accepting a negotiated settlement, with Thiessen saying that “we can open the strait by force if we want to” while Kilmeade suggested “we could stop them getting resupplied through land.”

Mark Levin: Iran won’t honor any “paper agreement,” and its regime “must be destroyed”

Levin reportedly helped bring about the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities by convincing the president over a lunch at the White House that the country was just days away from getting a nuclear weapon. Trump has urged the public to watch Levin’s program for the host’s commentary on the U.S.-Iran war.

Levin typically lavishes Trump with praise for his decision to attack Iran — but as the network’s most hawkish figure on the war, he wants it to end with Iranian regime change, not a deal.

“Our government needs to understand that no paper agreement, no matter how good the terms seem, will in the end be honored by this enemy,” he explained on Sunday night’s Fox show, which aired hours before Trump posted on social media.

“The Iranian regime is at war with us, whether we like it or not,” Levin later added. “They are at war with us whether we are at war with it, whether we sign agreements with it as we have in the past, and there is nothing that’s going to change it. Nothing!”

“Let me repeat, nothing — except its destruction,” he continued. “That’s it. This is why, in my view, it must be destroyed, where I feel it will never be destroyed, least not with some great, massive military operation, the kind of which we do seek to avoid.”

Levin concluded his monologue by describing Trump as “a courageous man, he's a moral man, and he cares passionately and compassionately about us, his fellow Americans. What I know is that he loves our country, and he will do the very best he can to safeguard it. That I do know, and that allows us to sleep at night.”

MAGA Propaganda: Trump's Fox News 'Cabinet' Urges Him To Escalate Iran War

MAGA Propaganda: Trump's Fox News 'Cabinet' Urges Him To Escalate Iran War

As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with top aides to discuss next steps in the Iran war, his Fox News Cabinet is advising him to escalate.

Influential pundits on the MAGA propaganda channel are telling the president that he currently holds “the cards” and are urging him to use U.S. military might to seize Iran’s uranium stockpile, force open the Strait of Hormuz, assassinate the country’s leaders, and overturn its regime.

Fox has played a key role in getting the U.S. into the quagmire in Iran, with the network’s hosts (who often double as off-the-books presidential advisers) counseling him to launch the campaign in February. They continued to cheer him on over the following weeks, even as Iran’s regime remained intact and in control of its nuclear stockpile, its seizure of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices soaring, public support for the war cratered, and analysts issued dire warnings of U.S. strategic defeat.

With Trump’s ceasefire with Iran failing to produce a more permanent agreement to end the conflict, the president has returned to saber-rattling and reportedly plans to meet with “his top national security team in the Situation Room on Tuesday to discuss military options.” And Fox, which often plays an influential role in shaping Trump’s worldview through its coverage, is already banging the drums for a return to war, telling its viewers — which on any given day can include the president — that the war is a success and that Trump is in control of the situation and can easily escalate without risk.

Brian Kilmeade, one of the network’s most prominent hawks and a co-host of the president’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, on Monday morning proposed a series of simultaneous U.S. strikes against Iranian targets.

He called for the U.S. military to “open up the strait,” “grab the uranium,” and “target these bad actors that have been insincerely negotiating with our group,” an apparent reference to assassinating Iran’s diplomatic team. Kilmeade added that “the best chance for no casualties is you open up four different fronts immediately, simultaneously.”

Fox correspondent Trey Yingst stressed on the same broadcast that Trump’s strategy has put him in control of the situation and left Iranian leaders desperate for a deal to avoid further U.S. strikes.

“President Trump holds the cards here, according to regional officials, who say that his strategic patience has given him not only the upper hand on the battlefield but also at the negotiating table,” Yingst said. “Now the Iranians … are grasping at straws. They are trying to find some path forward that would give them an agreement at least temporarily to enter into deeper negotiations to avoid such a bombing campaign.”

He added that Iran’s economic situation is “truly dire” and its officials “are having to try to sell a reality to the people that doesn’t exist. They were defeated militarily during Operation Epic Fury.”

And KT McFarland — a former Fox personality turned Trump national security adviser — even suggested during her Fox & Friends appearance that China would hesitate to engage the U.S. militarily because the U.S. success in Iran has shown them to be “no match for America militarily.”

“If you are the Chinese leader, you’ve got to look at what the United States is just pulling off in Iran,” she said. “The unbelievable precision, the capability, how everything seems to work together. We seem to have done the miraculous.”

Likewise, Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Middle East hawk who Trump has urged supporters to watch for his Iran commentary, spent the weekend urging the president to push for regime change in Iran.

On Saturday night, Levin hosted retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former Fox contributor Trump named as a special envoy in 2024 who has called for “putting boots on the ground” in Iran and for the U.S. to seize its territory “like the Romans did” in Carthage.

After Levin called Trump “the only president that's put his foot down firmly and said no,” Kellogg added that “there's been eight presidents since the revolution in Iran, and only one, Donald Trump, has done something about it.” He then called for Trump to seize Iran’s Kharg Island and Qeshm Island to force open the strait.

“I would just say, go full in, get rid of this regime, whatever it’s going to take out there, because as long as you’ve got the theocratic leaders, as long you’ve got mullahs running that government, you’re going to have this problem, not just today, tomorrow, a month from now, but five or 10 years for the next presidency or our grandchildren, or children as well,” Kellogg added.

“All right, I appreciate that,” Levin replied. “I agree with that. And we’re there. Let’s get it over with already. And what do I mean by that? Destroy the regime, help the people, so they can help themselves.”

After a similar segment on Sunday night’s show featuring right-wing commentator Josh Hammer, Levin again said the U.S. needs to “eliminate that regime, because it’s the only way to prevent them once and for all from getting a nuclear weapon, tomorrow, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”

Levin followed that up by interviewing right-wing commentator Jim Hanson, who served in the U.S. Army special forces, about how the U.S. could, as Hanson put it, “slow roll an internal unrest” in Iran “until the regime finally gets overthrown from within.” Levin suggested that this would be necessary because the Iranian regime could not be trusted to follow through on any deal Trump made.

“We have a deal, whatever the deal is, let's say it's the greatest deal since sliced bread,” Levin pontificated. “Are future presidents, future Congresses, the American people in the future, do you think we're going to be willing to enforce a deal if they break the deal, which I think they obviously will when the president leaves?”


While Trump Accuses News Outlets Of 'TREASON,' Fox Models MAGA War Coverage

While Trump Accuses News Outlets Of 'TREASON,' Fox Models MAGA War Coverage

While President Donald Trump accuses news outlets of committing “virtual TREASON” by producing reporting that suggests the United States is losing his war against Iran, the president’s loyal Fox News propagandists keep telling him that he’s doing a great job, saying he’s on the verge of victory, and suggesting he can fail only by backing down.

Ten weeks after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran — and nine weeks after Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” of its leaders — Iran’s regime remains intact and in control of both its nuclear stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route for global trade whose closure has spiked domestic fuel prices. In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan wrote Sunday that Trump’s decisions have put the country on the brink of a “total defeat” whose consequences “can neither be repaired nor ignored,” and he noted that “any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks.”

With his war at a standstill and the Iranians rejecting his demands for a negotiated settlement, the president has repeatedly lashed out at the press for undermining the effort by producing “treasonous” reporting — an attack he resumed on Tuesday afternoon.

“When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement,” he wrote on Truth Social. “They are aiding and abetting the enemy! All it does is give Iran false hope when none should exist. These are American cowards that are rooting against our Country."

Recent reporting suggests that Trump and his allies have been lying about how successful the war has been.

Minutes after he posted that remark, The New York Times published a report revealing that contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, classified intelligence analyses reveal that “Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities."

Earlier this month, The Washington Post determined that satellite imagery shows “Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East,” far more destruction than the administration has publicly acknowledged, while Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence indicates the war has not impacted Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, one of Trump’s putative rationales for starting it.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Trump abruptly canceled his “Project Freedom” plan to force the reopening of the Strait after Persian Gulf allies objected.

But on Fox this week, the hawkish sycophants who encouraged Trump to launch the war in the first place are still telling him he’s doing everything right.

Mark Levin: Trump’s war prevented a second Holocaust and a nuclear attack on America

Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Fox host and sometime presidential adviser whose program Trump has urged the public to watch, devoted a lengthy and increasingly loud monologue on Sunday’s broadcast to lavishing the president with praise for launching the war and averting a second holocaust.

Levin denounced the Iranian regime and the war’s critics, claiming the latter “hate America and Israel so much they'd rather tens of thousands more Iranians die horrible deaths than see our country defeat this homicidal regime” and “care not at all, not one whit, that they are not only giving aid and comfort to this horrific enemy, but they are encouraging this enemy to slaughter, to execute, to rape, to torture, and to do what homicidal regimes do, because they know the enemy, that these people are in the bag.”

After urging the U.S. to arm and organize a Kurdish resistance to the regime, Levin praised the president, saying that while “humanity allowed the Holocaust to occur,” Trump and his administration had put “this Iranian Nazi regime … on its back."

“The only president with the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime, this mass-murdering, nuclear-obsessed Islamist enemy, the world’s enemy, is Donald Trump,” he said. “And unlike other such circumstances around the world where genocide is taking place — and as a practical matter, we can’t get involved in all of them — in Iran, we have the opportunity to do something about it,” he continued, calling Iran “the biggest concentration camp in human history right now.”

Levin went on to host Fox contributor Newt Gingrich, who said the Iranian regime was “fully as evil as Adolf Hitler was or Joseph Stalin was” and the war was necessary to prevent Iran from deploying a nuclear weapon “in your neighborhood,” and Fox senior strategic analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane, who urged the president to revive Project Freedom, “return to combat operations,” “put Kharg Island on the table,” and implement an intelligence operation to overturn the Iranian regime.

Sean Hannity: Iran’s leaders should “get out while they can”

Sean Hannity, the president’s chief mouthpiece at Fox, said on Monday’s show that Iran’s leaders are on the verge of fleeing the country.

After parroting Trump’s statement earlier that day that the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire is “on life support,” Hannity cited unspecified “reports tonight that Iran's very fractured fourth-tier leadership, they may be planning an exit to Russia and Vladimir Putin.”

“Now, if you recall, on this program before Epic Fury, there were reports the supreme leader, other leaders were planning a move, that they had planes with cash and currency on a tarmac ready to go,” he continued. “I said multiple times, my advice to all of them is to get out while they can. The supreme leader, all his top leadership, and then the next tier and pretty much the third tier, they're all dead. They should have listened to me then. My same advice applies here.”

Hannity then brought on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke for a report on the war, telling him, “I think they're just lashing out in utter complete paranoia, but this report that they might be planning an exit is intriguing to me.”

“Yeah, intriguing indeed,” Corke replied. “And I salute you. You are spot-on. You gave him great advice. Of course, they didn't listen and it could cost all of them.”

Hannity was off the air on Tuesday night as he traveled with the president on his state visit to China.

Fox & Friends: “Are we on the five-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.”

The co-hosts of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show, have spent the week alternating between assuring their viewers that victory is at hand and pushing for risky escalations to the war.

Ainsley Earhart on Monday floated a military effort to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile. “The question is do we go in and get the enriched uranium? … Do the Israelis do it? Do the Americans do it?” she asked.

Lawrence Jones casually responded that such a mission — which experts say would constitute an immensely complex and risky endeavor — could be a “joint operation,” before pivoting back to how successful the war has been.

He criticized retired Adm. William McRaven’s declaration the previous day that the U.S. is “not really that much better off” than it was before starting war with Iran. “There is no doubt in my mind, taking out the ayatollah, a lot of their leadership, has put us in a better position,” said Jones. “Are we on the five-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.” (If the metaphorical language seems confusing, consider that Jones is operating within a worldview where it’s unfathomable that we’re farther from the war’s endzone than five yards.)

On Tuesday, the trio stressed how important launching the war had been and praised Trump for carrying it out.

In one segment, Jones said that “we’ve been dealing with this threat for 47 years,” criticized news coverage in the face of the “phenomenal” military operation, and concluded, “I'm glad that the president has the will to deal with this."

“Don't forget the purpose of this,” Earhardt chimed in. “It is to get the enriched uranium away from them because they are planning a nuclear -- they want to have a nuclear weapon. What would they do with that? Well, they yell in the streets, publicly, death to America and wipe Israel off the face of the map. That's their ideology. That's how they think."

“They are not thinking clearly like Americans do,” she added. “They hate us with a passion, with a vengeance. And they have the capability, possibly, of building this nuclear weapon. So the president — that was why the president decided to begin this conflict.”

Brian Kilmeade added that Iran causes “chaos in the region” before adding, “For those people who think the president is boxed in and frustrated, I’m telling you, he gets coolest under pressure. He does not feel it at all.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Payoff: Duffy's 'Great American Road Trip' Show Funded By Firms He Regulates

Payoff: Duffy's 'Great American Road Trip' Show Funded By Firms He Regulates

President Donald Trump’s Fox News obsession frequently yields outcomes that are difficult to directly explain without sounding crazy. But even by those low standards, this one is a doozy.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, one of more than two dozen Fox alums Trump has nominated or appointed to senior administration posts, announced in a Friday appearance on the network that he had teamed up with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy, a current Fox host, to produce The Great American Road Trip, a reality TV show that they had filmed driving across the country with their children.

Naturally, the Fox & Friends hosts helped roll it out, yukking it up with their current and former colleagues and telling them that “you’re inspiring us” to take road trips of their own.

The Duffys largely fielded questions like, “Sean, as transportation secretary, I assume this was your idea,” and “one of the coolest things [you did was] in Philadelphia, the Rocky steps, running up the Rocky steps,” and “what does the president say when you walk in with all nine of the children?”

At one point, though, Ainsley Earhardt accidentally committed journalism. When she jokingly asked, “Is this a taste of a possible reality show for y’all one day,” Campos-Duffy revealed that “reality TV people” often come to them asking to “do a show with your family,” and that they decided to “do this one for free.”

In other words, the show they shot while Sean Duffy was a public employee serves as a brand-building exercise for future for-profit endeavors.

Earhardt, Griff Jenkins, and Brian Kilmeade offered no suggestion that it was unusual or untoward for a cabinet secretary — one also assigned at times the duties of administrator of NASA — to spend extensive time shooting a reality TV show during what Duffy described as “over the course of seven months.”

The trio also offered no questions about who paid for the show. When actual journalists looked into it, they discovered that its production is funded via a nonprofit and that “several of the show’s sponsors — including Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean Group and United Airlines — are companies that Duffy’s department oversees and regulates.”

And of course, no one at Fox cares that one of their hosts was shooting government propaganda films in her spare time.

Fox has apparently run out of journalistic norms to destroy — so they’re creating new ones.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

President Retreats To 'Fox-Trump Feedback Loop' As His Approval Numbers Crash

President Retreats To 'Fox-Trump Feedback Loop' As His Approval Numbers Crash

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

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

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

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

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

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

Devore, during the segment Trump referenced, claimed:

  • Trump is negotiating a “strong” “deal” with Iran.
  • Trump’s foreign policy is “like clean up on aisles two, three and 11” and “anyone that doesn't trust President Trump or doesn't give him the respect or the consideration that I think is due, given his track record, I think that they would be sorely mistaken.”
  • “The economy is hitting on all cylinders now” and the spike in the price of gasoline will end soon.
  • “Voters are going to see” the impact of that “tremendous” economic boost by the midterm elections, giving Republicans “a pretty good chance” to hold the House and Senate.
  • “It's a complete wild card as to whether” the Iranian regime “survives the year.”

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Larry Kudlow

Fox Anchors' Nuclear Justification For Iran War -- And Its High Costs -- Is Collapsing

Fox pundits have repeatedly argued that the Iran war’s costs are “a small price to pay” for its supposed prevention of the imminent threat posed by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

But a new U.S. intelligence assessment reportedly found that after two months of war, “the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year,” according to exclusive reporting from Reuters.

Trump’s war of choice against Iran is now in its third month and headed for strategic defeat. While U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed Iranian leaders and severely damaged their military, the regime is intact and has established control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital channel for global trade. Americans are seeing gas, diesel, and fertilizer prices soar as a result, and the direct cost of the war continues to grow.

Some Fox pundits, in the face of plummeting support for the war, have argued that these costs are relatively small compared to the benefit of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — but according to the new U.S. intelligence assessment, there was and remains no imminent threat of that happening.

Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump economic adviser, argued in a Monday Fox appearance that skyrocketing fuel costs are “a small price to pay to stop the nuclear activity” from Iran, which he described as “the most gruesome regime we’ve seen in a hundred years” (note that this period includes Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung’s China).

After Kudlow went on to say that “four and a half dollars gasoline — it's not a great idea, wouldn't want it forever, but it really isn't doing all that much harm,” Fox Business contributor Marcus Lemonis added, “I think you said it right, Larry. We don't want it forever, but this short-term pain has a big, big benefit to it.”

Fox host Sean Hannity, a close ally of the president and major supporter of his war, similarly claimed last week that skyrocking gas prices are merely “short-term pain” justified by preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

“It certainly is short-term pain,” Hannity told a guest during his April 30 broadcast. “Nobody wants to pay more for gas. Diesel is even more expensive, as you point out.”

“However, in exchange for not giving our children and grandchildren nuclear weapons, again, in the short term, I think I’d take that deal every day of the week,” he added.

And Fox host Todd Piro, during a rare mention of the $25 billion estimate a Pentagon analyst gave last week for the early cost of the war, said of that price tag, “If we are dead because Iran strikes us with a nuke, all these economic discussions are moot.”

But as Reuters reported on May 4, U.S. intelligence agencies did not assess that Iran could quickly obtain a weapon before the 2026 war began — or even before striking nuclear facilities last year — much less that the country could deploy it on U.S. soil:

U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The assessments of Tehran's nuclear program remain broadly unchanged even after two months of a war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched in part to stop the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear bomb.
…
U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded prior ⁠to June's 12-day war that Iran likely could produce enough bomb-grade uranium for a weapon and build a bomb in around three to six months, said two of the sources, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence.
Following the June strikes by the U.S. that hit the Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes, U.S. intelligence estimates pushed that timeline back to about nine months to a year, said the two sources and a person familiar with the assessments.

This new assessment further demolishes arguments for the war that Fox propagandists like Hannity offered after U.S. strikes began in late February.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who negotiated on behalf of the U.S. in talks with Iranian counterparts in the lead-up to the war, helped fuel those arguments by claiming on Hannity’s Fox show that Iranian negotiators had admitted possessing a uranium stockpile that could be weaponized “in roughly one week” and used to build 11 nuclear bombs. Witkoff lacks prior experience in nuclear diplomacy — but he does have sizable business interests in the Gulf region, at times partnering with Trump’s family business.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters


On Fox, Bartiromo Celebrates Eric Trump's Company Winning $24M Pentagon Contract

On Fox, Bartiromo Celebrates Eric Trump's Company Winning $24M Pentagon Contract

Fox Business anchor Maria Bartoromo — who was one of the most fervent participants in Fox’s effort to turn Hunter Biden’s business interests into a corruption scandal for his father, President Joe Biden — congratulated President Donald Trump’s son Eric on air on Thursday after his company landed a robotics contract from the Pentagon.

Bartiromo devoted more than 10 minutes of her program to a fawning joint interview with Foundation Future Industries CEO Sankaet Pathak and Eric Trump, the company’s “chief strategy adviser.”

After Bartiromo congratulated the pair on winning a $24 million Defense Department contract to test its “Phantom” robot for military applications, she gave them a platform to talk up their product, as well as what Bartiromo described as “these incredible goals that you've got,” including to “build life-sustaining technology on Earth and beyond.”

Bartiromo did not quiz Eric Trump on the obvious ethical problems involved in the Pentagon directing a contract to the president’s son’s company. Instead, she asked him the following questions:

  • “Eric, I know this is a lot about national security, but [Pathak’s] talking to us about other use cases. Tell us about that and how did you get involved — what attracted you to this company?”
  • “Eric, you're a master at hospitality. Tell us how you could see these uses play out with robots. I know that there are robots used right now, for example, in hospitals, but this is something that you — the robot goes to the dock, picks up medical equipment, puts it in a basket, and delivers it where it needs to go.”

Eric Trump and other members of the president’s family have apparently adopted Fox’s “Biden Crime Family” conspiracy theory as their business plan, as I detailed for MSNOW earlier this month:

Many of the network’s highest-rated hosts carried out a yearslong obsession with what Fox host Sean Hannity described as the “Biden Crime Family,” mentioning Biden’s son at least 13,440 times over a period of less than 16 months of Biden’s presidency. Their feverish conspiracy theory postulated that Hunter Biden had served as a “bag man” for his father, soaking up money funneled from foreign entities and kicking a share back to Joe Biden, who would then use his elected office to help his son’s business partners.
No substantive evidence ever emerged that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The dealings in question largely occurred when Joe Biden was a private citizen, and the primary instance the conspiracy theorists have cited as evidence of him taking state action on behalf of one of his son’s clients — that he, as vice president, pushed for the removal of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in order to benefit one of his son’s clients — was manifestly bogus.
But Trump and his family members appear to have adopted influence-dealing on a dramatically larger scale than the Biden family was ever accused of. And the Trumps’ sprawling set of business deals with Gulf state royals and the sovereign wealth funds they control cannot be disentangled from the president’s decision-making in launching and continuing a war of choice against Iran.

Bartiromo was a key player in Fox’s fixation on Hunter Biden, regularly hosting Republican members of Congress like House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) to promote their overwrought investigations. The sum total of the money Comer tracked from international business sources to “the Bidens and their associates” — itself an inflated figure that includes money going to non-family members — was $20 million, less than the single Pentagon contract Eric’s company received.

Fox hosts who tore their garments over the Bidens typically just ignore the historic effort by President Trump and his family members to cash in on his second term in office. But Bartiromo is taking it one step further by openly celebrating Eric Trump’s business.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

How Trump Is 'Celebrating First Amendment' In Weeks Before White House Press Gala

How Trump Is 'Celebrating First Amendment' In Weeks Before White House Press Gala

President Donald Trump has accused news outlets of deliberately producing fraudulent reporting -- often claiming they’re doing so to undermine his Iran war — on at least a dozen occasions in the weeks since the White House Correspondents’ Association invited him to attend its annual dinner. Trump blames “Anti-America” journalists who he claims are “rooting for Iran to win” for this reporting, and he has repeatedly described their behavior as “almost treasonous.”

When WHCA president and CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang confirmed on March 2 that Trump had accepted the group’s invitation to participate in its annual soiree, she described the event as a traditional “evening with the president, a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment,” and added that the journalists of the WHCA “look forward to hosting him.”

But it is impossible to celebrate the First Amendment with the current president. When Trump enters the ballroom at D.C.’s Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday night, he will come not as a defender of the free press, but amid the most hostile campaign against it by a president and administration in recent history..

Indeed, in a development that should surprise no one, Trump has spent the seven weeks since the announcement of his attendance at the dinner honoring the First Amendment by demeaning reporters and threatening their employers, many of which he is currently suing.

He urged Brendan Carr, his hand-picked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to review “the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” over their reporting.

He described New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman as a “Maggot” and “SLEAZEBAG” who “insists on writing false stories about me,” called ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl a “third rate ‘anchor’” who produces “Fictitious quotes,” and insinuated that he might sue both of them.

He gave a speech in which he claimed to be “extremely proud” of having “exposed” the press “for being fake news,” adding: “And we are gonna hopefully change that because I think you really need great news to be great, and they are not great, and they're not leading us to greatness, but we are gonna lead us to greatness.”

But the bulk of Trump’s rancor has focused on news outlets that he alleges have been deliberately lying in order to downplay the success of the Iran campaign, which is currently mired in its seventh week with the regime intact and in control of both its nuclear stockpile and the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Here’s a sampling of Trump’s most demagogic attacks on the press since the WHCA confirmed his attendance at the dinner, cribbed from his Truth Social account, interviews, and public appearances.

'Lowlife ‘Papers’ and Media actually want us to lose the War'

Trump posted to Truth Social on March 14:

Yet again, an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media about the five tanker planes that were supposedly struck down at an Airport in Saudi Arabia, and of no further use. In actuality, the Base was hit a few days ago, but the planes were not “struck” or “destroyed.” Four of the five had virtually no damage, and are already back in service. One had slightly more damage, but will be in the air shortly. None were destroyed, or close to that, as the Fake News said in headlines. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (in particular), and other Lowlife “Papers” and Media actually want us to lose the War. Their terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts! They are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America. Fortunately, as proven by our Great and Conclusive Election Win in 2024, the People of our Country understand what is happening far better than the Fake News Media! President DONALD J. TRUMP

'The story was knowingly FAKE and you can say that those Media Outlets should be brought up on Charges for TREASON'

Trump posted to Truth Social on March 15:

Iran has long been known as a Master of Media Manipulation and Public Relations. They are Militarily ineffective and weak, but are really good at “feeding” the very appreciative Fake News Media false information. Now, A.I. has become another Disinformation weapon that Iran uses, quite well, considering they are being annihilated by the day. They showed phony “Kamikaze Boats,” shooting at various Ships at Sea, which looks wonderful, powerful, and vicious, but these Boats don’t exist — It’s all false information to show how “tough” their already defeated Military is! The five U.S. Refueling Planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged, according to The Wall Street Journal’s false reporting, and others, are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies. Buildings and Ships that are shown to be on fire are not — It’s FAKE NEWS, generated by A.I. For instance, Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media, shows our great USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier, one of the largest and most prestigious Ships in the World, burning uncontrollably in the Ocean. Not only was it not burning, it was not even shot at — Iran knows better than to do that! The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information! The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they “win” are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets. The Radical Leftwing Press knows this full well, but continues to go forward with false stories and LIES. That’s why their Approval Rating is so low, and I can win a Presidential Election, IN A LANDSLIDE, getting only 5% positive Press — They have no credibility! I am so thrilled to see Brendan Carr, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic “News” Organizations. They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in The Apprentice, “FIRED.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

'I think it's pretty criminal...Our media companies [publish news] they know is false'

Trump said at a press gaggle on March 15:

And what they tell the public, you know, I just put out a Truth about their disinformation. I assume most of you saw it. And they use A- -- AI. They said they attacked the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the largest ships in the world, an aircraft carrier. And they showed pictures of it burning. It was never attacked.
It was never burning. The Wall Street Journal put out a false story that five of our big, beautiful tankers that we feed the planes with, the, we give the planes, uh, the gas, the jet fuel, uh, hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline, that they were all essentially destroyed. They weren't destroyed at all.
In fact, uh, four of them weren't, were not even, I mean, literally were not damaged. And one of them has slight damage and it'll be back in the air soon. But they, if you, if you read The Wall Street Journal, it's like they were totally decimated and destroyed like Iran has been. So they put out pho- -- phony stories.
The kamikaze boats. The kamikaze boats don't exist. They're fake. And you can almost see that when you look at them. It looks like y- -- because if they did exist, we'd hit them just like we hit other boats all over the place. But they don't exist. In fact, some of the people say, “Where are the boats?” Well, well, how come nobody seen the boats?
You know why? 'Cause it's AI generated. It's fake. And I found, I didn't realize this before tha- -- we started, but Iran is known for a lot of fake news and they deal with our fake news. And I, I actually think it's pretty criminal because our media companies who have no credibility whatsoever are putting out information that they know is false.
And it's a very dangerous thing for the country. I think it's, I think they could be in serious jeopardy, frankly.

'It's really criminal what they do'

Trump said at a bilateral meeting with Micheal Martin, taoiseach of Ireland, on March 17:

Their reporting of the war was unbelievable. We have decimated that country, and if you watch BBC, it's almost like they're fighting us to a draw. They're not fighting us to a draw. It was very inaccurate news. It was fake news. So, I'm very proud of the term fake news because it was my term, I came up with it. But it's no longer accurate.
It really is. It's corrupt, fraudulent news. It really is -- it's fraudulent. It's not just fake, it's beyond fake. It's really criminal what they do.

'It's almost treasonous, I have to be honest. It's almost treasonous.'

Trump said during a March 27 speech:

[The Iranians] have no air force, all wiped out. They have very few missiles left. Their drones are at a minimum. Their factories are gone. Their leaders are gone. The leaders are all dead. They're all dead. Nobody ever heard of the people that are left. And if you read The Times, you think we're doing poorly. It's so -- it's almost treasonous, I have to be honest.
It's almost treasonous. But fortunately, we have other media that's fair and honest and honorable. And you have to go out and do some of your own talking, because nobody else will. You know the expression, I have to sell myself because nobody else will.

'CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies'

Trump posted to Truth Social on April 7:

The alleged Statement put out by CNN World News is a FRAUD, as CNN well knows. The false Statement was linked to a Fake News site (from Nigeria) and, of course, immediately picked up by CNN, and blared out as a “legitimate” headline. The Official Statement by Iran was just released, and posted on TRUTH, below. Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of the Fake CNN World Statement, or was it a sick rogue player? CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible “reporting.” Results of the investigation will be announced in the near future. President DONALD J. TRUMP

'The Fake News Media love saying that Iran is ‘winning’ when, in fact, everyone knows that they are LOSING, and LOSING BIG!'

Trump posted to Truth Social on April 11:

The Fake News Media has lost total credibility, not that they had any to begin with. Because of their massive Trump Derangement Syndrome (Sometimes referred to as TDS!), they love saying that Iran is “winning” when, in fact, everyone knows that they are LOSING, and LOSING BIG! Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft apparatus is nonexistent, Radar is dead, their Missile and Drone Factories have been largely obliterated along with the Missiles and Drones themselves and, most importantly, their longtime “Leaders” are no longer with us, praise be to Allah! The only thing they have going is the threat that a ship may “bunk” into one of their sea mines which, by the way, all 28 of their mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea. We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to Countries all over the World, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and many others. Incredibly, they don’t have the Courage or Will to do this work themselves. Very interestingly, however, empty Oil carrying ships from many Nations are all heading to the United States of America to LOAD UP with Oil. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

'The Fake News Media is CRAZY, or just plain CORRUPT!'

Trump posted to Truth Social on April 11:

The Fake News Media is CRAZY, or just plain CORRUPT! The United States has completely destroyed Iran’s Military, including their entire Navy and Air Force, and everything else. Their Leadership is DEAD! The Strait of Hormuz will soon be open, and the empty ships are rushing to the United States to “load up.” But, if you listen to the Fake News, we’re losing! President DONALD J. TRUMP

'They report things that they know are false. It's almost treasonous.'

Trump said during an April 12 interview on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Fox News show:

And [the Iranianians] go to the press. They're very good with public relations, much better with public relations than -- than they are at fighting. They go to the press. And they say, President Trump said it's OK for us to have a nuclear weapon, when I never even spoke to them. And, by the way, that would be the only thing I would never say to them.
…
And then The New York Times, which is a fake -- a fake paper -- it's just a fake. You just believe the opposite. It's so sad when you look at CNN, The New York Times, ABC fake news, NBC fake news. When you look at this stuff, it's so sad to see it. I mean, they report things that they know are false. It's almost treasonous, actually, if you want to really know the truth.
It's almost treasonous. But if you -- if you're reading The New York Times exclusively, and not -- and their circulation, by the way, is way down.
It's way down. I'm proud to report that. But if you're reading The New York Times exclusively, you would say that they are doing great in the war.

'The New York Times knows that it’s FAKE NEWS!'

Trump posted to Truth Social on April 13:

For those people that still read The Failing New York Times and, despite the fact that Iran has been totally OBLITERATED, Militarily, and otherwise, you would think that Iran is actually winning or, at the very least, doing quite well — But that’s not true, and The New York Times knows that it’s FAKE NEWS! When does this Corrupt Media Outlet apologize for their LIES and horrible actions against me, my supporters, and our Country itself! HAVE THEY NO SHAME? HAVE THEY NO SENSE OF DECENCY? President DONALD J. TRUMP

'Why don’t they just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT...???'

Trump posted to Truth Social on April 17:

The Failing New York Times, FAKE NEWS CNN, and others, just don’t know what to do. They are desperately looking for a reason to criticize President Donald J. Trump on the Iran situation, but just can’t find it. Why don’t they just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT, and start to gain back their credibility???

'The Anti-America Fake News Media is rooting for Iran to win.'

Trump posted to Truth Social on April 20:

I’m winning a War, BY A LOT, things are going very well, our Military has been amazing and, if you read the Fake News, like The Failing New York Times, the absolutely horrendous and disgusting Wall Street Journal, or the now almost defunct, fortunately, Washington Post, you would actually think we are losing the War. The enemy is confused, because they get these same Media “reports,” and yet they realize their Navy has been completely wiped out, their Air Force has gone onto darker runways, they have no Anti Missile or Anti Airplane Equipment, their former leaders are mostly gone (This has been, in addition to everything else, Regime Change!), and perhaps, most important of all, THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a “DEAL,” is absolutely destroying Iran. They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run. The Anti-America Fake News Media is rooting for Iran to win, but it’s not going to happen, because I’m in charge! Just like these unpatriotic people used every ounce of their limited strength to fight me in the Election, they continue to do so with Iran. The result will be the same — It already is! President DONALD J. TRUMP


Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Why Fox News Dumped Trump's 'Grand Conspiracy' Prosecutor In 2019

Why Fox News Dumped Trump's 'Grand Conspiracy' Prosecutor In 2019

While Newsmax hosts celebrate GOP lawyer and conspiracy theorist Joe diGenova’s appointment to a post overseeing investigations of President Donald Trump’s political foes, their counterparts at Fox News — which apparently banned diGenova from appearing years ago — have mentioned the news just one time, in passing, on Sunday afternoon.

News broke over the weekend that Trump’s former personal lawyer and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had appointed diGenova, a figure in numerous right-wing pseudoscandals over the last three decades who represented Trump’s 2020 campaign in election fraud lawsuits, as his counselor and tasked him with overseeing the Justice Department’s “Grand Conspiracy” probe. That investigation unifies a hodgepodge of “deep state” conspiracy theories touted by right-wing media into a single framework seemingly intended to defeat statutes of limitations and target a vast swathe of Democratic politicians and former federal law enforcement officials.

Newsmax hosts celebrate as the DOJ hires Joe diGenova

On Newsmax, where diGenova has appeared regularly in recent years, hosts cheered the news.

“We have congratulations to share with Joe diGenova," Newsmax’s Greg Kelly said on the network’s flagship prime-time show. “Good luck, Joe. Did you hear? He's got a big gig at the Department of Justice. One of our favorite guests on this show will be counselor to the attorney general. That is a big-deal role.”

“He knows what they did to President Trump,” Kelly claimed. “And he wants justice. He has said it many, many times right here on this show. I think it's part of the reason why he may have the job now. It's so awesome.”

Kelly also praised diGenova as a “superstar” and someone who “thinks creatively, ethically, honestly, but creatively” and claimed the lawyer “is so fired up for this role."

On-screen text during the segment read, “A regular on the show gets a new job."

Newsmax’s Carl Higbie likewise touted the news, calling diGenova a “friend of this network” who will be overseeing what Higbie called “the DOJ probe into this Russian origin thing.” (Trump and his media allies argue that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was corrupt and its perpetrators should be prosecuted; previous attempts to turn their conspiracy theories into federal cases failed after a three-year special counsel probe by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney.)

While Newsmax’s stars throw a parade over diGenova’s appointment, their Fox counterparts have been largely silent. Thus far, the entirety of the network’s coverage since the news broke late Friday has been a single passing mention on Sunday afternoon.

“The Trump administration is dismantling the deep state,” host Tomi Lahren said at the top of a segment on The Big Weekend Show. “The DOJ has now tapped former Trump attorney Joe diGenova to spearhead the probe into ex-CIA Director John Brennan and others over the Russian hoax."The news went unmentioned on Monday, including on the network’s flagship “straight-news” program, Special Report, and the scandal-happy programs hosted by Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity.

Why Fox may have trouble swallowing diGenova’s new post

Fox is in a strained position, because while the network spent years feverishly demanding and supporting the prosecutions of Trump’s enemies over dubious premises, its leaders are seemingly also aware that diGenova is not credible.

DiGenova made more than 100 appearances on Fox News weekday programs in 2018 and 2019, and dozens more on its sister channel, Fox Business — but both networks appear to have banned the GOP lawyer in late 2019. He has not appeared on Fox News weekday programs since October 8, 2019, according to our database.

DiGenova and his wife and legal partner, Victoria Toensing, disappeared from Fox News following a sequence of events that demonstrated their lack of credibility.

DiGenova used a Fox appearance to call then-Fox senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano “a fool” for suggesting earlier that day that Trump had committed a crime by soliciting campaign aid in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

A few days later, diGenova and Toensing lashed out at then-Fox anchor Chris Wallace for reporting that they had been working “off the books” with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, on his effort to smear Joe Biden over Ukraine.

The day after diGenova’s final Fox interview, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — who had been working alongside diGenova, Toensing, Giuliani, and conservative columnist John Solomon on the Ukraine disinformation plot — were arrested by federal law enforcement en route to Vienna, Austria, to reportedly help set up an interview between Hannity and Viktor Shokin, the corrupt former Ukrainian prosecutor at the heart of the disinformation campaign

Their appearances on Fox Business, however, continued for a few more weeks — until diGenova used one to utter a widely condemned antisemitic screed, at which point the couple stopped appearing there as well.

Then in February 2020, The Daily Beast reported on a 162-page internal Fox News research briefing book detailing the “unrelenting disinformation campaign originating from Ukraine.” “Notable are the roles of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing in spreading disinformation and their parroting of beneficial narratives while employed by [pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry] Firtash,” the document noted. It also highlighted their “non-disclosure of financial motives and representation of Firtash while spreading false and misleading stories."

DiGenova and Toensing subsequently became Newsmax contributors.

Now someone Fox’s own research division panned for “spreading disinformation” will be running the Trump administration’s latest efforts to criminalize their opponents. The network has spent years feeding the flames of the conspiracy theories that diGenova will now be investigating — but highlighting his new role might force the network to confront what it means that someone it’s apparently deemed unreliable is leading that charge.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters