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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

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

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

With Bondi Out, GOP Lawyer DiGenova Named To Run 'Grand Conspiracy' Probe

Joe diGenova, a GOP lawyer who represented President Donald Trump in his bogus election fraud cases in 2020 and a longtime fixture in right-wing media, complained in April that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had “nixed” him from a role overseeing a planned investigation of Trump’s political enemies. Now, just weeks after her removal, he’s reportedly ensconced in that position.

The Trump Department of Justice, through grand juries in Florida, is targeting a wide array of Democratic political figures and law enforcement officials while sidestepping statutes of limitation by positing that the federal probes of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump’s theft of classified documents upon leaving office, and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, are all manifestations of a single “Grand Conspiracy.”

This absurd conspiracy theory unifies a decade of wild right-wing media fantasies under a single banner, and its proponents claim that it could lead to convictions of everyone from former President Barack Obama to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to former special counsel Jack Smith.

DiGenova, asked about Bondi’s replacement by her deputy Todd Blanche during an April 2 Newsmax appearance, argued that the president fired her because “the weaponization investigation cases in Florida have basically come to a standstill because Bondi got in the way.”

“She should have been gone the minute she interfered in the Florida investigations,” he added. “And I know that for a fact, because I was involved in that. I was going to be a prosecutor in that case, I was all ready to be hired to be the chief lead counsel, and Pam Bondi nixed it because she didn't want anybody with a name in the case.”

But on Friday, Maria Medetis Long, who was overseeing a portion of the probe focused on former CIA Director John Brennan, became the latest career federal prosecutor ousted after expressing skepticism about the strength of a case against a Trump foe. Her replacement is reportedly diGenova, who will also be overseeing the broader “Grand Conspiracy” probe and has the title of counselor to the attorney general.

DiGenova has presumably been selected for the role for the very reasons that would disqualify him under any normal circumstances. He is a fierce Republican partisan with close ties to Trump who has been involved, as either a pundit or a lawyer, in GOP scandalmongering efforts dating back to Bill Clinton’s presidency.

A key player in the Ukraine-focused disinformation plot targeting Joe Biden that led to Trump’s first impeachment, diGenova regularly appeared on Fox News in 2019 to promote that conspiracy theory — even as he and his wife, Virginia Toensing, represented pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, another participant in the scheme. An internal Fox research document, which The Daily Beast reported on in February 2020, questioned the credibility of diGenova and several other players in the effort.

DiGenova was apparently banned from Fox in late 2019 after smearing two Fox personalities on-air and then using a Fox Business appearance to deliver an antisemitic screed in which he argued that Jewish philanthropist George Soros “controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department,” has “corrupted FBI officials,” and is seeking to “run Ukraine.” (He last appeared on Fox News’ weekday programming on October 8, 2019, according to a search of Media Matters’ database.)

DiGenova has since been a fixture on Fox rival Newsmax, where he recently argued that Trump, as “chief law enforcement officer,” has every right to force the Justice Department to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars as compensation for its past efforts to prosecute him.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Between Hegseth And Fox News 'Cabinet,' No Constraint On Potential War Crimes

A crucial piece of context for President Donald Trump’s deranged threat to annihilate all of Iran’s power plants and its “whole civilization” is that both his senior administration adviser on the matter, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and his key outside advisers at Fox News champion the commission of brutal war crimes by the U.S. military.

The clock is ticking on Trump’s latest ultimatum to Iran’s leaders, who he has said must open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. ET or face a campaign of U.S. war crimes. The president, facing strategic defeat in Iran, is responding by using the threat of devastation to try to compel the Iranian regime to give him what he wants.

“If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,” he said in a Monday interview.

The president added in a Tuesday morning post on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran’s regime does not submit.

Trump has repeatedly reset such timelines — but there’s no question that if he does finally give the order, his defense secretary will execute it with relish. And his Fox Cabinet is currently champing at the bit for him to launch the attacks.

But if Iran does not submit and the U.S. military does destroy its power plants, what will the next target set be if the regime still cannot be compelled to give in?

Secretary of War Crimes

Hegseth’s distinguishing characteristic in his prior role as weekend host of Fox’s morning show was his delight in the prospect of American service members engaging in brutality.

Indeed, Trump’s ultimatum seems cribbed from a strategy Hegseth urged him to undertake in January 2020, after the U.S. military assassinated Iranian Lt. Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iran retaliated with strikes on U.S. military facilities in the region.

“I happen to believe that we can't kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb,” Hegseth said on the January 8, 2020, edition of Fox & Friends. “What better time than now to say, we're starting the clock, you've got a week, you've got X amount of time before we start taking out your energy production facilities? We take out key infrastructure. We take out your missile sites. We take out nuclear developments. … We take out port facilities.”

“Iran has been in endless war with us for 40 years,” he explained. “Either we put up and shut up now and stop it, or we kind of wait, go back to the table, and let them dither while they attempt to continue to develop the capabilities to do precisely what they said they want to do. So either we — we're honest about the nature of this regime, or I think we miss a moment.”

Hegseth repeatedly called during this period for the U.S. military to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, specifically highlighting its “oil refineries,” “oil infrastructure,” “some ports,” “energy production facilities,” “political sites,” and “cultural sites.”

At the time, Defense Secretary Mark Esper acted as a brake on Trump’s bloodthirsty impulses. After the president floated attacking Iranian cultural sites, Esper publicly ruled out such strikes, which he explicitly described as violations of the “laws of armed conflict.”

But Hegseth notoriously does not believe such laws bind the U.S. military. Beyond his calls for attacking civilian energy and cultural sites, both unambiguous war crimes, he has championed U.S. service members accused or convicted of unlawful killings of civilians and enemy combatants. Indeed, during a 2019 Fox appearance, Hegseth said of a soldier charged with murdering a captured Afghan man who was allegedly a Taliban bombmaker, “If he committed premeditated murder … then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?” He added: “Put us all in jail.”

Hegseth also questioned whether the U.S. military should adhere to the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of wounded combatants, prisoners of war, and civilians, in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.

“Should we follow the Geneva Conventions?” Hegseth wrote. “What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us? Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism?”

“Makes me wonder, in 2024 — if you want to win — how can anyone write universal rules about killing other people in open conflict?” he continued. “Especially against enemies who fight like savages, disregarding human life in every single instance.”

In office, Hegseth has followed through on this contempt for the laws of war. He “has fired and reassigned uniformed lawyers and dismantled many of the offices set up to prevent the targeting of civilians and related sites,” focused his public statements on the need for “lethality,” and carried out operations in the Middle East, Indian Ocean, eastern Pacific Ocean, and Caribbean Sea that experts say could include war crimes, as The New York Times reported. And he’s remade the top ranks of the military, replacing senior leaders who won’t get with his program.

Now Trump is putting a new campaign of war crimes on the table, while repeatedly saying he is unconcerned with whether strikes on Iran’s power plants are illegal. And Hegseth, rather than trying to limit Trump’s options as Esper did, is publicly warning Iran’s leaders to “choose wisely, because this president does not play around."

The Fox Cabinet is all-in for war crimes

Trump often makes or calibrates his decisions based on the advice he receives in real time from his loyal propagandists at Fox. That Fox-Trump feedback loop played a key role in his decision to launch strikes on Iran in the first place, and ever since, many of his biggest supporters at the network have been urging him to respond to the war’s strategic failure with further escalation.

The Fox Cabinet, like the official one, could choose to act as a restraint on the president’s most psychotic plans. But the network’s stars seem fully bought in on the proposed attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure.

“Tick tock,” Fox host and Trump operative Sean Hannity began Monday’s monologue. “In 23 hours, that will determine the fate of Iran's rogue regime. By this time tomorrow, the deadline will be over. They can hand over all of their nuclear material, open the Strait of Hormuz, and make a deal that will allow for their survival, or they will be bombed into oblivion.”

After airing comments from Trump about the plan, Hannity warned Iran’s leaders to “think carefully because President Trump has proven again and again he does not make empty threats.”

“That should be more than obvious to all of them by now,” he continued. “And I'm actually hoping and praying, cautiously, even optimistic that this remaining fourth or fifth tier of leadership chooses the negotiated settlement and Iran's infrastructure for its people can remain in place.”

Fox host Jesse Watters also defended the proposed strikes on Monday night.

“These targets are selected as humanely as possible, considering dual use systems and the law of proportionality,” he said. “But the goal of war is to win. We aren't hitting their water, hospitals, or hotels. That's what Iran is doing to our allies.”

“Remember, these aren't civilian power plants,” he added. “The Guard runs them and gets dibs on the power, so hitting that type of target hurts the military and their ability to fight back.”

“He talked about the power energy plants being targets, the rail stations as well,” Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones said Tuesday in response to Trump’s “whole civilization” threat. “He does not want death and destruction but the deadline is the deadline, and it doesn't seem like he is going to move it.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fox News Hosts Scapegoat NATO For Trump's Botching Of Iran War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Antisemitic Influencers Who Say They're 'J-Pilled' Know Exactly What It Means

A New York Times report on young attendees at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference soft-peddled the movement’s antisemitism by describing some right-wingers as “J-pilled” and erroneously defining that term as “far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence.”

One indication that definition is inaccurate, as my former colleague Madeline Peltz pointed out in criticizing the article, is that “a few grafs later they quote a groyper who says ‘at least 60 percent of the young people here’ are fans of Nick Fuentes, who wants to deport all Jews from America.”

Another tell, of course, is that “Israel” doesn’t begin with a J — but “Jew” does. “J-pilled,” as should be extremely obvious from the name, is actually far-right slang for skepticism of Jewish influence. Those who claim to be “J-pilled” see the hidden hand of the Jewish people behind every social ill, an adaptation of the gutter antisemitism familiar from the blood-soaked anti-Jewish fraudulent tome, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This strain of explicitly anti-Jewish sentiment is a growing problem on the right. Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist once barred from the mainstream right, broke that containment in 2025 with a wave of appearances with popular podcasters like Tucker Carlson. He and his allies have tried to use the horrific scenes of devastation the Israeli military perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza to make inroads with young Republicans and encourage them to adopt virulently antisemitic views — and polling suggests they are succeeding.

If you spend enough time watching the programs of Fuentes and his ilk, you will hear the cohort the Times describes make very clear that when they use the term “J-pilled,” they are talking about Jews, not Israel.

Here’s a viewer telling Fuentes that his “boomer family” is “being J-pilled” by Candace Owens talking “about the propaganda surrounding Hitler.”
Here’s one explaining to Hitler-praising manosphere streamer Myron Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl) that he “found out my mom is jew pilled” when he “brought up some things about the jews and she started talking about the red cows and temple.” (While reading this comment, Gaines shortened “jew pilled” to “J-pilled.”)
Here’s another one telling Gaines, “My sister who is J-pilled thinks the jews want Maduro dead because his politics outlaws jews! no porn, no abortion, no usury!” (When Gaines read the latter comment, he said “J’s” in both places where the text read “jews.”)

Some on the far-right, hoping to avoid being accurately tarred as antisemites, deliberately try to muddy the waters. Gaines, for example, often uses the term “J-pilled” when he is discussing Israel.

But the streamer has also made clear this is a smokescreen. During a March 2025 show, he read a viewer’s claim that “the Disney CEO (Bob Iger) the man who has been destroying movies with bs trans ideology and feminism ideology and funding shitty movies it all makes sense when you check WIKI” — a reference to Iger being Jewish.

In response, Gaines told his livestreaming audience to type “1” into the stream’s chat “if I've J-pilled you,” adding, “I gotta obviously use certain terminology here for obvious reasons, but you guys know what I'm talking about.”

“All right, sweet,” he said as the chat became a stream of people replying with 1s.

Some are less subtle about what they mean when they talk about “J-pilling.” Take Stew Peters, a prominent right-wing streamer and influencer known for bigoted commentary, violent ideation about his political foes, and deranged conspiracy theories.

“As everybody knows, The Stew Peters Show and this network broadly have been and still are to this day at the forefront of J-pilling the American people,” Peters said in November 2025. “Our people are waking up. Our people are rising up. They’re noticing, and the noticing will continue. If you think about it, it’s impossible not to notice.”

Peters then detailed who and what his supporters are “noticing” — the Jews responsible for all of society’s problems.

“Just think of everything that these walking, talking, interest-charging demons have been responsible for,” he said.

He continued: “If societal ills were a bunch of stones in the middle of a field somewhere and all of us got together walking around, turning up the stones to see what’s underneath them, under every single one of these stones, you would find a little Jew-man, grubbing his hands, smirking, wearing his tiny hat, trying to get over on the goyim. Trying to kill the goyim, when it really comes down to it.”

“Just think of all that these people are responsible for,” he added. “Usury, central banking, communism, Bolshevik communism, the Holodomor, the transatlantic slave trade, transgenderism, the normalization of homosexuality, the normalization of pedophilia, transgenderism for kids, open borders, white replacement, white genocide, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, AIPAC, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, abortion, which is just a modern-day Malachian sacrifice ritual.”

Trump Says 'Watch Mark Levin' As Fox Host Urged US Troops To Seize Iran Uranium

Fox News host Mark Levin suggested the U.S. military should seize Iran’s uranium — a risky escalation experts say would place troops under fire on Iranian soil for days — during a Saturday night program that President Donald Trump had urged his supporters to watch for its discussion of “the importance of hitting Iran, HARD!!!"

Under normal circumstances, the nasal-voiced screeds a sycophantic Fox news host yells on his taped weekend program wouldn’t matter for much. But Trump is often persuaded by what the network’s MAGA propagandists tell him through his television, he’s previously leaned on council from Levin with regard to Iran in particular, and earlier on Saturday, the president urged his supporters to tune in to Levin’s show that evening.

“Watch Mark Levin interview of Brilliant Marc Thiessen tonight at 8:00 P.M., on FoxNews,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Will discuss the importance of hitting Iran, HARD!!!”

Trump’s instruction for supporters to watch Fox discourse on the prospect of further escalations in Iran comes as the war approaches a flashpoint. Iran’s regime is intact and it has successfully closed the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic victory that threatens global trade. With Trump’s initial prediction of a four-to-five-week war in doubt, U.S. troops are streaming toward the region and preparing for weeks of ground operations. The Pentagon has reportedly prepared a list of purported “final blow” options that include seizing Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal and extracting Iran’s uranium, even as Trump himself is reportedly “getting a little bored” and “wants to move on” from Iran, as a senior White House official told MS NOW.

Fox’s pro-Trump hosts are trying to influence the president’s next move. Laura Ingraham warned last week that further escalation could trigger “cascading problems for the region” and “political problems for the president,” while Sean Hannity suggested that the war is all but over and Jesse Watters said any further action would amount to a “knockout.”

Saturday’s broadcast illuminates Levin’s position among the network’s biggest hawks. And he appears to be showering Trump with praise in an effort to get the president on board with his latest escalation scheme. Levin touted Trump’s “enormous intelligence,” claimed his “victory” against Iran is “absolutely incredible,” and portrayed the war’s critics as merely Trump-haters.

The Fox-Trump feedback loop has in recent months played a role in the president’s decisions to send White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee immigration enforcement in Minnesota; prioritize the SAVE Act over all other legislation; order the deployment of ICE agents to airports; and start the war against Iran. Will it now help trigger an incredibly risky military operation?

Levin: We need ground troops in Iran because “we’ve got to get the uranium”

After spending the bulk of Saturday’s monologue praising Trump’s war and denouncing its critics (described below), Levin came to the point: He wants the president to deploy ground troops in Iran to seize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“Why would we need troops on the ground?” he explained. “Well, there's a lot of reasons, and we wouldn't need 300,000 of them.”

“We've got to get the uranium — if it cannot be destroyed, if it cannot be altered, we've got to get it,” Levin said. “That's why I am reading in the paper, we are talking about the 82nd Airborne, we're talking about these various special forces and the various military services and so forth.”

“He's not talking about sending regular Army and infantry in by the hundreds of thousands — the men he's talking about, the units he is talking about, they are specialized,” Levin continued. “And you know what else? I remember from my days in the Reagan administration, many of them are trained for a moment like this to try and secure enriched uranium. Many have been trained for moments like this.”

Thiessen, the Washington Post columnist and Fox contributor whom Trump described as “Brilliant,” likewise argued that “if we don't get that enriched uranium, and they want to get back at us for what we've done, the easiest way to do it would be to get it to al-Qaida and let them use it for a dirty bomb.”

“So we have got to get what Donald Trump correctly calls the nuclear dust before this operation is done,” Thiessen concluded.

The Wall Street Journal’s description of an operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of nuclear material buried in the middle of a hostile country during a shooting war does not sound as easy as Levin and Thiessen made it out to be. The paper reported:

Teams of U.S. forces would need to fly to the sites, likely under fire from Iranian surface-to-air missiles and drones. Once on site, combat troops would need to secure perimeters so that engineers with excavating equipment could search through debris and check for mines and booby traps.
The extraction of the material would likely need to be conducted by an elite special operations team specially trained to remove radioactive material from a conflict zone. The highly enriched uranium is likely contained in 40 to 50 special cylinders that resemble scuba tanks. They would need to be put into transportation casks to protect against accidents. That could fill several trucks, said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former nuclear negotiator with Iran.
Unless an airfield was available, a makeshift one would need to be set up to bring equipment in and take the nuclear material out. The entire operation would take days or even a week to complete, experts said.

Trump “hasn’t made a decision on whether to give the order” and is “considering the danger to U.S. troops,” but “remains generally open to the idea,” the Journal reports.

More open, perhaps, after hearing the pitch from Levin and Thiessen.

Levin: Trump has “enormous intelligence,” his Iran “victory” is “absolutely incredible”

Before urging Trump to send U.S. ground troops to invade Iran, Levin began his Saturday monologue by offering fulsome praise for the war of choice he had urged the president to start.

“I've been thinking about the war with Iran,” he began. “I like to call it a military operation. I actually like to call it a peace mission, because that's what it is, and how incredible it is, and the magnitude of this victory. It's not a final victory, but this victory up to this point is incredible, absolutely incredible.”

Levin meandered through his justification for the war, denouncing President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which he described as “an agreement that would ensure they get a nuclear weapon,” and comparing U.S. military deaths during the Iran war with those during other U.S. conflicts dating back to the Korean War as well as fatalities from murder and fentanyl overdoses.

He ultimately claimed that Iran could have turned its enriched uranium for a “dirty bomb” and then employed terrorists to detonate it in a U.S. city. “So what the president is doing is monumental in terms of protecting the American people,” Levin explained.

The host concluded that “we're in good hands” with Trump “because he's a man with enormous intelligence, enormous common sense. He's not an ideologue. He doesn't run around with slogans. He is prudential. He looks at the facts, he looks at the challenge, and he's dealing with it.”

Thiessen likewise gushed over the president’s war.

“We're about halfway through this thing,” Thiessen claimed, “and when this is all over, this is going to go down in history as possibly the greatest military campaign the United States has waged since the American Revolution.”

Levin: War critics “aren’t serious people,” they “are people who just oppose Trump”

Levin finds his own arguments so compelling that he can’t imagine why anyone would disagree with them.

Pointing to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and recently resigned former Trump intelligence official Joe Kent, Levin commented, “These aren't serious people with serious disagreements. These aren't serious people with substantive knowledge that's different than it was before. No, no, no. These are people who just oppose Donald Trump. That's the truth.”

He later complained that Schumer, “the conga line of Democrats,” and “the woke Reich neofascist isolationists” were giving Iran “the benefit of the doubt.”

“Why would you give a terrorist regime that slaughtered Americans and is the biggest promoter of terrorism the benefit of the doubt?” he whined.

Thiessen likewise told Levin that the Democrats are “rooting for defeat,” adding, “There are people in this country who hate Donald Trump more than they hate the Iranian regime that just massacred 32,000 people in their streets.”

That’s what Trump wanted his followers to tune-in for: A totally one-sided dismissal of the Iran war’s critics in favor of continued escalation in an aimless conflict that's already spiraled out of control.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fox News' United Front Supporting Trump's Iran War May Be Breaking Down

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ingraham did not seem impressed by Leavitt’s rhetoric.

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

Her air of skepticism continued throughout the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legacy News Outlets That Bent Knee To Trump Losing Their Credibility -- And Audience

It turns out that there isn’t a ratings bump for MAGA capitulation.

David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump’s megabillionaire ally Larry Ellison, took control of CBS last year following a corrupt deal that saw its parent company settle a lawsuit with the president and agree to implement a new conservative ombudsman for CBS News. As part of that takeover, he also installed conservative journalist Bari Weiss at the helm, promising that her “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” would “invigorate” the network. But six months into Weiss’ rightward makeover of CBS, the fruits of her labors include cheers from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for making the network more palatable to their aims, complaints from the CBS newsroom that she is dismantling its independence — and, it now appears, a viewer exodus.

Status’ Oliver Darcy got ahold of some CBS News ratings data from the first quarter of 2026, and it is brutal. CBS Evening News has lost seven percent of viewers year-over-year, placing it “on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic,” while CBS Mornings plummeted 13 percent and “is pacing toward its lowest-rated quarter on record in both total audience and the key demo.” Meanwhile, the audiences of competitor shows at ABC News and NBC News grew over the same period.

The ratings collapse is a devastating indictment of the strategy Ellison and Weiss are executing at CBS — and a blaring warning for CNN if Ellison is able to complete his takeover of that network and let Weiss run the same playbook there.

Meanwhile, new data from the Alliance for Audited Media show that while average daily print circulation among major audited newspapers saw year-over-year declines across the board in the six months running through the end of September 2025, the biggest drops came at The Washington Post, which fell 21.2 percent followed by the Los Angeles Times, down 19.8 percent. Their billionaire owners — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong, respectively — had responded to Trump’s return to the White House by trying to shift their papers to the right.

None of this should come as a surprise

Ellison and Weiss have suggested that the core problem for American media is that the public does not trust news outlets, and that the reason for this is that the public perceives those outlets as too far left and too critical of the right. They propose to win over a larger audience by deliberately course-correcting in the opposite direction.

“We are not producing a product that enough people want,” Weiss said at a CBS News staff town hall in January. Weiss attributed this to two factors. “First: Not enough people trust us. Not you. Us. As in: the mainstream media,” she said. “Second: We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are. So they are leaving us.”

Weiss is correct that trust in traditional media has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among conservatives — indeed, this is a banal truth that everyone remotely connected to the media knows. But her strategy of conceding that potential viewers are correct to distrust journalists and seeking to “meet audiences where they are” by signaling that coverage will now be deliberately shifted to the right has had the obvious result of driving away the existing audience without adding a new one.

CBS News’ viewers either liked what they were already watching or they liked what watching Edward R. Murrow’s old network said about them. When the network’s new ownership and management proposed taking its programming in a dramatically different direction in search of a different audience — as the wildly unpopular president cheered — the existing viewers could see that, and some decided that CBS is no longer worth their patronage.

Weiss’ theory of the case is that these losses could be made up by new viewers with more right-leaning views. But the decline in public trust for traditional media among Republicans stems at least in part from a decades-long strategy pursued deliberately by the GOP and conservative movement. That effort revolves around simultaneously denouncing news outlets as liberal propaganda while encouraging conservatives to instead patronize new, deliberately right-wing news sources. And it’s been taken to another level under Trump, who relentlessly attacks the press while using state power to reduce its influence and lift up the MAGA media operation.

That dynamic makes it wildly implausible that the shift Weiss enacted would win over a sizable new segment of viewers. Her version of CBS may garner praise from Trump, but people who might be swayed by his comments already have — and are likely already patronizing — a plethora of pro-Trump outlets. You could imagine a scenario where some slightly more right-wing viewers of the ABC and NBC news shows switched to watching the new CBS. But instead, the data Darcy cited suggests, CBS appears to be shedding viewers who are instead watching its competitors — or exiting broadcast television altogether as their news source.

As for Bezos’ Post and Soon-Shiong’s Times, when the owners similarly bet on trying to make their outlets more acceptable to Trump, their existing audiences looked for the exits and were not replaced. The efforts may win over the likes of Tucker Carlson or even the president himself, but MAGA isn’t rushing to buy subscriptions.

For Ellison, Bezos, and Soon-Shiong, the declines in their news outlets may be a small price to pay to win over Trump. Each owner has massive business holdings outside of the press and can afford the losses from tearing down their news outlets if it wins the Trump administration’s support for their desired mergers, contracts, or patents.

The journalists facing layoffs from their outlets — and the public who lose access to their reporting — are the ones who will actually suffer from this doomed strategy.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Trump's Shambolic Fox News Policy Making Hits American Airports

President Donald Trump threw his administration into chaos on Saturday by demanding the stationing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at U.S. airports in response to long lines triggered by the expiration of funding for the Transportation Security Administration.

Top administration officials offered disparate explanations for what those ICE agents would be doing — explanations which also seemingly diverted from Trump’s own vision — as they scrambled to turn the president’s social media posts into some sort of coherent policy.

Meanwhile, ICE and Department of Homeland Security sources are grumbling to the press that the deployment will reduce their ability to focus on the president's deportation agenda.

The president-mandated mayhem appears to stem from Trump’s habit of governing based on policy ideas he gets from his television, particularly the MAGA talking heads at Fox News. This Fox-Trump feedback loop has at various times driven everything from administration staffing to legislative and communications strategy to presidential pardons and federal contracts.

Both the problem — long airport lines caused by Trump’s opposition to funding TSA — and his response — stationing ICE agents at the airports — seem to have their origins in Fox segments he had been watching.

A government shutdown is hitting TSA and it’s Trump’s fault (with a Fox assist)

A partial government shutdown which impacts DHS is causing major disruptions at some U.S. airports, including long security lines. And while that shutdown originated with Democratic opposition to the Trump administration’s lawless immigration enforcement, it continues because of the president’s Fox-fueled demand that future appropriations come stapled to his unrelated legislative priorities.

Senate Democrats have refused to support appropriations for ICE or Customs and Border Protection absent reforms to their operations in light of the rampages by those agencies, while Senate Republicans have to date blocked Democratic attempts to separately fund TSA and other DHS agencies. And Trump is reportedly standing in the way of a deal pitched to him by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in which “Senate Republicans would support funding all of DHS except ICE,” funding for which would be handled separately on a partisan basis via reconciliation.

What explains Trump’s intransigence, which has become the primary cause of the airport lines? He is using the TSA funding as leverage as he tries to ram through the SAVE America Act, legislation otherwise stymied in the Senate that would rewrite the nation’s election laws. And he is doing so in response to something he saw on Fox.

On March 8, the president declared on Truth Social that he had been so moved by MAGA activist Scott Presler’s comments about the SAVE Act on Fox & Friends that morning that he would sign no other legislation until it was passed.

“It must be done immediately,” he posted. “It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION - GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY - ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION [SIC] FOR CHILDREN!”

The implications of this pledge for TSA funding seem to have largely gone unnoticed. But on Sunday night, Trump explicitly tied the two together.

“I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,’” Trump posted to Truth Social, claiming, “It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate.”

After denouncing what he portrayed as the Democratic position on DHS funding and rattling off a list of the SAVE Act’s provisions, he urged Senate Republicans to combine the two, writing: “Lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary.”

Right-wing radio caller -> Fox segment -> presidential post -> policy

ICE agents are currently patrolling some U.S. airports after a right-wing radio caller proposed the idea, the show’s host took it to Fox, and the president adopted the policy in a social media post, as Semafor’s Ben Smith first detailed in a Sunday report.

“Linda from Arizona” called into The Clay and Buck Show on Friday afternoon proposing to “bring in ICE agents” as “a solution to the TSA problem.” Clay Travis, the show’s co-host, liked the idea so much that he brought it up that night during a hit on Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime.

“I had a caller on the show, The Clay and Buck Show, today, Charlie, had an interesting idea,” Travis told guest host Charlie Hurt. “What if President Trump announced that ICE agents were now going to be supplementing TSA agents inside of all of the airports? The ICE agents are still being paid. How quickly would Democrats panic if he said hey, we're going to put some ICE agents in line with the TSA, help to expedite everybody?”

“And oh, by the way, if we think you might be an illegal when you're coming through to try to get on an airplane, we're going to go ahead and arrest you at the airport, too,” he added. “I think that might solve things in a hurry. It was a great caller suggestion. But it also goes to let's let people actually do something normal, go through security and get on airplanes — Democrat, Republican and independent, I think it connects with everybody.”

“Yes, it absolutely does,” Hurt replied.

Hurt and Travis weren’t the only ones enamored with “Linda from Arizona’s” idea — the next morning, the president adopted the proposal. In a Saturday morning Truth Social post, Trump stressed — just as Travis had — that the ICE agents would be used both for security and for arresting undocumented immigrants.

“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” he posted, “including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota.”

Trump made clear that the plan was moving forward in another post two hours later, writing, “I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!”

“The White House hasn’t commented on whether Trump did, in fact, hear the TV segment and act accordingly,” CNN’s Brian Stelter noted Monday. “But Trump has a decade-long track record of watching Fox and posting his reactions on social media.”

In another sign that the policy process driving this policy is the Fox-Trump feedback loop, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's “first post Saturday came as a surprise to officials inside ICE and at DHS, who have spent the weekend trying to figure out how it could work, according to three people familiar with the matter.”

Indeed, in Sunday interviews, two top Trump officials one would expect to be involved in executing the policy offered starkly different explanations for what ICE agents would be doing at the airports.

White House “border czar” Tom Homan, who Trump posted Sunday morning is “in charge” of the ICE deployment, stressed that the agents would be assigned to tasks like guarding airport exits, which he said would free up the TSA officers doing that work to do screening to reduce lines.

“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that, but there are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs and help move those lines,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash.

But the same morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy suggested that the ICE agents would be screening passengers alongside TSA officers.

“TSA agents are law enforcement,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “They know how to pat people down, they know how to run the X-ray machines because they are, again, under Homeland Security with TSA. So if we can bring in other assets and tools to assist TSA to get rid of these lines, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.”

Notably, both Homan and Duffy are in their administration roles at least in part due to their Fox ties. Homan, who has gone through the revolving door from the first Trump administration to a stint as a Fox contributor and then back to the second Trump administration, has taken on a larger role overseeing ICE operations after a Fox & Friends co-host suggested increasing his responsibilities. Duffy, meanwhile, is a former Fox contributor and host (he is also married to a current Fox & Friends Weekend co-host, who worked in that role alongside the nation’s current defense secretary).

Homan and Duffy both seem to be trying to salvage some sort of workable plan from the president’s Fox-stoked half-idea. Notably, neither pitched what Travis initially floated and Trump actually asked for in his initial post — ICE agents specifically tasked with arresting undocumented immigrants en masse. And that’s what the president still says is going to happen.

A reporter asked Trump at a Monday morning gaggle, “Will we see ICE arresting illegal migrants at airports?”

“Yeah,” he responded. “That's why the Democrats are going crazy.”

The president added that ICE agents “love it because they're able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That's very fertile territory.”

That’s not what the Journal is hearing. “Officials at ICE and DHS expressed frustration with the plan, saying it will distract from Trump’s core goal of deporting as many people in the country illegally as possible,” the paper reported.

It’s no wonder they are concerned. Either the ICE agents have been moved away from positions supporting the president’s mass deportation effort and are not going to be arresting immigrants at the airports, or they are going to be carrying out their brutal arrest operations in front of airport crowds and end up further damaging the agency’s reputation. The president has put ICE in a no-win situation, all to support a policy of holding TSA funding for ransom to secure unrelated legislation.

That’s what happens when you govern via Fox segment.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

How Fox News Is Hiding Trump's $200 Billion Iran War Funding Request

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fox News Drives Trump Bus Over 'Disloyal, Trump-Hating Leaker' Joe Kent

The White House responded to Joe Kent’s Tuesday resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over President Donald Trump’s ill-conceived war of choice in Iran with a comically lazy smear campaign that Fox News’ MAGA propagandists vigorously channeled.

After Kent wrote in a letter to the president that he was stepping down because he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” and that it “posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Fox’s hosts and guests described him as the “liberal darling du jour” and a “Trump hater” who “was about to be fired” and “never should have been in that position of leadership.”

Notably, none of them seem to blame Trump for elevating Kent — a notorious conspiracy theorist who unsuccessfully ran for Congress with backing from the likes of Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones — to the nation’s top counterterrorism post in the first place. Nor did Kent himself blame Trump for starting the war with Iran: He argued the president had been “deceive[d]” by an “echo chamber” composed of Israelis (a revival of blood-soaked antisemitic narratives) as well as “influential members of the American media,” a possible reference to Fox’s own stars.

Fox did not have much to say in the first hours after Kent’s announcement. But after Trump denounced Kent from the Oval Office, saying he had “always thought” Kent was “very weak on security” and calling it “a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat,” the propaganda network geared up on the president’s behalf.

Aishah Hasnie, a Fox White House correspondent, was the vector for an anonymous “senior administration official” to attack Kent. Hasnie posted to social media that her source had said Kent was “a known leaker” who “was cut out of POTUS intelligence briefings months ago” and “has not been part of any Iran planning discussions or briefings at all.” (The source also claimed “the WH told DNI Tulsi Gabbard he should be fired for suspected leaks,” but other Hasnie sources disputed that.)

Likewise, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Kent’s claim that Iran posed “no imminent threat to our nation,” claiming: “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first. This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors.”

The administration’s argument is thus Trump appointed Kent as the nation’s top counterterrorism official even though the president believed he was “very weak on security,” and he subsequently didn’t see all the bulletproof evidence that Iran was an imminent threat to the United States because he had been cut out of classified meetings on the subject — but not fired — for being a “known leaker.”

Meanwhile, the administration has produced no evidence that Iran was preparing an attack to either the public or Congress. Indeed, according to Reuters, Pentagon briefers “acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff … that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first.”

Fox runs with the Kent attacks — without implicating Trump

None of this hangs together, but it was more than enough for Fox’s stable of propagandists, who ran with those talking points while ignoring their damning implications for the president.

“Respect to Joe Kent's service, he is an American veteran, but he never should have been in that position of leadership,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs said on Fox’s America Reports, albeit without referencing who nominated him to the post in the first place.

“He was leading a counterterrorism unit, and Iran is the greatest source of terrorism,” she continued. “And even last year, Joe Kent even alluded to the fact that the Iranians were trying to assassinate President Trump. So clearly he should never have been in that position of leadership, and it's a good thing that he has decided to step aside.”

Fox host Laura Ingraham called Kent “the liberal darling du jour,” citing praise of his “very huffy letter” on other networks.

Ingraham then brought on Dan Bongino, the Fox contributor who sandwiched a year as deputy director of the FBI between tenures as a right-wing podcaster. Bongino downplayed Kent’s role in the administration and claimed that the “open source” evidence shows Iran was an imminent threat and that Trump “has a bevy of material that if he could do the Men in Black thing and erase your mind tomorrow, if he told you right now, you would come to the imminent threat conclusion in a snap.”

Ingraham added that “a senior U.S. official told Fox on background that Joe Kent was cut out of presidential intel briefings months ago due to allegations that he was suspected of leaking and that he hasn't been part of any Iran discussions or briefings,” though she caveated that “he's beloved” and “served his country, you know, proudly.”

Fox host and Trump shill Sean Hannity, after praising the Iran campaign, commented, “Now, a handful of very loud, oh, let's say isolationist Democrats, people that have agendas, once pretending in some cases to be part of President Trump's base, they're not happy.”

“This includes the now former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent,” he added, before suggesting Kent is a “Trump hater” pushing “conspiracy theories” and a “Democratic talking point.”

Hannity went on to claim that Trump would not “be swayed by lobbyists, politicians, countries, world leaders, the media, or anyone else on planet Earth,” and disputed Kent’s claim that Iran had not posed an “imminent threat” on the grounds that Iran was purportedly “a week away from 11 nuclear bombs potentially being built.”

On Fox News @ Night, former Republican National Committee spokesperson Elizabeth Pipko cited past Kent comments she said made “the perfect argument” for Trump’s strikes on Iran. “I fear that what he did was actually not sincere, not genuine,” she added. “And I think when American troops overseas are risking it all for us, a move like this and a statement like that is actually dangerous.”

And the co-hosts of Fox & Friends provided a perfect on-message recap for their viewers on Wednesday morning:

Lawrence Jones first brought up Kent, prompting Brian Kilmeade by saying that “some people in the administration” are “known to be leakers.”

Kilmeade, one of the biggest Iran hawks on Fox, replied that it was “just incredible,” branding Kent as part of “the podcast isolationist wing” and that his letter “said hey, Democrats, we have something for you to talk about.”

After the group talked up the case for war and aired Trump’s comments criticizing Kent, Jones commented, “That's why the administration cut him out of briefings months ago.”

“He didn’t have the intel, and obviously they didn't trust him to be in the inner circle on the decision making,” Jones added.

Kilmeade stressed that by issuing his letter, Kent had been disloyal to Trump. “You can do whatever your conscience wants you to do,” he commented. “But by doing it in this way, he's actually hurting the guy that gave him the best job of his life after he lost two straight congressional races.”

“Good point, good point,” Ainsley Earhardt commented. “And they say he was about to be fired, people had suggested that.”

None of them questioned why Trump nominated such an ignorant, disloyal, deceitful person to such an important post in the first place.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Trump Administration Demands American Press Propagandize Its Iran War

We are two weeks into President Donald Trump’s ill-conceived war of choice against Iran, and the president is already suggesting his administration should shut down news outlets for producing critical reports — or even consider treason charges based on spurious claims of collusion with America’s enemies.

Though U.S. and Israeli forces have successfully bombed a wide array of Iranian targets and assassinated its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has followed through with its strategic doctrine by closing the Strait of Hormuz, shutting down a major channel for the global energy and fertilizer trades.

As a result, Trump is begging/demanding foreign navies bail him out by sending ships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, deploying additional troops and ships to the region for unknown reasons, lifting sanctions on Russia in hopes of lowering the price of oil, denying reports that a Pentagon investigation preliminarily found the U.S. military accidentally incinerated scores of Iranian schoolchildren with an errant missile — and railing against the American press for refusing to report that the war is going well.

Meanwhile, Trump’s hand-picked Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, is signaling to broadcast stations that they will face regulatory retribution if they don’t “correct course."

It’s all part of the authoritarian playbook Trump wields against news outlets that produce anything less than Fox News-style propaganda. The protections of the First Amendment ensure that those outlets could likely prevail in court — but fighting is expensive, and over the course of Trump’s second term so far, the corporate moguls who control them have proven unnervingly unwilling to do so.

Trump rails against press, demands government retribution

Last week, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly bemoaned that the network’s coverage is offering lockstep support for Trump’s Iranian “excursion.”

“Now it's, you cheerlead the war, support the military industrial complex, or … you're a loser,” she said on her podcast. “It's infuriating because we're talking about life and death. We're talking about American life or death. And this is a dereliction of duty.”

As Kelly suggests, when Trump turns his television to Fox, he is getting unhinged validation of his efforts. But the president is not satisfied with that. He wants every American news outlet producing the same Fox-style war propaganda.

Trump used what he baselessly described as “an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media” to denounce the press in a Saturday morning Truth Social post.“The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (in particular), and other Lowlife 'Papers’ and Media actually want us to lose the War,” he wrote. “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.”

In another post on Sunday evening, the president baselessly claimed that Iran had been “working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” to promote a fake, AI-generated video depicting a U.S. ship burning in the Persian Gulf.

“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!” Trump posted. “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.”

(In reality, responsible news outlets have been debunking that video, not distributing it, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter.)

“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,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One later that night, “I think they could be in serious jeopardy."

Trump’s weekend anti-press binge followed coverage complaints from Pete Hegseth, the former Fox & Friends weekend host who now heads the Pentagon, who used a press conference on Friday morning to gripe extensively about the banners he has seen on TV news coverage:

Yet some in this crew, in the press, just can't stop. Allow me to make a few suggestions. People look up at the TV and they see banners, they see headlines. I used to be in that business. And I know that everything is written intentionally.

For example, a banner or a headline: “Mideast war intensifies,” splashing on the screen the last couple of days, alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets that Iran has hit, because that's what they do. What should the banner read instead?

How about, ‘Iran increasingly desperate,’ because they are. They know it and so do you, if it can be admitted.

Hegseth posited that an “actual patriotic press” would produce such coverage. He also decried a CNN report detailing how the Trump administration “failed to fully account for the potential consequences” of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” he commented, referencing a Trump ally’s effort to take over CNN’s parent company with the help of the administration.

With Carr, a cause for alarm

It is disturbing enough that the president of the United States is a deranged authoritarian who responds to a faltering war by ranting about its coverage. But what makes it worse is that his administration is filled with apparatchicks eager to carry out his demands for retribution.

Carr, who was reportedly with the president at his Mar-A-Lago club over the weekend, responded to Trump’s initial post complaining about journalists who “actually want us to lose the War” by threatening the licenses of broadcast stations that produce critical coverage.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."

Carr was nonspecific about how broadcasters could avoid reprisal (and Trump had lashed out at newspapers, not broadcast networks, in his post), but he’s a hack who is typically willing to carry Trump’s water no matter how absurd the underlying complaint may be.

Trump signaled his approval for Carr’s threats in his Sunday evening “TREASON” post, writing, “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."

Stelter, in an extensive report drawing on comments from First Amendment lawyers, notes that Carr “has very little power to follow through” and that television stations, if they are willing to fight such attempted reprisals in court, “are not at serious risk of being banned."

“Any government action against a licensee would cause a protracted legal battle, even more so given the current media-bashing climate, because a station would likely cite Trump’s retributive streak and mount a First Amendment case,” Stelter wrote.

There is a strong argument that stations would be victorious if they fought Carr’s attempts to strip their licenses. But there were also strong arguments that ABC News and CBS News would be victorious if they fought the lawsuits Trump filed over their coverage in 2024. The problem was that rather than going to court on behalf of a free press, Disney and Paramount, their parent companies, decided it was in the interest of their broader business holdings to fold.

The advantage Trump and Carr have in their fight to cudgel the press into line is that it can be very expensive to fight the federal government on behalf of the First Amendment — and what the last year shows is that many people who own or control news outlets don’t care enough about such principles to do it. And Disney and Paramount had much deeper pockets to pay lawyers than an individual local broadcast news station does. Even Sinclair Broadcast Network, which owns or operates nearly 200 stations across the country, has a market cap of around $1 billion, compared to roughly $175 billion for Disney.

If Carr threatens the licenses of Sinclair stations, are its pro-Trump owners really going to go to the mat for the free press rather than using his complaints as an opportunity to push coverage even further to the right?

It’s also worth taking seriously Trump’s threats of treason charges against news outlets. The Justice Department is now staffed by loyalists like former Fox host Jeanine Pirro who are willing to follow through on his demands for political prosecutions. Those efforts keep failing — but they raise the cost of dissent and thus chill free speech.

And that’s what the president wants, as Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt made clear when she channeled him on Monday morning.

“The president has said enough with this coverage from other networks that are not telling you the truth, that are so negative about what’s going on,” she said. “This is a pro-America fight, and every network needs to get on board with that."

And if they aren’t, there will be consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Dire Strait: Fox War Caucus Ignored Hormuz Peril During Month Before War

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

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

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

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

The report continued:

President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.
While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.
...
The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.
“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoops.

Fox's Ultra-Hawkish Hosts Are Thrilled With Iran War -- And Eager To Escalate

Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump launched an ill-conceived, ill-planned war in Iran, the Fox News Cabinet members who urged him to launch military strikes there are either pushing him to escalate or stressing what a great job he’s done.

Zeteo’s Justin Baragona and Asawin Suebsang confirmed on Thursday that televised input from the Fox propagandists Trump trusts played a role in the president’s decision to launch a war of choice. Trump regularly shapes policy based on what he sees on the network, and hosts Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade were loudly urging the president to attack Iran in the days before he did so.

Though U.S. and Israeli forces have successfully bombed a wide array of Iranian targets and assassinated its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the U.S. military also appears to have killed scores of Iranian children with a Tomahawk missile strike on a school, Iran has now taken the incredibly obvious step of closing the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which about 20 percent of global crude oil and liquified natural gas flows — and it remains unclear what a strategic victory could look like.

But if Trump is watching his favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, he’s hearing Kilmeade call for an expanded mission that would require putting troops on the ground in Iran.

“We killed their commander, and we’re killing a lot more, and the Israelis’ intelligence on the ground is unbelievable,” he said on Thursday. “Hopefully, that leads to grabbing that uranium out of some of those destroyed sites, maybe that’ll be something that will be announced shortly.”

Kilmeade’s casual invocation of “grabbing that uranium” elides the difficulties involved in attempting to secure and transfer potentially over a thousand pounds of material that has likely been dispersed across a hostile foreign country and possibly outside of it.

Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, detailed the potential dilemmas of such an operation in a Wednesday appearance on MS NOW.

Kilmeade has also suggested U.S. forces seize Iranian territory — using language that seems carefully chosen to appeal to the president.

“I just wonder how soon until we decide to grab that Kharg Island, where 90% of all the Iranian oil is shipped,” Kilmeade offered on Wednesday.

“If we have that, you want the ultimate leverage, we have it,” he added, “I just think that that's something the president has talked about since the ‘80s, everyone knows it, and that would really get their attention.”

Kilmeade went on to say that the administration could be hesitating because if the U.S. seizes Kharg Island, there would be “a temporary uptick” in the cost of oil during the “transition.”

“But Iran can't adjust economically without it,” he added. “So if you want to create ultimate leverage on a regime that is so scared, they are afraid to put their supreme leader out in public, I think that's one way to do it.”

He concluded, appearing to address Trump directly: “If you are in control of it, you literally are doing what you did with [Venezuelan President] Delcy Rodriguez. We took all their ships and said nothing is coming in or out. We will control your oil. We flipped the government to take Maduro out, and now we’re refining their oil.”

Kharg Island “is arguably the country’s most sensitive economic target,” Dan Sabbagh, defense and security editor for The Guardian, wrote on Wednesday, but “an effort to seize the island, given its size, would be likely to require a sizeable and sustained operation, greater than a typical special forces incursion.”

He further reported that “experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline.” That could cause a “tailspin” for global markets, even if oil shipments subsequently resumed.

Levin and Hannity can’t stop praising the “extraordinary leader” who launched the war

While Kilmeade is focused on coming up with new ways for Trump to risk the lives of American service members and undermine global financial and political stability, Hannity and Levin have been telling their viewers — which could include the president on any given night — that the war is going swimmingly and that anyone who says otherwise is lying.

“After just one week, Iran's Air Force, Army, Navy is in tatters,” Hannity said Monday. “Its radical leaders, they're all dead. A murderous regime is now a shadow of its former self.”

He went on to explain that in Iran, “a new supreme leader, ayatollah, has been announced and his days as of this hour are likely numbered” and the country “is apparently struggling to put up a fight.”

On Tuesday, Hannity praised Trump for demanding Iran remove any mines it had placed in the Strait of Hormuz, commenting: “Tonight, the message from the Trump administration and President Trump is crystal clear. Any Iranian ship that poses a threat to the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz will be obliterated without warning and sent straight to hell and the bottom of the sea in a million pieces.”

He added, “A little advice to anyone still alive in Iran's Navy, dock your vessel, head to dry land, and maybe you want to go home and join your families.”

And on Wednesday, Hannity began his nightly monologue with “the very latest figures out of Operation Epic Fury.”

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Iranian ballistic missile attacks, they’re down by over 90%. More than 5,000 targets, now, have been eliminated.
Air dominance has been secured. More than Iranian vessels have been obliterated, including all four Soleimani-class warships. The old ayatollah, supreme leader, and all of his top deputies and the next layer of leadership are all dead.
The new ayatollah is too afraid to appear anywhere in public. In fact, we don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.
Now, all of this in less than 11 days. America and Israel are dominating the evil regime in Iran.

On Saturday, Levin lavished Trump with praise for attacking Iran, calling him “an extraordinary leader and president who spent most of his life as a captain of industry, several industries, in fact, who gave up an enormously successful career to serve his country, a country he so dearly loves.”

He went on to attack those who suggest U.S. aims in Iran are unclear.

“Now, lot of people are saying, people who know better, what's the mission? Why are we acting now and so forth and so on?” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it's just appalling to hear Democrats and commentators and others make these statements when they know damn well what the mission is. We've faced this for 50 years.”

Levin subsequently asked Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “It's so important that we have this commander-in-chief when we have this commander-in-chief because literally none of this would be happening, would it?”

“Mark, I don't believe that presidents know when history is going to come knocking,” Goldberg replied. “It happens at times you can't expect. But what makes a great president is being willing to answer the call, not to shy away, not to cower, not to be deterred, as many past presidents have, and repeatedly throughout his two presidencies, when history knocks, President Trump answers the call, and that is what he just did.”

Goldberg went on to say of the war: “We are six days in, seven days in and this is moving at a pace no one could ever have imagined. We are decimating their missiles, their drones, their Navy, their ability to remake a nuclear weapons program, and soon, with the help of our allies in Israel, decapitating their ability to wage war against the Iranian people as well.”

“Understand what is at stake here for our national security. Donald Trump is delivering for the United States of America,” he concluded.

“Beautifully put, and conversely, the Democrats are trying to obstruct him every step of the way,” Levin replied.

The president was watching Levin and Goldberg wax poetic about how great he is.

“Rich Goldberg was GREAT on Mark Levin tonight,” Trump posted that night. “Two guys who really get it! Thank you both.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Shouldn't Brendan Carr's FCC Launch An Immediate Probe Of Fox News?

Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr faces an important test of his stated standards for news organizations this week: If he's not just looking to punish media outlets for being insufficiently deferential to President Donald Trump, he must launch a news distortion investigation of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Broadcasting Co.

Trump attended a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base on Saturday honoring the first six U.S. service members killed in the Iran war. The president drew criticism for wearing a baseball cap that his campaign store sells for $55 while saluting coffins bearing the remains of the fallen.

Fox News’ right-wing propagandists would lose their minds if a Democratic president did such a thing. But on Sunday morning, the network instead seemed to hide the president’s disrespect toward the dead. While purporting to cover the previous day’s event, Fox & Friends Weekend aired months-old footage from December of Trump attending a dignified transfer ceremony for two U.S. National Guard members and a civilian interpreter killed in Syria. The president was not wearing a ballcap in that footage, but was wearing an overcoat to shield him from the December cold.

Critics quickly exposed the Fox & Friends misrepresentation, and host Griff Jenkins apologized later in the program, claiming that the show “inadvertently aired video from an older dignified transfer instead of the ceremony that took place yesterday.” The network similarly stressed in a statement that it had been a mistake, saying, “FOX News Media programs inadvertently aired file footage from a previous dignified transfer while discussing yesterday’s ceremony at Dover Air Force Base. The archival footage was mistakenly used during the video sourcing process. We regret the error and apologize for the incorrect footage.”

But Fox News didn’t just air this incorrect footage once — as CNN noted on Sunday, “A quick scan showed both last night's ‘The Big Weekend Show’ and this morning's ‘Fox News Sunday’ also used the wrong footage, while last night's ‘My View with Lara Trump’ used the correct video.”

Fox News Sunday aired the footage of Trump at the December dignified transfer twice, first while anchor Shannon Bream said, “As fallen service members from Operation Epic Fury make their final return home, the Pentagon praises the progress being made on the battlefield,” and again as Bream stated: “On Saturday, the remains of the six U.S. service members killed in Operation Epic Fury came home. The president, first lady, and Vice President Vance joined family members for the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force in Delaware.” During the second occurrence, on-screen text read, “DOVER, DE. Saturday.”

Fox News programming airs on cable, which means its content is largely unregulated — but Fox News Sunday also airs on hundreds of local broadcast stations across the country, which “are subject to certain speech restraints” overseen by the FCC. That body, under Carr’s leadership, has been much more aggressive in cracking down on broadcast networks over purported “news distortion” on the public airwaves — at least when those distortions are against the interests of the president.

Carr targeted CBS for purported “news distortion,” using his federal regulatory power to extract concessions from the network as its parent company Paramount sought to merge with Trump ally David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Shortly after Trump took office and made him the FCC chair last year, Carr reopened a previously dismissed probe of CBS News over its editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris that aired in October 2024. Trump had sued CBS for $10 billion over the interview, and repeatedly declared that the network should “lose its license.”

Carr demanded an unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview and tied the investigation to the merger, saying, “I’m pretty confident that that news distortion complaint over the ’60 Minutes’ transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction.” The probe went away and the merger went through after Paramount agreed to settle Trump’s lawsuit and appoint a right-wing ombudsman.

CBS hasn’t been the only target of Carr’s ire. He also revived FCC probes into right-wing complaints that NBC favored Harris during the 2024 election because she appeared on Saturday Night Live, and that ABC’s moderator had unfairly fact-checked Trump during their presidential debate.

And when ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel inaccurately suggested in September that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killer was part of “the MAGA gang,” the chair rushed to a MAGA influencer’s show to accuse the comedian of “an intentional effort to mislead the American people” — and to threaten retribution against both ABC parent company Disney and the broadcast stations that aired Kimmel’s show, including potential “license revocation from the FCC.”

Broadcast licenses granted by the FCC give networks “a unique obligation to operate in the public interest,” Carr explained to Trumpist mouthpiece Sean Hannity during a Fox interview amid the Kimmel uproar.

Fox Broadcasting stations, one could argue, failed that “unique obligation to operate in the public interest” when they engaged in “news distortion” by airing inaccurate footage that prevented viewers from seeing the president disrespect deceased service members.

So how about it, Mr. Chairman? Why not launch a probe and demand interviews and documents to find out whether Fox’s editing issue was “inadvertent,” as they claim — or, as certainly seems possible given the network’s record, “an intentional effort to mislead the American people”?

Reprinted with permisson from Media Matters

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

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

'It's really criminal what they do'

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

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

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

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