Support Our Journalism

Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Politics National News World Economy Lifestyle Store

Matt Gertz

When Fox News Featured The Legal Clowning Of 'Attorney' Katie Zacharia

Last year, a Fox News interviewer touted a MAGA commentator’s legal acumen, claiming that based on her commentary, “Now you know for sure, Katie Zacharia is a licensed attorney.” She literally isn’t — Popular Information’s Judd Legum revealed Tuesday that Zacharia, a graduate of the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and the newly minted White House press secretary, is not licensed to practice law in the United States, and the Wall Street Journal reported that she took but did not pass the California bar exam.

Zacharia joined Fox & Friends First on November 25, 2025, to discuss the news that a federal judge had tossed the Justice Department’s politically motivated charges against Trump irritants James Comey and Letitia James on the grounds that the prosecutor who brought them, then-U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, had been improperly appointed.

Co-host Todd Piro introduced Zacharia as a “Republican political strategist and lawyer” before asking her, “How can the DOJ fix this?”

Zacharia claimed that the “Clinton judge” had been trying to “protect Comey and James,” later adding that “it is very difficult to watch the weaponized system continue to protect these people.”

Over the course of the interview, she repeatedly cited the section of the U.S. Code she claimed supported her position that Halligan had been properly appointed, and she stated that she believed then-Attorney General Pam Bondi should “appeal both, and then maybe bifurcate them or separate them and go after Letitia James separately.”

Zacharia’s use of citations and vocabulary made an impression on Piro, who closed the interview by praising his guest.

“In case you had any question whether Katie Zacharia was a lawyer when she started citing code sections, she threw in a ‘bifurcate’ in there,” he said. “Now you know for sure, Katie Zacharia is a licensed attorney.”

Zacharia did not respond to Piro’s description, but told The New York Times in an interview this week that she had “consulted with Pepperdine’s president as to how she should identify herself” in TV interviews and “said she was warned not to use the words ‘attorney’ or ‘esquire,’ but that ‘lawyer’ was OK.” On-screen text during the Fox & Friends First interview also identified her as an “attorney.”

As for the quality of Zacharia’s legal analysis, Halligan left the DOJ without being restored to her previous post, and while the Trump administration has continued its pursuit of Comey and James, those indictments have not been revived.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Focused On Phony Talarico Conspiracy, Fox Brushes Off New Paxton Scandal

Fox News barely covered Monday's report that Texas attorney general and GOP nominee for U.S. Senate Ken Paxton had partied overseas with two fugitives from U.S. justice — one of whom was a major donor to his campaign — as well as his mistress. Its hosts’ nonchalant reaction to Paxton’s new scandal comes amid their multi-day fixation on his Democratic opponent James Talarico’s temporary absence from the campaign trail due to illness.

The Wall Street Journal, which like Fox is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, reported late Monday:

As fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to welcome 2025, Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon watched from a luxury high-rise balcony full of people, according to a video of the gathering viewed by The Wall Street Journal, details of which were contained in court filings and confirmed by people familiar with the matter.
Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S., Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, according to the court records and people familiar with the matter. Ahmed, a healthcare executive, had donated $190,000 to Paxton, campaign-finance records show, including $25,000 days after he was indicted.

The Journal’s story, which featured video of Paxton at the event, was widely covered across Texas print and national television news — but not on Fox, which provided a grand total of 1 minute and 33 seconds of airtime to the bombshell as of noon ET on Wednesday. The coverage was limited to network correspondents who referenced the Paxton story during packaged reports on Tuesday's editions of The Story and Special Report and Wednesday's edition of Fox & Friends.

Each Fox segment describes Paxton as having attended a party in Dubai with “two men who had been indicted on federal healthcare fraud charges,” highlights the Paxton campaign’s response that the candidate had been subjected to a “politically motivated attack,” and contrasts the Journal report with Talarico’s absence from the campaign trail the previous week. None of the segments explicitly mention that the men were fugitives, that one of them was a major donor to Paxton’s campaign, that Paxton’s mistress was also present, or that the “attack” originated from another Murdoch-controlled outlet.

Fox stars like Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, along with the co-hosts of Fox & Friends, all ignored the story on their programs.

But those Fox hosts do find stories about the Texas Senate race newsworthy — when they emanate from rumormongering by Republicans and MAGA influencers rather than well-sourced accounts from their network's corporate cousins at the Journal.

The underlying facts are incredibly banal. On September 30, Talarico revealed that he had been diagnosed with the flu during a virtual appearance at an event. After eight days at home, he returned to public events on Friday, and on Sunday gave an interview in which he said, “I had the flu.”

But in the days in between and following those appearances, Paxton attempted to turn Talarico’s absence from the trail into a campaign issue, President Donald Trump tossed off some baseless insinuations, and right-wing media went berzerk. “By Sunday, the conservative internet was consumed by an unsubstantiated claim from a right-wing influencer that Mr. Talarico had flown to a mental health facility in Ohio, more than 1,000 miles away from Austin, for treatment of an undisclosed illness,” The New York Times reported.

The Talarico conspiracy theory never made any sense and was thoroughly dismantled by the Times and The Bulwark. But Fox, as a MAGA propaganda front whose hosts are deeply invested in the Texas Senate race, plugged into the GOP effort to turn Talarico staying home with the flu into a major scandal.

While the network’s stars largely avoided citing the most fetid insinuations of the online right, they nonetheless spent several days talking up the Paxton-Trump attack lines. Jesse Watters Primetime and Hannity each covered the story on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday; The Ingraham Angle on Friday and Monday; and Fox & Friends on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Talarico’s return to the campaign trail and the collapse of the right’s narrative did little to slow the Fox frenzy — instead, they simply scrounged for new angles. Watters, for instance, said Monday that Talarico’s absence showed he “doesn’t run his own campaign because his staff told him to stay in bed for two weeks” and that he had spent his time “in bed … thinking about all those trans kids.”

By Tuesday, Fox News Digital was acknowledging that the “viral rumor” that Talarico had checked into a mental hospital “has now been debunked” — but cited Republican strategists and a right-wing media figure to frame Talarico’s campaign as the story’s villain for not stopping the frenzy.

Even as late as Wednesday morning — five days after Talarico’s return to the campaign trail — Fox’s America’s Newsroom ran a segment highlighting comments Trump made on the stump about the Democrat’s absence the previous week. The program, putatively part of the network’s “hard news” hours, has not reported on the Journal’s Paxton story.

It turns out that the MAGA media is marbled-through with reprobates who have no interest whatsoever in providing their audiences with truthful information about Democrats — or in reviewing the corruption scandals of Republicans.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

How Top Fox News Propagandists Are Covering 2026 Senate Races

Fox News evening hosts Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity have overwhelmingly focused their discussions of key U.S. Senate races on attacking Democratic and independent candidates rather than building up the Republican nominees.

In the five weeks following Labor Day, the names of the Democratic or independent candidates in 10 key Senate races were mentioned 473 times on The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, and Hannity, compared to only 154 mentions for the GOP nominees — a 3.1-to-1 ratio.

That’s a shift from 2022, when Democratic nominees were mentioned just 1.7 times for every mention of the GOP nominees on the programs of Ingraham, Hannity, and Watters’ predecessor Tucker Carlson, as Media Matters found in reviewing coverage of seven races over the four weeks after Labor Day that year.

This year, Media Matters reviewed episodes of the three Fox programs that aired from September 8 through October 12 for mentions of the names of nominees for Senate in the 10 states identified by The New York Times as “races to watch” as of mid-September: Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas.

GOP Senate nominees are also appearing on the Fox programs much less often than they did at this point in the previous midterm campaign, according to Media Matters’ review. The 10 candidates made a total of 7 appearances over the past five weeks (5 by Michigan’s Mike Rogers and 2 by Texas’ Ken Paxton). In 2022, the Republican nominees in the seven races we reviewed made 19 appearances on the programs, averaging nearly 5 such interviews per week.

Fox functions as the communications arm of the GOP, and its biggest stars typically use their programs to achieve Republican electoral victories. This year, much of their coverage has revolved around hagiographic praise of President Donald Trump’s administration and increasingly dire warnings of what will happen to their viewers if Democrats triumph. But the thrust of the MAGA stars’ coverage on individual races appears to align with analysts who suggest the GOP faces a talent deficit after nominating a slate of low-quality candidates in crucial battlegrounds.

Fox's MAGA Propagandists Focused On Michigan, Texas

Michigan’s race was the most-discussed on the three Fox programs, with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed receiving 253 mentions compared to 57 for Rogers. Texas came in second, with Democrat James Talarico amassing 140 mentions and Paxton receiving 44. Together, those two states accounted for 79% of all Senate candidate mentions for the races we studied. (If anything, these numbers underrepresent the shift, as the methodology does not capture when Fox personalities identify El-Sayed only by his first name or call the Texas Democrat “Talafreako.”)

No other state’s nominees combined received more than 38 total mentions (Alaska). No other individual Republican nominee received more than 27 (Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, compared to 11 for Democrat and former Rep. Mary Peltola). No other individual Democrat had more than 24 (former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, versus just 1 for incumbent Sen. Jon Husted). Maine Sen. Susan Collins was mentioned 13 times, compared to 21 for Democratic challenger Troy Jackson.

The coverage in some states suggests Fox’s stars are resigned to defeat. In Georgia, a state Trump carried in two of his three presidential races, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has been mentioned 14 times, but the name of his Republican challenger, Rep. Mike Collins, seems to not have been mentioned a single time. In North Carolina, which Trump won all three times, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley have been mentioned 6 times combined.

The Fox fixation on Michigan and Texas matched the right-wing media’s overall focus on viewing the midterm elections through the lens of the culture war, with frequent demagogic attacks on Talarico over gender issues and El-Sayed related to his Muslim faith.

On Monday, for example, Watters responded to the collapse of the right-wing conspiracy theory that Talarico had been off the campaign trail because he had checked into a mental health facility (he and his aides said he had a bad flu) by saying that “Freako” subsequently “slipped on his cowgirl boots” for a Kacey Musgraves show, adding that the candidate “spent the last couple weeks in bed and at concerts thinking about all those trans kids.”

Watters later added that El-Sayed is “infatuated with Sharia law” and said that if he later runs for high office could become “President Abdul Mohamed.” (While Mohamed is El-Sayed’s middle name, Trump has repeatedly used it as the candidate’s first name on the campaign trail, stating that he can call the Democrat “whatever the hell I want.”)

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for all original weekday episodes of Fox News Channel's The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, and Hannity for any of the terms “Brown,” “Collins,” “Cooper,” “El-Sayed,” “Hinson,” “Husted,” “Jackson,” “Osborn,” “Ossoff,” “Pappas,” “Paxton,” “Peltola,” “Ricketts,” “Rogers,” “Sullivan,” “Sununu,” “Talarico,” “Turek,” or “Whatley” from September 8, 2026, through October 12, 2026.

We then reviewed each mention of any of the above terms for whether they clearly referenced any of the following U.S. Senate candidates: Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Mike Collins (R-GA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Roy Cooper (D-NC), Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Jon Husted (R-OH), Troy Jackson (D-ME), Dan Osborn (I-NE), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Ken Paxton (R-TX), Mary Peltola (D-AK), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Mike Rogers (R-MI), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John E. Sununu (R-NH), James Talarico (D-TX), Josh Turek (D-IA), and Michael Whatley (R-NC).

We included instances spoken by anchors, hosts, correspondents, contributors, personalities, or guests who appeared on any of the searched programs. We did not include instances in played clips, read quotes, or live events. We considered each instance of each term as a single mention.

Vice President JD Vance and Sean Hannity seated at the desk on the Fox News Hannity set

Fox News At 30: Even The Pretense Of Impartiality Is All But Gone

Fox News’ role as a Republican propaganda machine is clear to anyone who has bothered to peruse its programming — President Donald Trump knows it, Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch knows it, disgraced network co-founder Roger Ailes knew it, and longtime viewers like me certainly know it. The last holdouts arguing otherwise at this late date are some combination of ignorant, naive, on the Fox payroll, lying to the public, or lying to themselves.

To wit, Fox chief political analyst Brit Hume, touting the 30th anniversary of the network’s launch on Wednesday’s Fox & Friends, offered up a hoary chestnut in praising his employer.

“We program it in such a way that for the times of the day when people are looking for hard news, they can get it,” Hume argued. “And if they’re sitting back in the evening after they watch the news, consume whatever news they like, and we do these opinion shows at night. There’s news in them for sure, but it is a mix and I think it works well and the balance is real.”

Meanwhile, viewers who tuned in to one of those daytime “hard news” hours the day before heard the anchor open her program by effectively urging viewers to vote for Republicans: “Priority No. 1, 28 days out from midterm Election Day, Republicans must maintain their majorities in the House and Senate. I’m Harris Faulkner, you are in The Faulkner Focus.”

Fox executives have attempted to draw Hume’s distinction between “hard news” and “opinion” for decades, pointing to the hours of network programming that resemble typical news shows in order to maintain their ad sales to blue-chip companies while drawing a huge audience thanks to its right-wing personalities pumping out bigotry and propaganda. But that fig leaf has been ripped to shreds since the dawn of the age of Trump, as the network effectively merged with the president’s political operation and administration.

Indeed, the increasingly propagandistic tenor of Fox over the last decade sent a number of network veterans scrambling for the exits — and then denouncing the place they had worked, in many cases for years. Their rhetoric often echoed that of Fox critics like me — Fox was deemed “a destructive propaganda machine” (former contributor Ralph Peters) rife “with partisan misinformation” (former chief political correspondent Carl Cameron), the “arm of a political party” (former political editor Chris Stirewalt), and a network whose stars “question the truth” (former anchor Chris Wallace).

But not everyone at Fox found the network’s shifts excessively distasteful. Some used Trump’s rise to become more influential than ever before.

Hume was notably speaking alongside fellow network veteran Sean Hannity, who is not merely a Fox “opinion” host but a Trump propagandist who moonlights as a presidential confidant, adviser, and political operative. Over the years, Hannity has appeared in a Trump campaign video, drafted a campaign ad, spoken at a presidential rally, employed his lawyer, and served as a back channel to him, among other ethical improprieties no other network would tolerate. Their colleagues include Trump’s daughter-in law (who hosts a weekly program that promotes his administration); two of his former White House press secretaries; and his former campaign manager, secretary of state, and top economic adviser.

That revolving door between Trump’s orbit and his propaganda outlet swings both ways — more than two dozen former Foxers have joined Trump’s administration. The former co-host of Fox’s weekend morning show now runs the Pentagon, a former co-host of its afternoon panel show oversees federal prosecutions in Washington, D.C., and a former Fox Business host (who is married to another Fox & Friends weekend co-host) leads the Department of Transportation.

Over the past decade, any purported guardrails between the “news” and “opinion” sides have been stripped away, and the network’s number of hours that even look like “hard news” shows have dwindled. At best, such programming now occupies 8 of the 19 hours from 5 a.m. to midnight — and calling even those timeslots legitimately “hard news” is a big stretch.

Special Report, the flagship “hard news” show on which Hume often appears, is anchored by a guy who golfs with Trump and has spent his second term burying scandals about the president’s family after previously devoting his program to ripping apart the Bidens over much less egregious behavior. Amid Trump’s 2020 election subversion plot, anchor Bret Baier privately urged network brass to keep Fox from calling states for Biden, while his on-air coverage led a longtime Fox executive to comment: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”

America’s Newsroom, which provides the first “hard news” hours of the weekday lineup, is co-anchored by a former White House press secretary to President George W. Bush who is also one of the conservative co-hosts of the afternoon “opinion” panel show The Five. Other supposed “hard news” daytime anchors regularly parrot the right-wing narratives of the network’s “opinion” hosts.

Fox’s 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. hours — previously anchored by Neil Cavuto and Shep Smith, who would both often go viral for not following the Trump line — are now hosted by Republican party appendages Will Cain and Laura Ingraham.

And Fox News Digital, the network’s online reporting arm, is helmed by Hannity’s former producer, who hired several Republican political operatives and former Trump administration officials following a purge of more traditional journalists after the 2020 presidential election.

“Brit always understood opinion, which I’ve got to give him credit for — there were some news people that didn’t love the opinion part,” Hannity quipped on Wednesday’s Fox & Friends.

Those who remain at Fox to celebrate its 30th anniversary, like Hannity and Hume, either revel in or are willing to accommodate its core aims of GOP dominance and Trumpian propaganda.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters for America

Flashback: At Fox, Ambassador Guilfoyle Called For 'Pay To Play' Probe Of Clinton

U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in her prior role as a Fox News host, endorsed the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton for her purported role in “racketeering” and “corruption” because Clinton was supposedly “willing to sell access” through the Clinton Foundation in a “pay-for-play” scheme. Guilfoyle is now under fire for reportedly soliciting a $100,000 payoff from a donor to President Donald Trump who was seeking access to his administration in exchange for money.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that in the days before her congressional hearing to join the administration, Guilfoyle repeatedly texted Trump donor Eric Deters asking him to pay down her $100,000 American Express balance “in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail” in messages the paper had reviewed. At the time, the Journal reported, Deters “was seeking her help in getting the attention of the new Trump administration on some personal tax and legal issues—and had promised payments of as much as $1 million if she was successful.” The Journal further reported that “Deters didn’t ultimately make the payment” and that Guilfoyle’s lawyer “said the ambassador disputed the authenticity of the messages but declined to provide specifics.”

The Journal previously reported that Guilfoyle had “puzzled government officials across the region with her persistent promotion” of a Greek construction firm called Aktor Group as well as “her extensive efforts to involve” the firm’s top lobbyist, Christos Marafatsos, whom the paper described as “a neophyte in both diplomacy and energy” who “is frequently seen at Guilfoyle’s side, acting as her unofficial gatekeeper and joining her for meetings at her ambassadorial residence and with government officials in countries around the region.” That reporting prompted congressional Democrats to seek a probe into Guilfoyle’s conduct.

Guilfoyle is one of more than two dozen Trump administration appointees who previously worked at Fox. She spent a dozen years at the network, joining as a legal analyst in 2006 and later becoming a founding co-host of its panel show The Five. When Trump announced Guilfoyle's nomination in December 2024, he touted her role as his “close friend and ally” and her past work in media (privately, the Journal reported, he told people he had nominated her because “had to get her out of here” after Guilfoyle’s breakup with his son Donald Jr., her former fiance).

An undistinguished pro-Trump pundit during the 2016 campaign, Guilfoyle participated in the right-wing media’s deceptive effort to turn the Clinton Foundation’s work into a political liability. Guilfoyle argued on Fox that as secretary of state, Clinton had been “willing to sell access” through the Foundation and engaged in “influence peddling.”

In one notable example, Guilfoyle echoed and endorsed Trump crony Rudy Giuliani's proposal for a criminal investigation into whether Clinton’s actions with regard to the Clinton Foundation constitute “racketeering” and “corruption.”

“Well he's saying that not only as — yeah, a former mayor but as a former prosecutor who's investigated and prosecuted racketeering and RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] violations — and he's saying what we saw here, this level of corruption is so overt that it rises to the same level and would warrant a very thorough and fair investigation and potentially indictment,” she said on the August 22, 2016, edition of The Five.

“So he thinks that there is definitely a case to be made for it, but you don't see them climbing over themselves to try and even properly investigate it,” she added. “And if it were anybody else but the Clintons, BTC, they would be frying already.”

Enraged By Reports Of Shrinking Rally Attendance, Trump Wants Reporters Arrested

President Donald Trump keeps demanding that journalists face arrest and prosecution for reporting that displeases him, and his purported standards for criminal sanctions are developing in bizarre ways over the course of his second term.

His war on the free press hit a new low on Monday when the president declared that unnamed persons at The New York Times “should be arrested” for reporting there were “empty seats” at his rally in Ohio, when instead, he claimed, the arena was “full to the brim.”

It feels crazy to need to write this, but journalists should not be arrested because the president doesn’t like the way they report on the sizes of his crowds. Trump’s declaration that they should demonstrates yet again his abhorrence of the First Amendment and the basic principles of free speech on which this country was founded.

And Trump’s statement mixes absurdity with its menace — not least because the Times report he cited actually described the president’s appearance in Alabama on Friday, not the event in Ohio on Saturday.

The slipshod authoritarianism of Trump’s Times attack

The New York Times published an article about Trump’s October 2 campaign rally in Mobile under the headline “In Alabama, Trump Relives His Glory Days (This Time With Some Empty Seats).” The report by Times White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh termed Mobile “the birthplace of the MAGA rally,” and contrasted the turnout Trump received at an August 2015 event early in his first presidential run to the lackluster crowd that came to see him that night.

“These days, Mr. Trump is in political trouble, even with members of his famously loyal base,” McCreesh reported. “The indoor arena that he spoke at on Friday was a fraction of the size of the football stadium he once spoke in — security concerns are such that he rarely speaks in outdoor venues anymore — and still the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty.”

The article featured a photo showing empty seats as Trump addressed the crowd on Friday.

The president lashed out at the Times on Monday, quoting from and denouncing McCreesh’s article — and calling for arrests — while misrepresenting or mixing up which rally that article had detailed.

“The Ohio Arena was already full to the brim — And yet these people were still trying to get in,” Trump claimed in a Truth Social post. “The New York Times said, ‘There were empty seats’ when, in fact, there were none, and thousands of people had to be turned away. The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.”

“The Fake News New York Times ‘reported’ on my Great, PACKED Rally in Ohio that, ‘the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty,’” Trump wrote falsely in a second post. “In actuality, thousands of people were unable to get in. The Arena was totally MAXED OUT, including all upper sections.”

The president’s posts featured video and photos from in and outside the Ohio rally in an effort to disprove the Times report, which was about the Alabama rally. Notably, the Times article on the event in Ohio — authored by the Times’ Katie Rogers, who wrote she had been “covering Trump rallies, on and off, for almost a decade” — reported “several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time Mr. Trump finished speaking at a 4,500-capacity high school student activity center” and “attendees close to the stage were seated in neat rows” rather than the “old norm of standing room only.”

Trump positions what he claims are inaccurate statements about his rallies as part of a media conspiracy against the GOP. “My Rally crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable!” he wrote on Tuesday. “Nobody has ever seen anything like it. We are flipping races all over the place. The Fake News knows it, but they don’t want to be truthful with their viewers. It’s all happening!”

Trump keeps demanding criminal punishment for reporting he dislikes

Trump and his administration have spent his second term engaged in a systematic assault on the free press, one that includes unhinged vitriol directed at journalists; lawsuits directed at news outlets that produce critical reporting; regulatory efforts to punish critical outlets and reward friendly media owners; cutting federal funding to some public media outlets and reducing the editorial independence of others, attempts to curtail the access of outlets that produce unfavorable reporting; and the use of the law enforcement apparatus against reporters.

Over the last two years, journalists have faced federal searches and seizures, investigations, and even arrest and prosecution over their reporting. Trump himself has routinely called for journalists to face such criminal punishment when they produce reporting he doesn’t like.

In April 2025, for instance, Trump called for an investigation into pollsters and the media outlets that employ them after surveys from the Times and Washington Post/ABC showed his actions were unpopular, alleging the outlets had been “looking for a negative result.”

“These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it,” he wrote. “They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse.”

Trump has also accused news outlets and journalists of treasonous or nearly treasonous action at least 13 times since December, with the frequency and vehemence of such declarations increasing over time.

He has specifically described as “treasonous” outlets including the Times that reported the Iran war has left Iran in a strengthened position; unnamed “SCUM” reporting that the war reduced U.S. munitions stockpiles to a critical level; and The Washington Post for reporting that he is displeased with the performance of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Why Has Fox News Benched Karl Rove During Runup To A Crucial Midterm?

Fox News political analyst Karl Rove has not appeared on his network’s weekday programming for the last three weeks, even as the midterm elections loom. Rove’s absence coincides with his newsmaking public statements warning about extremism within the Republican Party — and his denunciation by President Donald Trump.

While Rove appeared alongside Fox senior political analyst Juan Williams on the October 4 edition of Fox News Sunday (which airs on Fox broadcast stations and reairs later in the day on Fox News), he last appeared on a Fox weekday program on September 14, when anchor Martha MacCallum interviewed him on The Story.

Rove’s absence at a time when his analysis would theoretically be most useful is notable. He averaged seven weekday Fox appearances per month from March through August, and that interview on The Story was his 5th of September, according to a Media Matters review of our database.

Rove makes news — but not for his employer

Rove’s disappearance from Fox's weekday airwaves overlaps with his increasingly strident criticism of extremist elements in the GOP, which has drawn attention from other news outlets.

Two days after Rove’s most recent Fox weekday appearance, The Wall Street Journal published a column in which the veteran Republican strategist and former top aide to President George W. Bush called out the “raw, uncut bigotry” of Texas GOP candidate Bo French, vowed to “vote for only the second Democrat in my life” rather than support French’s campaign, and warned that “the GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas.”

Rove doubled down during a September 26 appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival and drew more headlines for his lament that the Republican Party is “being infiltrated by people like Bo French” and the white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes, who he described as “a Nazi.”

No one needs to hear that message more than the audience at Fox, whose hosts played an essential role in mainstreaming and sanitizing the GOP’s far-right elements. But Rove’s denunciations of the extremists he says are taking over the party have been mentioned just once on Fox, according to a Media Matters review.

Fox contributor Josh Kraushaar crowned “our very own Karl Rove” the “winner” of the week during a panel discussion on the September 18 edition of Fox’s Special Report, arguing that Rove “spoke out with principle against the Texas railroad commissioner candidate, a Republican, Bo French, who made some racist tweets about Indian Americans attending the Texas football game.”

“You don't hear people going against party very often, and to hear those principles standing out, I think, was a real example that Karl Rove set,” Kraushaar said.

No one at Fox is apparently interested in following that example. Even Rove himself, in his Fox News Sunday appearance, did not address his critique of the GOP, instead focusing on downplaying the prospect of a Democratic midterm wave. The GOP’s extremism falls into what I’ve termed Fox’s negative space, the stories that the network’s stars seem loath to defend or even acknowledge to their viewers.

Fox benched Rove after Trump asked why the network helps “keep his RINO Voice alive”

Rove’s absence from Fox’s weekday airwaves also lines up with his denunciation by the president.

During his September 14 interview on The Story, the Fox analyst criticized Trump’s promise to give every American citizen $5,000 if Republicans hold the House and Senate, calling the proposal neither “well thought out” nor a political boon for the GOP.

Trump regularly watches Fox and responds to the programming he sees there, mixing praise of Fox coverage he appreciates with criticism of the network for failing to produce sufficiently consistent propaganda on his behalf. Just a few hours after Rove’s appearance, the Fox analyst received a harangue from the president.

“Karl Rove is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “He suffers from a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome primarily because, for almost 10 years, I beat back and won against so many of the people and things that he wanted and espoused.”

“Why does FoxNews and the WSJ keep his RINO Voice alive,” the president added. “The guy is a stone cold loser!”

The network’s executives are keenly interested in maintaining good relations with Trump. Just last week, network founder Rupert Murdoch and several senior figures in his media empire reportedly dined with the president at the White House in an effort to “reset the relationship.”

And on Monday, The New York Times reported that Fox had hired as a contributor Karoline Leavitt, who served as White House press secretary in his second administration. Leavitt’s new colleagues will include Kayleigh McEnany, one of Trump’s first-term White House press secretaries; Mike Pompeo, who served as Trump’s secretary of state; Kellyanne Conway, who managed his 2016 presidential campaign; and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Outraged By Schumer Cameo On Fox, Trump Demands Uninterrupted Propaganda

President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News on Wednesday with a lengthy online harangue that made little sense but demonstrates the network’s impossible task in satisfying the president’s demand for pure propaganda.

“Why does FoxNews always put Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Jessica Tarlov, and every Democrat on, saying bad things about the Republican Party and, of course, me?” Trump posted to his Truth Social account at 12:15 pm ET. “I actually think they get more airtime than Pro Republicans. This is why MAGA, and REAL Patriots, will never like Fox! They repeat a completely negative narrative, on and on it goes, and then we get a quick retort.”

I’ve spent nearly a decade following the twists and turns of Trump’s symbiotic relationship with Fox, particularly the ways in which his social media activity often corresponds to what he sees on his television — and I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about. The president’s commentary about Fox typically blends praise for the hosts he loves and segments he appreciates with critiques of personalities who don’t meet his standard for sycophancy and attacks on the network’s accurate pollsters, but usually his complaints are more coherent than this.

The most plausible hypothesis I can come up with is that Trump looked up at his television at 12:09 p.m. ET, saw a brief clip that Fox Business was airing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) criticizing the GOP’s AI strategy, and flipped out — and that suggests that Trump doesn’t want his propaganda network to even air footage of the Democratic opposition (except, perhaps, to deride them).

Meanwhile:

Schumer does not appear in Media Matters’ database of Fox News weekday appearances, which dates to August 2017.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has made at least 5 appearances on Fox weekday shows since November 2018, with the most recent airing in January of this year.
Fox’s Jessica Tarlov is the Democratic host tasked with matching up against four conservatives at once on the network’s weekday panel show, The Five. She made 2 guest appearances on other Fox shows in September; conservative co-hosts Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, and Dana Perino all have separate weekday Fox shows of their own.
In September, weekday appearances on Fox News by congressional Republicans and Trump administration officials outnumbered appearances by congressional Democratic guest appearances by 148 to 7.
Fox literally employs the president’s daughter-in-law, former Republican National Committee chair Lara Trump, as the host of a weekly program she uses to promote his administration. (And of course, his current defense secretary is a former Fox host; his U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is a former Fox host; his transportation secretary is a former Fox host whose wife still works for the network; his former campaign manager, his former secretary of state, and his former White House press secretary are on the Fox payroll; and so on and so forth.)
The network relied on Sean Hannity — a confidant and adviser to Trump who uses his show to propagandize on the president’s behalf — to lead its coverage of the GOP’s midterm convention.

And that’s before we even get into the network’s sycophantic coverage of Trump and his administration.

Fox celebrates Trump's supposed successes and promotes the GOP — but it's never enough for him

Fox programming — in the lead-up to the midterms in particular — is a non-stop exercise in assuring viewers that Trump is giving them everything they’ve ever wanted, while sidelining stories that could potentially upset them or harm the GOP’s election push.

On Monday night, for example, Jesse Watters opened his primetime show with a mash note to Trump that simply must be seen to be believed.

Watters and his colleagues have spent substantial portions of their shows this week lavishing Trump with praise and issuing dire warnings to their viewers about what might occur if Democrats were to triumph in the midterm elections.

Just hours before Trump lashed out at the network, high-brow hack Hugh Hewitt said on Fox & Friends that the president would be a boon to GOP candidates because Trump is “the get-out-the-vote machine for the MAGA base and for everyone that doesn't want their inflation to go nuts.” (As of October 1, The New York Times poll average places Trump’s approval rating at a catastrophic 37-61.)

“Trump has won in Iran,” Hewitt explained. “He’s won in the battle of the Strait of Hormuz. He's won with his economic policies. I think the Republicans have a good case to make. They just have to make it every day, morning, noon and night, and I think they're beginning to get into that groove and they've got plenty of time to make the argument.”

Later in the program, the hosts highlighted different Trump policies that appealed to them, with Lawrence Jones concluding that the White House simply faces a messaging problem.

“I just think that maybe it has been bad producing from the White House when it comes from the message, but this story has not been told,” he said. “Maybe so much and so complex or the president is just focused on doing his agenda, but the communications need to do a better job letting the American people know exactly the benefits that they’ve been — because a lot of people don’t even know about it."

Examples like these are a dime a dozen — but apparently not enough for Trump. The president won’t be satisfied until every minute of Fox programming is indistinguishable from North Korean state TV — and every minute of coverage at every other outlet is as well.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Rerun Season: Fox News Revives 'Migrant Caravan' For Midterm Election

President Donald Trump’s extreme unpopularity has the Republican Party seemingly on course for a midterm elections drubbing — which means it’s once again time for Fox News to try to scare its viewers to the polls with frantic coverage of a “caravan” of migrants in Central America headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border.

In October 2018, Fox hosts began warning viewers that a group of up to 4,000 Honduran migrants were moving through Central America with plans to “storm our border” — and urged Trump to make that “caravan” a central issue for that year’s midterm elections. Trump, an inveterate Fox watcher whose worldview is shaped by the network, obliged. Fox showered its viewers with hours of coverage over the ensuing days, and the story also became a major fixation of mainstream news outlets in the leadup to the election.

Eight years later, Fox is starting to run the same play. Trump’s approval numbers have tanked due to his economic policymaking and Iran war, and GOP officials are reportedly panicking over the upcoming midterms and treating the president as a liability for their prospects. Fox and the Trump administration are using the narrative of a new “caravan” to drive attention back to border security, a rare issue where Trump and his party retain an advantage in the polls, but one whose salience has fallen.

Anthony Aguero, a former GOP congressional candidate turned conservative border news streamer, drew attention to the “caravan” on Sunday with a viral social media post. “Over 400 aliens predominantly from Honduras entered Mexico on Thursday, ready to make their way to the US southern border,” he wrote. “Here’s footage of the caravan. Someone is incentivizing this movement, this is not organic.”

While the group is reportedly growing, it remains a fraction of the size of the 2018 “caravan” — which was successfully dispersed by U.S. authorities rather than “storming” the border — raising questions about why the 2026 version deserves significant coverage at all.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump critic, has a hypothesis. “We have not seen a caravan headed to the U.S. southern border in several years, why now?” she responded to Aguero’s post. “Oh yeah, there is an election coming and the GOP needs to scare you into voting because nothing else is working.”

To be sure, Greene is a notorious conspiracy theorist who sees insidious forces everywhere.

But sure enough, on Monday, Fox News Digital ran a story featuring what it termed an “ominous warning” to the “caravan” provided to Fox by the Department of Homeland Security. “Biden’s disastrous open border policy has been SEALED SHUT,” DHS stated. “Anyone attempting to illegally enter the United States will be apprehended, prosecuted, and removed from the country.”

That night, Fox host Laura Ingraham gave the story a partisan spin during her opening monologue. Ingraham denounced “blue cities” for “doling out the cash” to “illegals,” then raised the specter of the “new caravan.”

“So with all this cash waiting and what they perceive to be a weakened GOP, hundreds of migrants have now organized themselves into a new caravan and are heading through Mexico toward the U.S. border,” she said. “Now, someone got to them and probably got them to pay heavy prices in hopes that if they reach the border and Republicans get shellacked in the mid-terms, they'll just be let in.”

Ingraham’s program aired footage of a column of migrants walking along a highway over the chyron, “Amnesty for all is the Dem plan.”

The Fox host later brought on White House “border czar” Tom Homan, who was conveniently available, to fearmonger about the migrants and assure viewers that Trump would keep his promises about border security.

Fox & Friends, the president’s beloved morning show whose fixation on the 2018 “caravan” played a key role in attracting his attention, joined in on Tuesday.

“Right now, a caravan of more than 600 migrants is heading toward the U.S.,” co-host Brian Kilmeade warned as Fox aired footage of the group, noting that it is “traveling through Mexico — you’re looking at them now — after departing Honduras earlier this month.”

Kilmeade read from the DHS statement, then added, “Critics say the mass migration could be on hopes Democrats will embrace open border policies if they control Congress.”

His guest, retired chief border patrol agent Chris Clem, then speculated that the migrants were involved in illicit election interference.

“It is a different election cycle, but the same bad cast with the same bad script,” Clem claimed. “But here’s the good news, we’ve got a president and a border security policy that shuts this down. So, I think this is just about propaganda to bring some kind of sympathetic plight to the migrants.”

“This is really about showing some kind of opportunity at the midterm,” he added. “We saw this play out in 2018, we saw this play out again in 2020, they are coming here to try to make a point against the strong enforcement policies by this administration.”

The same “bad cast” does seem to be running the same “bad script,” and there’s definitely “propaganda” involved.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Trump Believes Press Deserves No Freedom Unless It Repeats His Propaganda Messages

The Justice Department sought last week to justify President Donald Trump’s decision to ban three news outlets from the White House by arguing that their reporters had jeopardized national security. But Trump’s own statements show what he actually wants from the press: servile propaganda that parrots what he and his political allies say about his administration.

“‘The United States has the BEST Employment Numbers in HISTORY,’” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in the 7 a.m. hour Monday morning. Trump attributed the quote to “FoxNews,” then added: “The Fake News Media REFUSES to report this rather significant development, however!!!”

The president, who regularly posts in near-real time about Fox segments that strike his interest, was actually quoting a Fox Business chyron, which attributed the statement to Trump himself during a segment that aired roughly 30 minutes before the post. He went on to tout the “fantastic” performance of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts during the segment, whose “topic” he said “was Fake Polls and how well the Republicans are going to do in the upcoming Midterms.” (Roberts, echoing Trump, called midterm election polling a “psyop” intended “to depress conservative turnout.”)

In reality, U.S. population growth ensures that every president can boast that more people are employed than ever before (as long as they avoid a recession) and hiring numbers are slack, while Trump’s own policies have triggered higher interest rates and inflation, and Fox’s own poll shows cataclysmic numbers for the president and his party.

Monday’s posts — while a perfect encapsulation of this phenomenon — were just the latest indications that Trump’s press ban has nothing to do with the administration’s stated pretext.

The White House press bans aren’t about ethics in journalism

Trump has feuded with the press for a decade, and in his second term has casually accused outlets of treason while surrounding himself with appointees eager to use state power to punish them. After the president’s September 18 announcement that he had banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House due to “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS,” DOJ tried to argue in court filings last Tuesday that the barred outlets had been stripped of access because they had been “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

But the president’s own statements about the press since those filings reveal that his actual concerns have nothing to do with national security or the publication of classified information — he’s mad that news outlets are reporting things he thinks make him look bad and not covering things that make him look good.

On Thursday, for example, Trump griped that CNN and MSNOW had not covered “one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years,” the lavish welcome ceremony he threw at the White House for “the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng.” The president added: “The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there.”

On Saturday, Trump claimed that “Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and Campaign materials.” He lashed out at USA Today, which broke the story on September 22 that Donalds’ campaign website had been revamped to deprioritize his relationship with Trump, and a string of other outlets for following up on it, saying, “This was a Fake Story, with no sources, and the only justification for it is they want to stop my ever upward momentum.”

Trump went on to link the story to his press ban, saying, “Fake News Media been doing this for years, I call them out, but they should really be called out by the Courts, and should not be allowed to enter the White House premises, or Press Room, because they are CORRUPT and DISHONEST!” But the story that the Donalds campaign had changed its website to remove references to Trump is true, and Donalds himself has acknowledged as much.

Later on Saturday, the president again lashed out at the “Fake News,” this time for allegedly not reporting about “our incredible results” with regard to the economy.

“If anyone else were President, this would be all the Media would talk about,” he said. “But because no one ever wants to give me credit, no one is talking about these Historic Numbers.”

“The FAKE NEWS and DUMOCRATS hate these reports, and these Record Setting Numbers,” he added. “They hate the TRUTH, and they hate the Great Success that our Country is having. Just look at the Numbers — THE BEST IN HISTORY.”

Comments like these expose the impossible task news outlets would face in trying to appease the president. Trump’s complaints are, at bottom, not actually about the disclosure of classified information, or the use of anonymous sources, or any other question of media ethics that could be plausibly applied in an even-handed fashion.

His actual concern is quite straightforward: The president does not support free speech that is critical of him or his administration, he wants every outlet to mimic the treatment he receives from his most zealous supporters at Fox, and he has no regard for the First Amendment’s protections for journalists who violate that standard. Any attempt to reckon with his administration’s treatment of reporters that does not reckon with those facts is doomed.

Trump Constantly Accuses Mainstream Outlets Of 'Treasonous' News Coverage

President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post published shortly before midnight on Tuesday, declared reporters at news outlets that produce reporting critical of his administration as “treasonous.”

Trump, in his rambling and confused message, expressed dismay that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and other unnamed “SLEAZEBAGS” had been present to cover his Tuesday appearance at the United Nations General Assembly after he banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House on Friday. He added of Collins: “She’s got a ‘TRUMP’ addiction, and so does CNN and MSDNC [MSNOW]. They’re all sick, treasonous, and demented!”

The post marked at least the third time this month, and the ninth time since March, that Trump had accused news outlets of “treasonous” reporting, according to a Media Matters review of his statements on social media and transcripts of his public events compiled by Roll Call’s Factba.se. The president also said news outlets had nearly or almost committed treason on four additional occasions during his second term, though since May he has transitioned to making outright accusations.

Treason is “the only crime expressly defined by the Constitution,” which limits such charges to “levying war” against the United States or “in adhering to [its] enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” and the Supreme Court has narrowly interpreted that definition. Trump has nonetheless declared that a slew of figures — from Democratic congressional leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to leakers within his administration to critics of AI to members of the group that filed suit to block his construction of a White House ballroom — have committed treason by defying his will.

But his frequent claims that news outlets are committing treason by publishing reports he doesn’t like are particularly worrisome and fit into a larger war on the press in which his administration has used state power to punish journalists for their work. The Justice Department, for example, argued in a Tuesday night court filing that the president’s banning of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House is justified because the outlets’ reporting on stories related to the Iran war and the ballroom “have threatened national security.”

[EDITOR'S NOTE: On Wednesday evening, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to “return, reinstate, and restore” the reporters' credentials while litigation proceeds. But journalists from those outlets were denied access again on Thursday morning.]

In December, Trump responded to reporting on his apparent physical decline by calling it “seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’” That was the first example we found of the president linking reporting with treason since his return to the White House.

But Trump’s treason accusations really picked up after the war he launched against Iran on February 28 began to falter. Since then, Trump has accused CNN, MS NOW, ABC, NBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times of treason, singling out CNN’s Collins and Times reporter David Sanger in particular. He has specifically described it as “treasonous” to report that the Iran war has left Iran in a strengthened position, that it has reduced U.S. munitions stockpiles to a critical level, and that he is displeased with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The best case scenario is that the president of the United States is an addled old man who is impotently lashing out at his critics as his administration collapses around him. Possible alternative explanations — that Trump is encouraging his pliant Justice Department appointees to actually file charges against reporters, or his followers to take matters into their own hands — are more sinister.

Here’s a list of examples of the president’s treason rhetoric.

September 22, 2026: CNN, MS NOW are “sick, treasonous, and demented!” [Truth Social]

September 3, 2026: “For the treasonous SCUM that refuses to accurately report on our Military Operation in Iran…” [Truth Social]

September 3, 2026: “Media Outlets that keep harping on the fact that we have no ammunition … are actually treasonous.” [Truth Social]

August 6, 2026: “I really believe” The Washington Post’s “fake ‘reporting’” that Trump is displeased with Hegseth “is treasonous!” [Truth Social]

July 13, 2026: “I actually think it’s treasonous” that The New York Times reported Iran is “stronger today than they were four months ago.” [Interview, Fox News’ Fox & Friends]

July 13, 2026: “The fake news would rather see us lose the war than win the war, which is really treasonous, which is really treasonous in a certain way.” [Remarks]

June 21, 2026: The Times’ Iran coverage “is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS.’” [Truth Social]

May 15, 2026: Trump tells Times reporter Sanger, “I actually think it's sort of treasonous what you write” about Iran, “I actually think it’s treason when you write, like, ‘They’re doing well militarily.’” [Press gaggle]

May 12, 2026: “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON…” [Truth Social]

April 12, 2026: “CNN, The New York Times, ABC fake news, NBC fake news … they report things that they know are false. It's almost treasonous, actually.” [Interview, Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures]

March 27, 2026: “If you read the Times, you think we’re doing poorly [in Iran]. It’s so — It’s almost treasonous.” [Remarks]

March 15, 2026: “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!” [Truth Social]

December 9, 2025: “I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’” [Truth Social]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fox News Hides Contributor Karl Rove's Column Warning Against GOP Bigotry

Fox News contributor Karl Rove sounded the alarm about a rising tide of racism and antisemitism within the Republican Party in his Tuesday column for The Wall Street Journal. But while CNN and MS NOW have both covered Rove’s warning, the network where he has worked since 2008 has not mentioned it.

Rove, who masterminded George W. Bush’s campaigns for Texas governor and president and served in his White House before joining Fox, wrote on Tuesday that he planned to “vote for only the second Democrat in my life” rather than support Republican nominee Bo French’s campaign for Texas Railroad Commission.

Rove pointed to the “raw, uncut bigotry” displayed in the racist social media post French authored Sunday about students at the University of Texas, as well as other “bigoted comments” French had made. But Rove also extended his argument well beyond French, writing that “the GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas.”

He continued:

Conservatism and the party it dominates have an increasing number of bigoted advocates of a “heritage America” composed of white descendants of the original European settlers. There are “just asking questions” Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.

Rove is correct that the GOP has what New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie describes as a “neo-Nazi problem.” And his message is essential for the viewers of Fox, whose stars played a key role in mainstreaming white nationalist ideas once relegated to the fringe of American politics.

But while Rove’s column drew attention from his employer’s mainstream competitors — garnering about 15 minutes of coverage on MS NOW and four minutes on CNN as of 1 p.m. ET on Thursday — his colleagues at Fox have not mentioned it, and he hasn’t been hosted on its airwaves since its publication, according to a Media Matters review.

Indeed, Fox has not mentioned French a single time since his social media post. Meanwhile, others on the right like Benny Johnson and Jack Posobiec have filled the vacuum by defending the Texas candidate.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fox News Covers Russian Oligarch Bankrolling Trump Jr Wedding -- For One Minute

Fox News devoted a grand total of one minute of airtime to Monday's bombshell report that a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the lavish Bahamas wedding of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. The coverage came entirely in a single segment framed around the response to the story from Trump Jr.’s wife, Bettina.

The “lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands” to celebrate Trump Jr.’s May wedding “was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin,” who attended the exclusive event, according to ProPublica. It further reported:

Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

The September 14 article went on to detail the incredible nature of this naked corruption. “Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family,” the article stated. “For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.”

Fox hosts and anchors once treated significantly more tangential ties between foreign businessmen and a president’s son as of vital importance. They flooded the airwaves with overwrought attacks on Hunter Biden when such claims could be used to damage Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy and then presidency. But such coverage has vanished since Trump returned to office and he and his family began profiting off the presidency on a massive scale.

Network star Sean Hannity, who accused the “Biden Crime Family” of masterminding “potentially the biggest bribery, money laundering scandal in American history,” had nothing to say about the ProPublica report during his Fox show on Monday. Nor did his “opinion side” colleagues Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and Greg Gutfeld; or the co-hosts of Fox & Friends; or “news side” anchors Martha MacCallum, John Roberts, or Dana Perino.

Indeed, the only Fox News program to mention the story at all on Monday was Special Report, which offered a single superficial account from correspondent Lucas Tomlinson that leaned heavily on the response to the story from Bettina Trump.

“Lucas, another story, there was a report about Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding back in May, and questions about foreign influence as a Russian businessman with close ties to Vladimir Putin helped pay for the celebration in the Bahamas,” anchor Bret Baier said at the end of a package on AI.

He then asked Tomlinson, “Has there been a response from the White House or the newlyweds?”

Tomlinson replied:

There has, Bret. In a new post on Instagram, Bettina Trump says the party was planned well in advance of the wedding and was never intended to be a wedding weekend. She thanked her friend Umar Kremlev, who made a fortune in Russian-backed gambling and commercial businesses. He's sanctioned by Ukraine, and he reportedly spent hundreds of billion — millions of dollars — hundreds of thousands of dollars on the two-night wedding celebration in the Bahamas. And Bettina put out, quote, “Friendship doesn't require a political motive. Generosity doesn't automatically come with an agenda, and sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.” And the White House referred us to this post, Bret.

“OK, Lucas Tomlinson at the White House,” Baier concluded.

And that was it from Baier, who once said the press had an obligation to scrutinize the Trump family’s business dealings but whose program has largely looked away from the myriad financial conflicts that emerged over the course of the president’s second term.

Update (9/16/26): Special Report provided an additional 2 minutes of coverage on Tuesday about a Russian oligarch bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. Bret Baier asked correspondent Aishah Hasnie for an update on the story and later noted in a panel segment that “there would have been a lot of coverage of this” if it involved the son of a Democratic president. After Axios reporter Stef Kight said that “we are not hearing anything from Republicans” about a “very similar situation,” Baier commented: “Well, we want to cover it, cover it all.”

No other Fox show mentioned the story on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Watters Pushed Reflecting Pool “Vandals” Story, But Now Conceals Humiliating Truth

Fox News host Jesse Watters’ coverage of the alleged vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool provides a useful case study in how the network’s MAGA stars respond to the collapse of their narratives.

Watters was a furious defender of President Donald Trump’s claims that vandals defaced the Reflecting Pool, then dropped the story completely rather than admit to his Fox audience that those claims were debunked. He still hasn't discussed the fact that prosecutors dropped charges and acknowledged that the damage resulted from “a botched installation and not vandalism,” or that the contractor has reportedly admitted fault.

Trump made renovating the pool an administration priority as he sought to beautify Washington, D.C., for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July. But when the $14.7 million paint job Trump had ordered deteriorated just weeks after the pool was refilled, the president blamed “Deranged Vandals” for sabotaging his efforts by supposedly slashing the pool liner.

Watters emerged as the most strident supporter of Trump’s vandalism claims. While others in the MAGA commentariat seemed conspicuously uninterested in promoting the president’s narrative, Watters repeatedly portrayed the supposed vandals as America-hating leftists bent on destroying the country.

The Fox host scrutinized “tapes” of the purported vandalism he said had been provided by the Department of Interior, cited an anonymous official “confirming someone cut the liner,” and highlighted the Democratic donations and legal representation of David Hearn when the former Olympic canoeist was arrested after sticking his hands in the pool.

And so it was no coincidence that when the office of Jeanine Pirro, Watters’ former colleague at The Five who now serves as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, secured felony charges against Hearn, she went on Watters’ show to take a bow.

“Fox News Alert: I hope Democrats enjoyed their little pool party, because Judge Jeanine just shut it down,” Watters said at the top of their July 2 segment. Trump “was fed up watching his new Reflecting Pool get savaged, so he sent his favorite attack dog to bite back — and she came armed with an indictment.”

“A lot of people, when this first happened with the pool, didn't believe the president that there was vandalism,” Watters told Pirro after that inadvertently revelatory introduction. “That's not the case.”

“Yes, it is not the case at all,” Pirro replied. “In fact, I was at the Reflecting Pool yesterday. There not only is a vandalism that is reflected in today's indictment, but there is a cutting of the liner of the pool, at the base of the pool for several yards across the pool.”

Pirro went on to claim that “someone was intent on doing incredible damage to the pool” and that those supposed vandals “are going to be made accountable, and in D.C. they will be.”

“I’m sure they will be,” Watters replied.

Watters has not returned to the Reflecting Pool story since that interview, according to a Media Matters review of the Nexis transcript database. (Charles Hurt, Watters' guest host on August 14, aired a correspondent segment that mentioned the DOJ had dropped charges in the case.)

He ignored the bombshell July 31 filing from Pirro’s office dropping charges against Hearn, citing new evidence “showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.” The motion to dismiss cites documents showing the damage “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings (‘AIC’), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”

Nor did he explain to his viewers that Trump subsequently posted that he disagreed “100%” with Pirro; publicly maligned her in the Oval Office; and reportedly considered removing her until she made a high-profile trip to the White House to explain herself.

Friday’s revelation from The New York Times that government documents show that the pool’s contractor “has told the Trump administration that errors in its own work and flaws in the repair plan, not vandalism, caused the pool’s new blue liner to peel and break loose,” went similarly unaddressed by Watters.

The smear got plenty of airtime — its repudiation got basically none. That’s how MAGA media operate as they attack Democrats and progressives in service of Trump.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

At GOP Midterm Fest, JD Vance Echoed Tucker Carlson’s Anti-Immigrant Slurs

Vice President JD Vance used his keynote address to the GOP’s midterm convention to echo one of Tucker Carlson’s most infamous statements, just one week after publicly refusing to distance himself from the right-wing podcaster.

“Two years ago, we have to remember — our nation, ladies and gentlemen, was tired,” Vance told the attendees in Dallas on Thursday night. After citing factory closures and drug overdoses, he continued: “We were tired of seeing the cartels and the criminals given free rein over our great country. And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous.“

Who was “called racist” for suggesting “our country was becoming dirtier and poorer”? That would be Carlson, who declared that immigrants were the cause.

“Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this,” Carlson told his Fox News audience during a December 2018 monologue. “We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.” He then aired footage of what he described as “an endless chain of migrant caravans” in Mexico.

Carlson’s statement that immigrants make the United States “poorer” is incorrect, and his claim that they make it “dirtier” was widely recognized as bigoted. More than two dozen companies dropped their ads on his show in response.

But Carlson refused to back down, repeatedly offering similar remarks and using his Fox show to mainstream other white nationalist tropes and talking points. And a few years later, an enterprising would-be GOP politician adopted the host’s language in a successful effort to win his favor.

On July 1, 2021 — the same day he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate — Vance went on Carlson’s Fox program and told the host that he was running to ensure that his kids “live in the same great country that I lived in. And if we don't do something, if we don't fight back against what's going on in our country, they're going to lose it, they're going to grow up in a country that's much poorer, that's much dirtier, that's much uglier, and where they can't even speak their mind as citizens.”

Carlson fawned over Vance throughout the interview. “I probably shouldn't say this, I'm really glad you're doing it,” he said at its conclusion. “I admire you and I wish you luck, very much. Thank you for doing this. Congratulations.”

Vance would continue to mimic Carlson’s rhetoric on the host’s show, and Carlson in turn backed his Senate campaign on-air — and used his personal relationship with Donald Trump to convince Trump to endorse Vance. Two years later, he helped convince Trump to select Vance as his 2024 running mate.

Since then, Carlson has dived even further into the right-wing fever swamps. He became the nation’s most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist; declared that “the defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated”; warned frequently of the influence of “demons”; and hosted a notorious white nationalist and a Nazi apologist for friendly interviews. That last point has triggered calls on the right for Vance to disavow or distance himself from the man who helped cement his political career.

But instead, Vance used a September 3 White House press briefing to portray Carlson as merely a “friend” with whom he sometimes has “political disagreements,” and to attack his critics as un-American.

And last night, Vance gave a wink and a nod to Carlson and his audience on the biggest stage available to him.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fox News Presents GOP Midterm Convention As A Very Special Episode Of 'Hannity'

“‘The vibes are very bad’ in Texas” was the headline of Politico Playbook’s dispatch from Dallas, where the GOP’s “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention had Republican attendees fearing “what could transpire on the stage — and what it might mean for lawmakers back home.”

But let not your heart be troubled, Fox News had the solution on hand — more Sean Hannity.

The Fox brass has decided to give its 10 p.m. timeslot during the convention to the network figure closest to President Donald Trump, “to make sure all the key speeches and anti-Dem video montages are seen,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Wednesday. That’s a shift from its coverage of the 2024 Republican National Convention, when Fox assigned chief political anchor Bret Baier and The Story’s Martha MacCallum to host a nightly special featuring a panel of the network’s political contributors

Hannity’s selection was a clear signal that Fox aimed to produce a GOP infomercial, and was functionally equivalent to simply letting the Republican National Committee program the coverage. Hannity is a confidant and adviser to Trump who uses his show to propagandize on the president’s behalf. Over the years, the host has appeared in a Trump campaign video; spoken at a Trump rally; scripted a Trump campaign ad; served as a White House back channel; sought, received, and carried out marching orders from the Trump White House about what to say on Election Day 2020; and strategized with Trump family members and White House aides.

Hannity and colleagues try to manifest a GOP vibe shift

On the eve of the midterm convention start, Hannity and his colleagues were trying to raise Republican spirits by sheer force of will, highlighting Trump’s purported successes and warning of dire consequences if Democrats muster election victories.

Hannity opened his Fox primetime show on Tuesday with a segment on the convention, promising viewers that “we will be there” and urging them not to read anything into the numerous Republican candidates in tough races who aren’t appearing at the event. He assured the audience that he “was able to get confirmation” that the candidates attending “were invited and they're the most competitive races in the country. … Not every Republican that's running for office was invited.”

He went on to give viewers a pep talk, urging them to “take nothing for granted” because “the stakes have never been higher during a midterm election” and instructing Republican candidates to “treat every single day with the proper amount of urgency.”

Hannity reeled off a list of “promises made, promises kept by President Trump and his Republican allies,” which he contrasted to “what the radical socialist Democratic Party is now offering the country. They want to completely upend our way of life. They want to strip you of your very humanity. If they get their way, you — you will have domain over nothing. Not even your own family.”

“In 56 days, this November, the choice will be very simple,” he concluded. “You can vote for Democrats who believe America is fundamentally evil and want to humble and humiliate the American people, or you can vote for liberty, freedom Republicans, albeit many Republicans, far from perfect, but they're not DSA members. And by the way, they believe in lifting everybody up through the concepts of liberty and freedom and safety and security and opportunity.”

Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters similarly touted Trump’s leadership and emphasized that the midterm elections will be a referendum on his performance on their Tuesday broadcasts.

“Tomorrow in Dallas, Republicans kick off that first-ever midterm convention, and gavel to gavel, the Angle will be there,” Ingraham said. “We'll broadcast live from the American Airlines Center. Cannot wait. President Trump will headline both nights. Now, what's the goal? To fire up the base with his vision, the Republican vision for continued economic growth and rigorous border enforcement.”

While she spoke, on-screen text read, “History in the making in Dallas.”

Ingraham later claimed that “we always take these polls with a grain of salt … I mean, at this point, you don't even know what's what with the polls, but there does seem to be some pro-GOP movement in some of these polls, especially the ones that came out today.”

Watters launched his own broadcast with fulsome praise for the convention and the president at the top of his show the following hour.

“We're less than 24 hours from Trump-a-palooza where the Republicans are going to hold their first ever midterm convention right in the heart of Texas,” he said. “President Trump will be there, so will JD Vance, Bobby Kennedy, and a long list of big-name Republicans. The goal of the convention: You make this election between communism and common sense, and the commies are making it too easy.”

Watters then offered a paean to what he portrayed as a laundry list of Trump accomplishments — over a chyron that read, “Republicans have a record to show off.” The host’s litany included that “jobs market has never been hotter for people with just a high school diploma”; “people took home big refund checks and realized if you start a family and open Trump accounts, your children will retire as millionaires”; “we just captured the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela”; “the border sealed, crime all-time low, and doctors aren't giving sex change surgeries to kids anymore”; and “MAHA is cleansing what we eat.”

He went on to praise the Iran war, saying, “Republicans will have to tackle high gas prices but they'll argue that President Trump stopped Iran from nuking up, killed the ayatollah, took out the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror, and our Navy in the strait [is] bringing prices down.”

“So the election is going to come down to Republican results and whether voters are going to buy what Democrats are selling,” Watters concluded. “They have no record to run on, no new ideas, just a mix of TDS with a whiff of communism. Republicans have to lock in these gains because there's a lot at stake.”

Watters and his Fox colleagues will be doing everything they can over the next few days — and weeks, and months — to ensure that happens.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

JD Vance's Wildly Disingenous Defense Of His Alliance With Antisemitic Carlson

Vice President JD Vance responded on Thursday to critics of his close relationship with Tucker Carlson by dodging their actual concerns with Carlson’s promotion of antisemitism and smearing them as anti-American. His handwaving portrayal of the right-wing podcaster as merely a buddy elides Carlson’s actual role as one of the architects of the vice president’s political career.

Vance’s Carlson ties were back under the microscope this week after he dodged a question about the right-wing podcaster platforming antisemites during a Monday night Q&A at the summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Pressed on the point at a White House briefing on Thursday, Vance dissembled — while wrapping himself in the flag. He called Carlson a “friend,” said he disagreed with Carlson’s criticism of President Donald Trump — then pivoted, saying it was “a travesty” that “in the United States of America, we let political disagreements define who our friends are going to be and not going to be.”

“Tucker is a friend, despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things, and I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them,” the vice president said.

“I think that is a terrible place for the United States to go, and if you have a disagreement with somebody politically, even over a deeply-held issue, you should still be friends with that person, because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another,” he continued. “That’s how I try to live my life.”

This is wildly disingenuous.

No one cares if Vance and Carlson spend their days palling around at the podcaster’s Maine home, chomping on his nicotine pouches, wearing matching flannel shirts, and pretending to be woodsy.

The reason their relationship matters is that Carlson has been a key cog in Vance’s political machine who was essential to his electoral rise — while generating numerous firestorms over the years due to his promotion of white nationalist talking points and willingness to grant friendly interviews to notorious antisemites and Nazi apologists.

Vance used dozens of appearances on Carlson’s Fox show beginning in 2018 to shapeshift from an elite favorite who privately compared Trump to Hitler to a MAGA culture warrior in the host’s own image.

The then-Fox host endorsed Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign on-air. “Occasionally, you run into somebody who could actually change things,” he told viewers on the eve of the Ohio primary. “That would be J.D. Vance.”

Carlson repeatedly used his then-close relationship with Trump to bolster Vance’s career, successfully lobbying Trump to endorse Vance’s Senate campaign and then select him as his 2024 running mate. Carlson spoke at the Republican National Convention that year, then Vance joined him on his own political tour.

And while Vance preps for a 2028 presidential run that Carlson seems almost certain to support, the podcaster has been saying things like, “The defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated,” and attributing “the rage of the neocons” to “demonic influence.”

The public deserves a more complete accounting of precisely where the vice president’s “disagreements” with Carlson lie.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

        About The National Memo
    
The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
TAGS

Created By

RebelMouse

About Masthead Terms of Service Privacy Statement Advertise with Us Contact

Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Sign up for our Daily Newsletter and never miss a story.

Fox's MAGA Propagandists Focused On Michigan, Texas

The slipshod authoritarianism of Trump’s Times attack

Trump keeps demanding criminal punishment for reporting he dislikes

Rove makes news — but not for his employer

Fox benched Rove after Trump asked why the network helps “keep his RINO Voice alive”

Fox celebrates Trump's supposed successes and promotes the GOP — but it's never enough for him

The White House press bans aren’t about ethics in journalism

Hannity and colleagues try to manifest a GOP vibe shift

About The National Memo