Tag: sean hannity
While Trump Accuses News Outlets Of 'TREASON,' Fox Models MAGA War Coverage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Larry Kudlow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The assessments of Tehran's nuclear program remain broadly unchanged even after two months of a war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched in part to stop the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear bomb.

U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded prior ⁠to June's 12-day war that Iran likely could produce enough bomb-grade uranium for a weapon and build a bomb in around three to six months, said two of the sources, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence.
Following the June strikes by the U.S. that hit the Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes, U.S. intelligence estimates pushed that timeline back to about nine months to a year, said the two sources and a person familiar with the assessments.

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters


Trump and Jack Keane

Fox's Ultra-Hawk Military Pundit Keane Also Works For Defense Contractors

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane is a vocal supporter of the Iran war from his perch as a Fox News senior strategic analyst, regularly arguing that the United States and Israel should escalate their joint military campaign and avoid diplomatic off-ramps. In addition to his TV gig, Keane also sits on the boards of directors of two defense contractors which potentially stand to benefit from the conflict with Iran — a fact that Fox appears not to have disclosed to its viewers since the beginning of the war.

The two contractors, United States Antimony Corp. and REalloys Inc., are both rare earths companies that provide crucial material to the Defense Department for use in weapons and other military equipment. Keane has been on the board of US Antimony since August 19, 2025, and on the board of REalloys since February 9 of this year.

Both companies tout the extensive DOD applications for their products in promotional materials and other outward facing statements. In a publicly available investor presentation from 2025, US Antimony Corp. claimed that 32% of its business comes from “military & defense,” including supplying antimony — a critical mineral — for use in “armor-piercing rounds,” “laser guided missiles,” “military electronics,” “night vision,” and other uses. The REalloys website goes into even greater detail, detailing how its products — critical minerals and magnets — can be used in everything from F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighters jets to Tomahawk cruise missiles to Predator drones and JDAM guided bombs. (The United States has used several of those weapons and platforms in the Iran war.)

As a former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, Keane is one of the most important and longstanding pro-war voices at Fox, having appeared on Fox News at least 44 times and on Fox Business at least 15 times since the U.S-Israeli campaign began on February 28. A Media Matters review found that Fox did not appear to mention Keane’s position on the board of directors for US Antimony Corp. or REalloys Inc. in any of those appearances. Fox News’ website also does not appear to have covered Keane’s connections to the two defense contractors, and does not list those affiliations in his official biography on the site.

The recent lack of disclosures are not the first time Keane and Fox have failed to mention his business ties and potential conflicts of interest. In 2017, Media Matters reported that Keane repeatedly called for an increase in military spending while sitting on the board of directors of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor. (Keane is no longer a board member at General Dynamics.)

Keane’s calls to escalate the Iran war and avoid a ceasefire

Even before the Trump administration began attacking Iran, Keane was on Fox downplaying the risks of a conflict.On February 27, Keane listed various examples of U.S.-led regime changes, advising that “there is always ambiguity in terms of what follows after that. And you can't let that distort what the opportunity is in front of you, here. And that's the reality of it."

On March 2, Keane cautioned against any negotiations that didn’t end in Iran’s total surrender.“The only thing we should negotiate with the Iranians is — not talking about nuclear weapons, don’t negotiate with them about ballistic missiles, don’t negotiate with them about support for proxies — we know they’ve done all of that and that’s why we’re in the war,” Keane said. “The only thing we want to negotiate with them about is surrender.”

The same day, Keane argued for a maximalist military approach that would result in regime collapse. “When you put — you're going to take that regime and put it on a pathway for its eventual collapse, and what follows after that is not particularly clear,” Keane said. “And I think that's OK.”As President Donald Trump’s war dragged on, Keane continued to agitate for a military victory rather than a diplomatic settlement.“We should not go to a ceasefire,” Keane said on Hannity on March 24. “I mean, if we go into a ceasefire it’s playing right into their hands — we want to keep the pressure on them to make a deal that makes some sense."

Keane continued to call for escalation on April 6. “What we need to do is keep our pedal to the metal here, so to speak,” he said on America’s Newsroom.“What I don’t think we should do is go to a ceasefire to get it open,” Keane argued, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. He argued that if that were to happen, Iran “will claim victory — and they’re really good at the propaganda."

Following Trump’s apocalyptic threat to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” and the subsequent ceasefire announcement on April 7, that evening Keane said his “preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage to make that deal,” and that “we have to finish what we started."

The next morning, Keane argued to restart the war. “I wouldn't have done what we're doing,” he said, adding: “I think we should take control of the Strait of Hormuz ourselves."

Waging the kind of war Keane has advocated for costs a lot of money, and that means a big payday for the defense industry as a whole.

The Iran war could be a windfall for critical mineral weapons contractors

The war against Iran has proved costly for the U.S. government, both in terms of dollars spent and munitions used. The Pentagon told Congress that the first week of the war ran a price tag of more than $11.3 billion, and over the course of the war the military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk missiles, leading some in the Pentagon to worry about its overall stockpile. The United States and Israel may also both be running low on interceptors, which are expensive and time-consuming to produce.

To address these significant military expenditures, the Pentagon initially asked Congress for over $200 billion in addition to its annual budget, though that request is expected to be roughly cut in half following the tenuous ceasefire. Beyond that, the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to ask Congress for what Bloomberg calls a “massive” amount of new military spending for fiscal year 2027, sending the defense budget north of $1.5 trillion from its current level at just under $1 trillion.

Which specific contractors will benefit from the deluge of public money remains to be seen, and so far the war hasn’t led to an increase in defense stocks overall. The story is rosier for US Antimony Corp., however, which has seen its year-to-date stock price rise 74 percent as of April 13, significantly outperforming both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. (REalloys enjoyed a major rally in early March, then a steep decline before a partial rebound in April.)

Both companies have recently announced significant defense contract wins.On March 2, Reuters reported that REalloy had gotten $1.7 million from the Pentagon to “fund design of a processing facility for metals used to make magnets for weapons and electronics,” which signaled “an ⁠initial vote of confidence in REalloy's technology.”In an article highlighting rare earths companies hiring retired generals, The Wall Street Journal reported that US Antimony Corp. secured a $245 million contract a month after it brought on Keane, though he was reportedly not involved in its procurement:

Gary Evans, the CEO of U.S. Antimony, said Keane’s presence has been a boon. “We have three grant requests going to D.C. this month for different things,” Evans said in January. “So, we just felt like having someone of his caliber and his connections on our board, to give us advice, to give us direction when we need it, would be helpful."

In interviews, Evans has been open that the Iran war could be good for his business.

“We’re trying to meet the demands of the United States, not only industrial demand but the military demand," Evans told the New York Stock Exchange’s YouTube channel. “As you can see, over the last 60 days we’re using up that stuff pretty quick, when you look at Venezuela and Iran — so we anticipate this being a great business."

Evans made a similar pitch during a recent earnings call, even going so far as to name-drop Keane. “We keep a very high dialogue going on at any given time with senators, house members, governors, and as I mentioned before, General Keane is on our board, so we kinda hear what’s going on,” Evans said. “There’s a lot of need for additional munitions, as everybody knows, with the activities we’d had in Venezuela and now Iran.”

On March 11, Evans appeared on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo to discuss a recent defense contract win. Neither Bartiromo nor Evans mentioned Keane or his ties to the company during the interview.

“US Antimony Corporation recently receiving a $27 million grant from the Department of War to help support domestic critical minerals used in military weaponry and other defense technology,” Bartiromo said, using the Trump administration’s name for the Defense Department.

She began the interview by asking Evans to “tell us about the grant from the Department of War and how this conflict has impacted your business."

Evan described the antimony ingots his company makes, which “go to the Department of War, the DLA [Defense Logistics Agency], to serve as inventory for wars like we’re in right now."

“We have the lowest stockpile since World War II, so we’re trying to ramp up” production “to help our military,” Evans continued. “[In] 2026, we’re expecting revenues north of $125 million, 2027, north of $200 million,” Evans said. “So we’re moving at warp speed."

The United States and Israel have killed more than 3,000 people in Iran since February 28, according to an Iranian medical official.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

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

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

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