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Bari Weiss' CBS News Frames El-Sayed With Islamophobic 9/11 'Analysis'

CBS News published an August 31 article linking Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the latest example of the news organization’s rightward shift under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. In reality, El-Sayed's comments, which he made on social media, were sober and well within the bounds of typical political discourse.

The piece’s headline appeared designed to suggest that El-Sayed, who is Muslim, had disrespected the victims of the attacks or had somehow justified them. Even by CBS News' account, El-Sayed simply invoked the 9/11 death toll while discussing surging deaths during the pandemic and hoped for a strong response across the country to help Americans.

In one of the posts reported by CBS, El-Sayed “compared the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11 to the mounting COVID-19 death toll and argued for a response commensurate with the nation's post-9/11 mobilization.” A different post similarly called for the United States to “spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In another, El-Sayed mourned the loss of life on 9/11 and in the United States’ reaction to the attacks, which devastated countries across the Middle East.

Contrary to CBS News’ innuendo, many public figures compared the death tolls of COVID and 9/11.

  • In April 2020, President Donald Trump’s surgeon general said the pandemic would be “our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment.”
  • Andrew Cuomo, then governor of New York, said in March 2020 that COVID “reminds me of 9/11 where one moment, which was inconceivable, just changed everything.”
  • In May 2020, Trump said: “This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this.”
  • In January 2021, Dr. Robert Redfield, then the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said “that we were going to be in for day after day after day — back in early December, of losing more people than we lost in Pearl Harbor and 9/11 every day.”
  • Fox News’ Neil Cavuto: “Yesterday, we had a record number of deaths in this country, more than died on 9/11.”
  • Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld: “In that case, this virus is much like 9/11. … So we have to think about this the same way we think about terrorism and thinking about 9/11.”
  • Like El-Sayed, comedian Chris Rock hoped that the government would respond forcefully to the pandemic. “I just hope that all that’s happened, that this whole year was not in vain, and that people and the government doesn’t just go back to business as usual,” he said in December 2020. “Like, basically, there’s a 9/11 every day.”

CBS News’ Islamophobic framing comes amid a rising wave of anti-Muslim animus in right-wing media, and illustrates how that kind of bigotry can easily migrate to once-respected media organizations. The outlet has lurched to the right under its new owner, David Ellison, and Weiss, a conservative journalist with no experience in broadcast news.

The Ellison-Weiss smash-and-grab has resulted in low morale at CBS News and several high-profile resignations, including veteran journalist Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes. In an interview with The New York Times, Pelley claimed that Weiss had asked him to revise a February segment on demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deadly crackdown in Minneapolis to “make the protesters look more violent.” Weiss had previously spiked a segment on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in a move many interpreted as her attempt to kill a story that made the Trump administration look bad. (The segment eventually aired in early 2026.)

Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance, is currently attempting to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN. Should the deal eventually go through, there is every reason to believe Ellison would introduce the kind of chaos and political bias at CNN that he and his deputies have brought to CBS News.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Declaring Iran 'Victory,' Delusional MAGA Shills Enter Full Gaslight Mode

Declaring Iran 'Victory,' Delusional MAGA Shills Enter Full Gaslight Mode

By any objective metric, the Trump administration has failed in its war of aggression against Iran. Once maximalist goals of destroying Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program have been tabled. In the United States, energy costs — especially diesel fuel — are skyrocketing, while missile stockpiles are dwindling. Iran has exerted control over the Strait of Hormuz, an outcome U.S. war planners had long predicted in the event of an extended conflict. Reports that the U.S. military has wrested control of the waterway should be taken with a shipping-freighter-sized grain of salt, as recent data shows that traffic through the strait dwindled on Thursday, and even days with the most activity only reached to about half of pre-war levels.

But what if all of that wasn’t the case? What if President Donald Trump had already won the war, and the only thing that was missing, geopolitically speaking, was the recognition of that fact? That would really be something. And, thanks to a set of especially sycophantic pundits aligned with the White House, that alternate reality is just one livestream or TV show away.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity, as reliable a hack for the Trump administration as you can find on cable news, argued on August 19 that the president hadn’t gotten enough “credit” for stopping Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb. (Of course, an obvious consequence of bombing a country, assassinating its leadership, and threatening to destroy its entire civilization is that the new government, entirely rationally, is more interested than ever in developing a nuclear deterrent to avoid such attacks being repeated.)

Hannity also claimed that Iran was “breaking financially,” though close observers believe it is well-positioned to withstand even escalated U.S. sanctions.

The next day, CNN contributor Scott Jennings — currently auditioning for the role of White House press secretary — was even more obsequious.

“It may be time for the president to declare victory in this war because it's obvious that we've won,” Jennings said on his YouTube show.

MAGA media influencer Benny Johnson was similarly shameless, titling an August 21 segment: “Iran's President SURRENDERS | Calls To 'End The War' With America Immediately As US CONQUERS Hormuz.” Then, on August 22: “Iran Thought They Won…Now It’s All OVER | How Trump Secretly DESTROYED Them Without a Single Bomb.”

On August 24, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a series of punishing sanctions on Iran — a so-called “economic D-Day” — and much of the right-wing media coverage framed it as the latest sign of victory.

That morning, Fox News’ Lawrence Jones, echoing a recurring theme in right-wing media, argued, “You know what’s worse that no new wars — and this is not a new war, this has been going on 47-plus years — is losing. And we're winning right now."

The chyron referenced a New York Post editorial headlined: “Trump is winning the Iran war— stay the course.”

From the wensite of the New York Post, publisehd on August 23, 2025

Citing Bessent’s comments, Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty claimed, “Despite what they’re saying about this war on CNN or MS NOW or in The New York Times, this war's about to end and America is about to win.”

Back on his YouTube show, Jennings offered a list of accomplishments the United States had not in fact accomplished.

“The United States has won the war against Iran,” Jennings said, arguing that “many in our political class refuse to acknowledge” this fact.

“Iran entered this war with four great pillars of strength: its nuclear program, its missiles and drones, its regional terror network, and its ability to hold the world economy hostage through the Strait of Hormuz,” Jennings said. “Every one of those pillars has been severely damaged or outright destroyed.”

On August 26, Trump posted an image on Truth Social reading, in part, “Mission Accomplished 2026.”

Like with Bessent’s announcement, the administration’s media allies ran with it.

Johnson once again painted a rosy picture of the conflict. “Iran is effectively admitting defeat,” he said. “The Iranian leadership is saying what we all know to be true, which is that you cannot fight a war if you cannot feed your army.”

Hannity boasted that “we have a nuclear-free Iran” among a list of Trump’s supposed successes — a thin accomplishment given that Iran has never had a nuclear weapon and U.S. intelligence agencies determined as recently as last summer it was not pursuing one.

Within the first few days after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, right-wing media figures were eager to declare victory. Half a year later, that outcome remains easier said than done.

Whining Wingnuts Can't Figure Out How To Spin Trump's War Anymore

Whining Wingnuts Can't Figure Out How To Spin Trump's War Anymore

As President Donald Trump’s war on Iran extends into its sixth month, some figures on the right are recalibrating their messaging from an original demand for maximalist victory to something much more modest.

Although the war has created some fractures in right-wing media, at the outset of the conflict it had no shortage of boosters — either Iran hawks or MAGA hacks. Now, as the Iranian government has survived months of bombing and operationalized its previously unrealized control of the Strait of Hormuz, some of those pundits are scaling back their ambitions.

MAGA influencer and right-wing media weathervane Benny Johnson provides the clearest example of this trend. On March 12, Johnson, who initially was both skeptical of the war and giddy with the promise of U.S. world domination, offered a particularly Trump-ian rebranding proposal.

“Can we rename the Straits of Hormuz the Straits of America, please?” Johnson said. “Are we there yet? We should be there.”

Fast forward to July 26, with the public turning against the war and any endgame seemingly a distant prospect, and Johnson sounded quite different.

“If Iran oversees boats in the Strait of Hormuz, that doesn’t bother me one bit,” Johnson said. “I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I didn’t care about it ahead of time, and that’s where we were before the war, and I don’t care about it now really. I want — oil was less than $2 a gallon in January of 2026, so that’s kind of where my head’s at.”

Johnson’s about-face may be the most dramatic rhetorical retreat, but he’s not alone. Newsmax host Carl Higbie, who endorsed bombing Iran “back to the stone age” in late February, spent months praising the Trump administration’s plan for the war only to recently change his tune.

“Now, the bulk of the people in that press briefing room are so high on their own farts that they stick their nose in the air and [say] well, if I don’t know the plan, that means Trump doesn’t have a plan,” Higbie said on April 6.

“You know what?” Higbie added. “The Pentagon and Trump and the State [Department] — they owe us no explanation on what they plan to do.”

A chyron on his April 23 show read: “Legacy media falsely claims Trump has no plan w/ Iran.”

This is the highest — not to sound crass again — return on investment in military history,” Higbie said on June 17, while discussing the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.

But in the last few days, Higbie has started to express some doubts about the Trump administration’s larger strategy even as he continued to push for dangerous escalations.

“This is now a war — this is a turn of events in timeline,” Higbie said on July 23 in response to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asking Congress for additional military funds after four more U.S. service members were killed.

“You said you need this much more money,” Higbie continued. “So tell us what it buys us.”

“I will pay my taxes twice this year to help with that nut if you tell Congress that this is what we want to do and this is how we’re going to achieve it,” he added. “Like the first mission in Iran, Midnight Hammer — there was [an] objective, it was planned, there was action, and completion. And then you go get Congress to buy in and they declare war. … For God’s sakes, give those families on the tarmac today a reason their children died.”

The chyron read: “Define the mission.”

Like Johnson, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles has alternately expressed hesitancy about the war while also defending the Trump administration from accusations of “hypocrisy.” Still, on March 10 he was willing to dismiss the concerns of right-wing critics of the campaign to that point.

“As I’ve said from the beginning of the Iran war — very, very high stakes for President Trump,” Knowles said. “But as of now, all the ‘panicans’ predictions have been wrong. Like, all of them.”

But more recently, Knowles acknowledged the war’s deep and growing unpopularity in a monologue about the House of Representatives passing a war powers resolution in opposition to the conflict.

“It’s a leading indicator that the appetite for this war is waning, not just with the broader public but even among the legislators,” he said on July 24. “So I agree in principle it would be good to wrap-up the war, but this is the problem with war. … These situations can really spiral out of control.”

“It should be wrapped up, but there’s no end in sight,” Knowles concluded. “Because in war, your opponent gets a say.”

This shifting rhetoric shows the delicate balancing act right-wing media are engaged in: The hawks want to escalate and the hacks want to continue to ingratiate themselves with the administration, while even Trump voters are growing more opposed to another forever war.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters


How Often Did MAGA Media Proclaim 'Mission Accomplished' In Iran? Too Often

How Often Did MAGA Media Proclaim 'Mission Accomplished' In Iran? Too Often

Within days of President Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran in late February, right-wing media figures began predicting a short, easy conflict that would be over quickly. Major conservative pundits unilaterally declared in early March that the war was a “wrap-up mission at this point,” a “done deal,” and “winding down.” Instead, the war is about to enter its sixth month with no clear end in sight, with the potential for escalation seemingly everywhere.

Where right-wing media promised a cakewalk, the Trump administration has delivered a quagmire, as recent developments make clear. The U.S. military resumed striking targets in Iran in the middle of July, following the breakdown of a largely illusory ceasefire. Iranian authorities told The Associated Press that the recent wave of strikes have killed 50 and injured over 500. Over the weekend, the Pentagon announced the deaths of three U.S. service members, and The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is now on the verge of “all-out war with Iran after more troops are killed.” And according to The New York Times, the Defense Department has been withholding the full number of U.S. troops who have been wounded in the conflict.

CNBC reported that a maritime risk firm characterized the current state of the Strait of Hormuz as a “worst-case scenario,” with the key waterway nominally open but still a primary point of conflict between the two countries.

These grim assessments stand in stark contrast to the predictions Iran hawks made in the days after the U.S. and Israeli militaries began their joint campaign on February 28 — the pundits listed below may as well have unfurled a “Mission Accomplished” banner for all of their premature declarations of victory.

In early March, right-wing media figures predicted imminent end to Iran war

Although some in right-wing media expressed early skepticism of the war, there was no shortage of hacks (and hawks) who got on board immediately.

On March 3, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham set a tone that others would soon match. “We've already knocked out so much of their capability,” Ingraham said. “It looks like this is just a wrap-up mission at this point.”

Two days later, her colleague Greg Gutfeld speculated on The Five that “maybe there's just nobody who can declare surrender because they're dead. I don't know, but I don't see how this thing can continue much longer.”

The Five returned to the topic the next day. “Do not lie about the war,” host Jesse Watters shouted at his liberal colleague Jessica Tarlov. “You know the war is going well.”

Fox News contributor Tyrus Murdoch added: “I’m willing to say this is a done deal.”

Some prime-time hosts at right-wing network Newsmax took the same line.

“I think we're at the end of serious U.S. involvement in Iran,” said host Rob Finnerty on March 9.

The same night on the same network, Greg Kelly said, “This time next week, we may be able to declare victory and warn Iran, don't do it again. But it could be over.” Kelly’s comments were illustrated by a graphic that read “I Predict: War Over Soon.”

Finnerty doubled down the next night. “The war in Iran appears to be winding down,” he said. “I think it is.”

Also on March 10, Fox News’ Sean Hannity weighed in during his Premiere Radio Networks radio show. “I am a firm believer that this is going to end very quickly,” Hannity said.

As the month drew to a close, Hannity again saw the conflict’s end in sight, telling his radio audience, “It's going to be on the verge of wrapping up no later than three weeks from today is my prediction.”

That was on March 30.

Conservative pundits claimed in March that Trump had won the war

Sometimes right-wing talking heads went even further, not just claiming that the war would end soon but declaring that Trump was already the victor.

On March 5, Ingraham stated flatly: “Trump has already won in Iran.”

In response to a press briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 13, Heritage Foundation senior counselor James Carafano said, “The reality is the U.S. has already won this war, period. Mic drop. End of statement.”

Although Kelly’s “War Over Soon” prediction hadn’t come to pass, on March 16 the Newsmax host tried to speak that reality into existence. “I think we kind of just won the war,” Kelly said, adding: “I think we got this.”

Carafano echoed Kelly on March 23, arguing that “it does make sense for the U.S. to say, ‘Hey let's wind this down.’ Look, from America's perspective, dude, we’ve already won."

It’s now been at least three and a half months since these pundits made their various rosy predictions. Contrary to their Pollyannish analysis, the war appears to be expanding, as Iran continues to bomb U.S. military bases in the region and the Houthi militants in Yemen impose a blockade on Saudi Arabia to mirror Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

In light of these developments, a recent Fox News guest offered a different timeline, drawing inspiration from operations the U.S. military conducted after the 1991 Gulf War.

“I do expect that we're going to be there a long time,” said Robert Spalding, a retired Air Force general. “You know Operation Northern and Southern Watch went on for, you know, almost 20 years, I think.”

“I think this is going to be something similar,” Spalding continued. “We're going to have to stay there.”

Research contributions from Helena Hind, Isabella Corrao & Jane Lee

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

China Syndrome: White House Plots With Bannon To Seize Control Of Midterm Election

China Syndrome: White House Plots With Bannon To Seize Control Of Midterm Election

Over the last several weeks, the outlines of a plot have begun to emerge that could signal how President Donald Trump, along with MAGA media figures and activists, could attempt to severely curtail voting rights under the pretext of declaring a national emergency posed by China.

The details of the scheme remain publicly vague, and may not yet come to pass, but the short version looks something like this: First, the White House would declassify and release documents purporting to show foreign interference in U.S. elections, especially by the Chinese Communist Party.

Next, Trump would use that supposed “proof” of a stolen election to declare a national emergency, thereby — according to those pushing this idea — giving him extraordinary powers over the upcoming midterms. That move would serve as a way to advance the anti-voting rights measures in the SAVE America Act, like forcing voters to prove their citizenship, without having to actually pass the law — which Congress, so far at least, appears reluctant to do.

The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is a central node, attempting to advance the operation on his War Room podcast, aired on right-wing network Real America’s Voice (RAV), long a major source of misinformation about the 2020 election.

Bannon’s RAV colleague John Solomon, whose role in the plot appears to be running the declassification effort, was recently appointed to a White House “task force” into supposed election integrity. Solomon was Media Matters’ Misinformer of the Year in 2019 for his role in laundering misinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine through his opinion columns.

Also in the mix is Peter Schweizer, who founded the Government Accountability Institute with Bannon and has moved from spreading misinformation about the Clintons to claiming that China is taking over the United States by exploiting birthright citizenship.

Then there’s Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing lawyer who was on the January 2021 call when Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to tip the state his way. She referenced Schweizer in a June 20 appearance on War Room, positively paraphrasing an argument he made on his podcast acknowledging that much of the voting activity he wants to suppress is actually legal.

“Peter Schweizer put it pretty well last week in a podcast that he does with Eric Eggers, and the question they posed is: If fraud is made — if election fraud is made legal, is it still fraud?” Mitchell asked. “Because what's happened in California over the last decade is that the far-left Democrat, socialist, Marxists, communists have completely upended every vestige of election integrity.” (Bannon had teed her up by referencing the Los Angeles mayoral primary, claiming without evidence: “They stole it right in front of our face and laughed at us the entire time.")

Mitchell is supported by a loose array of election deniers who have called on Trump to issue an executive order to seize “king-like powers” over voting systems, supported by the national emergency decree.

Bill Pulte, the newly installed acting DNI, and his recently appointed chief of staff, former Republican National Committee official Christina Norton, also appear to figure heavily into the plan. On June 20, Bannon said Pulte’s role at DNI is “to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.” Ten days later, Bannon described Norton as “one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC” and said Pulte is “signaling where he's going on this” with her hiring, adding that “my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election."

The same day, NBC News reported that Solomon’s task force “is gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, so President Donald Trump can amplify new accusations about past elections.” In describing his unpaid role at the White House, Solomon said he will be releasing “some documents, some secrets you should know about when it comes to weaponization, election integrity, other things."

Solomon’s recent media footprint offers clues about what he is likely looking to find, declassify, and present — possibly out of context. The subhead of a May 6 article of Solomon’s states: “The evidence continues to stack up that the U.S. intel community sought to downplay China's actions in 2020 as Trump sought reelection.” Then, during a May 19 interview, he said: “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically."

The Supreme Court’s narrow June 30 decision to protect birthright citizenship could turbocharge the Bannon-Solomon-Pulte scheme, in part by providing fodder for anti-Chinese sentiment on the right. On Solomon’s website, Just The News, an article about the birthright citizenship case referenced Schweizer’s book and hyped the supposed China menace.

Birthright citizenship abuse via birth tourism, when foreign nationals travel to the United States on temporary visas specifically to give birth, is an issue that Trump addressed early in his second term.
Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer detailed this practice extensively in his 2026 book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” in which he described how China has industrialized the practice on a large scale through an organized industry.

Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute told FactCheck.org that “birth tourism is a very small occurrence – of the 3.6 million U.S. births annually, a tiny fraction is due to foreign women who are not regularly domiciled in the U.S. coming here for the purpose of giving birth to secure U.S. citizenship for their child.”

And as the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind noted: “Consulates have a ton of discretion under existing law to deny someone a visa. And suspicion of birth tourism _has_ served as a reason to deny visas in the past. If the problem is insufficient enforcement, good news, you can solve that problem without changing the law or Constitution!”

Bannon stated plainly on June 29 that Solomon’s “task force” and “also Pulte” would be central to creating a “predicate” for the declaration of a national emergency and subsequent executive order achieving the anti-voting rights goals of the SAVE America Act.

On June 30, Bannon interviewed another of his RAV colleagues, Wayne Allyn Root, who further elaborated what a national emergency declaration could look like.

“Stop talking about the SAVE Act and do a national security emergency for elections, which is the SAVE Act, which contains everything that's in the SAVE Act, Steve, and more and more,” Root said.

Just days earlier, on June 24, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass the stalled out SAVE America Act, which he referred to as a “National Emergency."

The “predicate” Bannon is hoping to manufacture could also be for other election initiatives the administration is working on — such as trying to force courts to give the administration access to various state voter rolls — an issue the administration is facing significant resistance to.

Whether this harebrained plot congeals into an active conspiracy to subvert the midterms remains to be seen, but given that Trump has already tried to overturn one election it would be a mistake not to take these rumblings seriously. There may indeed be an emergency — it’s just not the one that Bannon and company are talking about.

Pulte's Appointment Of RNC Election Conspiracy Theorist Shows His Hand

Pulte's Appointment Of RNC Election Conspiracy Theorist Shows His Hand

A newly installed top intelligence official in the Trump administration appeared on a so-called election integrity call with leading figures in the election denial movement in 2024, and has been repeatedly praised by the MAGA activist who coordinated the meeting.

The New York Times reported on June 26 that former Republican National Committee official Christina Norton would serve as chief of staff in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under Bill Pulte, its acting director. From the Times:

Mr. Pulte’s decision to put Ms. Norton in the powerful post is likely to further fuel concerns among Democrats, intelligence officials and state and local election administrators that he intends to focus on hunting for evidence of election fraud at the behest of President Trump.
Mr. Trump has said Mr. Pulte is expected to work on election security matters, prompting fears by some officials that he could try to influence the midterm elections. Other officials expect him to declassify documents related to issues that have preoccupied Mr. Trump, including the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
While at the R.N.C., Ms. Norton oversaw a poll watcher program that included conservative conspiracy theorists, including Jack Posobiec, who helped spread the false “Pizzagate” stories about child abuse at a restaurant in Washington.

In Norton’s capacity overseeing the RNC’s so-called election integrity initiative, she attended an April 4, 2024, zoom call coordinated by Steve Stern, a right-wing podcaster who regularly convenes such meetings.

Stern has been a central figure in what former Trump adviser Steve Bannon refers to as the “precinct strategy,” a way for grassroots MAGA activists to participate directly in election administration — and potentially undermine the results.

During Norton’s presentation on the 2024 call, she cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

“Certainly, there is no question that in 2020 Democrats and their far-left allies exploited the pandemic to disregard election laws on the books,” Norton said. “States altered their voting procedures in the middle of an election year, in the middle of a pandemic, without time for meaningful adoption of safeguards.” (There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.)

Stern repeatedly praised Norton over the course of 2024, both before and after Trump’s win, in appearances on Bannon’s War Room podcast. On the day of the April 4 call, Stern said Norton was working “hard on letting the people know that she's really in the game,” adding: “Christina Norton's phenomenal."

Bannon praised Norton’s presence on the call and the emerging “symbiotic relationship” between “new management of the RNC” and outside groups.

In October 2024, Stern appeared on War Room again and claimed Trump won in 2020. “We need to see how these people are going to cheat because he can win the election like he did in 2020 and lose because they're going to bring in all these votes,” Stern said, adding: “Christina Norton is doing a fantastic job."

After Trump’s victory the following month, Stern detailed the close working relationship between Norton at the RNC and his network of so-called election integrity activists.

“Not only did we get out to vote and get out to vote early, but we protected the vote with Christina Norton from the RNC, which took me a lot of time to work with her, but we did it,” Stern said. He added: “I got a gold star from Christina Norton, who we're going to try to get on tomorrow, from the RNC, who helped us so much."

A former U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW that Norton’s appointment “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.” Neither Pulte nor Norton appear to have any relevant experience in intelligence or national security.

Norton also served as Pulte’s top aide at the federal housing agency he oversees. In that role, Pulte has used the agency to target Trump’s political opponents, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

Bannon has been a major booster of Pulte’s, suggesting that the acting director of national intelligence would “get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election,” possibly through a theoretical upcoming “task force.” Bannon also supported Trump’s decision to pull the nomination of Jay Clayton to head ODNI in a move that cleared the way for Pulte to take the role in an acting capacity.

Trump has staffed the government with prominent election deniers, including MAGA activist and right-wing media figure Heather Honey, who now works for the office within the Department of Homeland Security that oversees elections.

Update (6/30/26): One day after this blog was published, Bannon praised Pulte’s hiring of Norton as “one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff.” Bannon said Pulte is “signaling where he's going on this,” adding that “my understanding is that there is [sic] going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Right-Wing Media Joins White House Push For Regime Change In Cuba

Right-Wing Media Joins White House Push For Regime Change In Cuba

Right-wing media figures are helping administration officials lay the groundwork for regime change in Cuba in what would potentially be the latest unprovoked act of military aggression by the Trump White House.

MAGA media figures have long embraced a Trumpy version of the Monroe Doctrine, the notion that the United States has the right to exert dominance over the Western Hemisphere. As the second Trump administration has pursued more openly imperialist ambitions, many conservative pundits have cheered on the White House every step of the way, including when the administration started to threaten Cuba.

If Trump does attack Cuba, it may be an attempt to replicate what he sees as the successful operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, the former president of Venezuela — in contrast to the administration’s increasingly unpopular war on Iran.

On May 20, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller appeared on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime to discuss the Justice Department’s indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro.

“Today, finally, accountability is coming for Castro,” Miller said, before offering the administration’s case for escalation.

“Cuba, positioned just a 45-minute flight from American shores, has been a staging ground for America's adversaries for decades,” Miller said. “It is the last outpost of communism. It is the last outpost of the Cold War. American presidents for generations have tried to deal with the problem, the threat of this communist foothold just miles away from American shores.”

“And President Trump,” Miller argued, “has brought us closer than ever to the day when Cuba will be free and when Cuba will no longer be a threat to America but Cuba will be a friend and partner to America, which is essential for our national security.”

Watters responded: “Absolutely, and it will be a historic achievement if that does happen.”

A week earlier, Fox’s Sean Hannity interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for regime change in Cuba, aboard Air Force One.

“It’s my personal opinion, you cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it. That’s what’s going to have to change,” Rubio said.

Hannity agreed and speculated about the possibilities for U.S. capital to flood the country. “If these people are not in charge, I mean, I can envision American wealth and companies — it could become the destination.”

Amid a report that the Cuban government was considering using drones to attack the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay or Key West, Florida, MAGA streamer Benny Johnson speculated the leaked intelligence could be a “pretext” for launching a war — though he appeared to support the administration’s overall goal.

“I don't buy this,” Johnson said. “Right? Like, why would Cuba ever consider doing this unless it was a false flag — unless it's a false flag that's getting set up by the American administration, and that's what I believe that this is.”

Despite acknowledging the intelligence could be false, Johnson concluded the segment by seemingly endorsing military action.

“Expect this to pop off any day now,” he said. “Hopefully, Iran signs a peace deal, and then we can get Cuba done, as they say.”

For months, some of the loudest voices suggesting regime change in Cuba have come from right-wing Spanish-language media, a trend that has continued into May.

On May 5, Fox Noticias host Andrea Linares said that before there could be any foreign investment in Cuba, “there would have to be a total regime change.”

On May 19, Augustin Acosta, co-host of Actualidad Radio's Cada Tarde, argued that if Trump “believes he can fix Cuba while leaving the regime in power, the president is either completely wrong or has started to lose his mind.”

“In Cuba there is nothing that can be fixed — absolutely nothing that can be fixed — while leaving the dictatorship in power,” Acosta added. “That is absolutely impossible.”

Still, there are already some signs of discontent in right-wing media. Newsmax host Rob Finnerty questioned the wisdom of “another foreign entanglement” in addition to the Venezuela operation and the Iran war, which has caused gas prices to skyrocket across the country.

“According to two new polls — and say what you want about the polling, but it's not good,” Finnerty said. “People are clearly losing their patience.”

He added: “I think people struggle with how this is America First when gas is $4.55 a gallon right now.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Amid Faltering Ceasefire, Fox News Personalities Push To Resume Bombing

Amid Faltering Ceasefire, Fox News Personalities Push To Resume Bombing

Some Fox News figures have continued to agitate for the Trump administration to resume bombing Iran amid continuing, if unclear, negotiations to maintain the tenuous ceasefire.

On April 8, the United States and Iran entered into a ceasefire agreement, though the countries have exchanged low-level attacks in recent days. On May 3, President Donald Trump announced a new phase of the campaign, dubbed Project Freedom, which would provide some U.S. support to ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, though the degree of its implementation has been difficult to discern. Separately, the Pentagon has reportedly drawn up strike plans that would likely include bombing Iranian infrastructure targets, acts which could constitute war crimes, should Trump decide to carry out new attacks.

Top Fox News figures have supported the war since even before Trump launched it on February 28 alongside Israel, a position largely unchanged across the network in the ensuing months. As recently as April 29, Fox personalities were calling for Trump to restart the war, a drumbeat that has only gotten louder since.

On May 8, Fox News senior security analyst Jack Keane, a longtime supporter of attacking Iran, called for Trump and Israel to escalate their offensive campaigns.

“In my judgment, I think we got to see reality for what it is,” Keane said. “We should go back and execute Project Freedom, take the Strait of Hormuz away from the Iranians, secure it and open it for navigation and also at some point get some assistance in doing that.”

“And then we have to unleash the Israelis," Keane continued. “They have a very comprehensive bombing campaign that they’re going to conduct that deals with leadership, it deals with energy, it deals with all the weapons systems we still have to go through.”

“We would be able to do some selective bombing in support of returning to combat operations, while the main effort for the United States would be to open up the Straits of Hormuz,” Keane added.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, a major Iran war hawk, also argued that the United States and Israel should resume bombing Iran in lieu of continued negotiations.

“It seems as though the Iranians feel like they survived and will emerge stronger currently,” Kilmeade said. “And the fact is they haven’t gotten back to us on the 14-point plan in two days.”

“I think they’re almost daring us to resume strikes,” he continued. “At which time, we understand that there’s a plan in place for Israelis to hit a lot of locations — they have more air power actually than us in the region. And I think we could handle the strait and maybe tell Iran who’s really in charge. Perhaps we need that."

Kilmeade’s co-host, Ainsley Earhardt, agreed.

“I like what Gen. Jack Keane said: Take it — take the strait, open it, and unleash the Israelis,” she said.

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

Right-Wing Media Sparring Over Iran War's Impact On Fertilizer And Food Supply

Right-Wing Media Sparring Over Iran War's Impact On Fertilizer And Food Supply

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — which has been largely but not entirely supported by major right-wing media outlets — is threatening to upend not just international oil markets but also world food production, with fertilizer costs soaring just as farmers in the global north enter the spring planting season.

Some figures in right-wing media have taken notice, alarmed that a spike in domestic food prices could be disastrous for President Donald Trump and Republicans in the fall midterms. Globally, poor countries are set to take the brunt of the disruption, which could trigger famine or political instability in especially vulnerable areas.

The right-wing comments on the potential looming food crisis largely break along two lines. The first is pro-war voices, mostly at Fox and Newsmax, who have argued that Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz (the primary driver of the fertilizer shortages) is proof that the United States and Israel should escalate the war to ensure that Tehran can’t close the passage in the future. On the other side are figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly who have been more critical of the war effort and now cite rising prices as one reason to oppose it.

According to the United Nations, about one-third of global seaborne fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Gulf countries export about half of the world’s urea and 30 percent of its ammonia, common fertilizers that farmers need for their crops. CNBC reported on March 25 that “urea and ammonia prices had surged by around 50 percent and 20 percent, respectively, since the war began,” citing a note from Oxford Economics’ Alpine Macro. Rising costs for fertilizer and oil could both cause food prices to rise, especially in poor countries, but will almost certainly affect costs in the U.S. as well. There are second-order concerns as well, as low crop yields for corn and other staples used to feed livestock could make beef much more expensive in the coming months.

Pro-war pundits use fertilizer crisis to justify escalation against Iran

Several figures in right-wing media have opportunistically latched onto the looming food crisis as another reason to escalate the war.

In a March 26 segment focused on the rising costs from the war, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade — a major booster of Trump’s campaign against Iran — praised the president’s decision to send additional troops to the region, possibly to prepare for a ground invasion.

“We’ve got the 82nd Airborne coming in, two Marine ships coming in, 5,000 Marines — it looks like we’re looking to ratchet this up to bring this thing to a rapid close and get those prices down,” Kilmeade said.

He then listed the commodities that normally flow through the Strait of Hormuz, including fertilizer, to underline the importance of Trump taking further military action.

“If we just look at how susceptible we are in the Strait of Hormuz, look at what they do in terms of the amount of oil that passes through there, helium that passes through there, fertilizer that passes through there,” Kilmeade said.

Fox News host Jesse Watters argued on March 24 that “Iran is blocking the flow of fertilizer — a lot of people are going to go hungry if the regime doesn't surrender.”

Watters has previously advocated for regime collapse in Iran and for the United States to seize Kharg Island, a key node for Iranian oil exports. (Notably, Watters failed to mention the Strait of Hormuz prior to the launch of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.)

Fox Business host Taylor Riggs appeared on the March 19 episode of Fox & Friends to discuss the effect of the strait’s closing on global commodity prices despite high levels of domestic energy production. “That’s where things get tricky,” Riggs said. “We do import diesel, for example, or things like nitrogen for fertilizer. We’re in spring planting season."

Riggs’ solution to the commodity price spike is to “get the snake off of that head of Iran,” which would “make the world a safer place” and urged viewers to “let that play out and see what oil prices do from there — it is painful in the meantime though, I recognize that."

Retired Air Force brigadier general and Newsmax contributor Blaine Holt argued on the March 23 episode of Rob Schmitt Tonight that the Iranian government “has to go away, because if we let the regime survive they’ll be revenge-minded mullahs for the rest of our lives."

Later in the segment, he explained that “the straits right now is the most important thing, and it's not just the oil markets, it's actually the food, Rob. It's the sulfur and the urea that needs to get out of the straits so that in planting season, which is right now, they can make that fertilizer."

“We’re setting up for a fall famine if we can’t bust those straits open really, really soon,” Holt added. “This is extremely important, and if the Marines need to secure Kharg [Island], well then they’ll do just that."

Some in right-wing media, however, have claimed that rising costs are proof the war was a bad idea from the outset.

Right-wing media voices warn of higher costs from the war

Fox News has been a primary driver of Trump’s war against Iran even prior to its launch, but there have been some lonely voices on the network warning the conflict could make life in the United States more unaffordable.

On the March 21 edition of Saturday in America, John Byrnes of the Concerned Veterans for America argued that “there’s issues with affordability, oil prices and fertilizer prices, the stock market tanked yesterday,” suggesting Trump “would have done himself a bigger favor if he'd made a better case for the need for imminence” in attacking Iran.

Nominally liberal Fox host Harold Ford similarly raised the issue of affordability and paired it with muted criticism of the Trump administration’s ability to “convey” what “a win looks like” to allied countries.

“How do we police the Strait of Hormuz?” Ford asked on March 19. “We shouldn't kid ourselves. The reason this is as big of an issue as it is is because gas prices are up, it’s because food prices are up."

Outside of Fox, Iran war critics Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson have raised similar alarms.

During the March 19 episode of his podcast, Carlson laid the blame for the war squarely at Israel’s feet and argued that the conflict isn’t in the interests of people in the United States.

“Increasingly as the days pass, it becomes obvious to everyone why it's not good for us,” Carlson said. “And if you don't believe that then check the prices of food and fuel and everything you buy, because everything you buy is dependent on the price of energy and the production of fertilizer, both of which are affected almost immediately by the closure of the Straits of Hormuz."

During her March 13 episode with pundit Saagar Enjeti, Kelly discussed the ripple effects of the war on rising oil costs, especially diesel fuel. “It’s not only going to hurt people who drive cars with diesel engines, it’s going to hurt the entire world economy,” Kelly said.

Enjeti expanded on the point, describing how fertilizer shortages could have global ramifications. “Fertilizer is skyrocketing in price,” he said. “A significant portion of it actually comes through the Straits of Hormuz — already our own farmers are reporting spot price increases of up to 70%. All of us know that’s going to be passed on to us with food."

“What's actually even more tragic is that what that means is that while Americans and First World countries will just have to pay a lot for food, Third World countries will actually go without," Enjeti continued. “We could have a full-blown crop shortage if this war continues going on.”

The Trump administration now appears to be on the verge of staging some sort of ground operation on Iranian territory, and opening the Strait or Hormuz looks to be a key objective. Iran could respond by mining the strait, a process that CBS News reports is already in its early stages. Iran might also ask the Houthis in Yemen, who until now have stayed on the sidelines, to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, another critical waterway for global shipping.

Should any of those situations come to pass, the divisions over the war that are already present in right-wing media are likely to intensify — and those calling for escalation will almost certainly double down and demand Trump push for further military confrontation with Iran.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters


Fox Hosts Urge Flooding Iran With Small Arms To Incite Regime Change (Or Civil War)

Fox Hosts Urge Flooding Iran With Small Arms To Incite Regime Change (Or Civil War)

Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, and Jesse Watters have suggested flooding Iran with small arms to incite regime change, a reckless proposal that even some of their guests have rejected.

The United States and Israel last week launched an unprovoked war on Iran with shifting stated goals, one of which is regime change — or, perhaps more accurately, regime collapse. That could take several forms, including a mass uprising of the population in Iran or possibly the introduction of proxy forces, such as Kurdish militias, whom the CIA is reportedly working to arm. (The United States has a decadeslong history of encouraging Kurds across several countries to rise up and then betraying them.)

The risks of such a development are numerous, the most obvious being the threat of sending Iran into a spiral of violence that could turn into a civil war like in Syria after the Arab Spring or Iraq during the U.S. occupation. The United States poured weapons into both of those countries, helping to fuel the violence and worsen the internal conflicts.

Although such an outcome would appear disastrous on its face, there is ample evidence that the United States and Israel want to turn Iran from a regional power into a failed state incapable of countering their influence. Flooding the country with weapons could do that, and Fox News personalities are leading the charge.

Host Sean Hannity is the network’s most vocal supporter of the idea, both on his Fox prime-time show and on his radio program, which airs on Premiere Radio Networks.

“I already know” that arming Iranians is “part of the plan,” Hannity said on his March 2 radio show, telling a caller that “if you have millions of Iranians that, in fact, do have weapons and they rise up against the remnants of this regime — and there's not a lot — or for those Revolutionary Guard forces that will not put their weapons down, there's only one way to get rid of them.” (Whether Hannity’s claim to “already know” President Donald Trump’s war plans was bluster or not, the administration has been leaking insider information to its allies in right-wing media.)

Hannity returned to the topic several times during that show. “The Iranian people need to have elections, and they need to get armed, and they need to be able to fight back” against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he said. Later, he added, “I’m hoping that the students, the people in Iran, I’m hoping that they get the arms for any remaining Revolutionary Guard forces that won't lay down their weaponry.”

“You can't win a revolution with a slingshot — at some point they are going to need to be armed to take out the remaining loyalists,” he said the following day.

That evening, Hannity broached the idea on his Fox show during an interview with network contributor and retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the war’s most vocal cheerleaders outside the Trump administration.

“Do we need to arm the civilians that had taken to the streets, that were being mowed down by the tens of thousands?” Hannity asked.

“In terms of arming the people themselves, I would pause on doing that,” Keane said. “I wouldn’t rush into that.” He added, “I don’t think just arming them and creating that — upgunning that level of violence is what we need.”

Seemingly unsatisfied with that answer, Hannity later in the same show asked retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw the arming of U.S.-backed “death squads” in Iraq during the so-called surge, what he thought of the idea.

“Should part of the plan be to arm the people that have been slaughtered on the streets that were looking for freedom and change, so that it won’t take any American or Israeli forces?” Hannity asked. “I’ve got to believe there is going to be holdovers that are loyal to the former regime.”

“Well, I agree with my old boss and mentor and friend, Gen. Jack Keane, who earlier said that he’s not certain about that given there’s no organization there.”

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade has floated the idea too.

“I just wonder at some point is the CIA or Mossad going to be able to arm the people?” Kilmeade said on March 3. “If you arm the people so they're not slaughtered in the streets, that would begin to get the IRGC’s attention.”

“We've got to find a way to arm that population and open up these prisons,” Kilmeade said on March 4, referring to Kurds in Iran.

His colleague Jesse Watters made a similar suggestion.

“Trump has even been on the phone with the Kurds," Watters said on March 3. “We might be able to arm them and use them as boots on the ground.” (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, formerly a co-host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, said on March 4 that “none of our objectives are premised on the support of the arming of any particular force.”)

The Trump administration has done such a poor job explaining its war on Iran that even right-wing media allies are having a hard time articulating the conflict’s larger strategy and goals. Predicting the direction any war will take is a fool’s errand, but it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know that flooding Iran with weapons is a recipe for disaster and potentially state collapse. For Fox News hosts, that appears to be an acceptable outcome.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Fake Journalist Nick Shirley Recycles A Debunked 'Voter Fraud' Narrative

Fake Journalist Nick Shirley Recycles A Debunked 'Voter Fraud' Narrative

A new video by MAGA provocateur Nick Shirley purports to expose voter fraud in California, but in fact it’s little more than a repackaging of false narratives spread over a decade ago by right-wing operative James O'Keefe. In both cases, the right-wing influencers suggest that fraud could exist without actually exposing any, relying on innuendo and hypotheticals rather than evidence.

O’Keefe created the template for undercover videos meant to expose and embarrass liberal organizations and causes. His old videos, like Shirley’s new ones, were frequently debunked in real time, but they nevertheless served a role in providing fuel to conservative content creators hungry to stoke outrage about perceived liberal excesses. Shirley’s repackaging shouldn’t be surprising given the incentives for young, MAGA-aligned influencers to make a name for themselves in a crowded field. But the original claims didn't provoke any policy changes — reasonably so, given that they were bogus — so Shirley's repackaging has little to offer beyond a hope that new consumers take the bait.

Shirley gained prominence in recent months following a so-called investigation into fraud in Minneapolis day care centers. Although there were some real instances of fraud within the city’s social services, local news and prosecutors had already exposed and investigated many instances of wrong-doing. Still, The New York Times referred to Shirley as having “spurred the federal crackdown on Minneapolis.”

Once the right-wing’s most identifiable creator of sting-style — often deliberately misleading — exposés, O’Keefe’s star has since somewhat fallen. In 2010, O’Keefe founded Project Veritas, and over more than a decade the organization produced videos meant to discredit perceived liberal organizations, often through tactics such as manipulation and deceptive editing. According to Rolling Stone, in 2023 O’Keefe “either left or was pushed out of his own company … depending on whom you ask.” He has since tried to reestablish himself in the right-wing media ecosystem, including by creating an award in 2025 for the so-called citizen journalists who have followed in his footsteps. The first recipient was Nick Shirley.

Shirley, like O’Keefe, is promoting the possibility of fraud that he hasn't actually found

Shirley’s video is one of many from right-wing influencers, such as Benny Johnson, decrying supposedly rampant voter fraud in California, and it includes many examples and myths that have already been debunked. One of the most prominent narratives in Shirley’s video, which was already debunked when Johnson spread it, is that voters whose registrations list central locations, like an abandoned building, as an address are a clear sign of fraud. However, as Democracy Docket notes, California law “gives people experiencing homelessness the flexibility to use any location to register to vote. As long as unhoused residents can describe the place where they spend most of their time — whether it’s an address, a cross street, or a vacant lot — they can legally list it as their address on their voter registration form.”

Another one of Shirley's key examples of “fraud” in the video is a previously reported story about a woman who registered her dog to vote and cast two ballots for him in 2021 and 2022, only one of which was counted. The woman, a registered Republican, self-reported her crimes and is facing six years in prison.

The premise of Shirley’s 20-minute video is that there could be fraud in California without stricter voter ID laws and “with the state receiving millions of illegal migrants, the opportunities for fraud now are even higher.” California does require a valid ID or Social Security number when registering to vote or when voting for the first time after registering by mail, and extensive research has shown that noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is exceedingly rare and extremely unlikely to impact elections. Yet Shirley’s video has been picked up by others in right-wing media, including livestreamer Tim Pool, former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit.

Had someone just awoken from a decade-long coma, they might find these types of claims quite familiar. In 2012, O’Keefe attempted to show how easy it was to commit voter fraud in a state without strict voter ID laws via a video titled “Dead people receive ballots in NH primary,” which claims that conspirators could use the names of the deceased to cast fraudulent ballots to steal an election. But, as Media Matters noted at the time, the video “actually demonstrates just how difficult it would be to pull off such a plot.”

Although it’s true that making sure ballot rolls are accurate is important, O’Keefe’s stunt only showed that without knowing how many votes were needed, the conspirators would need to engage in a massive plot and subsequent cover-up to make sure they had covered the spread. It would be an enormous undertaking. O’Keefe provided no evidence that such a scheme existed for the simple reason that there was no such plot.

In another one of O’Keefe’s “gotcha” videos on voter fraud, a Project Veritas employee almost obtains a ballot meant for registered voter Eric Holder, then the U.S. attorney general. Project Veritas marketed the video as a slam dunk, claiming it had “proven” fraud occurred while in reality no vote was cast and no fraud occurred. The manufactured stunt, like Shirley’s escapades in California, was another senseless attempt to rally people behind more restrictive voter ID laws.

Though Shirley’s claims about California include some different details from O’Keefe and Project Veritas’ claims, the gist is the same: Both attempt to prove “voter fraud” and fail to show any actual fraud being committed. Such right-wing misinformation has been debunked for years while the truth is still that fraud is just not happening at the scale they claim.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Immigrants Accused Of Attack On ICE Officer

Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Immigrants Accused Of Attack On ICE Officer

In mid-January, right-wing media figures seized on a story that could serve as a narrative reset after an

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. Amid rising backlash to the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation across Minnesota, MAGA pundits hyped claims from the Department of Homeland Security that Venezuelan immigrants had attacked federal agents with a shovel and broomstick. Federal agents shot in response, the story went, wounding one of the men accused in the attack.

Since then, those claims have totally fallen apart, and on February 12 prosecutors asked the presiding judge to dismiss the case with prejudice. The prosecutor wrote that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations” put forward by the government in official filings and testimony.

Right-wing media coverage of the story was unhinged, and it followed a clear, established pattern of hyping dubious initial government claims that would later turn out to be false.

As news of the incident broke on January 14, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin called in to Sean Hannity’s show to read a DHS statement he’d been given “literally 45 seconds ago” and to lay the foundation for the coverage to come, a role he often plays in the conservative media ecosystem.

“While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle,” Melugin read. “As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broomstick.”

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life,” Melugin continued.

The narrative was set, and the next morning Fox News’ Fox & Friends weighed in on the story.

“You come at these guys and these women with a shovel and if you are being apprehended and try to run away or drive over them, you will be featured in retaliation videos,” said host Brian Kilmeade. “That's what this is about."

Kilmeade’s co-host, Steve Doocy, also bought the government’s line. “You cannot hit a cop with a shovel or a broom. You just can't do that. It is against the law,” Doocy said. “It is terrible when anybody gets shot. But, unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize, if you break the law -- when you're breaking the law, there's going to be repercussions.”

Co-host Ainsley Earhart suggested capital punishment should be on the table. “When we were growing up, if you harmed a police officer, if you killed a police officer, in South Carolina you got the electric chair,” Earhart said. “When we were growing up, you didn't go after police with your car. You listened to what they said.”

Guest Trey Gowdy, who hosts another Fox show, said the supposed attack and the broader resistance to ICE’s presence gave President Donald Trump “all the justification” he needed to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, thereby deploying active military units against civilians.

The tenor of the coverage was similar elsewhere, and sometimes even more irresponsible.

On the podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Kevin Posobiec — brother of MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec — said an immigrant was “shot in the leg because he was trying to kill an ICE agent with a shovel.”

At The Daily Wire, host Matt Walsh claimed that after a foot chase, “the illegal alien began attacking the officers and then two individuals, apparently family members of this person, came out of a nearby apartment and began ambushing the officers with a shovel and a broom handle.”

Walsh called it “another clear-cut, totally justified shooting by law enforcement.”

Walsh’s colleague, Michael Knowles, said, “The poor ICE agents now getting ambushed — they take out shovels, they start beating this guy with a shovel, and, so, luckily, happily, the ICE agent was able to get his gun out and shoot the Venezuelan.”

Although the exact details of what happened in the incident remain unclear, the prosecutor’s own words make it plain that the government's account was false. Less than two weeks after the shooting, two Border Patrol agents would shoot and kill Alex Pretti. Right-wing media tried to justify that shooting as well.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

As Right Splits Over Neo-Nazi Fuentes, Steve Bannon Signals His Dark Affinities

As Right Splits Over Neo-Nazi Fuentes, Steve Bannon Signals His Dark Affinities

Podcaster and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon indirectly signaled his support for Tucker Carlson and those who defended him after his friendly interview with white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes created a massive rift within conservative media.

On Wednesday, Bannon invited former Heritage Foundation operative Ryan Neuhaus to appear on his influential War Room podcast, ostensibly to discuss the cost of living crisis facing young people in the United States. Left unsaid was Neuhaus’ central role defending Carlson’s October 27 interview with Fuentes, which was a predictable attempt by the former Fox News prime-time star to sanitize and amplify Fuentes’ antisemitic beliefs.

Still, Bannon’s signal to the more plugged-in, online segment of his audience was clear, even if shrouded in plausible deniability: Neuhaus, and by extension Carlson and Fuentes, are welcome inside of the MAGA tent

The November 12 War Room segment was not the first time Bannon has weighed in on the split. On October 31, Bannon responded to conservative backlash directed at Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who had released a statement — which Roberts later said had been written by his then-chief of staff Neuhaus — reiterating Roberts’ longstanding friendship with Carlson and criticizing the “venomous coalition” of “bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda” now seeking to “cancel” him over the Fuentes interview.

While some conservative commentators saw Roberts’ remarks as embracing antisemitism, Bannon saw things differently.

“For Tucker having Nick Fuentes on, they wanted to crush Tucker,” Bannon said. “I think Tucker's solid as a rock.”

“There was a meltdown because Tucker had Nick Fuentes on for an interview,” he added. “I just don't get it.”

Roberts’ video has thrown Heritage into a state of panic and disarray. In an apparent attempt to mitigate the damage, Roberts distanced himself from his own words, claiming they’d been written by Neuhaus but hadn’t been circulated or vetted beyond that. By November 4, Neuhaus was out at Heritage.

Over the course of the controversy, Neuhaus has repeatedly defended himself and Carlson’s interview on X (formerly Twitter).

In what appears to be Neuhaus’ first post about the topic, on October 28 he wrote in support of the interview by arguing, “We need to reach young men.”

On October 30, Neuhaus reposted Roberts’ video — which clarified that Heritage was not “distancing” itself from Carlson — commenting: “God bless @KevinRobertsTX. We are so fortunate to have him serve as a leader representing the interests of the American people.”

God bless @KevinRobertsTX . We are so fortunate to have him serve as a leader representing the interests of the American people.

Citation

From Ryan Neuhaus' account on X/TwitterOn November 10, Neuhaus wrote: “Masks are coming off every day now and the gatekeeping strategy of Buckley is dying fast,” seemingly referencing the myth — still held as gospel among many on the right — that National Review founder William F. Buckley worked to purge antisemites from the conservative movement. “This is not only a clarifying exercise for those paying close attention, but enables a legitimate and unified future within the MAGA coalition,” he continued.

Following Neuhaus’ appearance on Wednesday, the official War Room X account posted a clip of the interview.

“Love the @Bannons_WarRoom posse,” Neuhaus responded. “It was a privilege to be on air today.”

Am

Steve Bannon

Bannon Outlines MAGA Plan To Suppress Votes And Subvert 2026  Elections

War Room host and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon this week spelled out a vision of how MAGA media could attempt to subvert the 2026 midterm elections, including by advocating for the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at polling places, extreme Congressional redistricting, and a mail-in voting ban.

Bannon’s proposed playbook is an evolution of the MAGA movement’s central ideological myth, which asserts that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. This load-bearing fantasy supports any number of related policies, including MAGA media’s oft-repeated threat that every immigrant who came to the United States without authorization during the Biden administration must be deported.

It’s only a matter of time before election denial again becomes ubiquitous in right-wing media, as it did in the run-up to the 2022 midterms and prior to the 2024 general election. Beyond false claims about noncitizen voting, right-wing pundits also spread conspiracy theories in 2020 about Dominion voting machines and wrongly asserted that some votes had been flipped in 2024.

This history is key to understanding the moves that the Trump White House and MAGA media are making in anticipation of the 2026 midterms with the goal of cementing power through a host of anti-democratic means, including:

  • Sending federal police, the National Guard, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to occupy liberal cities like an invading army.
  • Seeking to ban mail-in voting.
  • Pushing for unprecedented, mid-decade Congressional redistricting efforts.
  • Attempting to purge voter rolls and suppress turnout by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
  • Calling for a mid-decade census that would exclude people in the United States without authorization, which experts have argued would be unconstitutional.

Bannon laid out MAGA media’s theory of the case during his Tuesday morning show.

The Trump administration must “get these elections squared away, for once and all,” Bannon said, adding, “No mail-in ballots.”

A day earlier, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” (Trump’s claim that voting machines are unreliable is false.)

Bannon then escalated his rhetoric, demanding that ICE agents enforce voter ID measures in cities throughout the country, seemingly without regard to local and state laws.

“They're petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we're taking control of the cities, there's going to be ICE officers near polling places,” Bannon said. “You damn right.”

“If you don't have an ID — if you're not a citizen — you're not voting,” he said.

Bannon’s threat is not idle, given the Trump administration’s posture toward some of the country’s biggest cities. In June, Trump deployed ICE agents to Los Angeles to carry out workplace raids, subsequently calling in the National Guard for additional repressive power. Then in August, Trump took over Washington’s local police department and surged federal police on the city’s streets. Once again, Trump sent in the National Guard; Republican governors lined up to provide their state’s troops to serve his ends. Trump has also threatened to deploy National Guard troops to New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, and Oakland, and has directed ICE to ramp up deportations in cities run by Democrats.

Some of Bannon’s allies have attempted to suppress voter turnout by monitoring ballot drop boxes and otherwise harassing election workers. Now, as the Trump administration prepares to hire an additional 10,000 ICE agents thanks to a newly passed Republican budget, Bannon’s demand that immigration cops stalk polling places doesn’t seem far-fetched.

Already, election denial activist Jenny Beth Martin and her group, Tea Party Patriots, are going on tour to promote the SAVE Act, an anti-voting rights bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Martin’s group sponsored a rally on January 6, 2021, and in 2024 she bragged that she was helping to train poll watchers for the election that year.

In his Tuesday morning monologue, Bannon also called for a “maximalist policy” on redrawing Congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterms instead of waiting until the end of the decade for the completion of the census. Trump initiated the fight, calling for Texas to redraw its maps to produce five more Republican seats in the House of Representatives. Some Democratic governors have matched Trump’s gambit, saying they’ll attempt to do the same in their own states.

In addition to Texas, Bannon called for “Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, [and] Ohio,” to create new Republican seats through extreme gerrymandering in order to protect Trump from possible impeachment should Democrats win back the House. Trump has “a lot more than a year and a half's worth of work left,” Bannon said. “He's got more than this term and beyond.”

Bannon reiterated his threats on Wednesday, tying them explicitly to the midterms.

“Remember, for 2026, the mid-decade census that has to be right this time,” Bannon said. “No illegal aliens. You’ve got to get the algorithms right. And the collection — all the mistakes that we had. Also, the redistricting.”

“The last is the mail-in ballots,” Bannon said.

“And the left is sitting there going, well gosh, they take away mail-in ballots, people are going to have to show up, they’re going to have ICE agents around, people are going to be so afraid, intimidated, they’re going to be arrested,” Bannon added. “Well, hey, if you’re an illegal alien you shouldn’t be going to the polls anyway.”

On Wednesday, the Texas House passed a new redistricting map expected to yield an additional five Republican seats. Trump celebrated the result in a post on Truth Social, adding that if Republicans “STOP MAIL-IN VOTING” and “go to PAPER BALLOTS,” Republicans will “will pick up 100 more seats, and the CROOKED game of politics is over.”

The MAGA movement’s attacks on immigrants, voting rights, and cities they don’t control are all attempts to further entrench Trump’s political power and eliminate any possible checks or balances on it. Right-wing media figures are salivating at the opportunity to punish their opponents. It’s incumbent on legacy media to tell the whole story and draw these connections. After all, Bannon and his fellow travelers in MAGA media are very open about their playbook.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

How Fox News Feeds Fake Data On Migrant Arrests To Gullible Viewers

How Fox News Feeds Fake Data On Migrant Arrests To Gullible Viewers

Right-wing media have worked symbiotically with President Donald Trump’s administration to manufacture false media narratives of immigrant criminality and to justify subsequent crackdowns on those communities. A recent segment on Fox Business’ Mornings With Maria Bartiromo perfectly illustrates this dynamic, as guest host Cheryl Casone enabled a Homeland Security spokesperson to uncritically spread a baseless statistic to bolster the administration’s claim that it’s pursuing the so-called “worst of the worst.”

This segment exemplifies how Fox feeds garbage anti-immigrant slop to its audience www.mediamatters.org

On August 4, Casone introduced Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin by discussing legal challenges Trump has faced in carrying out his mass deportation plans.

“What is the path forward here from the legal side, from the attorneys at DHS, to make sure that these deportations continue to be carried out as the American public had asked for?” Casone said.

(This framing is already misleading — in mid-July, polls from CNN and CBS News both found that a majority of respondents oppose the administration’s increased deportation program.)

After assuring the Fox Business’ audience that Trump’s targeting of immigrants had nothing to do with “racial animus,” McLaughlin moved on to what has become a common administration talking point to claim Trump’s policies “are focused on criminality.”

(Meanwhile, DHS recently asked the Supreme Court to allow ICE agents to use factors like speaking Spanish or working in construction as a partial basis for reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country without authorization.)

“Seventy percent of those illegal aliens who have been arrested under the Trump administration either have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges,” McLaughlin said. “So we are focused on getting people like MS-13 gang members, Tren de Aragua, terrorists, murderers, rapists — the worst of the worst out of this country.”

“We will keep on going, flooding the zone in sanctuary cities, and going after the worst of the worst,” she added.

The data point that McLaughlin cited — which Casone didn’t challenge — appears to have first been used in a DHS press release on June 26. DHS has used the statistic in at least seven press releases since then, and Trump “border czar” Tom Homan — the most frequent administration official to appear on the Fox networks since Trump's inauguration — has repeated it numerous times across right-wing media.

As Media Matters previously reported, the statistic appears to be false based on independent sources that collect federal data.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which is frequently cited in media and legal publications for collecting government data, “71.1% [of detainees] held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction according to data current as of July 27, 2025. Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.” TRAC further notes that just 24% of ICE detainees had pending criminal charges as of July 13.

Reports from CBS News and The Associated Press have found comparable numbers.

When Homan has recently claimed that 70 percent of ICE arrestees are criminals, he has sometimes added that the remaining 30 percent are “national security threats.” This figure appears to be the product of his own imagination. In some of statements, he has lumped in immigrants with final orders of removal alongside so-called terrorists and gang members to pad his statistic.

A CBS News report last month found that since the beginning of Trump’s second term, “3,256 of the more than 100,000 people removed were known or suspected gang members or terrorists.” That’s about three percent — not 30 percent — and databases that purport to list “terrorists” or “gang members” are notoriously inaccurate.

A news outlet that was interested in giving its audience reliable information might include any of that context when interviewing a Trump administration immigration official, but that's not the role Fox was created to serve.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Tom Homan

Right-Wing Media Fawn All Over 'Border Czar' Tom Homan

When Harris Faulkner concluded a recent interview with Tom Homan — President Donald Trump’s “border czar” tasked with carrying out the administration’s mass deportation operations — she did so with a benediction.

“God bless you, Tom Homan, for keeping us safe,” the Fox News anchor said solemnly.

Fox host Jesse Watters took a different, more threatening approach when he demanded that Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), who is Guatemalan American, “acknowledge” that “no other country is as great as the United States,” and “if she doesn't, I'm calling Homan — she's going home.”

The devotion that Faulkner and Watters show to Homan is hardly unique in right-wing media. More than any other figure in Trump’s inner circle save perhaps deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Homan is the person conservative outlets turn to when they need someone in Trump-world to champion the administration’s increasingly unpopular immigration policies.

According to a Media Matters review, Homan has appeared on Fox News 78 times this year and an additional 20 times on Fox Business, making him the most frequent Trump administration guest on the Fox networks since Trump's inauguration. But his reach in conservative media extends far beyond those appearances.

Over the month of July, right-wing media fawned over Homan in interviews, aiding him in manufacturing false narratives about widespread migrant crime and encouraging him to threaten so-called sanctuary cities with increased raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Conservative interviewers also ignored or downplayed horrific conditions at a Florida immigrant detention camp known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” including allegations that detainees had been subjected to overflowing toilets, food filled with worms, and had been chained to the ground. A whistleblower just came forward describing “inhumane conditions” at the facility. These interviewers simultaneously offered Homan a platform to wildly inflate the number of so-called criminals and “national security threats” that ICE had arrested.

This dynamic illustrates the symbiotic relationship between Homan, who had his own lucrative career as a conservative pundit and consultant, and the right-wing media ecosystem — where each party has an incentive to demonize immigrants, ignore critical reporting, and create narratives about social disorder that they attribute to immigrant communities, all in the service of Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

“God bless you, Tom Homan”: Right-wing media’s month of softball interviews with Trump’s border czar

On July 1, a day before officials at Alligator Alcatraz began concentrating people in the encampment, Homan appeared on Charlie Kirk’s influential podcast.

“Tell us about the significance of Alligator Alcatraz,” Kirk began. “What is it and what will it be used for?”

After Homan offered his standard anti-immigrant boilerplate to plead on behalf of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Kirk responded: “You’re doing a wonderful job.”

“We have your back, Tom Homan,” Kirk said at the conclusion of the interview, calling for “10 million deportations” after Homan promised to “flood the zone with sanctuary cities,” declared “zero tolerance” for those who impede ICE operations, and defended ICE personnel (“They’re not Nazis”).

Appearing on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on July 7, anchor Bill Hemmer asked Homan about the new facility in southern Florida and whether other states might be willing to open similar sites. Homan took aim at people who opposed the administration’s approach, complaining that blue states are “too busy attacking ICE and they’re too busy attacking Trump’s policies,” referring to a shooting at an immigrant detention facility in Texas on July 4. Hemmer responded: “On that point, could this get ugly?” It was his only follow-up question.

Homan had a busy following day. Fox News’ Martha MacCallum interviewed him and didn’t ask about Alligator Alcatraz. Neither did Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, though the host found the time to shower Homan with praise, saying “you guys are on fire,” and “nobody knows the law better than you.” (Kelly also incorrectly stated, “Habeas corpus is great, but I don't think it applies to an illegal alien,” echoing a larger right-wing media campaign to suspend due process protections for immigrants.) Fox Business host and former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow introduced Homan by calling him “one of my great heroes.” Kudlow also didn’t bring up Alligator Alcatraz.

Homan has appeared on Fox News 78 times this year and an additional 20 times on Fox Business, making him the most frequent Trump administration guest on Fox by far

On July 10, Fox anchor John Roberts asked Homan three questions, all about sensational but unrepresentative examples of immigrants committing acts of violence. “There could be more, and that’s truly frightening,” Roberts said to conclude the segment.

Kirk hosted Homan for a lengthy, in-person event at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit on July 12. “The great Tom Homan,” Kirk said by way of introduction. “The legendary Tom Homan.” During their interview, Kirk declared that “we need to get rid of birthright citizenship” and claimed that “the legal Hispanics” support mass deportation. (A Gallup poll from July 11 found 91% of Hispanic Americans support a pathway to citizenship, and only 23% support deporting all immigrants without legal status.)

Alligator Alcatraz didn’t come up during a July 11 interview on Fox & Friends or a July 16 interview on Hannity. Newsmax host Rob Schmitt also failed to bring up the facility in his interview with Homan, though he began the segment by accusing the administration’s opponents of throwing “every possible sob story at you guys.”

On July 18, Fox Business guest host Cheryl Casone began her interview with Homan by asking about the administration’s stated goal of reopening Alcatraz prison in San Francisco as a migrant detention center before shifting her focus to its namesake in southern Florida, suggesting it might serve as a template for other states.

“What do you make of this idea of these other states that could do something similar to what they’ve done in Florida, which is Alligator Alcatraz,” Casone said. “I mean, this facility was created very quickly, and many lawmakers have been down there. They said that it is safe. You know, all of these Democrats yelling and saying it was going to be dangerous — it’s not.”

That was the same day that Fox News’ Faulkner blessed Homan at the end of her interview. Alligator Alcatraz went unmentioned.

Homan was back on Hannity on July 21, during which the eponymous host asked him three questions, all of which centered on — and inflated — the risk of so-called migrant crime. Two days later, Homan was on another Fox prime-time show, this time The Ingraham Angle, appearing over a chyron that read: “Illegals’ reign of terror.”

The next afternoon on America Reports, Roberts’ questions again gave Homan a chance to criticize sanctuary city policies. The anchor concluded the segment by reminding his audience that Homan had “vowed to flood the zone there in New York City” with ICE agents.

On July 29, Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones framed Homan and ICE as dispassionately following the law. “There’s laws on the books you guys have to enforce,” Jones said, adding later, “You don’t get to selectively enforce when a judge has signed an order, right?” (The Washington Post found that the second Trump administration has defied more than 1 in 3 judicial rulings, including in high-profile cases regarding immigration and deportation.)

Homan uses right-wing media to spread false talking point that 70% of ICE arrestees are criminals, the rest are “national security threats”

A closer look at one of Homan’s latest talking points helps illustrate how the right-wing media ecosystem seeks to bolster support for Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

In the July 29 Fox & Friends interview, Homan claimed that “70% of the people we are arresting are criminals. Hard stop: 70%.”

“Who are the other 30%?” Homan continued. “The other 30% are national security threats.”

He reiterated later: “We’re arresting 70% criminals, and the rest are national security threats and those with final orders.”

Homan didn’t offer a citation for those figures, and Jones didn’t ask for one. Neither did NewsNation anchor Markie Martin, who interviewed Homan the same morning.

“Seventy percent of everybody we arrest is a criminal,” Homan repeated later that day on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime. “Who is the other 30%? National security threats, final orders of deportation, gang members.”

Note the rhetorical slippage, as Homan moves from an unequivocal statement that 30% of people detained by ICE are national security threats to squishier phrasing that also includes immigrants with an order of deportation.

Over the next 48 hours, Homan made nearly identical versions of the claim on Newsmax’s The National Report, Fox Business’ Varney & Co., and OAN’s Real America with Dan Ball. None of these programs offered even mild pushback, much less the full debunking the claim deserves.

Homan’s first claim that 70% of ICE arrestees are criminals appears to have first been used in a Department of Homeland Security press release from June 26, which quoted DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin as saying: “Under the Trump Administration 70% of illegal aliens arrested have been convicted or charged with a crime beyond illegally entering our country.” The figure has been included in at least seven subsequent releases.

Even granting Homan the benefit of the doubt in his failure to distinguish between a criminal conviction and a charge, the DHS stat appears to be incorrect, according to media reports and other independent sources that cite ICE’s own data.

On June 24, CBS News reported that “federal statistics show nearly half — or 47% — of those currently detained by ICE lack a criminal record and fewer than 30% have been convicted of crimes.”

The Associated Press, citing ICE data, reported that “as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7% — of whom had no criminal convictions.” Of that subset, 14,318 people had pending criminal charges, meaning that about 53% of arrestees either had a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which collects government data, 24% of ICE detainees were facing criminal charges as of July 13 and 28% had a criminal conviction, though TRAC adds: “Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”

Even the scant evidence in the public record that purports to bolster Homan’s claim undercuts the Trump administration’s larger argument that it’s targeting the so-called worst of the worst.

On July 16, CBS News reported that “of the estimated 100,000 people who were deported between January 1 and June 24 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 70,583 were convicted criminals, according to an ICE document” obtained by the network — though “most of the documented infractions were traffic or immigration offenses.” (It’s not clear what accounts for the discrepancy between the CBS News report and other publicly available data.)

As to Homan’s second claim that the remaining 30% of ICE arrestees are “national security threats,” it appears to be the product of the Trump border czar’s own imagination. The statistic doesn’t appear in any DHS press releases from this year, and doesn’t seem to exist in the public domain beyond Homan’s own claim. Although Homan occasionally tempers his talking point by including people with removal orders, the message to conservative audiences is clear, as illustrated by the NewsNation headline: “Border czar says ICE arrests include 70% criminals, 30% threats.”

Using TRAC’s most recent numbers, ICE is holding 56,816 people — meaning that by Homan’s reasoning, more than 17,000 are national security threats. By contrast, the July 16 CBS News report found that “3,256 of the more than 100,000 people removed were known or suspected gang members or terrorists,” which is roughly 3%. (Databases that purport to list terrorists and “gang members” are also notoriously inaccurate and filled with false positives and other errors.)

Homan’s baseless assertion that 30% of ICE arrestees are national security threats — including people who simply have an order of removal — functions as a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that won’t be challenged in right-wing media. The Trump administration has absurdly claimed that unauthorized migration amounts to an “invasion.” Working backwards from there, Homan apparently concludes that any person in the United States without legal status is therefore a matter of national security.

This hall of mirrors, where regular people going about their lives are transformed into violent threats to community safety, inverts the actual dynamics at play. Right-wing outlets that serve as platforms for Homan to demonize immigrants are actually putting communities at risk, and now their coverage has helped lay the foundations for ICE and the Florida Division of Emergency Management to open a remote detention camp in southern Florida rife with abuse.

Cascading reports of horrific conditions at “Alligator Alcatraz”

Right-wing media have amplified Homan’s fearmongering even as they have largely ignored or downplayed the harms ICE is causing throughout the country, as embodied most viscerally at Alligator Alcatraz. That campaign of ignorance notwithstanding, the public has had access to horror stories from the southern Florida facility virtually from its first hours of operation.

Officials began holding people at the facility on July 2, and by July 4 reports of harsh living conditions were already starting to emerge. NBC 6 Miami reported the encampment faced swarms of mosquitos, heavy downpours, and high temperatures, all of which were standard fare for the remote area of southern Florida. The outlet later spoke with a detained man who said there was “no water here to bathe,” that the fluorescent lights were always on, and that the food, which detainees were given once a day, “has worms in it.” Another person held there had been denied his medication.

On July 9, The Miami Herald published a lengthy investigation into Alligator Alcatraz, reporting that detainees had no access to showers or water with which to flush the toilets, that giant bugs had breached the tent walls, and that temperatures whipsawed between freezing cold and swelteringly hot. Many of those details were subsequently confirmed by The Associated Press, which added that there were “flooding floors with fecal waste,” and The Washington Post, which reported that some detainees had been “shackled to a bench.”

Conditions only deteriorated from there. On July 22, NBC News reported a man held at the facility had developed fungus on his feet from the standing water and overall poor sanitation. The same day, The Guardian cited immigration advocates who claimed at least six people sent to the facility had been hospitalized. WLRN Public Media spoke on the phone to a migrant in the camp, who said guards “chained me to the ground,” forced him to stand in the sun without water from 1-7 p.m., and “called him the n-word.”

Lawyers and immigration advocates for the detainees have sued in federal court, alleging that the Trump administration and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have created a legal black hole where the ultimate jurisdiction for the facility is deliberately opaque. “This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” the plaintiffs argued. Detainees there have reportedly gone on hunger strike, though DHS denies the claim. Videos show ambulances entering and leaving the facility repeatedly over the course of several days.

In short, Alligator Allcatraz is operating as an extrajudicial concentration camp designed to disappear and punish immigrants largely outside formal legal processes. If Tom Homan and his MAGA media allies have their way, it won’t be the last. DeSantis has already suggested his state will soon unveil a second detention camp, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the government is looking to open similar facilities in Arizona, Nebraska, and Louisiana. On August 5, Noem announced a second camp would be opened in Indiana, dubbed the “Speedway Slammer.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.