Trump's allies in open civil war as MAGA movement struggles to pick up the pieces from 2020: report

On Friday, The Daily Beast analyzed how pro-Trump media personalities have gone to war with one another in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss.

"It was the year Dominion Voting Systems filed massive, billion-dollar lawsuits against MAGA pundits and media outlets, forcing the biggest names in right-wing media to dial back their deferential coverage of Trump’s unhinged election lies," reported Zachary Petrizzo. "The result was, in part, a mostly lopsided battle between Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN over who could most cleverly court Trumpworld without veering into legally murky waters. It was also the year that conservative talking heads threatened to quit, squandered career opportunities, or seethed — publicly and privately — over their employers’ compliance with various vaccine rules."

One of the most prominent of these fights, noted Petrizzo, is MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who has spent all of this year staging stunts to try to get Trump "reinstated" — and going after right-wing media outlets that refuse to take him seriously.

"Initially, his fight started with Fox News, all stemming from the conservative titan not playing his conspiracy theory-laced ads promoting the in-person election fraud convention in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he hosted in mid-August. That mini-war ended with Lindell pulling his ads and yelling, 'shame on Fox News,'" wrote Petrizzo. "Then in October, Lindell focused his ire on Chris Ruddy’s Newsmax, which earlier in the year bailed on an interview with the pillow mogul when he spewed election lies. 'We had Newsmax call up, and they canceled all their ads on Frank Speech,' Lindell fumed one night on his show, describing the right-wing network as competition."

Another pro-Trump figure going to war against former colleagues, noted Petrizzo, is Dan Bongino, who in recent months has drawn ire from fellow conservative media figures over his crusade to try to get his bosses at Cumulus Radio to drop their vaccine mandate.

Meanwhile, even some former Trump administration alumni have come under fire, like once-chief of staff Mark Meadows, who revealed in his book that Trump hid his COVID-19 diagnosis before a presidential debate, before Meadows disavowed it and called his own book "fake news."

"While 2021 is in the rearview mirror, all feuding elements of right-wing media seem united in hope that Trump will find himself back into power soon, with at least one dead-ender convinced it could occur ahead of the 2024 election," concluded Petrizzo. “'People are out canvassing,' Lindell insisted to The Daily Beast, loudly and proudly declaring Trump could be reinstated as president while merely getting a haircut on a Sunday morning. 'This is real!'"

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