Media

U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran is triggering heated debates in right-wing media. While former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — like ex-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) — considers Trump's military strikes against Iran a betrayal of his American First platform, current Fox News hosts Mark Levin and Sean Hannity are applauding the president's foreign policy.

The Dispatch's Michael Warren examines this right-wing media infighting in an article published on March 6.

"Since Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury last week," Warren explains, "one thing has been clear: The most MAGA of MAGA media are not behind the president. Nowhere else has this been more apparent than on 'War Room,' the live program hosted by Steve Bannon that is part news analysis, part on-air strategy session for the new right. Starting with two days of emergency broadcasts over the weekend, Bannon has been joined by his series of regular guests to provide both neutral military analysis and, increasingly, carefully couched warnings that an extended military operation in Iran would be a terrible mistake…. Bannon, always with an eye toward the MAGA coalition, sounded particularly worried."

On "War Room," Blackwater founder Erik Prince lamented, "I don't think this was in America's interest. It's going to uncork a significant can of worms and chaos and destruction in Iran now."

Warren points out that "Bannon and his fellow skeptics are hardly representative of conservatives and Trump supporters on the Iran question."

"On any given issue," according to Warren, "the most reliable bet on where Republican voters are headed is wherever Trump seems to be going. But there have been notable exceptions, when the opinionmakers of the MAGA-verse have been leading, not lagging, indicators of how Trump’s populist movement was taking matters into its own hands — and leaving the president himself catching up with his own base.

But the more MAGA right-wing media figures are, the reporter stresses, the more likely they are to be questioning or outright opposing Trump's Iran policy.

"The arc of MAGA history is long, but it bends toward conspiracy theories and distrust of institutions," Warren writes. "Could Bannon and others in the MAGA universe be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine warning Trump and his party that the broad support he's getting for the Iran war from his voters may evaporate quickly?.... But a whole range of suboptimal results — a bloody civil war in Iran that leaves the United States in a worse position in the region, say, or a restoration and continuation of the Islamic Republic under new and just-as-recalcitrant leadership, or perhaps a drawn-out military campaign that requires more use of American military personnel, weapons, and materiel than Trump had ever anticipated, or even small-scale terrorist attacks on Americans at home or abroad — risks discrediting Trump on this issue with his party's base."

Warren adds, "If so, the MAGA skeptics won't look like outliers within their own movement. They'll just have been ahead of the curve."

There’s a “chasm of uncertainty” in the U.S. war actions, one media pundit opines.

Sarah Baxter, director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting, peeled the onion of U.S. war schemes in an opinion piece for The iPaper. She indicated that despite the public bravado of the administration, there’s a lot that’s unknown and unplanned with regards to Iran.

President Donald Trump admitted as much in a CNN interview, Baxter cites.

“We don’t know who the leadership is. We don’t know who they’ll pick. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing … We don’t know who is leading the country now. They don’t know who’s leading," Baxter writes.

Trump has attempted to frame the decision to launch the attacks as an end to the 47-year “forever war” started by Iran, Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, told Baxter.

“The killing of Ayatollah Khamenei led to a feeling of euphoria and ‘we’ve succeeded’. To a certain extent Washington thinks, ‘we’ve won. All we have to do is tidy up,’ but we’re not there yet,” said Henderson “Even if we succeed, there are bound to be clashes and ugliness.”

Not only is the current leadership publicly unknown, but what comes next is also guesswork.

“Bluntly, Iranian exile politics is a mess," Baxter writes. Few Washingtonians have faith in the abilities of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, to usher in democracy, as King Juan Carlos I did in post-fascist Spain in 1975. Competing groups vie for influence and accuse others of being spies and stooges.”

All of the uncertainty is likely bleeding over onto Middle East allies.

“Sunni Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, who are quietly supporting the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Shia Iran, are wondering whether Trump can be trusted to stand by them.”

According to Henderson, “they placed their bets on Trump many months ago and hope their bets are still good. But they must be thinking, is he going to succeed or are they going to be left to drift?”

One advantage to the seeming uncertainty is it leaves a wide path to declare victory and go home.

Trump still believes things are on the right track, despite some setbacks. But his optimism isn’t shared right now by those outside the staunch MAGA supporters.

Several important MAGA media figures, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, have criticized the attacks on Iran. The President isn’t concerned with the chatter

“I think that MAGA is Trump — MAGA’s not the other two,” he said.

But the MAGA movement is "experiencing whiplash" after swallowing Trump’s campaign rhetoric about wanting to stop wars, Baxter claims. How long their support lasts remains to be seen.

Despite being inundated with criticism, far-right podcaster Candace Owens is doubling down on her attacks on Turning Point USA's (TPUSA) Erika Kirk. Owens is suggesting, without evidence, that Erika Kirk was somehow involved in the fatal shooting of her late husband Charlie Kirk, who founded the MAGA youth organization.

The criticism is coming from both the left and the right. Conservative media figures like The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro (who Owens used to work for) and The National Review's Rich Lowry are calling her out, and liberals and progressives are saying that while they vehemently disagree with Erika Kirk's politics, Owens' YouTube video series "Bride of Charlie" (a play on "Bride of Frankenstein") is a mean-spirited smearing of a widow who lost her husband to gun violence.

Salon's Sophia Tesfaye, in an article published on March 4, argues that "Bride of Charlie" not only underscores Owens' willingness to promote unhinged conspiracy theories — it is also an indictment of right-wing media's business model.

"With Kirk's assassination at a Turning Point USA event in Utah last September, the MAGA movement faced a genuine tragedy," Tesfaye explains. "His widow, Erika Kirk, stepped in to lead the organization. But within weeks, before the grief had even begun to settle, Owens began publicly questioning the circumstances of Kirk's killing and spinning conspiracy theories on her podcast…. What started as insinuation soon metastasized into a serialized spectacle: 'Bride of Charlie,' a multi-episode YouTube series targeting Erika Kirk personally…. In the series, which is still ongoing, Owens hints that Kirk's murder was an inside job, suggests foreign agents may have been involved and implies that Erika Kirk has 'ulterior motives' in leading TPUSA."

Tesfaye notes that although "the conservative establishment has, belatedly, tried to fight back against Owens' accusations" against Erika Kirk, they "have largely failed to land a blow" — as the first episode of "Bride of Charlie" received "nearly 5 million views."

"The real reason right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens is that they built her," Tesfaye emphasizes. "And, more importantly, they built the engine that fuels her: the machinery of conspiratorial media, which is immune to the tools that might once have contained it. For decades, conservative media has thrived on a business model that monetizes outrage and distrust. The more outrageous the claim, the greater the engagement. The more distrust sowed toward institutions — universities, media, elections, public health, the FBI — the more loyal the audience becomes."

Tesfaye continues, "In December, even as Owens was deep into Charlie Kirk assassination trutherism, Erika Kirk was urging TPUSA audiences to be tolerant of disagreeable views. By the time the right decided Owens had gone too far, she had already built a fully independent operation. The movement that once shielded Owens is now discovering that monsters raised on grievance do not recognize fences. The conservative movement no longer has credible gatekeepers."

Jeffrey Epstein survivor Danielle Bensky has been an outspoken critic of the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) handling of its files on the late billionaire financier and convicted sex offender. Bensky, who met Epstein when she was a young ballerina and says she was abused by him, has been reaching out to a variety of media outlets —including those on the right.

But according to Bensky, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets are ignoring her.

In a Wednesday, March 4 post on X, former CNN host Jim Acosta — who interviewed Bensky for his internet show — tweeted, "A dancer abused by Epstein, Dani Bensky tells me she and other survivors are being ignored by 'Republican media' outlets like Fox. If you want to understand why so many people are giving Trump a pass on Epstein, it's partly because they’re watching Fox."

During the interview, Bensky told Acosta, "We're not able to get on Republican media a lot of the time. We've been hoping to get on Fox News. We've been trying to get on Newsmax. I think maybe two people had done a quick Newsmax. Stories are not even getting across the aisle."

Acosta responded, "Wow. Fox is not interviewing any of the survivors? You can't get on Fox?"

Bensky lamented, "Nope…. A lot of the time, Republican media will not take our stories at all. When I saw the State of the Union, I felt very clear that the chasm between Republicans and Democrats is so great…. There are some baseline things should just be, like, human."

President Donald Trump has the loyal support of Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okl.), but in order to get it, Mullin has to say blatantly untrue things in public — and get called out for it.

Appearing on CNN with host Kasie Hunt on Monday, Mullin found himself on the defensive after insisting Trump’s invasion of Iran is not a war, only to be corrected by Trump’s own defense secretary.

“This isn't a war, we haven't declared war. Everybody wants to say,” Mullin told Hunt, prompting Hunt to play a clip of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying earlier on Monday that “we set the terms of this war from start to finish. We didn't start this war. But under President Trump, we are finishing it.”

Hunt then asked Mullin if stood by his earlier statement that this is not a war.

“What he declared on us was war — meaning the Ayatollah declared war on us,” Mullin replied. “We are not at war with the Iranian people. The Ayatollah declared war on us, we've already taken him out, and now we're eliminating the threat."

"[T]his isn't Iraq," Mullin later said. "We made that very clear. Pete Hegseth — Secretary Hegseth — made that very clear. This isn't the same approach. Keep in mind, we took out the leader within an hour.”

“After 9/11, Kasie, we said never again, never again will we be caught flat-footed, never again will we ignore someone like Osama bin Laden when we knew what his intentions were but didn't take him out,” Mullin continued. “We knew what the Ayatollah's intentions were. They had been chanting ‘Death to America’ for 47 years. We gave them that opportunity. Not a war of choice.”

Although Mullin told Hunt that Trump’s Iran war strategy is radically different than Bush’s Iraq war strategy, he has in fact given contradictory ideas about his vision for Iran. New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel wrote on Monday that Trump “said he hoped the military and Guard Corps would surrender their weapons to the people, even though the same hardened forces killed thousands in the streets in January,” which was part of the reason Trump cited for invading Iran in the first place. He has said that his goal is "freedom for the people" of Iran, but then said he has “three very good choices” in mind as to who he will install to take over the country, although he later said “actually, nevermind, we killed those choices."

Similarly, although Trump has downplayed the severity of America’s invasion of Iran, he also told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that “we haven't even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn't even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

Although President Donald Trump often attacks CNN as "fake news," one CNN contributor he holds in high regard is GOP strategist Scott Jennings — a strident defender of Trump and the MAGA movement. Jennings worked with his share of traditional conservatives in the past, including former President George W. Bush and ex-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). And if a change in ownership goes through, CNN could end up with a lot more MAGA commentary.

In an article published on February 28, Radar Online's Beth Shilliday reports that many CNN staffers are filled with "dread" over the prosect of the cable news outlet being sold to Paramount-Skydance and "Republican billionaire David Ellison" becoming CNN's "new boss." CNN is presently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

"Paramount and Netflix had been in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery," Shilliday explains, "but the streamer said it would leave the negotiations after Paramount put in what it called a 'superior' revised bid that the company was unwilling to match on February 26…. Employees are 'devastated' by the prospect of the sale, one insider told Variety."

The possibility of CNN being sold to Paramount-Skydance follows shakeups at CBS News under Bari Weiss (who Ellison brought in) and the Washington Post under Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Under Bezos, a who's-who of the Post's opinion section have left — including Greg Sargent (now with The New Republic), Catherine Rampell (now an MS NOW host), Paul Waldman, and Never Trumper Jennifer Rubin (now with The Contrarian).

"Trump has gone so far as to not take questions from CNN's White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins due to the network's nonstop bashing of the president and his policies," Shilliday observes. "He openly calls CNN 'fake news' when speaking to reporters, and repeats the claim frequently on his social media. If Ellison ends up with the cable news network among his assets, CNN's openly anti-Trump proselytizing could soon change."

President Donald Trump reportedly played a key role in guaranteeing Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) was sold to the pro-Trump Ellison family rather than Netflix — yet some conservatives think Trump overestimates what he won in that bargain.

“Trump’s head is stuck in the 80s so he may not have noticed that cable is dying,” conservative commentators Tim Miller and Amanda Carpenter wrote in their Friday podcast episode for The Bulwark. “All he can think about is getting his greedy little hands on CNN so he can make them say nice things about him. But independent outlets—like The Bulwark— are changing the media space and are beyond the reach of a corrupted FCC. Nevertheless, our screens are going to be filled with vast quantities of pro-MAGA propaganda.”

Later in the podcast, Miller speculated that even if Trump prevails in saturating the media landscape with his point of view, his narrative ultimately will not prevail. Instead Miller speculated that kids are “gonna be in high school, and there's gonna be a picture of people storming the Capitol with Confederate flags and Trump flags. And it's gonna be two paragraphs in the chapter. And it's gonna be like, ‘Donald Trump tried to overturn democracy. They stormed the Capitol. Police officers died.’ That's what your kids are gonna learn.”

Trump reportedly played a critical role in making sure Warner Brothers Discovery was sold to the Ellisons, including meeting privately with Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos at the White House earlier this week shortly before Sarandos pulled Netflix out of the deal and publicly demanding he fire UN ambassador Susan Rice from the Netflix board or else “pay the consequences.”

“President Donald Trump is not the sort of old-fashioned Republican who believes businesses should operate unfettered from government interference,” reported The Week at the time. “Instead, he is now telling Netflix to fire a prominent board member who once worked for the Obama administration.” Indeed, the White House has made it clear since last year that it wanted the pro-Trump Ellison family, led by father Larry and son David, to take over CNN.

CNN now joins a long list of news media and social media platforms owned by people actively supportive of Trump, including Amazon and The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos), Facebook and Instagram (Mark Zuckerberg), Twitter/X (Elon Musk) and TikTok (a consortium of pro-Trump billionaires including the Ellisons). It is well known that Trump wanted the Ellisons to purchase CNN so hosts who regularly criticize Trump, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, can be fired.

“The question nobody is asking is the one that keeps me up at night: what has already been arranged for the one asset the president demanded change hands, in the one company where someone quietly built the legal infrastructure to make it happen, five months ago, before anyone was looking?” business journalist Audrey Henson wrote on her Substack shortly before Netflix’s withdrawal was announced. Her post included extensive documentation regarding the details of the business deal.

She concluded, “I do not have the final answer yet. But I know where the documents are. And now, so do you.”

The billionaire head of a Berlin-based global mass media behemoth that owns influential outlets including Politico, reportedly met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.

Mathias Döpfner serves as chairman and CEO of Axel Springer SE, a publishing group that operates in dozens of countries and counts U.S. private equity firm KKR — co‑founded by Republican donor Henry Kravis — among its principal owners. According to Forbes, Kravis gave one million dollars to Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration committee.

In the U.S., Axel Springer also publishes Business Insider and Morning Brew.

New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin reported that Wiles met with Döpfner in, according to a source, "an introductory, get-to-know-you meeting."

The meeting comes just one day after President Donald Trump delivered his controversial State of the Union address and less than nine months before the midterm elections.

Döpfner sent an email to his top executives before the 2020 election, asking if they would like to join him to pray for the re-election of Donald Trump, according to reports. The email came one year before Axel Springer sealed the deal to purchase Politico.

“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” Döpfner wrote in the email, The Daily Beast reported, citing an article in The Washington Post.

“No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfner added.

“When asked about the message,” The Daily Beast reported, “Döpfner initially denied it existed, going so far as to say: ‘It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.’ When confronted with a printout of the email, he explained that he may have sent it ‘as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.’ ‘That is me,’ he added. ‘That could be.'”

In a 2022 analysis titled "The Scandalous History of America’s Newest Media Baron," Foreign Policy reported: “The new owner of Politico, Axel Springer, has a decades-long record of bending journalistic ethics for right-wing causes.”

Fox News host Bret Baier told host Gillian Turner that despite President Donald Trump's cheering around his work on the economy, people are still struggling.

He anticipated that the Tuesday night State of the Union Address would likely focus on the economy.

"I think that there’s going to be a real significant part of this speech that deals with what they see, what they passed with the Big Beautiful Bill, what people they believe, the administration believes are starting to feel and will feel as the year progresses," said Baier.

He touted consumer confidence numbers increasing, saying they had previously been low.

"And there are people that are feeling pain from this economy, and you see that in polls all up and down,” said Baier. “The president is going to spend a lot of time on the economy, but he has a full plate of issues to deal with — Iran, the fallout from Venezuela. He will react to the Supreme Court and the tariffs, and you wonder how that’s going to go with the Supreme Court Justices, several of them in the front row listening to the speech."

"So, it’ll be fascinating to see, expect these stories, weaving in all of these elements with real people as examples, because the president has done that before, and he will do it again," he added.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this evening.

The address represents a key moment for the administration to outline its legislative agenda, economic priorities, and vision for the nation.

Trump's speech comes amid ongoing political polarization, debates over his policies on immigration, the economy, and foreign affairs, and continued controversy surrounding various investigations and legal challenges. And the address will likely draw significant media coverage and public attention as a defining moment of his presidency.

This Sunday night, February 22, CNN is airing reporter Pamela Brown's documentary on Christian nationalism, a far-right form of evangelical fundamentalism closely tied to the MAGA movement. Brown, in the documentary, notes that Christian nationalists are hailing the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — who was fatally shot during an event in Utah last year — as a martyr for their cause. And she interviews Matthew Taylor, a religious scholar at Georgetown University; Taylor makes a clear distinction between "radicalized" Christian nationalists and the many Christians who reject their belief system.

In a February 21 segment, Fox News' Kayleigh McEnany — who served as the fourth White House press secretary during President Donald Trump's first administration — attacked the documentary as a "hit piece on the resurgence of Christianity in America." But according to Mediaite reporter Colby Hall, McEnany's comments were both misleading and painfully lacking context.

Hall, in an article published on February 22, points out that Brown interviewed self-described Christian nationalist Andrew McIlwain, a Texas resident, in the documentary and discussed Kirk's murder with him. During that part of the documentary, according to Hall, Brown made a statement that "Fox's audience never heard" — which was, "Kirk's death happened at a moment of unprecedented alignment between Christian nationalists and the Trump Administration."

Hall explains, "That sentence is not an aside. It is the documentary's thesis in miniature. It clarifies that the project is not an attack on churchgoing or orthodox belief. It is an examination of the political alignment between a self-described Christian nationalist movement and executive power. Fox cut it. Instead, McEnany presented the film as an assault on faith itself and amplified a Georgetown professor's warning about 'radicalized' Christians. She insisted the framing was 'so off base,' collapsing any distinction between Christianity as religion and Christian nationalism as an ideology seeking to shape public policy…. By trimming Brown's contextual line and McIlwain's own articulation of a faith-centered political vision, Fox transformed a documentary about political theology into an imagined attack on believers."

Hall adds, "The audience was invited to reject a caricature while being shielded from the actual argument…. The central question Brown is asking — whether a movement that openly ties America's future to 'scripture' and enjoys 'unprecedented alignment' with a presidential administration warrants scrutiny — never made it to the people most likely to vote on it."

Note to the decision-makers at the Gallup Organization, which for nearly 90 years has tracked presidential approval ratings: Capitulation never works.

I learned this the hard way as a teen playing basketball on D.C. playgrounds. I regretted my fecklessness.

Gallup last week admitted it would no longer survey Americans’ sentiments on how the commander in chief was faring, though I couldn’t find news of that major switch on the company’s website.

The organization’s latest presidential barometer, in December, placed Donald Trump’s approval rating at an abysmal 36%. The worst was 34%, another honorific Trump earned as he was leaving office at the end of his first term. It was right after the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol.

Yes, other companies conduct surveys nowadays about the presidency. Gallup, though, held a unique place in the industry.

A Gallup spokesman told The New York Times the company was shifting strategy. He also used other corporate-speak that, frankly, doesn’t justify Gallup’s cowardice.

As The Times noted, the polling firm’s decades of data gave “historical context to what amounts to a monthly snapshot of Americans’ views.” The independent barometer has been valuable.

It’s curious the company didn’t make the change under then-President Joe Biden, but is doing so now under a thin-skinned president.

Trump and his administration have targeted journalists with criminal indictments, filed lawsuits against media outlets and often lied about the actions of violent federal immigration agents – even when video footage and witness statements proved the contrary.

My questions to Gallup’s media folks, including what role Trump’s attacks on journalists played in the polling decision, weren’t returned by my deadline.

Gallup’s groveling reminds me of when I relinquished my chance to play a playground basketball game – even though I’d earned it – to a guy bigger, stronger, and a little older than me. “I’m taking your spot,” he declared, with a hint of menace.

The shame was I didn’t fight for it, even if I would’ve gotten bloodied. I couldn’t return to that court because no one would respect me. As I got older, I stood up for myself more, no matter whether it made me uncomfortable.

That a private company like Gallup would cave so dramatically to this administration is reprehensible. Why is it acting beholden to officials who disrespect law, precedent and common decency?

The capitulation is a stain on Gallup’s reputation and legacy, and it leaves Americans with less information on how we all feel our top government executive is faring.

A conservative columnist is blasting President Donald Trump for continuing to spread the baseless conspiracy theory that he actually won the 2020 presidential election.

“Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything,” wrote George F. Will, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and columnist to The Washington Post. “His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence.”

Will correctly pointed out that Trump has a long history of claiming something was stolen from him when he loses — and it started well before politics. During a 2016 debate, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accurately pointed out Trump accused the Emmy Awards of being rigged against him when he was snubbed for his work on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Earlier that year, after losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP primaries, Trump baselessly alleged fraud and demanded a new election. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump said he would only accept the result if he won, and after winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote that year, he falsely blamed millions of illegal ballots and established a voter fraud commission that eventually disbanded without finding evidence of his allegations.

In 2020, Trump preemptively attacked mail-in voting, prematurely declared victory on Election Night and falsely claimed votes were being "dumped" against him. Biden ultimately won by a clear margin in the popular vote (81.3 million to 74.2 million) and the same Electoral College margin (306-232), but despite this Trump attempted a coup on January 6, 2021. To this day, Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will concluded, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Will is not alone among conservatives warning about Trump’s authoritarian election-denying tendencies. Linking his 2020 denialism to his efforts to discredit Democrats if they win the 2026 midterms, a Republican who served as Maricopa County, Arizona county recorder explained Trump’s strategy.

"Almost every single Republican that I spoke with after the 2020 election ... knew that there was very little to Donald Trump's allegations of a stolen election,” Stephen Richer, who served when Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election, recently told The Atlantic. “At best, they stayed quiet. At worst, they went full-throated along with it because they knew it was a path to political riches."

He also said Republicans are planning to dispute however many number of Democratic victories they need to stay in power, then demand House Speaker Mike Johnson reject their seats.

“Speaker Mike Johnson, the outgoing speaker, will choose not to seat the new members, because they’re in allegedly disputed elections,” Richer said.

Conservative historian Robert Kagan expressed the same concern, arguing Trump has trained Republicans to oppose democratic outcomes unless they get what they want.

“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” Kagan said. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”

Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has picked many former Fox News hosts for key positions — from Jeanine Pirro (now a federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia for the U.S. Department of Justice) to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Another is Dan Bongino, who is back at Fox News and resumed his podcast after leaving his position as deputy FBI director.

In a February 10 column, MS NOW's Steve Benen describes a "revolving door" linking Trump officials and right-wing media. And he stresses that although Bongino was an "embarrassment" at the FBI, that didn't stop Fox News from rehiring him.

"The precise number of former Fox hosts, anchors and contributors who have joined Donald Trump's team is open to debate," Benen explains, "but by any fair count, the total is roughly two dozen. One of the notable things about revolving doors, however, is that they can be used to go in both directions: As a wide variety of figures leave Fox to join Team Trump, some members of Team Trump have also left the administration to join Fox…. Bongino's tenure at the FBI was an embarrassment. The president thought it might be interesting to put a volatile podcast personality in charge of running the bureau, and the result was a failed experiment in amateurism: Bongino did a job he didn't like badly."

Benen points out that Bongino "is in a unique position."

"While the revolving door has spun quickly since Trump returned to the White House," the "Rachel Maddow Show" producer observes, "Bongino is one of those rare people who went from conservative media to the administration and then back to conservative media — all within the span of about 10 months."

President Donald Trump, in what appeared to be an attempt to pressure two major cable news networks, warned against booking two prominent former officials from his first administration.

Trump targeted CNN and MS NOW — formerly MSNBC, which he called “MSDNC” — while denouncing attorney Ty Cobb, a former member of the White House legal team who reported directly to the president, and former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor.

The president called Cobb “one of the Worst Lawyers in Washington, D.C.,” and a “WHACKJOB, who I hardly knew,” and said Taylor is “another major Loser … who I have no idea who he is.”

He charged that both “make livings talking about me like they know me well.”

“So, when you watch these two guys on Television, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often because there’s very little audience at either CNN or MSDNC,” he wrote, “remember, they know nothing about me — Just two DOPES trying to make a ‘buck’ by pretending to know something about someone who turned out to be very famous.”

Trump already was the president when they served in his administration.

“These two Networks are forewarned not to put them on the air again, because they have no knowledge or credibility with respect to anything have [sic] to do with DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Last month, Cobb “claimed President Trump is experiencing a ‘significant decline’ in his mental faculties,” according to The Hill.

“I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians,” Cobb said.

Trump’s social media post came just about the same time that he or someone with access to his social media account deleted what many, including several prominent Republicans, denounced as a racist meme that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

The New York Times is being destroyed over a since-deleted excerpt in its report on President Donald Trump sharing racist imagery online.

Trump shared an AI video spreading conspiracies about voter fraud that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys, a trope often used refer to Black Americans in a disparaging context.

The Times report included the passage: "It was unclear if Mr. Trump was aware that the clip had been included in the video before he shared it. It was unclear how the clip was made, although it appeared to have been generated by A.I. The clip appeared to have been taken from a video that was shared in October by a user on X whose watermark is shown with the caption 'President Trump: King of the Jungle,' and an emoji of a lion."

The beginning of that paragraph has since been removed by The Times, but not before activist Oliver Willis copied it and posted the initial screenshot online.

"The New York Times has finally covered the Trump video of Obama as an ape — and they are still providing cover for him. F—— the Times," Willis added as a comment.

Long-time attorney Max Kennerly wrote, "Love how the presumption here is that the President doesn't know what he's sharing and that's fine and normal. Sorry, no, if the President doesn't know what he's sending out, then that is indisputable proof of gross incompetence, cognitive unfitness, or both."