Welcome back to Media Matters’ weekly newsletter. This week:
MAGA media's laughable propaganda about Trump’s popularity is instrumental to the plot to subvert this year’s midterm elections.
Right-wing media are intensifying conspiracy theories about birthright citizenship following the Supreme Court’s recent decision.
As Trump declares the Iran ceasefire “over,” right-wing media hawks push for ground troops, regime change, and even nuclear strikes.
Freshly released from prison, Tina Peters is on a right-wing media tour full of conspiracy theories about voter fraud and boasts about advising Trump how to fix it.
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Right-wing moment
This week's infighting
As novel AI tools continue to emerge and massive data center construction projects generate local and national controversy, right-wing media are divided over the impacts of the technology and the infrastructure that supports it. Read more about this divide in this great piece.
A MAHA activist said Trump “has not done a single thing to reduce our children’s exposure to pesticides. In fact, he’s made it worse.”
Fox’s Lawrence Jones on the Iran MOU: “The deal was a joke from the very beginning.”
While discussing the war with Iran, Fox's Brian Kilmeadecalled for “a different negotiating team,” adding that Vice President JD Vance and Steve Witkoff should “focus on Ukraine.” Later on, Kilmeade added that he didn't want Witkoff and Jared Kushner to do the negotiations because "they have not been effective in Ukraine, not been effective in Gaza. They have not been effective in this.”
MAGA media’s laughable propaganda about Trump’s popularity is instrumental to the plot to subvert elections
Citation
Molly Butler / Media Matters
The MAGA plot to subvert the 2026 midterm elections is coming into focus. Election denial bigwig Steve Bannon has outlined a scheme in which President Donald Trump — aided by right-wing journalist John Solomon at the White House and Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence — would declassify and release documents purporting to show significant foreign interference in past U.S. elections. The president would then use that theory as the “predicate” to declare a “national emergency” and try to seize control of the elections apparatus to curtail voting rights in November.
The foundational lie of this scheme (and of election denial writ large) is that Trump is such a popular figure that only massive election fraud could explain the defeat of his movement at the polls. And the right’s propaganda apparatus is essential in buttressing that lie by ignoring or explaining away all evidence to the contrary. Outlets like Fox News don’t just celebrate the president as an heroic, visionary figure — they tell viewers that the polls are wrong and “The MAGA Momentum Is Unstappable.”
Check out this piece by Media Matters’ Matt Gertz to see how this scheme has worked in the past and get a glimpse into how Trump and his propagandists are kicking into gear again this cycle.
Meanwhile, 2020 election conspiracy theorist Tina Peters has been on a right-wing media tour following her release from prison. She has made at least 17 appearances in right-wing media, in which she has spread numerous conspiracy theories about foreign interference in elections, while repeatedly boasting about advising Trump on how to fix the purported problem. If you want to read more about this, check out this great piece from Media Matters’ John Knefel.
This week in stupid
Newsmax’s Greg Kelly on Patriot Front: “I noticed that they’re all in shape. Now, according to some of the movies I’ve seen, white supremacists are often out of shape.”
Steve Bannon on U.S. soccer star Folarin Balogun: “I don’t want to be lionizing an anchor baby just when we had the fricking Supreme Court of this nation essentially help destroy this country.”
Right-wing media intensify conspiracy theories about birthright citizenship as a threat to American elections
Citation
Jesse Watters Primetime
As the Supreme Court reaffirmed birthright citizenship in the United States is a constitutional right, right-wing media and politicians have portrayed birthright citizenship as a threat to both national security and U.S. elections, citing so-called “birth tourism” from Chinese nationals giving birth while in American territory. This narrative appears to stem from conservative author Peter Schweizer, a long-time associate of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
A wide chorus of right-wing media personalities, Republican politicians, Trump administration officials, and even Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito have all either directly cited Schweizer’s book or repeated arguments contained in the book to fearmonger about birthright citizenship. They often echo the conspiracy theory of China swaying U.S. elections and undermining national security through “birth tourism.”
This all comes amid efforts by right-wing media and election deniers to implicate China as a threat to our election system and force actions by the Trump administration to seize power over voting ahead of the midterm elections.
If you would like to read more about this, check out this great piece.
Excuse me?
Right-wing ghouls, especially Trump bootlicker Benny Johnson, are reviving the Seth Rich conspiracy theory nearly a decade after it first became a cause célèbre for the online right, which baselessly linked Rich’s tragic 2016 murder to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton.
Roger Stonepushed for Trump to bring his “longtime friend” Bill Pulte into the administration — and now wants Pulte to investigate “that 2020 election.” This is part of Stone’s greater role in Trump’s second term in office, as recently reported.
Asmongoldresponded to so-called “teen takeovers” by saying “I’d shoot them” and “put neck collars and shock collars on every single one of them.”
As Trump declares Iran ceasefire “over,” right-wing media hawks push for ground troops, regime change - even nuclear strikes
This week Iranian forces struck commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. retaliated by resuming military strikes. Trump has declared the long-shaky ceasefire with Iran “over.” In response, right-wing media hawks are floating a new wave of risky, and at times bloodthirsty, escalations.
Figures such as Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen want to “destroy 100%” of Iran’s defense industrial base and “set them back to the Stone Age militarily and then declare victory.” Carl Higbie called for “mass destruction” in Iran, including “a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike,” arguing, “That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages.” And Brian Kilmeade called Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz their “new nuclear weapon,” arguing that the U.S. military is “going to have to take back the strait.”
As Media Matters Matt Gertz writes: “The right-wing media hawks, having convinced Trump to launch an unprovoked and ill-conceived war of choice against Iran only for the regime to survive the attack with its nuclear status unchanged and very predictably respond by closing the strait and hobbling global trade, are scrambling for a way to avoid strategic defeat and at least make it back to status quo ante. We could have just not done any of this.”
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