Welcome back to Media Matters’ weekly newsletter. This week:
As the Iran war teeters on the brink, here are some of the right-wing media figures who declared the war won months ago — you guessed it, another Mission Accomplished moment.
Fox News stars are still duckingTrump’s election security speech.
As gas prices climb past $4 again, Fox figures shrug off costs tied to Trump's war in Iran — while trying to shift the blame to Joe Biden.
If you want this delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here.
Jump to section
Right-wing moment
This week's infighting
The arrest of pro-Trump manosphere podcasters Andrew and Tristan Tate in Miami last weekend over U.K. charges has caused some division in right-wing media. A PBD podcast panelist, for example, called the Tate brothers’ charges “politically driven and motivated,” while The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro criticized right-wing media for “touting” the brothers, saying it’s “really quite insane.”
Tim Dillon on Trump’s 2020 election denial speech: “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Tim Pool: “I have questions about Donald Trump’s efforts, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, and I don’t believe he’s been honest and forthright about what the U.S. intentions really are.”
Fox’s Brian Kilmeadesuggested the U.S. has been “pretending we’re making progress with talks” on Iran.
As the Iran war teeters on the brink, let’s revisit the numerous “Mission Accomplished” moments from right-wing media
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 declared in early March that the war was over. Instead, the war is about to enter its sixth month with no clear end in sight, with the potential for escalation seemingly everywhere.
Right-wing media promised a cakewalk when the war began — instead, the Trump administration delivered a quagmire. Recent developments make clear the extent of how badly the war is going for the U.S. Yet in the days and weeks after the U.S. and Israeli militaries began their joint campaign against Iran on February 28, right-wing media pundits such as Fox’s Laura Ingraham, Greg Gutfeld, and Sean Hannity, Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, and many others have been declaring victory in a war that is still going on.
For instance, on March 3, Ingraham said, “It looks like this is just a wrap-up mission at this point.” On March 9, 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 made those comments with a graphic on the screen reading “I Predict: War Over Soon.” Hannity told 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.
For those of us old enough to remember President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner in 2003, years before the end of military hostilities in Iraq, the parallels are striking. Once again right-wing pundits helped to get the U.S. into a war it is very far from winning in any coherent sense, and their solution is simply to declare victory over and over and over again.
This week in stupid
Benny Johnson: “Ukraine isn’t a real place. It’s not a real place. It’s not really a real people.”
Fox News stars are still ducking Trump’s election security speech
Citation
Andrea Austria / Media Matters
Fox News’ most zealous MAGA stars have completely ignored Trump’s July 16 election security speech in the days since he delivered it.
Trump had previewed the White House address by promising it would contain “really, really big news.” While some in the election denial community were ecstatic about the speech, claiming they “feel vindicated,” news outlets and analysts quickly pointed out that Trump’s melange of slipshod claims about Chinese interference in the 2020 election purportedly concealed by the “deep state” did not cohere. Even right-wing journalist John Solomon, who masterminded the declassification of documents upon which the address was based and is still on a media tour claiming Trump’s speech was “100% accurate,” conceded afterwards that he found “zero evidence” that any votes in 2020, 2022, or 2024 had been altered by a foreign power.
Fox News, perhaps fearing legal liability or concerned that an obsessive focus on the 2020 election will damage Republican standing in the 2026 election, has been burying the address.
Newsmax’s Greg Kelly has noticed. This week, Kelly called Fox “fair-weather friends” for not discussing Trump’s election claims.
If you want to read more about this, check out Media Matters’ Matt Gertz’s piece.
Excuse me?
The White House Correspondents’ Association invited Trump to attend its annual dinner tonight. Given the Trump administration’s treatment of the media, including his attacks on journalists and lawsuits against news outlets, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz lays out the case for the invitation to be withdrawn.
Newsmax host Carl Higbie: “There is a cost to being a superpower. And sometimes for six months, you got to pay a dollar extra a gallon.”
A Fox News guest and retired Air Force general predicted the U.S. will be in Iran “for a long time.”
As gas prices climb past $4 again, Fox figures shrug off “rising costs tied to Iran” while shifting blame to Biden’s use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
As gas prices climbed back up to a national average of $4 a gallon on July 20 and the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve dropped to its lowest levels in more than four decades, guests and network personalities on Fox News and Fox Business deflected from Trump’s role in driving up energy costs by pointing to former President Joe Biden’s use of the reserve while downplaying the price at the pump caused by Trump’s conflict in Iran.
Starting in March 2022, Biden drew down 180 million barrels of oil from the reserve in response to oil disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was scheduled for a six-month period. This is almost identical to the amount and scheduled releases of oil by the Trump administration, except Trump’s release was made to offset the supply disruption from a conflict he initiated. Releasing oil from the reserve is a temporary tool that doesn’t meaningfully impact gas prices, as Fox repeatedly pointed out under Biden, and again in the lead-up to Trump releasing oil from the reserve earlier this year.
Fox figures and guests are now scapegoating the Biden administration for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve reaching record low levels on Trump’s watch. And while this is happening, Americans are feeling the pain every time they fill up on gas.
Meanwhile, this morning, Fox's Jack Keane said, “People are not going to remember five years from now that we had to pay higher gas prices.”
Comments
Post a Comment