Welcome back to Media Matters’ weekly newsletter. This week:
Right-wing media figures are claiming that dismal polling for Republicans this election cycle is a “psyop.”
The Trump administration just contradicted Fox News’ narrative that mass deportations are targeting the “worst of the worst.”
Trump’s bizarre rant against Fox News demonstrates the network’s impossible task in feeding the president’s need for propaganda.
Election deniers are working to sow maximum destruction in this year’s midterm elections, calling for states to purge voter rolls following a recent Supreme Court decision.
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This week's infighting
Donald Trump went on a bizarre social media rant against Fox News, accusing his propaganda outlet of showcasing Democrats who criticize him and the Republican Party. Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote this piece on the network’s impossible task in feeding Trump’s insatiable demand for propaganda. As Gertz writes: “The president won’t be satisfied until every minute of Fox programming is indistinguishable from North Korean state TV — and every minute of coverage at every other outlet is as well.”
Megyn Kelly: “Every other week, there’s a story about how much money the Trump family’s making.”
Asked about the prospect of Republicans losing Congress in the midterm elections, a Fox contributor pointed to “self-inflicted wounds by President Trump.”
A recent MAHA Summit shows that a divide between administration-aligned advocates and popular influencers has become entrenched. The summit's apparent cooperation with industry figures and the Trump administration seemed to drive further an existing wedge within the MAHA coalition, putting administration-aligned advocates at odds with some grassroots activists and popular influencers. As one activist put it, “I don’t recognize this version of MAHA.”
Right-wing media figures are claiming that midterm polls are designed to suppress conservative turnout
Citation
Newsmax
As recent polling shows Republicans in serious danger of losing their congressional majorities, some in right-wing media are responding by claiming the polls are deliberately showing dismal GOP support in order to suppress Republican voter turnout. Some of these figures are even calling the polls a “psyop.” This follows President Donald Trump’s repeated second-term dismissals of poor polling as “fake polls.”
Some of the figures spewing this absurd talking point include Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who told Fox that midterm election polling is a “psyop … to depress conservative turnout” and Steve Bannon, who said of midterm polling showing a potential “blue wave,” “That psyop is out there pretty strongly.” Newsmax host Rob Finnerty asked of Republicans’ poor polling, “Do you think maybe the left is doing that on purpose?”
You can check out all of the right-wing media personalities trying to bury their heads in the sandhere.
Excuse me?
After the Supreme Court ruling on the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, right-wing media figures and election deniers are calling on states to purge their voter rolls — despite a 90-day moratorium on voter roll changes and evidence that the database is erroneous. This is part of the plan election deniers are implementing for the midterm elections, which Media Matters’ President Angelo Carusone has characterized as “maximum destruction in as many places as possible to weaken and put as much sand in the gears.”
It’s election season, which means it’s time for Fox News to try to scare its viewers to the polls with frantic coverage of a “caravan” of migrants in Central America headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Foxhasbeendoing thisfor years and, like clockwork, it’s happening again now.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, right-wing media figures have called for the federal government to deploy federal law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, or the military to polling stations across the country to “surround the polls” as votes are cast or to interfere with vote counting after the election.
Media Matters’ Alex Kaplan wrote this piece detailing the role election denial activists are playing in right-wing media this year.
Fox News has spent almost two years claiming Trump’s deportations are targeting “the worst of the worst.” The administration just contradicted that narrative.
Citation
Molly Butler / Media Matters
After nearly two years of Fox News claiming that Donald Trump’s deportation operations were targeting the so-called “worst of the worst,” the administration has acknowledged that it is indeed attempting to go after every person it thinks is in the United States without authorization. This admission by the administration undercuts Fox’s narrative that mass deportations are somehow about public safety rather than maintaining structures of white supremacy through ethnic cleansing (which they are).
Since the earliest days of Trump’s second term, Fox News has worked overtime to paint people held in ICE custody as violent criminals, terrorists, and gang members. In reality, since January 2025, the percentage of ICE arrestees with a criminal conviction has tended to hover around 30%, with many of those convictions being for low-level offenses like traffic violations.
For as much as Fox News is trying to obfuscate the reality of Trump’s deportation operation, some voices in Spanish-language right-wing media see it clearly — and they’re not happy about it.
Media Matters’ John Knefel provides this great analysis: “It’s worth underscoring that people convicted of crimes — even violent crimes — are still human beings who deserve basic dignity, a baseline many ICE facilities fail to meet. … But for Fox News, immigrants who have been convicted of violent offenses are simply a convenient way to tar all immigrants as public safety risks. For as much as Fox told its viewers Trump is going after ‘the worst of the worst,’ the network’s own reporting now undermines that very narrative.”
The Navy disclosed 8 suicide attempts after right-wing media dismissed reporting about conditions on the USS Lincoln as “Persian propaganda”
The Navy carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was deployed in the Middle East for nine months during the Trump administration’s Operation Epic Fury against Iran. In August, reporting emerged on the poor conditions and declining mental health among servicemembers posted to the carrier. Right-wing media figures dismissed those stories as “an information op” and “Persian propaganda.” On September 22, however, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao disclosed that eight personnel across the Lincoln strike group attempted suicide.
After the initial reporting emerged in August, Steve Bannon suggested that low morale is “just the reality of life at sea” and accused media outlets of spreading “Persian propaganda.” Fox News senior strategic analyst retired Gen. Jack Keane dismissed the reports of a suicide attempt aboard the USS Lincoln, saying, “I’ve never seen such misrepresentation in the media of the actual facts that took place.” And Newsmax host Carl Higbie attacked the reporters covering the story as “a bunch of reporters who have never sacrificed anything in their lives” and said reports of low morale were an “invented narrative.”
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