This week in stupid

• Newsmax host Rob Schmitt falsely suggested that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz lied about his dog.
• Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said it “isn’t that weird” that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly cut off a dead whale’s head with a chainsaw.
• Megyn Kelly said Tim Walz “bows like he’s Chinese.”
• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said polls showing Kamala Harris in the lead are “psychological warfare” and a “propaganda campaign.”

This week in scary

• Newsmax host Greg Kelly: “A lot of us believe a good portion of the government must have had something to do with” the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
• Daily Wire host Matt Walsh: “I would support a full-scale military invasion of Mexico to destroy all the cartels.”

Excuse me?

• Former Daily Wire host Candace Owens: “Brigitte Macron is a man.”
• Fox's Jesse Watters called Kamala Harris “a frightened woman.” This week, he also said Harris will “get paralyzed in the situation room while the generals have their way with her.”

This week in Project 2025

For Media Matters’ complete coverage of Project 2025, please visit this section of our website.

• As key Trump allies advocate for revenge, Project 2025 proposes that a second Trump presidency should gut funding for public broadcasting and “reexamine” the relationship between the White House and reporters.
• The Heritage Foundation recently promoted an apprenticeship program that opens up workers to increased exploitation.
• The president of Project 2025 partner the American Principles Project, Terry Schilling, compared banning abortion to ending slavery and advocated for an incremental approach.
• Project 2025 proposes gutting several federal offices that oversee efforts to address climate change and rolling back the bulk of the Inflation Reduction Act.
• The president of a Project 2025 partner, Kristan Hawkins, said abortion should be “unthinkable” and “unavailable.”
• Project 2025 contributor Stephen Moore is defending the richest Americans from Kamala Harris’ plan to tax them more.

Trump shared post from N-word spewing account that claims “Hitler was right” and the Holocaust “never happened”

On August 24, former President Donald Trump promoted a social media account that wrote that “the election must be too big to rig” above an image of a flag with the words “Trump or communism.” The account Trump promoted is filled with extremist content, including use of the N-word and praise for Adolf Hitler.

I’ll spare you the specifics on this disgusting content but you can find it all here.

Trump’s behavior here is not an aberration: Media Matters also recently reported that Trump has frequently promoted a Truth Social account that’s shared material calling for Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and others to be killed.

On Wednesday, Media Matters’ Eric Hananoki further reported that Trump used his Truth Social account to “retruth” a supporter’s meme calling for the imprisonment of Harris, President Joe Biden, and other prominent figures. A review of the supporter’s account also found numerous calls for Trump’s political opponents to be killed.

Trump has a clear pattern of endorsing content from people who advocate for violence and support racism. Journalists should be asking Trump if he condemns that content.

Fox News is championing RFK Jr.’s view of public health, even as it puts your kids at risk

Fox News hosts are overjoyed about notorious anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purported ability to help Donald Trump’s campaign appeal to “moms” concerned with public health. The culture warriors at Fox aren’t typically invested in talking about public health issues. But in one key health-related fight on which the network aligned with Kennedy — COVID-19 vaccines — the results have proved disastrous.

Fox conducted a yearslong campaign to undermine the vaccines, which the network falsely portrayed as ineffective and dangerous, while talking up the potential fake cures for the virus. Its hosts were particularly scathing about public health efforts to require vaccination at schools and workplaces. The right-wing assault on the COVID-19 vaccines led to lower rates of vaccinations among Republicans — and consequently higher death rates.

But the anti-vaccine sentiment unleashed by the likes of Fox and Kennedy was not limited to COVID-19: There have been broader impacts on GOP support for the full range of childhood vaccinations.

After Kennedy endorsed Trump, Fox’s breathless coverage has barely mentioned the former candidate’s record of spreading dangerous vaccine misinformation.

I invite you to read all of this piece from Media Matters’ Matt Gertz on the frightening potential impacts that Fox is trying to make a reality for public health.

Moms for Liberty is raising money to put Glenn Beck’s teen fiction book in school libraries

Right-wing media figure and now teen fiction author Glenn Beck is partnering with Moms for Liberty to place his new novel in public schools.

Beck was an early supporter of Moms for Liberty, an anti-LGBTQ “parental rights” organization whose members have advocated for banning books across the country and harassing school officials. The Moms for Liberty Foundation ran a special campaign in late July to place conservative propaganda in school libraries and classrooms, promising that 100% of donations to the foundation would go to putting Beck’s premiere teen fiction novel into public schools. This suggests that the money raised was likely eventually fed to Beck through payouts from his publisher.

This isn’t Beck’s first rodeo with weird fiction. He’s written four Christmas books, four libertarian apocalyptic books, and is now trying to tap into teen fiction. Beck’s new book is the most recent addition to a long list of right-wing propaganda being strategically placed in public school libraries by Moms for Liberty, while the group simultaneously removes books that challenge its right-wing worldview.

In case you missed it 

• Donald Trump made a political appearance at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday - despite the Trump team being warned explicitly that campaigning over veterans’ graves was against the law — and Fox News wasted no time cheering him on.
• Donald Trump and his media allies have already begun laying the groundwork to intimidate the Federal Reserve away from expected interest rate cuts this September.
• Spanish-language right-wing personalities on radio and social media have spent the first half of 2024 comparing Democrats to Latin American dictators, part of a documented right-wing strategy to divert attention from the threat that Donald Trump poses to democracy.
• A new Media Matters and GLAAD analysis has found that Meta is seemingly failing to enforce its own hate speech policy, which prohibits “the usage of slurs that are used to attack people on the basis of their protected characteristics,” including gender identity.
• Appearing on the network of far-right conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier Stew Peters, Kandiss Taylor, the District 1 chairwoman for the Georgia Republican Party, complained about Jewish people “controlling everything.”
• Chevron-sponsored “news” site Permian Proud represents one of the fossil fuel industry’s latest and most insidious greenwashing strategies, exploiting the decline of local journalism to shape public opinion in oil-rich regions.