Fox News personalities have continued to mislead their audience into thinking that President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans aren't considering massive cuts to Medicaid, even as both chambers have advanced budget plans that would require billions in reductions to the program in order to offset tax cuts for the wealthy.

As Fox’s coverage suggests, those budget plans are unpopular even among Trump supporters. A new poll from MAGA-friendly firm Fabrizio Ward, whose co-founder served as Trump’s 2024 campaign pollster, found that a majority of Trump voters and two-thirds of swing voters oppose slashing Medicaid to fund Trump’s tax cuts. That level of disapproval helps explain why Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have spent the first several months of Trump’s second term claiming the health insurance program for low income individuals and people with disabilities is safe from Republican austerity measures, despite all evidence to the contrary.   

The obfuscation from conservative media comes amid Congress’ ongoing efforts to draft a budget for the next fiscal year. On February 26, the House of Representatives passed a budget outline calling for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts — overwhelmingly favoring rich people — and $880 billion in reductions to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid. The plan didn’t specifically call for cuts to Medicaid, but outside experts and the Congressional Budget Office, which provides nonpartisan analysis of federal spending, found that drastic reductions to Medicaid or Medicare would be necessary to meet the GOP’s requirements. 

The Senate responded with its own budget plan, passed on April 5, which reportedly directed the same House committee to enact the same amount of cuts in spending — therefore placing Medicaid at risk. (As of Thursday morning, the House had failed to advance the Senate resolution.) 

Over the past month — following the release of the CBO’s report — Fox News continued to mislead viewers, claiming that Trump and Congressional Republicans are not considering major cuts to Medicaid. The defenses of Medicaid that Fox personalities have offered, such as they are, should be taken with a high degree of skepticism given that many at the network have also called for cuts to the program.

On March 12, as the threat of a government shutdown loomed, Fox News host Sean Hannity told his audience that Trump has “pledged to protect Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare.”

Then on March 15, Fox News host Mark Levin accused Democrats of lying about the House Republicans’ budget plan. “Democrat after Democrat has gone on TV and stated that the Republicans are gutting Medicaid,” Levin said. “That’s a flat out lie.” 

“Medicaid is being used by illegal aliens and physically and mentally fit people who are capable of working at least 20 hours a week, but refuse to do so,” he added. “They’re draining the Medicaid system, and should be removed.”

Levin’s arguments, though common in right-wing media, are deeply misleading. In general, undocumented people are barred from accessing Medicaid, except in some emergency situations — which makes up less than one percent of total Medicaid spending. Furthermore, almost two-thirds of working-aged people on Medicaid are already working, and many of those who aren’t in the formal workforce are taking care of a family member, have a disability, or are in school. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients puts up to 36 million people at risk of losing their coverage.   

The steady drumbeat continued, next on the network’s supposed news side. On March 19, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum undermined a correct claim made by her guest, former Biden campaign surrogate Kevin Walling, that congressional Republicans were looking to cut social safety net programs, including Medicaid.

“Well I don’t think there’s Medicare and Medicaid cuts that have been proposed,” MacCallum interjected. “I know President Trump has said he doesn’t want to touch those programs.” 

On March 24, host Sean Hannity told viewers Democrats were lying about the GOP’s budget framework.

“Don’t forget the Democrats’ dishonest claims about — when you hear that Donald Trump, Republicans, want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the SNAP program — it’s all a lie,” Hannity said, adding, “Donald Trump has vowed over and over again to protect these programs, period.”

A week later, Hannity pushed the same line in an interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, claiming Trump will not “touch Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, except to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, which is a very different scenario.”

Contrary to Hannity’s assertion, Republicans in Congress can’t get to their demanded reductions simply by targeting Medicaid fraud, waste and abuse alone. As Politico reported, even if every single instance of misuse or improper payments were caught — which has no historical precedent — it would only make up a third of the GOP’s required cuts.

It is possible that opposition to Congressional Republicans’ austerity plans will prove sufficient to spare Medicaid from significant cuts. But Fox News is attempting to cast Trump as the program’s protector, even as he and his party are charging at it with a chainsaw.