• Fox Business host Charles Payne defended Trump’s relationship with tech billionaires, claiming that “robber barons” increased wages and life expectancy. 
• Newsmax guest Steve Milloy: “We may never see another windmill built in the United States.” 
• Russell Brand called Trump an “American prophet” who “America needed.” 
• Fox’s Will Cain: “I truly believe that DEI could have killed America.”
• Fox’s Jesse Watters: “What kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife?”

• “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander celebrated Trump’s January 6 pardon: “I would storm the Capitol again for Donald Trump. I would start a militia for Donald Trump.” 
• On Infowars, Enrique Tarrio, the newly freed former leader of the Proud Boys, called for retribution: “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars.” 
• White nationalist Stew Peters and a January 6 participant called for retribution against those who “set up” and prosecuted rioters. 
• Fox’s Jeanine Pirro called for the arrest of governors who don’t comply with ICE: “It’s time to take a side.”

• Ben Shapiro: “Jesus was not in favor of free migration across all borders.” 
• Fox’s Sean Hannity launched into a vicious attack on a bishop for preaching compassion. 
• Fox host Kayleigh McEnany said the American public might not be swayed by pictures of crying migrants anymore. 
• CNBC’s Squawk Box built up excuses for Trump’s inflationary tariff proposals.
• Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: “Donald Trump was dictator on day one, but a dictator that the American people voted for.”

Fox News stars have spent months since President Donald Trump’s election assuring their audiences that Trump’s long-stated promise to pardon what he termed the “J6 hostages” would be limited to only nonviolent offenders who participated in storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. But on his first day in office, Trump pardoned or commuted to time served every person convicted in connection to their actions that day, including those who violently assaulted law enforcement and participated in seditious conspiracies. 

Numerous Fox personalities condemned the Trumpist violence at the Capitol in its immediate aftermath and called for the perpetrators to face consequences, even as they avoided assigning Trump culpability for encouraging the mob to come to D.C. and inciting it with lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. As Trumpists challenged the initial consensus around January 6 with a conspiratorial counternarrative, the right came to excuse or downplay their crimes. 

After Trump issued the pardons and commutations, right-wing media were quick to obscure the facts, suggesting that he pardoned only nonviolent offenders and ignoring the pardons that went to violent offenders who assaulted police and carried weapons. For its part, Fox praised Trump for granting the pardons and ignored the pardons for violent offenders. 

The same propaganda machine that was able to turn a nightmare that unfolded in front of our eyes into a story of Trumpist victims is gearing up for four more years of lies on Trump’s behalf.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s first Oval Office interview aired. Trump chose his loyal propagandist, Fox News host Sean Hannity, to conduct this first interview. Hannity shattered every imaginable ethical standard during Trump’s first term as he transformed his program into a nonstop White House propagandafest. 

Hannity, long a consistent mouthpiece for GOP talking points and naked partisan cheerleading, became the sitting president’s confidant and adviser. The Fox star became known within the West Wing as Trump’s “unofficial chief of staff,” shaping policy outcomes and widespread conspiracy-minded counternarratives through both his private conversations with the president and his public program, which Trump regularly watched. Hannity’s on-air propaganda and unethical actions drew outrage from his colleagues, but his bosses were largely unconcerned with his dual role as network host and Trump political operative. 

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz provides this timeline of the Trump-Hannity relationship during the president’s first term — including a sequence of ethical morasses that would lead to the termination of a host at any remotely credible news outlet.

During the inaugural prayer service, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal diocese of Washington urged Donald Trump to “have mercy” on undocumented migrants and LGBTQ children. Right-wing media responded by calling her a “fake bishop” with “deranged political beliefs,” saying her sermon was “heretical” and “satanic” and claiming she was “forcing left-wing platitudes down everyone’s throat.” 

• Fox’s Greg Gutfeld called Budde “Satan.” 
• The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said Budde “is exhibit A for why women should not be pastors, priests, or bishops.” 
• Fox’s Laura Ingraham called Budde a “radical leftist.”

• OAN host and former congressman Matt Gaetz defended the Proud Boys. 
• On Trump’s first day back in office, he announced an end to the CBP One app, which was the sole way for migrants to request an asylum-seeking appointment for legal entrance into the U.S. Right-wing media celebrated Trump for ending the policy. 
• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk: “Julie Kelly and I were on the phone together with the president last week about this topic of January 6.” 
• Media Matters President Angelo Carusone discussed how conservative media infighting is offering an opportunity for resistance.