• There is no link between the New Orleans truck attack and border security — in fact, the suspect in the horrific attack is an American. Nevertheless, Fox News keeps desperately trying to make the attack about immigration and the border. A CNN guest tried peddling the same falsehood, it didn't go well. 
• Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: “Republicans are really bad at being speaker of the House.”

• Newsmax guest Michael Savage called on Donald Trump to deport imams and shut down mosques.

• Youtuber Benny Johnson asked about the New Orleans New Years Day attack, “Was this an inside job?”
• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk: “I’m very much against H-1Bs.”
• Ahead of the anniversary of the January 6 attack, Fox News host claimed that the government targeted “political dissidents.”

President-elect Donald Trump keeps falsely suggesting that the native-born U.S. Army veteran who rammed a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day was an immigrant. He appears to have been misled by a Fox News report — subsequently retracted — that the alleged assailant crossed the border from Mexico two days before the attack. 

The falsehoods mark a resumption of the Trump-Fox feedback loop that powered his communications during his first term in the White House. The then-president, an obsessed consumer of Fox programming, sent nearly 1,300 tweets in response to coverage he saw on Fox News and Fox Business over the last 29 months of his first term as president. Now, Trump appears to be starting his second term the same way he spent his first one — by riffing on what he sees on television. 

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote this piece explaining how Trump is, once again, trumpeting falsehoods he saw on Fox. I invite you to read the whole piece here.

The independence of the press, enshrined by the Constitution’s First Amendment, is an essential element of our democracy. The public cannot stay informed about the problems facing our country and the efforts to improve or worsen them without robust protections for journalism. But powerful people hate the light journalism shines on them and the dissent it can spur. A coalition of right-wing billionaires, Republican law enforcement officials, and the incoming authoritarian president are using wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence the press and carry out their political agenda unimpeded. And they are perilously close to succeeding. 

Media Matters is naming anti-media intimidation the Misinformer of the Year for 2024 for its chilling effect on essential press freedoms. 

The purpose of intimidation tactics, such as baseless defamation suits, is to silence adversarial speech. If powerful individuals can force critics to pay a hefty price, they will be much more hesitant to take risks. And those without the financial resources for protracted legal fights will either back down or risk crippling costs. With journalists silences, crucial stories will go unwritten - and the American public will lose out to right-wing power.