Media Matters weekly newsletter, October 25
Written by Jason Campbell
Published
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In this week's edition:
- Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly sounds the alarm about Trump's potential return to office. Here's how the Fox News bubble is reacting. It took Fox nearly 24 hours to play the audio of Kelly's warning. And here are the right-wing media figures who praised Kelly as a restraint on Trump — and are still supporting his candidacy regardless of Kelly's warning.
- Project 2025 allies are organizing to steal the election.
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This week in stupid
- Even though Donald Trump is 18 years older than Kamala Harris, Newsmax’s Greg Kelly claimed there’s “not a significant age gap.”
- Fox News spent 2 hours and 4 minutes touting Trump's McDonald's stunt. Fox News spent just 15 seconds on a new report showing Trump's policies would make the Social Security Trust Fund insolvent years earlier than expected. The average Fox News viewer is nearly 70 years old.
- Fox’s Brian Kilmeade defended Trump’s comments about Nazi generals, saying Trump was “maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis.”
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This week in scary
- Alex Jones claimed Democrats are going to start a race war and said he has discussed it with JD Vance.
- QAnon conspiracy theorist Scott Pressler said he is working directly with Lara Trump on “election integrity.”
- Fox’s Greg Gutfeld said “the integrity of the election” is in doubt.
- Article III Project Founder Mike Davis listed judges and law enforcement officials Trump should investigate “on day one.”
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Excuse me?
- Greg Kelly said Trump’s comments about Arnold Palmer had “elegance” and “class.”
- Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk: “If you’re a Christian that votes to the Democrat Party, you are voting for things that God hates.”
- Laura Loomer: “I’m blacker than Kamala Harris.”
- Wayne Allyn Root and Kari Lake pushed a conspiracy theory that her opponent’s campaign is funded by “the Mexican drug cartel.”
- A Fox & Friends co-host said that John Kelly and others warning about Trump’s fascism are guilty of “insubordination.”
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This Week in Project 2025
If you would like to follow our reporting on Project 2025, please visit this section of our website.
- Project 2025 rejects climate science in favor of Big Oil’s preferred policies.
- Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts: “President Trump, of all people, would agree” that Project 2025 is “in service to the American people.”
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How the Fox bubble is reacting to John Kelly calling Trump a fascist
John Kelly, who once served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, has gone on the record and agreed that the former president is a “fascist” and would seek to rule as a dictator if he returns to office in November, The New York Times reported on Tuesday evening. The paper published audio of an interview Kelly gave in which he explained that Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government” and believes he should have “an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
Kelly is not the only former top Trump official sounding the alarm: Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described him as “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever.” These remarks were also echoed by Jim Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Trump a “threat to democracy,” while former national security advisor John Bolton described him as “unfit to be president.”
And yet, Trump retains the zealous loyalty of the counselors he relied on most of all during his presidency: the faithful hosts at Fox News. Primetime hosts completely ignored Kelly’s remarks on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, Fox & Friends suggested that Trump critics were guilty of insubordination, with Fox host Brian Kilmeade even suggesting that Trump was “maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis.” By Wednesday night, Fox host Jesse Watters was attacking VP Kamala Harris for citing Kelly.
- The Wall Street Journal editorial board and commentators like National Review Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich previously praised the retired four-star general and Gold Star parent John Kelly as an “indispensable” and “unflinching” figure who “deserves the nation’s gratitude” for stopping Trump from exercising his worst impulses. Now, Kelly is publicly describing the former president as a fascist bent on ruling the United States as a dictator if he returns to power — while Trump is making clear that he will not allow himself to be surrounded by similar figures who could act as guardrails in a second term — and the same figures are still backing his candidacy.
- It took Fox News nearly 24 hours to play the audio of Kelly. In a triplet of recorded interviews released by The New York Times, Kelly went on the record over concerns he has about Trump. In a series of breathtaking quotes, Kelly claimed that Trump “is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” and that Trump has “commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’"
- The Los Angeles Times was the only one of five top U.S. newspapers to focus a front-page article on Kelly’s comments, while the Times continued to bury its own scoop.
- Newsmax host Greg Kelly railed against Kelly, Mattis, and Milley, saying their medals should be taken away and that they're “out for a buck.” Kelly's claim that Trump did not promote them is belied by reality: Trump appointed Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mattis as secretary of defense, and Kelly as secretary of Homeland Security and chief of staff in his White House.
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Project 2025 allies are organizing to steal the election
Media Matters has found significant ties between authors, contributors, and partners involved in Project 2025 and the ongoing right-wing efforts to disenfranchise voters and sow confusion about the 2024 election.
The Heritage Foundation is at the center of many of these efforts. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer identified the conservative think tank as one of the election denial movement’s “leaders” following the 2020 election. Heritage has extensive connections to election denial groups through both direct collaboration on voter suppression policies and the Project 2025 advisory board, which includes more than 110 conservative groups. Additionally, Heritage’s political arm, Heritage Action, is a member of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a collection of election denial activists and right-wing groups that voting rights experts say are spreading misinformation about noncitizen voting.
In collaboration with The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, the groups and individuals listed here are at the forefront of efforts to sow chaos and confusion in the 2024 election. I invite you to read the entire report here.
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In case you missed it
- Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo has spread a conspiracy theory about voting security over 20 times in recent months.
- Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania-based election denial activist with connections to the House GOP, has appeared on the conspiracy theory site The Gateway Pundit to promote unfounded claims about noncitizen voting.
- After Kamala Harris shut down anti-abortion hecklers at a campaign rally, Fox News pundits saw an opportunity to add a new misleading talking point to Donald Trump’s arsenal.
- The major broadcast news networks largely ignored VP Kamala Harris’ proposal to expand Medicare to pay for long-term, in-home care services for seniors in the two weeks since she announced it.
- Polling around mass deportation is complicated and requires context, but right-wing media have ignored this fact.
- New analysis shows that Trump would devastate Social Security finances, debunking a MAGA talking point. National broadcast news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to mention this report.
- Activists connected to the Election Integrity Network are advocating for racially profiling voters they believe are noncitizens, following through on a conspiracy theory right-wing media have helped to spread.