On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses the war plans text group: “This is what happens when a president hires people based off of the fact that he liked their TV segments"
Published
Citation
From the March 25, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Angelo, I want you to take a look at how Fox News reacted to this news. Here's Will Cain yesterday.
...
Okay, so that's, like, Olympic level spin. And then Angelo, you also had, while they were talking about this banner running along the bottom of the screen, "We've all texted the wrong person before." Talk to me about the treatment the story is getting.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean, and this ties directly in with the question about accountability and also with what Zerlina was talking about before, which is that the right-wing sort of drove the narrative against Hillary Clinton for two years, and the fuel for that was what was happening in the right-wing media. That's how they kept it going and continued to push it forward. So if you just look at how that's playing out in the larger right-wing universe, you have a spectrum. You have some criticism, which is very, very modest. It's the smallest slice of the pie, and they're basically acknowledging that it was a screw-up and that's basically it. You know, they're not really getting too much bigger than that. So that's people like Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson.
And then the other two things, though, range from downplaying and dismissiveness to deranged. So what you just saw from Will Cain is basically what the larger Fox and, like, the bulk of the right-wing media, talk radio, that's how they're playing it out, which is that, "It's not that big of a deal. It happens. And actually, in a way, it's sort of positive because we got to see how awesome these guys are."
And then there's the deranged, which is that this was all done on purpose, that this was actually fifth dimensional chess right before you had this Intel hearing and it was designed to, like, hijack the conversation, showcase how great we are, illustrate how effective we were against the Houthis and what effective leadership is. And that's obviously a reflection of what's happening in the right-wing media. And it ties into accountability, because unless you're able to shift the narrative, you can't then build the political pressure on even the more -- the small amount of modest comments from the very few Republicans that have said they're a little bit concerned about it, you can't turn that spark into a larger flame that you can then drive forward for accountability. And, you know, even Ben Shapiro said, "You just ride it out. Two or three days, it'll be over." And I think that's the prevailing consensus in the larger right-wing space.
And the last thing I'll just say, though, is that it shouldn't -- and I think this has been a through line of the conversation so far. I mean, this is -- to me, the big takeaway is that this is what happens when a president hires people based off of the fact that he liked their TV segments as opposed to their credentials. And that's the thing here, to me the concern is that this is a reflection probably of how they orient themselves, and it's not just this small character. There's a revolving door between the White House and Fox and the right-wing media, and there's more than 20 officials that are basically in the same place. And I think it just is a testament to how deeply unserious, unqualified these people are.
MENENDEZ: And with very, very high stakes.