Sinclair Broadcast Group national correspondent James Rosen has been producing misleading news packages that air on Sinclair TV stations for months, pushing President Donald Trump’s agenda or defending him from criticism. Sinclair owns or operates hundreds of TV stations throughout the United States, many in battleground states and smaller cities, giving its pro-Trump propaganda a wide reach.

Rosen, who was formerly the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News until his departure in December 2017 amid sexual harassment reports from multiple colleagues, was carrying water for Trump even before he began working at Sinclair in early 2019. In mid-2017, Rosen defended Trump for reportedly disclosing “highly classified information” to the Russian ambassador during a White House meeting. In October 2017, Rosen falsely claimed the federal charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort didn’t extend to his time with the campaign -- and had to correct his inaccurate reporting. And nearly a year after joining Sinclair, Rosen disclosed the name of the man widely believed by right-wing media to be the intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint triggered an investigation into Trump’s abuse of power toward Ukraine and led to the president’s subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives.

Transcript searches showed that Rosen’s news packages were aired on at least 42 Sinclair-owned or -operated TV stations in 35 states, blanketing the nation with pro-Trump propaganda during the election season.

Some of Rosen’s dishonest defenses of Trump fit into a larger pattern of GOP talking points -- like covering for his pandemic mishandling -- while others seem to be isolated incidents. For instance:

• On July 23, Rosen uncritically reported the debunked Trump administration claim that its use of federal police in American cities, called Operation Legend, resulted in 200 arrests in Kansas City, Missouri, in just two weeks. But The Kansas City Star reported on July 22 “that’s not even close to true,” noting that “a senior Department of Justice official on Wednesday corrected comments by Attorney General William Barr, who minutes earlier had said 200 arrests had been made within two weeks in Kansas City as part of Operation Legend, a federal anti-crime effort.” The newspaper continued: “Speaking with McClatchy after the Wednesday event, the senior Justice Department official clarified that the 200 figure included arrests dating back to December 2019. It also included, the official said, both state and FBI arrests in joint operations.” In fact, the newspaper reported, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said only one person had been arrested by federal law enforcement in the city during the operation.

• On August 26, Rosen erased Trump’s many actions that have harmed LGBTQ Americans. In a report Rosen aired for Sinclair previewing the third night of the Republican National Convention, he closed by noting without pushback that Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, Ric Grenell, “is expected to make the case, as he has elsewhere, that Mr. Trump is the most pro-LGBTQ president in history.” Media Matters’ Brianna January has previously documented Grenell’s efforts to whitewash the many actions and policies Trump has done to harm LGBTQ Americans, including advocating for anti-LGBTQ policies during his 2016 campaign; implementing rules that codified discrimination against LGBTQ Americans in health care, housing, adoption, and foster care; rescinding Obama-era guidance to protect trans students from discrimination and bullying in school; and many, many more.

Many of Rosen's Sinclair news packages aired misinformation in support of Trump on the pandemic, foreign policy, and Russia:

Rosen has repeatedly covered for President Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic

• On April 16, Rosen supported the Trump administration’s efforts to blame China for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in America and included baseless allegations that a Chinese lab was involved in the outbreak.

• In an April 24 report, Rosen attempted to justify Trump’s bizarre boast that “statistically, we're doing phenomenally, in terms of mortality, in terms of all of the different elements that you can judge.” In his report, Rosen failed to even mention a crucial fact about the U.S. death toll: Almost two weeks prior, the U.S. surpassed all other countries in confirmed COVID-19 deaths. It’s even more false now with the U.S. death toll exceeding 210,000.

• In a June 19 report, Rosen included a quote from Health and Human Services spokesperson and Trump loyalist Michael Caputo in which he falsely claimed that “we never had a backlog of tests in this country.” In fact, multiple reports from the early months of the pandemic had covered huge testing backlogs throughout the United States. (Caputo took a leave of absence from HHS last month “after a social media tirade in which he falsely accused government scientists of engaging in ‘sedition.’”) 

• In a July 31 report, Rosen suggested former President Barack Obama was unfairly criticizing Trump for his objectively horrible handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. Rosen suggested it's unfair that Obama said Trump responded poorly and politically to the coronavirus pandemic -- but Trump’s failures during the coronavirus pandemic are well-documented, and reporting published the day before Rosen’s report began airing suggested that the Trump administration deliberately let the coronavirus impact Democratic-led states harder. He also suggested Obama’s criticism of Trump for sending federal personnel to attack protesters was beyond the pale, but ignored Trump baselessly accusing Obama of treason in June.

• On August 2, Rosen pushed Trump’s blame for Democrats for not passing more coronavirus relief without noting that House Democrats passed a bill for this months earlier. In fact, House Democrats passed a comprehensive relief package all the way back in May, known as the HEROES Act. The House also passed The Emergency Housing Protections and Relief Act in June, spun off from the HEROES Act, which provides a $75 billion relief fund for homeowners and extends an eviction and foreclosure moratorium through March 2021.

• On September 8, Rosen made false claims to make Trump and Senate Republicans’ actions on unemployment insurance payments during the pandemic look better. In his report, Rosen claimed “both sides want to renew unemployment benefits that expired at the end of July.” He added, “President Trump issued an executive order directing such payments at 70% of wages, capped at $600. And some states are complying.” But Rosen got the amounts wrong: Trump’s executive order capped unemployment payments at $400 per week, and also forces cash-strapped states to foot 25% of the bill and takes money away from FEMA’s disaster relief money -- details Rosen neglected to report. The Senate GOP bill also offered only half of the unemployment benefits that lapsed in July, $300 per week. In addition, Rosen noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wanted Republicans and Trump to agree to more aid, but failed to mention that the Democratic-controlled House passed a bill renewing the lapsed jobless benefits and including this aid months ago. 

Rosen has also covered for Trump’s foreign policy failures, glossed over corruption at the State Department, and embellished his Middle East record

• In a June 22 report, Rosen dishonestly pushed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s smears against fired Inspector General Steve Linick. In his segment for Sinclair, Rosen failed to mention Pompeo’s notable role in Linick’s firing -- asking the president to fire Linick while the inspector general was investigating Pompeo himself for misconduct, a possibly illegal act of retaliation.

• In a June 24 report, Rosen left out an Al Qaeda attack in Florida while covering the Trump administration’s claims of success against the terror organization. Rosen covered the State Department’s annual country report on international terrorism, saying that the Trump administration had “claimed major strides” in the fight against international terrorist organizations. But he failed to mention that the December 2019 shooting at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, where three U.S. sailors were killed, was labeled an act of terrorism by the attorney general in January. In May, the FBI and the Justice Department announced that the attack was linked to Al Qaeda, and the killer, as CNN reported, “was a longtime associate of al Qaeda who had communicated with operatives from the group as recently as the night before the shooting.” FBI Director Christopher Wray said the attack “was actually the brutal culmination of years of planning and preparation by a longtime [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] associate.” Rosen’s failure to mention this Al Qaeda-linked attack while hyping the administration’s successes against ISIS potentially misled viewers into thinking that Trump’s mess of anti-terrorism policies have been successful.

• On July 30, Rosen uncritically repeated the false reason Trump gave for withdrawing thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, which he has long lied about. Rosen reported that Trump linked the move to “Berlin's failure to meet spending requirements for the NATO military alliance.” However, Reuters reported in November that Germany was on track to meet the agreed-upon spending target by 2031. This is later than the 2024 deadline agreed to, but as Agence France-Presse reported, some of the countries Trump is sending the withdrawn troops to spend even less on defense than Germany. Rosen also hid the specific details of Trump’s reasoning, which included: “Germany’s delinquent. They haven’t paid their fees. They haven’t paid their NATO fees.” Trump’s repeated claims that Germany is somehow “delinquent,” owes the U.S. money, pays “fees” into NATO, etc. are false.

• On August 18, Rosen misled viewers about the effects of the Trump administration-brokered deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, suggesting it included a permanent end to Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank. In a segment that included an interview the Sinclair correspondent conducted with Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, whom he labeled the architect of the deal, Rosen said that in order to secure the deal, Israel “abandoned plans to annex parts of the Palestinian West Bank.” But nearly a week before Rosen’s segment, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself said in a televised address about the agreement that Israel merely had to “temporarily wait” to annex the West Bank to secure the deal.

• In a September 9 report on Trump’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, Rosen credulously cited the Trump administration’s actions that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran as one of his positive accomplishments. After reporting that a right-wing Norwegian politician nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, Rosen uncritically repeated the administration’s claims that his accomplishments include “withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the killing of Iranian terror chief Qasem Soleimani.” But Trump’s assassination of the Iranian general brought the United States to the brink of war and led to military retaliation from Iran that caused injuries to more than 100 U.S. military personnel -- which Trump lied about. Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has also been an absolute failure. Rosen failed to mention any of these or other critical details of Trump’s actions in the Middle East.

• On September 11, Rosen misled about Trump’s record on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming he fulfilled a campaign promise to end them. PolitiFact determined that, in fact, the wars were still ongoing and “the U.S. presence in the region hasn’t significantly slimmed under Trump.” And while Rosen highlighted Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s vote to authorize the Iraq war started by President George W. Bush, he ignored Trump’s past support for that war, which many fact-checkers have noted he regularly lied about.

Rosen covered for Trump’s inaction against Russian aggression

• In a June 29 report, Rosen began helping Trump dismiss reporting that Russia paid bounties to Taliban fighters to kill American troops in Afghanistan. In his report, Rosen quoted a Republican lawmaker calling reporting on Russia paying the Taliban bounties to kill American troops “‘fake news,’ part of a long-standing effort to portray President Trump as weak in the face of Russian aggressions.”

• On June 30, Rosen continued pushing the Republican narrative that Democrats were interested in the Russian bounty reports only because of Trump’s friendly relationship with Russia’s leader. Rosen also quoted Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe criticizing news organizations for reporting on the intelligence claims.

• On July 1, Rosen went even further in helping Trump dismiss this story. In his report, Rosen quoted an anonymous White House official calling the information reported in the first Times story about Russia paying bounties for the deaths of U.S. troops in Afghanistan “junk intelligence” and emphasizing that the leak was a crime.

• On July 20, Rosen aired a story focusing on documents released by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to cast doubt on the Trump-Russia narrative, including Graham’s suggestion that crimes were committed by the investigators and a quote from a Judicial Watch rep that it’s “phony.” But Rosen left out information that Trump team members were in contact with Russian government officials.