This week in stupid

• Former Daily Wire host Candace Owens: “I freaked out when I learned Buzz Aldrin was a Freemason. It’s not helping my case in believing those moon landings.”
• Fox’s Jesse Watters blamed Kamala Harris for professional sports teams leaving Oakland, California.

This week in scary

• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on the vice presidential debate: “I spoke to JD last night. I was texting him all my debate advice.”
• Election denier Cleta Mitchell said Democrats are trying to “change the electorate” to “turn America into a Marxist, one world country.”

Excuse me?

• Benny Johnson claimed January 6 was a military coup: “Donald Trump is actually the number one person who attempted to prevent January 6th.”
• Fox’s Greg Gutfeld praised mainstream media for ignoring climate change when reporting on Hurricane Helene.
• Fox contributor Kellyanne Conway attempted to minimize the divide between Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
• The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said “if child care is a crisis,” it is driven “by single motherhood.”

Conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene are going viral on TikTok

Hurricane Helene devastated southeastern states, killing at least 180 people with hundreds still missing. The “biblical devastation” to these areas, particularly in North Carolina, has prompted some TikTok users to spread unfounded conspiracy theories about the catastrophe that are reaching millions of users.

The most prominent of these conspiracy theories circulating on TikTok claims that the storm was not a natural occurrence but engineered in order to devastate North Carolina and create access to the land for lithium mining. Another variety of conspiracy theory that’s emerging is claims that “cloud seeding gone wrong” caused the hurricane. And another video featuring a clearly AI-generated image of Donald Trump wading through flood waters is even circulating, with overlaid text reading “this is our president right here.”

Outside of TikTok, the broader right-wing media ecosystem has been falsely insisting there is no federal response to Helene. In fact, the Biden administration approved federal assistance to supplement state and local efforts in various states affected by the hurricane. Additionally, media personalities and MAGA figures are falsely and dishonestly claiming that Helene victims are only entitled to $750 in aid - this is yet another example of right-wing media using undocumented immigrants as a political cudgel.

CBS News’ VP debate moderators let JD Vance tell a staggering lie about Trump’s efforts to destroy the Affordable Care Act

During the October 1 CBS News vice presidential debate, moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell allowed Republican nominee Sen. JD Vance to tell a massive lie that his running mate “salvaged Obamacare.” In reality, Trump repeatedly attempted to destroy the Affordable Care Act and strip health insurance from millions of Americans.

Vance himself has proposed putting millions of Americans with chronic illnesses into their own insurance pool, as was standard practice in many states before adoption of the ACA. That had resulted in unaffordable insurance premiums, exclusions for preexisting conditions, and limits on both care and enrollment. A Media Matters review over the two weeks prior to the debate found that CBS and the other corporate broadcast networks entirely ignored Vance’s proposals.

How Fox is dismissing the unsealed Trump filing

Fox News stars are running cover for Donald Trump after special counsel Jack Smith provided extensive new revelations about the former president’s scheme to use lies about fraud to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, culminating with a mob of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol. The network has spent four years supporting Trump’s subversion plot, covering up his attempt to steal that election, and paving the way for him to try again next month.

Smith’s filing includes previously unreported details about Trump’s activities leading up to and on January 6, 2021. While some at Fox recognized the gravity of these new details, the network’s biggest stars either presented Smith’s revelations as old news or ignored them altogether.

As Trump was pushing lies in his effort to overturn the 2020 election results, Fox figures were making similar claims on the channel’s airwaves. The network is, essentially, an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s plot to steal the last election.

In one example from the filing, Smith alleges that Trump and his allies entirely fabricated claims about noncitizens voting in the 2020 election. Right-wing cable outlets, including Fox News, have relentlessly pushed this false conspiracy theory during the 2024 election cycle.

Having seen the disastrous consequences of indulging in Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories, Fox remains fully in his corner. The network’s airwaves are once again filled with baseless demagoguery about potential election fraud.

In case you missed it 

• National TV news coverage largely failed to connect Hurricane Helene to climate change. From September 25-27, Media Matters found that only 3% of corporate broadcast and cable news showed mentioned climate change in segments about Helene.
• A Media Matters analysis of economic news coverage in the second quarter of 2024 revealed a lack of in-depth coverage on an array of economic policies and indicators. The only macroeconomic trend that drew any consistent focus was inflation, which remained little-changed during the quarter.
• Donald Trump recently and falsely claimed that Kamala Harris was born “mentally impaired” and is “mentally disabled.” The remarks followed numerous Trump media allies attacking Harris with an ableist slur.
• Conservative outlets and media figures are amplifying reports of clerical errors, state voter roll audits, and Republican lawsuits to push a narrative that noncitizens are being widely allowed to vote in elections, despite evidence that very few votes are actually cast.
• Donald Trump called for implementing the far-right immigration policy known as “remigration,” which is a form of ethnic cleansing. Major outlets have failed to properly contextualize the proposal.
• The right-wing media firestorm that JD Vance helped unleash on Springfield, Ohio, may have died down, but his constituents already have reaped disastrous consequences of those toxic lies.
• Right-wing media are misrepresenting data about noncitizens with criminal histories to falsely claim Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have allowed for “thousands of illegals” who are “murderers” and “rapists” to come in through their “open border,” or to fearmonger that high numbers of criminals are “roaming free in the U.S.”
• Fox News has misrepresented Immigration and Customs Enforcement data in 53 of 62 segments since September 27.
• Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik used inaccurate police reports to spread fear of violence by trans people.
• Trump lobbed false attacks at Biden and Harris while CNN claimed he’s offering a “message of unity.”
• Robby Starbuck, who has a history of inflammatory rhetoric against LGBTQ people, has found his niche among right-wing media by leading a string of boycotts against companies to rescind their DEI policies and positions.
• Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote this great piece on how Tucker Carlson has pushed to expand the GOP tent from Alex Jones to JD Vance.