• Fox’s Sean Hannity crashed out on a radio caller questioning Trump’s war in Iran, calling the self-described Air Force veteran an “idiot.” 
• Podcaster Tim Dillon said about the war in Iran: “We got into something without any plan” and “it seems pretty obvious we got hosed.” 
• Podcaster Megyn Kelly said the Trump administration’s statements on the Strait of Hormuz have been “so erratic that even Fox News, the biggest cheerleader of this war by far, is starting to ask some questions.” Also this week, a caller to Kelly’s show said, “Donald Trump’s foreign policy is a complete disaster.”  
• Nick Fuentes: “How much losing is enough on every issue? … Every issue is a TACO. Trump always chickens out.” 
• Laura Loomer accused Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Megyn Kelly of attempting to sabotage Republicans in this year’s midterm elections. 
• Influencer Brett Cooper: “What actually is MAGA now? … I would have considered myself MAGA, but I don’t. I’m not giving Trump a 100% approval rating personally.”

For days, right-wing media figures have claimed that President Donald Trump’s war on Iran could not be a success if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed and under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Reporting this week from The Wall Street Journal, however, indicated that Trump recently “told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed.” During his Wednesday night televised address, the president further indicated that he was willing to end the war without reopening the strait, saying, “The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won't be taking any in the future. We don’t need it.” 

About 20% of the world’s oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian attacks on commercial ships as well as threats of additional attacks have stopped nearly all traffic through the strait. 

Trump’s comments seemingly ignore demands from his media propagandists, who have insisted that “when this ends, Iran cannot be in control” of the Strait of Hormuz: 

• The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro said “there is no way to extricate ourselves” from the war in Iran “by simply running away” that “does not leave Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz.” Shapiro also said he thinks it’s “highly unlikely" that Trump leaves the Islamic Republic in control of the strait. 
• Newsmax guest Elliot Abrams: “If the Strait of Hormuz isn't really open, freely open, the president is going to look like he did not win this war.” 
• Fox’s Laura Ingraham said there is an “absolute essential nature of securing safe passage through the Strait” and asked her guest whether Kharg Island “is going to have to be occupied by American troops.”

• Fox’s Laura Ingraham said she’s “choosing not to panic” about the Iran war. 
• Right-wing media predicted Trump’s tariffs would boost the economy. So far, the effects have been disastrous.
• Fox’s Trace Gallagher suggested “rising gas prices” may be “more emotional than physical.”  
• In an episode of The Daily Wire’s Real History with Matt Walsh on slavery, Walsh stated, “There’s no doubt that being a slave was a bad life, but if you were to be enslaved, it was better to be enslaved in the United States.” Walsh also claimed, “It’s a statistical reality that every living white person has ancestors who were enslaved, but a great deal of white slavery was not done by fellow Europeans.”

Fox News’ MAGA stars, unable to acknowledge that the war in Iran Trump launched with their support is spiraling into a strategic defeat, have landed on a scapegoat: NATO and its member states, which were not consulted by the United States before it joined Israel in starting the war and have since refused participation. 

Fox primetime stars Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity all denounced NATO on Wednesday as “kind of a meaningless ally” that “we’ve had it with” for purportedly “abandoning us.” Hannity and Ingraham each suggested that Trump should withdraw the U.S. from the alliance (which he is barred from doing unilaterally under a bill Secretary of State Marco Rubio cosponsored in the Senate that became law in 2023). 

Trump has spent the last several weeks raging over the refusal by U.S. allies to send their navies into the active war zone to escort oil tankers and other commercial ships after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, Trump claimed to be “beyond reconsideration” of the U.S. role in NATO after “they weren’t there for us” in Iran. If Trump was watching Fox before or after his Wednesday speech (a likely assumption given that the president regularly tunes in to Fox to guide his communication and policy decisions), he heard vigorous support for pivoting from his inability to defeat Iran to punishing his allies. 

The looming strategic failure of the U.S. war in Iran has placed Fox’s hosts in a bind. They have assured their viewers that the war is a historic success and appear unable to break with Trump due to their viewers’ support of the president. That makes our NATO allies an appealing target as the war grinds on.

• Fox host Dagan McDowell advocated for lifting oil sanctions on Iran just days after decrying “the insanity of enriching a terrorist regime.” 
• Fox host Jesse Watters said a Jewish person couldn’t win the Republican presidential nomination. Watters also questioned the “emotional maturity” of women, saying, “I hope there’s not a female president in my lifetime.” 
• Megyn Kelly said Fox people “have told me that administration figures will come to them saying, please put me on because I have something the president has to hear.”

New reporting found that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s stockbroker tried to buy defense funds before the Trump administration launched its war with Iran. In his former role as a Fox News host, however, Hegseth slammed federal officials for alleged instances of “insider trading.” 

According to the Financial Times, Hegseth’s stockbroker “contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF … shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.” The Financial Times noted that the ETF’s “largest holdings include defence conglomerates RTX, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which count the US Department of Defense as their biggest customers.” 

Rewinding back to 2022, during an interview with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Hegseth touted a Wall Street Journal report highlighting “officials exposed … for trading stock in companies that their very own agencies regulate,” including one Department of Defense official who “bought a defense stock five times before it won new business from the Pentagon.” Hegseth called the actions “insider trading,” criticizing the officials by saying, “They enrich themselves while they’re supposed to be temporary public servants.”