• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wondered on his radio show if the “little intern at Media Matters” (yours truly, and I’m not an intern) watching his show was getting “redpilled.” According to him, tall buildings make people liberal, and I live in a city.

• The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles ranted against “so-called gay adoption and IVF and surrogacy,” saying they are an “abject moral horror.” Knowles has been a longtime opponent of IVF and gay adoption — the Trump campaign touted his support during the 2024 presidential election. 
• Fox’s Jesse Watters on the deportation process: “We want them treated humanely, don’t get me wrong. But this is not high on our list of priorities.” A few months ago, Watters said it’s “common sense” to deny people being sent to an El Salvador prison due process.
• Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: “I want to see Barack Obama dragged out of his Martha’s Vineyard mansion in handcuffs.”

• Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, called Trump’s mass deportations “scary.” In June, Rogan decried ICE raids at Home Depots and construction sites and called for a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants. 
• Charlie Kirk: “The Jezebel spirit has just infected an entire generation of young ladies.” 
• Fox’s Greg Gutfeld: “Making a profit off anti-semitism is absolutely genius.”
• Fox shielded the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin as he promoted the most destructive climate rollback in EPA history.

On July 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents that she claimed showed the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence” about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election in what supposedly amounted to a criminal conspiracy against Donald Trump. Since then, Fox News has aired 168 segments about the unsubstantiated allegations. 

Coverage peaked in the middle of last week when the network aired 28 segments on July 23. 

Gabbard’s revelations have quickly fallen apart under scrutiny. Prior investigations into Russian activity during the 2016 election have concluded that Russia did interfere through social media and hacked documents.

It's not just that: On Thursday, The New York Times reported that a document released by the Trump administration and immediately used by right-wing media to claim Hillary Clinton coordinated a campaign to tie Trump to Russia was likely manufactured by Russian spies. According to the The New York Times: “The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.” 

Nonetheless, on Friday morning, Fox News was saying the exact opposite. A chyron on the network’s Fox & Friends read “Docs reveal Hillary Clinton’s plan to ‘smear’ Trump.” Another Rupert Murdoch-owned outlet, The New York Post, also ran with a similar take — and the story appears to be spreading across right-wing media fast — even as The New York Times pointed out that this document was previously found to be likely made by Russian spies.

Following weeks of outrage from right-wing media over the Trump administration’s handling of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein, Tulsi Gabbard recently declassified multiple documents relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election. However, hosts of right-leaning online shows have argued that Gabbard’s report and Trump’s subsequent rhetoric are a “distraction” meant “to appease the Trump base” and shift the narrative away from the Epstein case. 

• PBD Podcast panelist Vincent Oshana said of Gabbard’s report, “I think it’s a distraction.” 
• Podcaster Brett Cooper said her “conspiratorial brain” wonders if the investigation is “just a distraction from Epstein because you guys fumbled so hard.” 
• The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan: “There’s no question that Tulsi Gabbard has brought on this Obama scandal to appease the Trump base and hope that they stop paying attention to Epstein.”

Last week, American Eagle launched an ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney dressed in denim and emphasizing her “good genes” or jeans. Some social media users and an MSNBC op-ed criticized the ad, but at least one reporter has pointed out the criticism came largely from “Twitter randos” with no major Democratic politicians weighing in. Sniffing an opportunity, however, Fox News spent 85 minutes covering this ad since Monday. In contrast, the network discussed the ongoing saga related to Jeffrey Epstein for only 3 minutes. 

Fox mentioned Sweeney over 4 times more than it mentioned Epstein. CNN, meanwhile, mentioned Epstein over 100 times more than Sweeney, and MSNBC hasn’t mentioned Sweeney at all. 

The right-wing discourse related to this ad has been, predictably, absurd. Fox host Jesse Watters pointed to multiple TikTok videos and argued that “liberals saw a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes and thought she was ushering in the Fourth Reich.” Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy crowed that the ad was “a return to hotness” that is “brought to you” by MAGA. And Fox contributor Lisa Boothe claimed that the ad was “about rejecting the Orwellian way of life that was shoved down our throats from four years under Joe Biden.” 

This is a great example of how the right-wing meda ecosystem manufactures a non-troversy — they point to isolated and obscure comments made by allegedly left-wing social media users or a single op-ed, then argue that a huge swath of Americans think the same thing. For conservative media, the point is to constantly manufacture an enemy that needs to be fought. This week, the battlefield they chose to fight on was an American Eagle ad.