• Fox’s Jesse Watters said criticizing the Trump administration’s boat strikes makes people sound “effeminate.”
• Podcaster Benny Johnson: “There’s no such thing as a conspiracy theory. I mean, that’s a slur.”

During a speech in which he attempted to address the growing affordability crisis in the country, President Donald Trump told his supporters to accept a lower standard of living during the holiday season, stressing that children really don’t need so many toys. The Grinch-in-chief has advocated for depriving children of toys in the past. In April, when defending his tariff policy, Trump said American children might “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.” 

Trump’s propagandists on Fox News dismissed Trump’s recent comments as a “joke” — an especially rich line from a network that has spent years claiming Democrats are waging a war on Christmas. 

It’s not merely Trump’s attack on Christmas toys that’s causing problems for Fox. In the aftermath of the 2025 elections, Trump has repeatedly dismissed Democrats’ fixation on voter concerns over affordability as a “con job,” “hoax,” and “scam” — often by misleadingly citing the reduced cost of a Walmart Thanksgiving dinner bundle or falsely claiming that prices in general are declining. And several Fox personalities have tried to launder his comments by offering explanations for what he meant. Meanwhile, others at Fox cosigned Trump’s dismissal of affordability concerns, and more resorted to their time-tested excuse of blaming former President Joe Biden for Trump’s faltering economy. 

Trump is continuing to dig a deeper hole for himself as the affordability crisis deepens, and Fox is perfectly willing to pick up a shovel and help him.

• The war within the MAGA commentariat is getting uglier as conspiracy theorists, such as Candace Owens, turn their tools of conspiracy and psychodrama inward, against other right-wingers. Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote this great piece explaining why MAGA can’t quarantine its more deranged wing. 
• On Thursday, the Indiana GOP-controlled state Senate voted down a Trump-backed redistricting map. In response, Newsmax host Carl Higbie said “Primary all the 21 state senators in Indiana who just voted with Democrats to oppose congressional redistricting for their own party.” 
• The Trump administration immigration policies continued to come under fire this week. Fox’s Brian Kilmeade encouraged the administration to rework its immigration policy, while podcaster Tim Dillon went so far to say that “Some of these ICE raids are so barbaric."
• As the influence of Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes continues to grow in the right-wing media ecosystem, Fox’s Sean Hannity criticized “insane” Trump supporters who “praise Hitler."
• Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has come under fire this week with some Trump administration officials reportedly floating potential replacements for Noem (the White House maintains she is not leaving). In the middle of all this, Newsmax host Greg Kelly criticized an ad made by Noem, saying she should spend “less time on the horse and more time at the office with the files."
• Podcaster Shawn Ryan supported Trump’s election in 2024. Now, he’s saying that “nothing I voted for happened."
• The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro said Trump pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar is “a giant fail.” Last week Shapiro also criticized Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

On December 1, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was released from a U.S. federal prison following a pardon from Donald Trump. Hernandez was serving a 45-year sentence in U.S. federal prison for aiding drug trafficking. Fox devoted just over 6 minutes of airtime to the Hernandez pardon. 

While Fox has been largely ignoring Trump pardoning a drug trafficker, the network continues to push the claim that Democrats “stick up for narco terrorists.” The claim stems from Democratic opposition to the Trump administration’s strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean since early September. So far, those strikes have killed at least 87 people and destroyed 23 boats. While legal experts have described the U.S. campaign of extrajudicial killings as “patently illegal,” the strikes have been widely praised on Fox, where hosts and anchors regularly accuse Democrats who raise legal questions about them of supporting the traffickers.

• Most leading newspapers and all broadcast news ignored Steve Bannon’s extensive connections with Jeffrey Epstein in the past month. 
• A guest on Megyn Kelly’s podcast said comparing rhetoric of Trump officials to Nazis will give Nazism “a good name” 
• As the MAGA movement begins to fracture, elements of the coalition may seek to rally behind anti-feminism. Media Matters’ John Knefel wrote this chilling analysis.

Right-wing media figures are applauding Trump and his administration for their apparent support of “remigration,” a far-right immigration policy associated with forced migration, mass deportations, and ethnic cleansing. These figures said remigration and “reverse migration” are “critical,” “necessary,” and “what we need.” The administration's support for remigration was also celebrated by prominent white nationalist media figures, who declared that “Trump promises us the best immigration policy possible: NO NON-WHITES.” 

Following the November 26 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., Trump called for “REVERSE MIGRATION” and vowed to "permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” But this kind of immigration policy is deeply associated with ethnic cleansing. It has become associated with anti-migrant extremists and far-right activists and political parties in Europe. Mainstream media outlets have largely failed in the last year to put Trump’s planned “remigration” policies in appropriate context. For example, when Trump called for “remigration” on the 2024 campaign trail, Media Matters found that major outlets failed to contextualize the proposal as a form of ethnic cleansing. Earlier this year, mainstream media outlets almost completely ignored news that the Trump administration is reportedly reorganizing the State Department to include a new “Office of Remigration.” 

Mainstream media outlets may have failed to notice Trump’s calls for ethnic cleaning, but white nationalists have not. Several of the loudest voices in white nationalist media have praised Trump’s remigration push as a way to create a white ethnostate.