• Right-wing media figures are taking sides before and following recent claims by Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary that local activists opposing his Utah data center project are “proxies for the Chinese government.” Fox and Fox Business personalities have suggested China is “undermining” the U.S. by “fueling anti-AI data center protests,” while other right-wing media figures have mocked the idea of foreign influence. Fox Business has more generally begun framing local opposition to data centers as a threat to America in the midst of an AI “arms race.” Meanwhile, MAHA and wellness advocates are raising concerns over data centers, signaling another potential fracture between Trump (whose administration has supported rapid expansion of data centers) and the MAHA movement that helped send him to the White House in 2024. 
• Tim Dillon said Trump is a “czarist” who is “selling the government off for parts.” 
• Shawn Ryan on the people who were on Jeffrey Epstein’s island: “They’re all being protected by the president of the United States.” 
• Fox’s Jesse Watters on the Iran war deal: Trump “keeps saying we’re very close, we’re days away, and I don’t know what that means.” 
• Fox’s John Roberts on Iran negotiations: “That’s nine weeks of ‘we’re close to a deal.’ At some point you’ve got to acknowledge it’s not happening.”

Fox News host Sean Hannity constantly criticized gas prices during the Biden administration, but as Trump’s invasion of Iran has caused crude oil prices to rise — resulting in similarly high gas prices — Hannity has had a different response. This time around, the Fox News host has minimized the effects of gas prices on Americans, attempting to reassure his viewers that the pain at the pump is “temporary,” and reminded them that gas prices were higher under the Biden administration. 

Media Matters compiled this fantastic breakdown of Hannity’s response to similar gas prices during the Biden and Trump administrations. 

Media Matters has been keeping track of how local news is covering the impacts of higher gas prices on Americans. This week, WJAC in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, ran a segment on the consequences of higher gas prices on emergency medical responders. The chief of the West Hills fire department said, “Our prices did increase over the last month, just like everyone else’s, if not two months. .. We’re going to have to make, you know, budgetary changes moving forward to assist with that.”

• About one month after Benny Johnson said gas prices would be “around $2 a gallon” by the midterm elections, he said, “If we’re not here for the midterms, I am very fearful, and I’ll be angry.” Johnson also gave Trump advice, telling him to be like Smaug from The Hobbit, saying, “You got to go full dragon in Lord of the Rings, and scorched-earth the entire town”. 
• Ben Shapiro: “Absent the Strait of Hormuz, inflation would not be outsized right now.” 
• When Trump was at Madison Square Garden for Game 3 of the NBA Finals this week, he was “thunderously booed.” But the MAGA sycophants at Fox News carefully shielded their viewers from this, downplaying the crowd’s cacophonous jeers of the president. 
• Some right-wing media personalities made ridiculous comments about the Knicks in the lead up to this week’s game in New York. Ben Shapiro said, “It is imperative that the Knicks lose. It is imperative because Zohran Mamdani cannot be allowed to be happy.” And Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said, “The real story is that the Democrats wanted the Knicks to lose last night so that they could blame it on Donald Trump.” 
• Sean Hannity on oil prices: “They’re not even that bad.”
• Newsmax’s Greg Kelly on the Iran war: “If we’re bombing now, peace is not out of the question pretty soon.”  

The right-wing media response to former reality TV personality and conservative candidate Spencer Pratt’s defeat in last week’s nonpartisan primary for mayor of Los Angeles shows that the right-wing media’s election denial machine is as strong as ever. But a post-proof era of election denial is dawning as that apparatus moves away from its prior strategy of ginning up myriad deranged conspiracy theories, with major implications for future American elections. 

Election denial is table stakes for participants in Trump’s Republican party and the MAGA media that support it, most famously for Trump’s 2020 election defeat. After Pratt was locked out of the top-two runoff — just as polling predicted — vast swathes of the MAGA commentariat adopted the position that only massive election fraud could explain Pratt’s defeat. 

Claims of election fraud in LA were helped by “First Assistant” U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who is on a right-wing media tour claiming to have evidence of such fraud in California that will lead to prosecutions. Essayli is encouraging people to send tips to help the Department of Justice investigate the supposed election rigging, and his comments have right-wing media outlets in a frenzy pushing unverified claims of fraud. 

This issue is especially important now in a midterm election year. In November's elections, California’s House races may determine which party controls Congress. Those races will likely mirror the LA mayoral election pattern of Republicans over-represented in early returns from votes cast on Election Day, then falling behind as officials count mail in ballots. Trumpists have repeatedly cited this as pretexts for election fraud claims, and right-wing media figures have laid down a marker that elections should not be trusted if Democrats win, paving the way for a new round of election subversion.

• On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor statistics released its worst inflation report in three years, marking the highest annual pace of inflation since April 2023. In the hours following that report, Fox News dedicated just 22 seconds to the report. 
• Laura Loomer: “Maybe we need another 9/11.” 
• A Newsmax guest: If California’s election were happening in another country “we would be talking about invading that country and liberating them, at least sanctioning them.”

Several top figures at Fox News have argued that the Trump administration should resume bombing Iran and could win a decisive military victory in as little as “two weeks.” However, there is no public evidence to support the claim that the United States is on the cusp of victory. To the contrary, a U.S. intelligence assessment from early May determined that Iran still retained significant missile capacity. 

Fox News supported the war against Iran even before the United States and Israel launched it on February 28, and the network’s position has remained largely unchanged in the following months as the conflict has dragged on. Fox has repeatedly urged Trump to restart the war since April 8, when the three countries agreed to a ceasefire that’s proven shaky at best. 

Fox has spent months selling the fantasy that victory is a mere “two weeks” away, if only Trump would unleash the U.S. and Israel militaries. Media Matters’ John Knefel wrote this piece detailing how Fox is pushing this fiction to its audience.

On Thursday, Trump called into Fox & Friends and denounced the “crooked” media’s coverage of the Iran war (including the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal), praised Fox’s own positive coverage, and listened to the program’s co-hosts urge him to escalate further by deploying U.S. ground troops on Iranian soil. The interview included co-host Ainsley Earhardt falsely telling Trump the American people are supportive of attacking Iran. That same day, Trump promised to attack Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and possibly invade Kharg Island, heeding the advice of his semi-formal advisers at Fox. 

Hours after that announcement, Trump completely shifted course, cancelling plans for an attack and saying the U.S. has “ended the war with Iran.”