• Podcaster Benny Johnson: “You can live like a king off food stamps.”

Tuesday saw Democrats sweep several major elections across the country. After facing extreme attacks by right-wing media, Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor in New York City. Democrats also won gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey (more on New Jersey in a moment). Many right-wing pundits responded to the losses with despair. A Newsmax host, for example, told his colleagues “it’s like a funeral in here,” while a Daily Wire host acknowledged, “We got blown out of the water.” Discussing President Donald Trump’s absence from ballots in off-year elections, podcaster Megyn Kelly said: “Republicans can’t win without big daddy? … Then you’re going to lose forever because he can’t run again.” 

People more qualified than me can speak to the underlying causes which drove the election results. But I would point to just one issue — Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that grocery and food prices were supposedly decreasing during his second term in office, and right-wing media have been helping him peddle this falsehood. In the month of October, Fox News and Fox Business spent just 1 hour and 23 minutes discussing high and rising grocery prices — that’s less than 1 ½ minutes per day on average. Despite that, on the morning after the elections, a Fox anchor reported that “71% of people … said they are spending more on groceries now than a year ago.” Later that day, Fox’s Bret Baier summed up the issue well when he said, “This dichotomy between how Wall Street is doing and how big business is doing and how you feel about it at home is something Republicans really have to look at closely.”

In the wake of Tuesday’s elections, right-wing media have started to acknowledge that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have failed to address the growing affordability crisis in the United States.  

The New Jersey gubernatorial election deserves some attention because Fox’s Sean Hannity made this race a special project for himself. Hannity spent weeks urgently focusing the attention of his viewers on the New Jersey race, interviewing Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli multiple times, and campaigning for him. After Fox called the race for Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill, Hannity said the reason Ciattarelli lost was because too many Republicans left the state. 

Of course, that view is hogwash. New Jersey’s election was not close in any way — Sherrill ended up winning by a dominant 56% to 43% margin. What a Trumpist zealot like Hannity cannot accept is the possibility that voters have soured on Trump and are punishing Republicans up and down the ticket for his economic failures, corruption, malfeasance, and authoritarian conduct.

• Also: Media Matters' Ari Drennen reviews why right-wing media's anti-trans gambit failed in 2025. 

• Right-wing media figures have been blaming “mass immigration” for Zohran Mamdani’s electoral victory this week. 
• Megyn Kelly has spent Trump’s second term spreading hate and rage on her very popular podcast. Media Matters prepared this excellent piece detailing Kelly’s campaign to target marginalized communities. In just one example, Kelly said that Muslims should not be elected to positions of power because “Islam is not consistent with the premises of the West.” 
• Newsmax’s Greg Kelly said the hijab is “not exactly something that is congruent with American culture."

On November 1, almost 42 million people who rely on SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) for food assistance lost their benefits due to the ongoing government shutdown. While the political blame game goes on, real people are feeling the pain of their needed assistance drying up. Local news reporting across the country has been highlighting the dire situation SNAP recipients are facing. Right-wing media, however, have chosen a different tactic — conservative pundits are personally attacking SNAP recipients, calling them “overweight,” “lazy,” and undeserving of food assistance. 

The right-wing attacks against SNAP recipients have been truly egregious, and you can find many examples here as well as in last week’s newsletter. But instead of highlighting them, I want to point you to this quote from a mother in West Virginia who said, “I’ve already skipped meals to try to save what food I have left so that my kids can eat them.” 

Meanwhile, Fox News has been trying to blame Democrats for SNAP benefits drying up. But this week, Trump undercut that claim by saying his administration will not pay out SNAP benefits until the government shutdown ends. This is not only in contradiction to his earlier statements, but is also in apparent defiance of court orders. 

Real people are really hurting — right-wing media’s response is to mock, demean, and disrespect them.

• Trump claimed he knew “nothing about” the pardon of Changpeng Zhao, the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange with ties to his son’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Between October 22 and the morning of November 6, Fox News spent 1 hour and 23 minutes discussing former President Joe Biden’s use of an autopen while airing only 3 minutes of coverage on Zhao’s pardon — all of that, despite the network frequently accusing Biden of being unaware of who he pardoned. 
• FBI Director Kash Patel is currently facing scrutiny for his personal use of a government plane. During past appearances on a far-right podcast, Patel criticized his predecessor, then-Director Christopher Wray, for his own use of a “government-funded G5 jet.” 
• The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh: “Every time a Black woman is in any kind of professional position, we have to — like, how did she get that job?”

On October 27, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted an interview with white nationalist streamer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Following the episode’s release, right-wing pundits and podcasters called the collaboration “sick” and “simply despicable,” with some labeling Fuentes’ movement “anti-Semitic, hateful freaks,” and characterizing the event as disrespectful to the legacy of Charlie Kirk. 

A new wrinkle in the saga unfolded a few days later, though, when Kevin Roberts, the leader of the conservative Heritage Foundation, released a video criticizing the “venomous coalition” who have attacked Carlson for hosting Fuentes. His video also received broad condemnation from members of right-wing media. 

• Ben Shapiro said Carlson “let Nick Fuentes cuck him” and claimed Roberts’ statement is a “betrayal of the Heritage Foundation’s history and principles.” 
• Newsmax’s Rick Santorum said Roberts “just sort of missed it a little bit” in response to Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. 
• NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon called Roberts’ statement “nauseating, repulsive stuff.” 

Interestingly enough, while this firestorm has consumed large segments of right-wing media this week, Fox News has been mainly silent. Media Matters' Matt Gertz wrote this piece for MSNBC analyzing the situation.

Roberts’ comments have also caused internal problems among Heritage staffers as he continues to take criticism among conservatives for his defense of Carlson. 

Where all of this ends up is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear — Nick Fuentes, who had dinner with Donald Trump in 2022, is clearly not a marginal figure in American right.