• After Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that hate speech would be “targeted” by the Department of Justice, many MAGA media personalities attacked her. Newsmax host Carl Higbie said, “I like Pam [Bondi] as a person, but I’ve not been greatly impressed by her and as an, you know, an AG.”

• Fox News’ national correspondent, Griff Jenkins, has been embedded with militarized forces in Chicago as they engage in the Trump administration’s deportation agenda. The style of Jenkins’ reporting is reminiscent of correspondents during the war on terror. As Media Matters’ John Knefel writes, “Fox News and the Trump administration are bringing that paradigm to U.S. cities as the wars on terror, drugs, and immigrants congeal into an all-purpose authoritarian campaign on domestic soil.”

• On Wednesday, recently-fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez testified before the Senate Health Committee. She was fired on August 27 after reportedly refusing to commit to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s requests to fire career scientists and to preapprove recommendations from the newly-instated CDC vaccine advisory panel without reviewing scientific evidence. While CNN and MSNBC both devoted significant time to the hearing on Wednesday, Fox News opted to air much of the United Kingdom's lavish ceremonial welcome for Trump, instead of airing any of the hearing. 
• Fox has been assisting in the Trump administration’s efforts to force Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook out of her seat by pushing unsubstantiated claims that she committed mortgage fraud. These claims, which originated from Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte, were seemingly debunked by new reports from Reuters.

In the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk last week, many on the right have claimed that all political violence comes from the left, an argument used to justify a broad crackdown against their political enemies. The June shooting of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota is the most prominent recent evidence against that argument (though hardly the only such case). 

But several right-wing media figures have found a rhetorical solution by suggesting that the alleged Minnesota shooter — who reportedly had a “hit list” of dozens of other Democratic leaders and was, according to his friend and roommate, a supporter of President Donald Trump — is actually a leftist. 

In fact, the right-wing media bubble is so impermeable to facts that contradicts its narratives that prominent Republican figures, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have pushed the same claims. 

We can’t have a real conversation about political violence if we can’t admit that it has come from both sides. But many on the right just don’t seem capable of doing that, and they’re backfilling whatever explanations they can conjure up to avoid admitting the existence of political violence from the right.

As with so many of the Trump administration’s excesses, a simple recitation of the events leading to Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension sounds like something out of dystopian fiction. ABC’s Wednesday night announcement that it was putting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus in the face of White House threats is the latest sign that U.S. media are increasingly coming under the control of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. 

Kimmel inaccurately suggested during his Monday night monologue that the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk was part of “the MAGA gang.” Under ordinary circumstances, such a statement could result in a correction and apology. But Kimmel’s remarks occurred in an environment in which Trump and his administration are eager to punish political speech they dislike. It’s also worth noting that Trump has been targeting Kimmel and ABC for months. 

Brendan Carr, the FCC’s Trumpy chair, attacked Kimmel on a right-wing podcast and specifically suggested that affiliate networks should tell Disney that they would not run Kimmel’s show “until you straighten this out” and insinuated that they could face “license revocation from the FCC” if they did not. Carr’s threats appear to be a clear violation of the First Amendment, but that only matters if Disney and the affiliate networks are willing to fight to uphold those rights in courts. 

Instead, Nexstart Media Group, which needs FCC approval for its proposed purchase of the stations owned by media company Tegna, said its affiliates would immediately preempt Kimmel’s show. Shortly after, Disney announced that it was putting the show on hiatus. And Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owned by the pro-Trump Smith family, said it would not return Kimmel’s show to its airwaves until ABC committed to “appropriate steps” and called for the late-night host to make a “meaningful personal donation” to Kirk’s right-wing political group. 

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz has much more analysis of the Kimmel saga, but Trump’s endgame is clear. He wants to ensure that media outlets don’t produce coverage that criticize him or his administration, but instead convey an endless stream of propaganda about his accomplishments. In a nutshell, he wants every outlet to be Fox News. And at this rate, he may get it.

Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are constantly pushing boundaries and transgressing norms of behavior and discourse. That’s not to say, however, that they find such rules useless: Trump’s media propagandists aggressively call out infractions by his opponents, even when he and his allies break those same strictures on a far more expansive scale. 

Case in point: The New York Times on Monday published an investigation providing new details into “two multibillion-dollars deals” which revolve around Steve Witkoff, simultaneously Trump’s Middle East envoy and his business partner, and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. The paper reported on the deals: “One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically.” 

Media Matters’ Matter Gertz wrote this piece comparing this most recent Trump corruption story to various allegations Fox News and Republican members of Congress made during former President Joe Biden’s term. 

Needless to say, the volume of coverage right-wing media outlets give to Trump’s shady deals won’t be proportionate — or even inversely proportionate — to what they provided for those Biden stories.