• Fox’s Jesse Watters argued that a gay couple kissing in a cartoon is “a slippery slope.”
• On Wednesday, Florida’s attorney general announced plans to end all of the state’s vaccine mandates, including those for school children. Fox’s Sean Hannity praised the decision. Meanwhile, Fox’s Greg Gutfeld said he doesn’t understand how vaccines work as “a community preventative thing.”

• MAGA personalities with ties to Trump ally Steve Bannon are holding a conference in South Korea with the goal of starting “a MAGA movement” in Korea called Build Up Korea. As South Korea faced political turmoil over the past year, these figures defended the former Korean president’s use of martial law and pushed wild conspiracy theories about Korean politics. One of the American panelists attending the conference even suggested that South Korea had “needed” martial law because “communists have infiltrated these these seven areas of societal influence, arts, entertainment, media, business, politics. They're everywhere. And the same thing infiltrated with us with DEI and critical race theory.” He appeared to be referencing a fundamentalist “Seven Mountains Mandate” philosophy. 
• The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “should be arrested, charged with treason, convicted, and then given the requisite punishment for a capital offense.”

• In late August, Trump fired Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, and she responded by suing Trump for unlawful termination. Podcaster Megyn Kelly claimed that Cook “DEI-ed her way” into the Federal Reserve job, saying, “There have been a lot of Black women who have ascended to these positions on very thin credentials.” 
• Fox News mostly ignored reports that Federal Emergency Management Agency employees that Trump is setting the stage for a “disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.”
• As the Trump administration considers adding new restrictions to H-1B visas that allow a limited number of foreign workers in specialty fields into the U.S., right-wing media have railed against the program and argued for its eradication. Right-wing media personalities have called the visa program a “total scam,” blamed the recipients for a poor job market, and suggested Trump should “deport them all.”

Chicago has likely seen fewer shootings this year than in any other in nearly six decades, and was not even among the top 20 U.S. cities by homicide rate in 2024. But according to President Donald Trump, the city is “THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!” 

Trump’s false Tuesday morning declaration came after watching overheating commentary from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, which cited shootings over the weekend as evidence Chicago is a “war zone” and its elected leaders are sending the message that they “like the violence.” Trump’s favorite TV show is helping to ease the country onto a glide path toward his authoritarian goal of putting troops on the ground in more U.S. cities. 

Trump has repeatedly displayed his eagerness to put the National Guard and even active-duty military on the streets of Democrat-run cities and states. He lied about conditions in Los Angeles to justify a deployment there (which a federal judge on Tuesday said violated the law) and lied about crime in Washington, D.C., to do the same thing in the nation’s capital. 

With Trump’s propagandists at Fox and elsewhere chomping at the bit for the president to order “full military occupation” of other “problematic cities,” Chicago may be next.

Trump has succeeded in getting his media supporters to stop talking about his old friend Jeffrey Epstein. Prominent MAGA media figures ignored a wave of Epstein news on Tuesday, signaling that Trump’s pressure campaign has paid off with their silence — even as (or, perhaps, because) his own corrupt involvement in the story has grown. 

The initial resistance but eventual submission of Fox stars, Newsmax hosts, and MAGA influencers demonstrates that the Trumpist right’s only defining principle is that the president is good and his position at any time is the correct one — everything else can be tossed aside at his command. 

As we discussed back in July, MAGA media figures lashed out at the Trump administration after the FBI and Justice Department released a memo debunking foundational claims of the right’s Epstein narrative. Trump, who has a host of connections to Epstein, responded to that criticism by demanding his allies move on from the story and offering up new common enemies for them to focus on instead. 

This week saw an influx of Epstein-related news that legacy news outlets are providing plenty of coverage of, but many people are likely not hearing about any of it. The propagandists they are listening to prioritize remaining in Trump’s good graces above all else, and they are largely following his command to sweep Epstein and his victims under the rug.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that the United States had carried out a strike against a boat carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members, killing 11 people. Trump had previously ordered seven warships to the waters off Venezuela, and administration officials have refused to rule out an invasion of the South American nation. In August, the Trump administration doubled a reward offer for the arrest of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million. 

Right-wing media figures have been praising Trump’s acceleration of hostilities with Venezuela. 

• Fox’s Jesse Watters celebrated destroyers being sent to Venezuela, saying, “It’s the return of the Monroe Doctrine.” 
• Fox’s Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that if Trump caused Maduro to fall, it would be his greatest foreign policy achievement. 
• A Wall Street Journal editorial board piece argued that “toppling Mr. Maduro is a worthy goal.”

Media Matters' John Knefel wrote this great piece showing how right-wing media concocted its own justification for Trump's extrajudicial killing.