On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses right-wing media’s disjointed response to Trump’s war in Iran

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From the March 9, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, we have talked endlessly about narrative dominance. Here's how Laura Ingraham and Marjorie Taylor Greene have reacted over the last couple days to the war in Iran. 

This is Laura Ingraham, quote -- this is about the bombing of a girls' school in Iran by the US military. "If true, this is horrific news, and the US military will have to address this publicly. Proximity of military compound obviously a factor, but our weapons also have pinpoint accuracy. Reupping what I said last week, the administration must wrap its investigation and address this head on. Horrible unintended tragedy of this war." 

Marjorie Taylor Greene had this to say about the war in Iran: "The peace president and founder and chair without term limits of the Board of Peace denies killing Iranian children, even though tragically we did. We have such a great military filled with the greatest among us. This war should not be happening. It's unfair to everyone. Why are we bombing Iranian children? Does it make the Iranian people thankful that we are liberating them when we are bombing their children?"

Again, this is not a neutral observer. This is Laura Ingraham of Fox News prime time and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. But, I mean, you know, elsewhere on Fox, you know, Jesse Watters and Lawrence Jones, for example, are basically saying, oh, well, you know, too bad, so sad, not our problem, this is sort of the price of war, and it happens, and to move on. And I think that gets back to the original point you were making, which is that there's not a really clear cut narrative coming out of the right-wing more broadly. There just isn't.

The one, you know, little bit of through line that's there is that they're mad -- you know, there's some of that percolating antisemitism, the same things in the same fault line that we saw come to a head last October with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and the Heritage Foundation. That is sort of bubbling up and seems to increasingly demonstrate the power of the groypers and that really deep bleed in antisemitism within the right. But otherwise, you're getting this confusing message. If you're a Fox viewer, your head is spinning right now because there are moments where the war strategy is being questioned, the idea behind it. There are these individual instances where everything tells you it's absolutely wrong and terrible and a tragedy, and we should get to the bottom of it, like this bombing of the school. And, yet, within the same hour, you could say the opposite. So it's confusing.