On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains the right-wing media “chum cycle” of pushing false election fraud claims and why this time it's more dangerous
Carusone: “They take a piece of information, they hype it, they put it out into right-wing media. ... Then it creates a media frenzy,” and “some type of action happens.”
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From the July 14, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): I guess what I wonder, Angelo Carusone, is how much of a limb men like Brian Kilmeade and Bret Baier will go out on to cover something that would hold that Ratcliffe and Bill Barr and Chris Krebs and Christopher Wray engaged in a conspiracy against Donald Trump that no one working for Barack Obama and no one working for Joe Biden, like the people who turned against Donald Trump to, quote, "rig an election," to knowingly suppress evidence that China was flipping votes in a voting machine, to orchestrate such an elaborate cover up that Fox paid almost $1 billion to Dominion, that that was an inside job. Are Bret Baier and Brian Kilmeade going to shovel that, to quote Bill Barr again, "bullshit," into the mouths of the MAGA base?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yes. And we know that because they already went out on a limb, and as you indicated with the Dominion stuff. I mean, they helped build the scaffolding, the narrative scaffolding for what happened with January 6 by reinforcing all the lies about the election being stolen. And the thing is, they knew it. They knew what they were saying wasn't true. That's come out, but they did it anyway. They went out on that limb, then fell because the limb broke, because, as you noted, they had to pay $1 billion. And then even after that, they climbed back up on that tree and went right back out on a limb with Trump. They're still carrying the same water for him.
And this thing, and Vaughn sort of noted the two key players here, we actually call this at Media Matters, the chum cycle, because it's actually a pattern. And there's the actual facts and the evidence, and clearly it's not there as you keep pointing to, but in a way that doesn't seem to matter. Because this chum cycle does lead to real externalities. And the key holders, like the Kilmeades and these other influential figures, they will help determine whether or not it's effective. And it's as simple as this. They take a piece of information, they hype it, they put it out into right-wing media, oftentimes through John Solomon. That's why it was so scary, you know, a few months ago when he sort of moved his way back into this role, because that's a key part he's played. That's the first step. They put it into the right-wing media. Then it creates a media frenzy, a frenzy, a massive storm — second step. The third is that some type of action happens, and you keep pointing to the Bill Barr thing, and that's important to note. But the last time this happened in 2020, it was a crony DNI, it was Ric Grenell, who put out a bunch of information that led to — about these unmasking these lists with Michael Flynn — it led to a frenzy, Bill Barr appointed a special prosecutor. They investigated this. Now, as you noted, it didn't turn anything out. It fizzled.
But one of the big differences that we've always been pointing out to people time and again is that this time around, it's not the same as last time. They have gotten rid of more serious senior people. They gutted all of these agencies and departments and filled them with cronies at every level. And so the things that were the guardrails, the institutional guardrails that were there last time, that led to something fizzling after the predicate was put out there, they're not there anymore. And that's, to me, why this is a difference maker from, say, the last time, is that they're following a very similar playbook that has had real consequences, but the mechanisms that undermine it are no longer there. And that's why it's incumbent on all of us to really be very, very, very guarded and careful and serious about what's happening right now, because it's not just another news cycle. This is a plan that they are beginning to execute. And Thursday is the premiere.