How Fox News helped champion Trump's attacks on Iran: ‘I agree with the president'
The US bombing of Iran last weekend prompted sober reporting from the mainstream US media, along with considered discussion of whether the US had violated international law in attacking a foreign country.
Fox News, however, took a different tack, championing a war that, according to reports, it had helped convince Donald Trump to start.
'This will go down in history as one of the greatest military victories,' roared Sean Hannity, arguably Fox News's best known host, on Saturday night.
After the right-wing network aired Trump's White House address which hailed the strikes as a success, Hannity continued in the same vein.
'I agree with the president,' he said. 'This is one of the most skilled, important, imperative peacekeeping, peace-through-strength-keeping operations in the last 40 years, and certainly the reign of terror in Iran, whether they know it or not, is coming to a quick end.'
Hannity, who said he had spoken to Trump before going on air, then brought on Mark Levin, a conservative talkshow host who reportedly urged Trump to allow Israel to attack Iran during a private lunch in early June.
Levin was not impartial.
'You're looking at a historic figure,' Levin said of Trump. 'We just kicked their ass.'
His voice rising, Levin added: 'These Islamo-Nazis were building nuclear weapons to attack us too, with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Guess what? You can go to bed peacefully tonight and know that's not gonna happen.
'This mission was never going to fail under this commander in chief,' Levin said, before concluding: 'This is historic, he is historic, the United States military is historic.'
It made sense that Fox News would cheer the strikes. It had spent days appearing to support the idea. On 17 June, host Brian Kilmeade pulled up a map of all the places Iran might attack – a map which included Germany, Italy and parts of the Middle East. He then showed off some photos of all the rockets Iran has, as Mark Dubowitz, from the pro-Israel thinktank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, speculated that Iran could deliver a 'nuclear payload'.
'Do you think we should help [Israel] finish the job at Fordo?' Kilmeade asked Dubowitz.
'We gotta help them finish the job,' Dubowitz said. 'Only we can slice through the concrete, slice through the mountain under which the nuclear site is buried.'
Kilmeade concluded: 'President Trump's got some big decisions.'
And it wasn't just Kilmeade.
'Iran wants to hold the world hostage,' a chyron blared during Jesse Watters show on 19 June. Later the chyron switched: 'An unarmed Iran would give US leverage', after Watters said 'there's risks to action and there's risks in inaction' before comparing the situation to a person undergoing 'life-saving surgery'.
Trump, a known cable news watcher, was paying attention, according to the New York Times.
'The president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel's military operation and featuring guests urging Mr Trump to get more involved,' the Times reported. It added that some of Trump's aides 'lamented' that Tucker Carlson, who has emerged as an anti-interventionist voice, was no longer on the network.
That split between right-wing media has been stark. Many non-conservatives found themselves in the novel position of agreeing with Carlson, as he repeatedly stated in the days ahead of the attacks that the US should not get involved. On 18 June, Carlson confronted Republican senator Ted Cruz, shouting: 'You don't know anything about Iran!' in a memorable exchange.
But Fox News had the president's ear, and it was awash with fawning praise after the attacks, as a series of guests, many of whom had vested interests in Iran being attacked, lined up to champion Trump.
Among those was Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli general who has proposed forcibly relocating Palestinians to Egypt.
'This was an excellent opportunity to end the war which was led by president Trump and the Israeli people thank him for his leadership.' Avivi said, adding that Trump had created a 'global deterrence'.
Still, in the Maga world, even the most sycophantic media organizations can never be absolutely certain of their footing.
Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, went on a performative rant at the Pentagon on Thursday, lashing out on specific journalists he accused of not having been Pravda enough in their reporting of the strikes.
'Jennifer, you've been about the worst,' Hegseth said to Jennifer Griffin, a Fox News reporter, when she asked if the government was certain that highly enriched uranium had now been removed from Fordow.
Continuing to experiment with grammar, Hegseth told Griffin she had also been: 'The one who misrepresents the most intentionally.'
Could this be a rift between the administration and its most ardent supporter? No. Griffin offered a light pushback to Hegseth before agreeing with him that the Iran mission was 'absolutely' the most successful she had witnessed during her time reporting at the Pentagon.
That seemed to do the trick. 'I appreciate that,' Hegseth said.
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