Howard Stern spent years complaining about the media’s coverage of him. And for good reason. Journalists loathed Stern’s shock jock shtick.
And then, slowly, the media began affording Stern a Strange New Respect around the same time he went woke and embraced the Democratic party.
Does that explain the stunning shift happening over at “South Park?”
The irreverent series debuted in 1997 and is still going strong, while kindred comic spirits like “The Simpsons” and “Bob’s Burgers” lack the snap of their early years. “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone just signed a <a href="https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/south-park-paramount-plus-billion-dollar-deal-1236466524/">$1.5 billion deal with Paramount+</a> to keep the misadventures of Cartman and co. going.
Not bad for a crudely animated show featuring a talking piece of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MSp-KFJXJVo">excrement</a>.
The show’s willingness to mock both sides of the aisle has been one of its selling points over its nearly 30-year run. The show has made fun of smug EV drivers, Catholicism, Mormons and more.
The series tweaked transgender athletes dominating biological women in sports years before Riley Gaines called foul on Lia Thomas’ “stunning and brave” swimming victories.
Fair? Balanced? Pretty darn close for most viewers, and a rare example of a comic institution unwilling to become yet another DNC platform. It was all about the funny, and Parker and Stone didn’t care whose toes they stepped on along the way.
That not only forged the show’s fame but also generated keen interest from the Right. We’ll take our lumps if our liberal friends share in the honor.
Until now, perhaps.
<div id="attachment_967213" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-967213" class="size-large wp-image-967213" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-01-37-PM-9230-1024x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Trey Parker. Matt Stone. &quot;South Park, Members Only.&quot; IMDB. " width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-01-37-PM-9230-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-01-37-PM-9230-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-01-37-PM-9230-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-01-37-PM-9230-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-01-37-PM-9230-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Trey Parker. Matt Stone. &#8220;South Park, Members Only.&#8221; IMDB.</div>
The first three episodes of “South Park’s” current season have hammered President Donald Trump, Director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance and other GOP targets. It’s been crude and, gasp, atypically one-sided. 
Recent shows have also attacked ICE agents rounding up illegal immigrants and suggested Christians are trying to swarm public education with a cameo from Jesus himself.
While most animated shows take months, or even a year, to complete, the turnaround time for new “South Park” episodes is shockingly fast. That allows them to cover recent ICE raids, for example, even as the headlines were mere days old.
It’s been relentless. And, in many ways, less funny than usual. Showing a cartoon Trump threatening to sue everyone on sight is funny because he has been litigious, even if one agrees with his legal strategies.
Satire stings when it has a kernel of truth. Other bits, though, feel desperate and clapter-adjacent.
Even more curious? The show is missing so much comic material. What about prominent Democrats siding with accused wife beaters and gang bangers, a la Kilmar Abrego Garcia? Or progressive mayors insisting their crime-infested cities aren’t crime-infested cities?
What’s going on?
The Stern theory is in play, no doubt. The media has been moderately kind to “South Park” over the years, but the adulation shown to “South Park” in recent weeks has been eye-opening.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Why &#8216;South Park&#8217; Hurt Trump When No One Else Could: <a href="https://consequence.net/2025/08/south-park-hurt-trump-no-one-else-could/">Consequence of Sound</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Satire at its finest: &#8216;South Park&#8217; takes on Trump’s martial takeover, AI and tech bros: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/aug/21/south-park-takes-on-trumps-martial-takeover-ai-and-tech-bros">The Guardian</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">‘South Park’ mocks Trump all the way to the bank: <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5453169-trump-south-park-ratings/">The Hill</a></li>
</ul>
Even the Associated Press has begun chronicling the new episodes as if they were suddenly newsworthy. That’s how reporters have treated anti-Trump “Saturday Night Live” sketches over the years and many late-night monologues.
It’s Strange New Respect, The Sequel. Here’s betting liberal Hollywood, Inc. is warming up to Parker and Stone in ways they haven’t felt for some time, too. After all, they can’t keep “South Park” going forever, and they’ll need to pivot to new projects soon.
<div id="attachment_967215" style="width: 842px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-967215" class="size-large wp-image-967215" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226061249-832x576.jpg" alt="US animators Matt Stone (L) and Trey Parker attend the Comedy Central Adult Animation: &quot;South Park&quot;, &quot;Beavis &amp; Butt-Head&quot;, and &quot;Digman&quot; panel in Hall H of the convention center during Comic Con International in San Diego, California on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Chris DELMAS / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)" width="832" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226061249-832x576.jpg 832w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226061249-300x208.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226061249-768x532.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226061249.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 832px) 100vw, 832px" />CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images</div>
The recent shift also runs counter to the show’s original take on Trump. “South Park” hasn’t hammered the real estate mogul as consistently as other pop culture institutions over the past decade.
“Saturday Night Live” trolls Trump on a weekly basis.
Parker and Stone are self-described Libertarians, which has helped explain their equal opportunity skewerings up until now. Have their political leanings shifted of late? Note that they left President Joe Biden alone for four years despite enough comic material to flesh out an entire season. Maybe two.
Another possibility, one in line with the duo’s brand, is the Trump attacks are making a larger point. The Left and the Media insist, without evidence, that President Trump helped get Stephen Colbert fired from “The Late Show.”
He’s silencing dissent, the Left collectively cries, citing Colbert’s cancellation. This could be the duo’s attempt to mock that fear-mongering. Just try to censor us! We’re willing to mock Trump, but not eager to cost our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/officialbenshapiro/videos/stephen-colberts-show-loses-40-million-per-year/2218688955237636/">employers’ $40 million a year</a>.
“South Park” is no stranger to censorship, so any real sign of it from Team Trump would draw its ire. The show’s willingness to show a comic likeness of Muhammad <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/22/south-park-censored-fatwa-muhammad">caused a kerfuffle</a> earlier in the show’s run. Comedy Central ended up censoring the visuals, not Parker or Stone.
If the “South Park” pranksters do a heel turn and start smiting the Left again, expect a vastly different media reaction to future episodes. The disappointment will be palpable.
Even the best shows run out of fresh ideas. That may happen to “South Park” sooner or later. Abandoning the show’s bipartisan spirit could be the quickest path to just that fate.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-30-Aug-2025-12-58-PM-2393

Strange New Respect: Why The Media Suddenly Love ‘South Park’

Strange New Respect: Why The Media Suddenly Love 'South Park'

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President Donald Trump raged against ABC and NBC on Sunday night, calling them &#8220;the most biased networks in history,&#8221; adding that he was &#8220;totally in favor&#8221; of revoking their broadcast licenses.
Trump ripped the national broadcasting companies in multiple posts on Truth Social, suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission should terminate transmission permits with ABC&#8217;s and NBC&#8217;s local affiliates.
&#8220;Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC &amp; NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES. IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115086929873163909">wrote</a>. &#8220;I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy!!!&#8221;
While ABC and NBC don&#8217;t have to be licensed by or pay fees to the FCC, each local ABC and NBC affiliate station must obtain licenses and pay regulatory fees, according to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-hits-abc-nbc-fake-news-says-hed-support-fcc-revoking-licenses">Fox News</a>. Trump questioned this arrangement in a follow-up post, <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115087160158530143">writing</a>, &#8220;Why is it that ABC and NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the absolute worst and most biased networks anywhere in the World, aren’t paying Millions of Dollars a year in LICENSE FEES[?]&#8221;
&#8220;They should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!!&#8221; Trump added. &#8220;Crooked &#8216;journalism&#8217; should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!&#8221;
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In April, the Media Research Center <a href="https://www.mrc.org/node/90399">found</a> that the evening newscasts from ABC, NBC, and CBS gave the president 92% negative coverage. The national network coverage of Trump was more negative in the first few months of his second term than during the beginning of his first term in 2017, according to the Media Research Center.
Trump also recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-scores-16m-payout-from-paramount-after-exposing-deceptively-edited-kamala-interview">settled</a> a lawsuit for $16 million with CBS over its editing of a Kamala Harris &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; interview just before the 2024 election. Trump argued that CBS engaged in election interference when it made one of Harris&#8217;s answers sound more coherent.
Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/06/cnbc-transcript-exclusive-fcc-commissioner-president-elect-trumps-pick-for-fcc-chairman-brendan-carr-speaks-with-cnbcs-squawk-on-the-street-today.html">told</a> CNBC in December that the independent government agency could &#8220;take a fresh look&#8221; at TV networks to see if they are operating in the &#8220;public interest.&#8221;
&#8220;You look on the media side, I think there’s no question that trust in media is at an all-time low. &#8230; And so I think there’s a lot that needs to take place to restore trust and confidence in media. And there’s a role for the FCC, at least on the broadcast side, for instance. They have to operate in the public interest. And I think it’s probably appropriate for the FCC to take a fresh look at what that requirement looks like.&#8221;
Asked if that means he was open to revoking licenses for networks over their &#8220;perceived liberal bias,&#8221; Carr replied, &#8220;Well, look, the law is very clear. The Communications Act says you have to operate in the public interest. And if you don’t, yes, one of the consequences is potentially losing your license. And of course, that’s on the table.&#8221;
&#8220;You’ve got the national networks, for instance, ABC, NBC, CBS,&#8221; Carr said. &#8220;They provide a lot of the content that the actual licensed local broadcasts disseminate. And so we need to look at empowering those local broadcasters to serve their local communities, even if that’s in conflict with the interests of those national networks.&#8221;

Donald Trump

Trump Says He’s ‘Totally In Favor’ Of Revoking ABC, NBC Broadcast Licenses

Trump Says He’d Support Revoking ABC, NBC Broadcast Licenses

Between 1999 and 2005, Lance Armstrong’s cycling performance simply defied belief, with an unprecedented seven consecutive wins of the Tour de France. As writer Xander Lytle <a href="https://themacweekly.com/84147/sports/the-armstrong-effect-american-cyclings-tainted-history/">stated</a>, “It is hard to exaggerate just how astounding Armstrong’s feats were.” He points out that in its 100+-year history, only four riders had ever achieved as many as five Tour de France victories and only one of them had won those consecutively. Prior to his historic accomplishments, Armstrong was a survivor of testicular cancer — and he touted that experience as giving him the renewed grit, focus, and strength to perform at a higher level. 
His skeptics were treated by most media outlets as nasty, unpatriotic, conspiracy nuts who were simply wrong at best and malevolent at worst. Armstrong personally chose the latter tact, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/16/us/lance-armstrong-quotes">labeling his detractors</a> as desperate for attention and money, as being filled with hate, bitterness, and jealousy, by proclaiming investigations of him to be “witch-hunts,” and threatening and filing libel suits. He told some critics that he was sorry for them because they could not “believe in miracles.” 
Armstrong’s <a href="https://www.si.com/cycling/2020/02/11/lance-armstrong-livestrong-charity-rebrand-years-later">Livestrong</a> charity also provided a sort of layer of moral protection, buffering against charges of ill will. Most of the media applauded his efforts and ignored and attacked critics — some even contending that attempts to reach the truth were <a href="https://time.com/archive/7133755/why-the-wheels-came-off-the-lance-armstrong-case/">prosecutorial overreach</a>. The Armstrong team often rewarded the supportive media with exclusive interviews and punished critical outlets by denying them access.
<div id="attachment_964573" style="width: 501px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-964573" class="size-large wp-image-964573" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-103092847-491x576.jpg" alt="PARIS - JULY 25: Lance Armstrong of team Radioshack waves to fans after the twentieth and final stage of Le Tour de France 2010, from Longjumeau to the Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 25, 2010 in Paris, France. (Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)" width="491" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-103092847-491x576.jpg 491w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-103092847-256x300.jpg 256w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-103092847-768x901.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-103092847.jpg 873w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 491px) 100vw, 491px" />Bryn Lennon/Getty Images</div>
But eventually, with pressure mounting from both the incredulity of the performance itself, a detailed report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and a few dogged media outlets (most notably <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/drugs-cheat-armstrong-settles-with-sunday-times-2qkrw7qsj9k?region=global">The Sunday Times</a> and <a href="https://vault.si.com/vault/2012/10/22/a-massive-fraud-now-more-fully-exposed">Sports Illustrated</a>), Armstrong finally confessed in a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey that he had used banned performance-enhancing drugs, such as erythropoietin, human growth hormones and diuretics for years, including in all seven of his victories. Significantly, his testimony came after the statute of limitations had run on his previous perjured testimony denying such usage.
For a decade-plus, Armstrong had pulled off perhaps the greatest hoax in sports history. His victories and his cancer survivor status was a made-for-Hollywood comeback story that most of the world devoured, making him celebrated, adored, and wealthy — one of which remains true today. Armstrong’s estimated net worth <a href="https://www.finance-monthly.com/lance-armstrong-net-worth/">is still around $50m</a>. He is also credited with creating a sort of <a href="https://themacweekly.com/84147/sports/the-armstrong-effect-american-cyclings-tainted-history/">Dark Age for American cycling</a> from which it still has yet to recover. In a far broader arena, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Americans were subjected to another protracted hoax. It involved a consortium of senior-most Democrat leaders, key governmental agencies, private sector intermediaries, and major media players. The hoax went something like this: Successful billionaire Donald Trump worked closely with Vladimir Putin as a sort of Manchurian candidate aiming to illegally rig the 2016 election which Hillary Clinton had legitimately won. Mr. Trump did all of this chiefly because President Putin was blackmailing him with a secretly recorded raunchy sex tape featuring Russian hookers and Mr. Trump.. President Trump was therefore a treasonous criminal, a Russian asset, pervert, and illegitimate president.
On its face, that narrative was even less believable than one man legitimately winning seven consecutive Tour de France competitions. Nonetheless, that was the story fed to Americans for nearly a decade. Many of the tactics used to promote this hoax were quite similar to those employed by the Armstrong team, only on steroids (pun intended).
In many ways, the Russia hoax was quite successful. At its peak in 2017, some <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-poll-majority-americans-think-president-trump-meddled-russia-probe?">68% of Americans</a> polled by AP indicated that they were at least moderately concerned that President Trump or his campaign associates had ties to Russia. That narrative helped hobble the Trump presidency for most of his term and made it nearly impossible for him to have a productive relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin. Additionally, it surely had a significant but immeasurable impact on the 2020 election. 
Even prior to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tulsis-bombshell-team-obama-doctored-intel-to-push-russiagate?author=Ben+Shapiro&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Tulsi%E2%80%99s+Bombshell%3A+Team+Obama+Doctored+Intel+To+Push+Russiagate">recent revelations</a> of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel, the Russia Hoax was beginning to unwind from the gradual exposure of the truth — the Hillary Clinton campaign sponsorship of the now debunked “Steele Dossier,” the lack of evidence in the much anticipated Mueller Report, and the Durham Report which concluded that there never should have been a Trump/Russia collusion investigation.
<div id="attachment_956619" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-956619" class="size-large wp-image-956619" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226690172-864x576.jpg" alt="White House Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard talks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226690172-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226690172-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226690172-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226690172.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</div>
However, the new revelations from Gabbard and Patel — most significantly, the newly declassified and previously <a href="http://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf">unreleased report</a> from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) — solidifies the deserved descriptor of “hoax” in “Russia Hoax.” They allege that President Obama <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-releases-damning-email-that-puts-clapper-in-the-hot-seat?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Tulsi+Gabbard+Releases+Damning+Email+That+Puts+Clapper+In+The+Hot+Seat">directed</a> top intelligence officials — James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey — to fabricate the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) concluding that Russia favored Trump in the 2016 election. They further contend that internal emails demonstrate that officials pressured analysts to adjust their original conclusions — which countered their preferred conclusion — and support the claim that Trump had worked in concert with the Russians, despite the lack of sufficient evidence to support that. “Creating this piece of manufactured intelligence… contradicted every other assessment,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NcStDaGFug">Gabbard told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo</a>. According to Gabbard, so began a years-long coup to stifle and hopefully overthrow Trump’s presidency.
Kash Patel also revealed the discovery of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kash-patel-finds-secret-fbi-room-filled-with-thousands-of-trump-russia-docs-in-burn-bags">burn bags</a>” and hard drives of evidence dating back to the early days of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. He claims it contains a 29-page annex to the Durham Report which had never been publicly disclosed and includes intelligence suggesting foreign sources warned U.S. officials that the FBI was preparing to spread disinformation implicating Trump’s campaign. Director Patel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/evidence-of-clinton-russia-hoax-was-buried-in-back-room-at-fbi-kash-patel?author=Daniel+Chaitin&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Evidence+Of+Clinton+Russia+Hoax+Was+%E2%80%98Buried+In+Back+Room%E2%80%99+At+FBI%3A+Kash+Patel">contends</a> that FBI leaders James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok all played roles in attempting to conceal or destroy evidence related to the Russia probe.
In both of these protracted hoaxes Americans were asked to believe outlandish tales — with those most wanting to believe the narratives most likely to embrace them — whether that was adulation of a cancer survivor whose extraordinary will power and physical strength helped propel him to super-human outcomes, or whether it was demonization of an evil, traitorous, Machiavellian candidate who would use any means necessary to win an election and preserve his reputation.
In both hoaxes the media played a central role in perpetuating the frauds through their blind allegiance to one narrative and abandonment of basic investigative journalism, and use of their outlets for relentless and pervasive repetition of false narratives. 
In both cases the same sources that actively worked to perpetrate the hoaxes worked to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/legacy-media-outlets-largely-silent-tulsi-gabbards-bombshell-obama-administration-claims">ignore</a> any new evidence discrediting them — in the latter case calling Gabbard’s and Patel’s revelations an attempt at “distraction.”
In both hoaxes, disbelievers received an assortment of labels — “jealous losers,&#8221; &#8220;unpatriotic conspiracy theorists,&#8221; &#8220;fascist sympathizers,&#8221; &#8220;deplorables,” and far worse. In fact, we now know that in both hoaxes whistleblowers received <a href="https://www.mountbonnell.info/lances-austin/former-teammate-exposes-lance-armstrong-doping-scandal">backlash</a>, and were <a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2025/4093-pr-19-25">threatened and silenced</a>, and supporters were rewarded. With the Russia Hoax, skeptics were denigrated by governmental leaders and media alike. And in both hoaxes the statute of limitations protected apparently guilty parties — testimony to the longevity of the campaigns and coverup.
In both hoaxes the damage was more extensive than we are likely able to ever measure — involving massive erosion of trust in a host of institutions — athletics in general, charities, intelligence agencies, government, international relations, and media.
Of course, there were some major differences between the two hoaxes. The first was simply scope. One of the hoaxes was primarily confined to the world of athletics, involving a relatively small number of people from the Armstrong camp in concert with ongoing albeit likely unwitting help from the media. The other involved the sanctity of our very Republic with willing participation across a wide spectrum of institutions — the Democrat party leadership, multiple governmental agencies and their leaders — perhaps including the sitting president of the United States, and top legacy and independent media agencies around the world.
A second difference was in the purpose of each hoax. One was perpetrated to falsely elevate, enrich, and celebrate a fraudster, while the other was designed for precisely the opposite reason — to smear and denigrate a legitimate and successful president. One was created to conceal a truth — unfair and illegal doping, while the other was created in an attempt to establish a falsehood as truth — Trump/Russian collusion. In Armstrong’s case, the hoax was dependent on hiding key evidence (presence of drugs). While some hiding of evidence was also true in the Russia Hoax — with plenty of exculpatory evidence being buried or ignored — the primary focus was on fabricating supportive evidence. Further, the fabricated evidence became the predicate for additional falsehoods and illegal actions — such as <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2017/09/04/12-times-msm-told-us-obama-wiretapped-trump/">wiretapping</a> the Trump campaign.
Mark Twain once observed that, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Indeed, un-ringing the Russia Hoax bell may well prove to be a Herculean task. That false narrative was promoted so authoritatively, so thoroughly, so pervasively, and for so long that many people and media outlets will find it difficult to accept the truth — especially those who may have <a href="https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/commentary/will-new-york-times-washington-post-return-pulitzer-misleading-russia">received prestigious awards</a> for their false coverage of the story.
CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post published thousands of stories referencing Trump and Russia during the peak of the hoax. At the height of the investigation, some networks ran multiple segments per day focused on potential collusion, often leading with it in prime-time programming. In a peer-reviewed study published in Journalism titled “A catastrophic media failure? Russiagate, Trump and the illusion of truth: The dangers of innuendo and narrative repetition,” the authors call the coverage a “catastrophic media failure,” emphasizing the Illusory Truth Effect — where repetition of unverified claims led audiences to believe them as fact.
The truth has reason for hope. A new <a href="https://americanfaith.com/rasmussen-poll-u-s-voters-strongly-prefer-capitalism-to-socialism/">Rasmussen poll</a> shows that the percentage of Americans who believe that President Trump’s 2016 campaign likely colluded with Russia is now down to 42% with most of those being Democrats — but that is still a big number. As the evidence continues to mount, that number will almost certainly continue to shrink — and who knows; if we get an Armstrong-Oprah-type moment with full confessions, it may actually plummet.
* * *
Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisor member for <a href="https://starrs.us">STARRS.US</a>. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-24-Aug-2025-12-24-PM-4413

Anatomy Of A Hoax: From Lance Armstrong To Russiagate

Lance Armstrong

Russia Collusion Hoax

Tour de France

The Left-wing cable news network MSNBC will soon be changing its name. It will also soon be wearing a false beard and a putty nose in an attempt to disguise the fact it’s still the same old crap geyser of socialist lunacy. The name change comes as MSNBC prepares to break away from NBC News, and become part of a group of more obscure networks that will include the Golf Channel, Oxygen, the Sicilian Mafia, and several Mexican Drug Cartels.
From then on, MSNBC will be known as MS-NOW with the letters standing for My Source News Opinion World, signaling that this will be the go-to network for people who can’t form complete sentences. 
To come up with the name change, MSNBC Executives consulted branding experts at the marketing agency of Blundering, Wakoff and Shmoe, who have launched such famous brands as New Coke and McPizza as well as running the ad campaign: “Blockbuster Video, The Unspooling Face of Tomorrow.”
Agency leader Prodigious Wakoff recently spoke of the MS-NOW name change to a gathering of former CEO’s at the San Diego Former CEO Home and Soup Kitchen. Wakoff told the gathering, “We wanted to come up with a new name that sounded like a cross between a 1980’s PC operating system and a fire alarm in a clinic treating progressive diseases. That way, we could communicate MS-NOW’s exciting mission of transforming outmoded ideas into a future of crippling decline. MS-NOW preserves the network’s core identity while allowing NBC News to quietly scuttle off into the darkness, pretending they never had anything to do with this horrific crap fest.” 
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1244?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
Not everyone is happy with the changes coming to the leftist network. For instance, Joy Reid’s show has been canceled, leaving Reid to continue her unique brand of commentary at more welcoming venues like homeless encampments and padded cells. In a recent rant on an imaginary podcast that was really just her standing alone and screaming into the bathroom mirror, Ms. Reid said, “Canceling my show was an obvious attempt by the white establishment to silence strong black women who stand up fearlessly for psychopathic distortion in the service of complete ignorance. The fact is, the white man stole all his ideas from advanced black civilizations of the past like the nation of Wakanda, because the white man has never invented anything himself, except advanced black civilizations of the past like the nation of Wakanda, which, okay, was totally the figment of some white guy’s imagination. But other than that, everything was invented by the black people in Wakanda.”
But while MSNBC will be losing its status as the sister station of a major broadcast news network, it will otherwise not be sinking any lower because that would violate the laws of physics. So, for example, after the network changes its name, it will still feature Rachel Maddow, though she will also be changing her name and will now call herself Bret Baier in the hope someone will take her seriously.
Ms. Baier-nee-Maddow recently commented on the changes at MS-NBC on a media podcast called “Former News Networks and Whatever Happened to Them.” Ms. Baier-Maddow said, “MS-NBC is needed MS-NOW more than MS-EVER. Donald Trump represents a fundamental threat to Democracy not to mention a threat to South American gangsters, Islamic terrorists, teacher union pedophiles, dead voters and incarcerated minority males who are presumed innocent and should therefore be set free to kill again. And when I say not to mention all that, it’s because I plan not to mention any of it when I talk about the threat to Democracy Donald Trump represents in my imagination, a beautiful fairyland where John Brennan and Adam Schiff eternally walk hand in hand through a dreamlike field of wildflowers and lies. We commentators on the Left are running out of time, as well as evidence and ideas, and we need to make sure our voices are heard by our audience above the noise of their irrational gibbering and howling.”
Network Executives say the new MS-NOW name should be in place sometime between the end of this year and the moment shortly thereafter when the network disappears completely from our TV screens as well as our collective memories.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is now available for Pre-Order. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Philadelphia Prepares To Host Democratic National Convention

NBC Finalizes Divorce Proceedings As MSNBC Rebrands To MS NOW

Andrew Klavan

Leftists

MSNBC

Satire

The Left’s efforts to preserve their censorship industrial complex just triggered a new low in judicial imperialism — one that imperils free expression everywhere.
The Left-wing activist organization known as Media Matters recently filed a suit against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block it from investigating potential antitrust violations.
Media Matters has been around for decades, attempting (unsuccessfully) to boost the reputation of legacy media by launching spurious attacks against journalists it views as too conservative. Recently, Media Matters was accused of working with major advertising companies to form an economic cartel designed to foreclose market access to conservative media outlets. By targeting online publications like Breitbart, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist, the FTC is concerned that Media Matters is trying to eliminate competition to the benefit of legacy media and to the detriment of American consumers.
If true, such conduct would violate federal antitrust law, which prohibits such anti-competitive schemes. Given the gravity of the allegations, the FTC launched an investigation, as required by Congress. With the kind of lawfare tactics the Left has perfected, Media Matters immediately sued to block the FTC from even inquiring into whether the law had been broken.
It is hard to overstate how ludicrous this suit is. Imagine if drug dealers sued to stop the police from investigating their illicit operations, or if a company running a Ponzi scheme sued the SEC to prevent it from examining its fraudulent contracts.
No rational, law-abiding judge would ever countenance such a claim, especially in light of strong Supreme Court precedent to the contrary.
In Associated Press v. United States and again in Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, the Court ruled that the First Amendment does not constitutionally protect the unlawful actions by news media cartels. Justice Hugo Black famously wrote: “Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not.”
The Media Matters suit is based on a patently absurd argument that the Court has already rejected — twice.
Thus, any judge hearing this case would be obligated to follow Supreme Court precedent, no matter how much she may personally disagree. Unfortunately for the public, Media Matters has managed to land its case before one of the most partisan activists in the federal judiciary.
Despite being just eight months into a lifetime appointment, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan has already drawn criticism from across the political spectrum for her unethical conduct. At her Senate confirmation hearing last year, Sooknanan — a former Big Law attorney who spent a stint in the Biden administration — swore under oath that she was “not lead counsel” in a controversial lawsuit she brought on behalf of a vulture hedge fund against the territory of Puerto Rico.
It is a crime to provide knowingly false testimony to Congress. Sooknanan’s testimony was clearly untrue. It may also have been knowingly false. Her own firm, where she had been a partner, contradicted her testimony and provided evidence that she had indeed been the lead counsel on the case.
Judge Sooknanan is once again playing fast and loose with the law. In flagrant defiance of the Supreme Court, she has issued a preliminary injunction demanding that the FTC immediately cease its investigation into Media Matters.
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The harm of such an order cannot be overstated. Media Matters is not the only leftist group alleged to have formed a cartel: other legacy media sycophants like Ad Fontes Media and the Center for Countering Digital Hate have been accused of the same misconduct. If the FTC is judicially prohibited from protecting new media from antitrust violations, then the existence of potentially hundreds of journalistic enterprises — especially those with conservative leanings — is instantly imperiled.
Fortunately, under the strong leadership of FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the agency has already appealed the lawless actions by Judge Sooknanan.
But there are additional avenues to combat Sooknanan and other renegade judges who fancy themselves as judicial dictators. House Republicans could launch an impeachment inquiry. The Department of Justice could also investigate Sooknanan’s behavior to determine whether she committed perjury at her confirmation hearing. Higher courts could also begin their own inquiries into her refusal to apply the law evenly and fairly.
Media Matters and Judge Sooknanan are counting on not being held accountable for their actions. They are betting that they can nullify Supreme Court precedent and kill the FTC investigation in the cradle. For the sake of our republic and the freedom of the press, let us pray they are wrong.
* * *
Dan Schneider is the Vice President for Free Speech at the Media Research Center.
Tim Kilcullen is the Senior Fellow for Free Speech at the Media Research Center.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

E. Barrett Pettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington

A Rogue Judge Just Handed Media Matters Its Biggest Weapon Yet

Censorship

Conservative Media

Free Speech

Judges

Media Matters For America

Media Research Center

Washington D.C.

As the media and Democrats fulminate over President Trump&#8217;s supposed capitulation to Vladimir Putin, precisely the opposite seems to be happening.
But leave it to the media and the Left to deliberately misinterpret what is going on.
On Monday, President Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/with-historic-zelensky-visit-donald-trump-moves-the-world-one-step-closer-to-peace?author=Mary+Margaret+Olohan&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=14&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=With+Historic+Zelensky+Visit%2C+Donald+Trump+Moves+The+World+One+Step+Closer+To+Peace">met with</a> Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, along with a bunch of European leaders.
Everything seems to be moving toward Ukrainian territorial concessions in return for serious security guarantees for Ukraine.
Those guarantees would presumably be some form of European trigger force in Ukraine that would implicate a mutual defense pact. It wouldn&#8217;t exactly be NATO, but it would be NATO-lite. The problem is that to be a credible deterrent, you need tens of thousands of troops.
The second possibility is a trip-wire force that would trigger the possibility of the mutual defense coming into effect if Russia were to walk across the border.
A third possibility would be a kind of observer force, perhaps a few hundred troops or so, to report on incoming military action, which could be accomplished with satellites and ground cameras.
Of course, all of this flies in the face of the fact that Russia wants to leave Ukraine utterly defenseless and prostrate before them.
But here’s the thing: The fact that President Trump is willing to hold Russia&#8217;s feet to the fire by even talking about these kinds of significant security guarantees is a major move from the president, and pretending that it&#8217;s a pro-Russia move is silly. If there were a significant security guarantee, a sort of NATO-lite and Article Five-lite approach to Ukraine in exchange for territorial concessions in Donbas, that would be a masterstroke from the president of the United States, because otherwise this war just keeps going.
All of Trump’s forward movement on this issue is to the great consternation of both the media and the Democrats, who claim that Donald Trump was a Putin catspaw. They thought that Trump was going to welcome Zelensky to the White House yesterday by berating him and telling him he needed to basically surrender in the war: No security guarantees, no economic health, no nothing.
None of that happened. In fact, it was pretty warm. You could see Trump and Zelensky getting along. This was not an antagonistic meeting.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2262-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
One of the things that Zelensky also said is that as part of any of the security guarantees put forward by Europe and the United States, Ukraine would buy $90 billion in American weapons via Europe. The rest of the NATO nations and the United States military would benefit from it. The defense industries in the United States would end up benefiting from that. He expressed gratitude to both President Trump as well as the EU leaders for their hard work on the possibility of a peace deal.
There are still a lot of steps to go. We still have to see whether Vladimir Putin actually is interested in ending the war in any serious way.
As I’ve said before, a good thing about President Trump is that he&#8217;s heterodox in his views, which means he does very creative things. But if things don&#8217;t happen, he will respond. He&#8217;s responsive. He doesn&#8217;t just stick with an idea, no matter what.
The idea that endless diplomacy is something that President Trump is going to pursue here is not true. If Russia does not come to the table, if he feels that Putin is jacking him around again, he&#8217;ll walk away. He is not going to be bullied by Vladimir Putin here.
Trump remains optimistic, saying that he thinks that Putin wants to make a deal.
For the media and the Left to pretend that somehow Trump is doing Putin&#8217;s work here is to ignore everything that&#8217;s actually going on in favor of a pre-established narrative.
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Even Michael McFaul, who was President Obama&#8217;s Russian ambassador, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5459351-mcfaul-praises-trump-peace-efforts/">admitted</a> that Trump is actually doing a pretty good job here. “I think this was a very positive meeting,” he said. “And whoever had the idea to bring all these European leaders together, in addition to President Zelensky, that was a brilliant, brilliant idea. And having it come so quickly after Alaska was also very important because now they&#8217;ve changed the talking points here. Just in this meeting alone, they&#8217;ve walked back some of the positions that the president was echoing, when he met with President Putin. So this is very positive progress.”
If you&#8217;re honest —even if you&#8217;re a Democrat — you should be acknowledging that President Trump not only is not doing anything wrong here, he&#8217;s actually moving the ball forward.
To pretend that this was somehow a gigantic Trump capitulation to Putin is to ignore the actual reality of the situation, and it demonstrates the wild disconnect between reality and what Democrats think of President Trump.
But then, Democrats and reality are like oil and water.

TOPSHOT-US-UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT-DIPLOMACY

Could Trump’s Masterstroke End The Russia-Ukraine War?

Could Trump's Masterstroke End The Russia-Ukraine War?

Ben Shapiro

Europe

NATO

Opinion

President Trump

Russia

Ukraine-Russia War

Vladimir Putin

Volodymyr Zelensky

A picture is worth a thousand words — or in this case, a thousand lies. Or, in this case, a thousand reasons to fuel the BDS campaign in the United States: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.
As a professional photographer, I know that the person behind the lens doesn’t just capture the story, they control it. Every crop is a decision. Every object in the frame is a deliberate layer. Every angle sends a message. What you choose to show and what you intentionally leave out matters. Photography can illuminate truth. But it can just as easily be weaponized to obscure it.
That’s exactly what’s happening in Gaza.
A recent exposé by <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-863454#google_vignette">German outlet</a> BILD revealed that Gaza-based photographer Anas Zayed Fatiyeh has been staging scenes of suffering — intentionally using women and children — to manufacture strong emotions and propaganda on behalf of Hamas. These aren’t candid moments of human agony; they are carefully choreographed images designed to deceive.
One of Fatiyeh’s photos recently went viral after being amplified by The New York Times and millions of influencers. It showed a severely malnourished Gazan child wearing a trash bag, with headlines claiming Israel was “starving” civilians. The image is heartbreaking, and the suffering is real — but the story was false. The child had severe congenital conditions, including cerebral palsy. A healthy child who appears to be a sibling, not in a trash bag but in normal clothing, standing right beside them, was deliberately cropped out of the frame.
<div id="attachment_959399" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-959399" class="size-large wp-image-959399" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225506182-864x576.jpg" alt="GAZA CITY, GAZA - JULY 21: Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a 1.5-year-old child in Gaza City, Gaza, faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, on July 21, 2025. Having dropped from 9 to 6 kilograms, he struggles to survive in a tent in Gaza City, where milk, food, and other basic necessities are lacking. Suzan Marouf, a clinical nutrition specialist at Patient Friend’s Hospital, confirmed that Mohammad’s condition worsened due to severe malnutrition caused by the ongoing Israeli siege. When his family brought him to the hospital a month ago, doctors diagnosed him with moderate malnutrition in addition to pre-existing congenital health issues, including brain complications and muscle atrophy. Marouf said they had been trying to stabilize Mohammad’s condition using the last remaining nutritional supplements. &quot;The medical issues he had weren’t significantly affecting his weight,&quot; she noted. (Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225506182-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225506182-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225506182-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2225506182.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images</div>
This wasn’t journalism. It was another example of deliberately distorting reality to cast Israel as the perpetrator and Hamas as the victim. It is visual DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
And it didn’t happen in a vacuum. This isn’t organic outrage, it’s narrative warfare and has been going on for decades, executed in stages, and the formula works: 
First, Hamas-approved photographers stage the shot. Then, mainstream outlets from The New York Times to the BBC buy and publish the images from the Hamas-approved photographer, giving them global legitimacy. BDS accounts flood social media with them, stripped of context but supercharged with moral outrage. By the time real developments emerge — like hostage videos showing real famine, or footage of Evyatar David, intentionally starved (a war crime) and forced to dig his own grave — the emotional groundwork is already in place. The narrative then takes root, outrage explodes, and blame shifts automatically to Israel. The cherry on top? Destabilization in the West.
That’s exactly what happened here. The manufactured image became the emotional climax of a months-long BDS campaign blitz accusing Israel of engineering famine while conveniently omitting a critical fact: it was the United Nations, not Israel, that paused aid deliveries, leaving nearly 1,000 humanitarian trucks stalled inside Gaza.
What didn’t go viral? Over 100 million meals have been delivered into Gaza in the last two months alone — facilitated by Israel and the U.S. through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. That’s not the behavior of a genocidal regime. That’s a sovereign nation defending itself under relentless rocket fire, still upholding humanitarian obligations in the middle of war.
<div id="attachment_959405" style="width: 881px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-959405" class="size-large wp-image-959405" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226561585-871x576.jpg" alt="A C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft drops humanitarian aid on the northern Gaza Strip on July 27, 2025. Two Jordanian and one Emirati plane drop 25 tonnes of humanitarian aid over the Gaza Strip, Jordanian state television reports on July 27, 2025. (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)" width="871" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226561585-871x576.jpg 871w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226561585-300x198.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226561585-768x508.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/GettyImages-2226561585.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 871px) 100vw, 871px" />Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images</div>
Hamas understands something many in the West still don’t: visual storytelling wields more power than words. In a media landscape where lies spread six times faster than truth, where content goes viral without verification, and where movements are built on emotion instead of evidence, a single image — especially of a child in pain or, worse, a child’s death — can shape global perception before truth even enters the conversation. Even when the image is staged, or the child is tragically yet intentionally sacrificed by Hamas, the emotional impact overwhelms reality. And once the narrative takes hold, the truth rarely catches up.
This visual manipulation metastasizes. In the United States, Hamas’s propaganda becomes the lifeblood and oxygen of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. While Hamas wages physical war, BDS attacks the American mind.
You’ve likely seen BDS content without realizing it: polished Instagram carousels calling for “genocide” strikes, petitions demanding economic boycotts, and blacklists of “Zionist businesses.” But make no mistake, this is not a grassroots cry for peace. BDS was conceived under the Iranian regime, shaped by Soviet propaganda, and codified at the 2001 Durban Conference — a supposed anti-racism summit that devolved into open antisemitism, casting Israel as the world’s pariah. Officially launched in 2005, BDS has since infiltrated nearly every legacy institution in the West and thrives on the most powerful algorithms and most naive influencers online.
BDS is a sophisticated, well-funded Trojan horse cloaked in Western progressive language: feminism, decolonization, intersectionality, liberation theology. These ideals have been hijacked and funneled into unlikely arenas. <a href="https://coachingindustryglobalstrike.com">Wellness coaches</a> are calling for BDS strikes. Interior design accounts are boycotting Jewish businesses. Predatory marketing influencers like Jenna Kutcher are raising money for <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/palestine_children_s_relief_fund_ohio_/">NGOs</a> that historically have documented ties to Hamas. The publishing industry is boycotting <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C9u0y4uJsSG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">Jewish authors</a>. And even ex-country music singer turned social justice crusader <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/a2tolfsarb64bn18gm25c/Maren-Morris-BDS-Rosenheck-Op-ed.jpg?rlkey=o7c7kz48huni79qvjz0p1psm7&amp;dl=0">Maren Morris</a> is resharing BDS propaganda on her Instagram stories. Many of these voices have unknowingly become messengers for Hamas.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-959415 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-384x576.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-11-Aug-2025-10-00-AM-5432-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></div>
Credit: @marenmorris/Instagram
I’ve seen their playbooks firsthand. Last year, I was part of the effort to stop a BDS resolution in Nashville and sifted through hundreds of BDS Google Drive toolkits used to <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x8ggtgx3tzafjvozy650g/STOP-GAZA-GENOCIDE_-Ceasefire-Now-Public-Toolkit-copy.docx?rlkey=gg6u3uoy93b0l5ipfkw9yvr9u&amp;dl=0">orchestrate pressure campaigns.</a> These documents detail everything from how to birddog politicians, <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/15XripiWh5HoaNwLkPz05xrF2OJ-Yd6NVt3THLrNxLsE/edit?usp=sharing">chant slogans in English and Arabic,</a> manipulate marginalized groups, and weaponize emotional language to win public opinion — along with legal contacts for when the chaos inevitably leads to arrests.
The manipulation works. We’ve created a culture where a staged photo can do more to radicalize a high school student at a private school that costs $30k/year than any speech from a terrorist leader. And the consequences are measurable: Antisemitism isn’t just rising, it&#8217;s raging. The Anti-Defamation League reports 46% of the global population harbors antisemitic beliefs. That means nearly every other person you pass on the street or follow online holds some form of hatred toward Jews or Israel.
Let’s stop pretending this is accidental. It is deliberate. It is dangerous. And it is working.
I believe in the power of photography. I’ve dedicated my life to it. When done with integrity, photography is one of the most powerful tools we have to build bridges, evoke empathy, and humanize differences. But when photography is used as a weapon of propaganda, it becomes a tool of destruction, of truth, of peace, and of human dignity.
This is a wake-up call — not just for journalists, producers, and editors, but for every one of us who consumes media. We must ask: Who is behind this image? What’s their agenda? What’s being shown and what’s being deliberately left out? Does this content amount to material support for a foreign terrorist organization — a felony under U.S. law? Where is the line, and who is drawing it?
If we don’t start applying discernment, we become complicit in a system designed to manipulate us. We become pawns in a game played by those who seek not peace, but power.
You can either be used by Hamas propaganda, or you can reject it. You can either fall for the illusion or you can insist on the truth, no matter how complex or uncomfortable.
Photography shapes memory. It shapes morality. And right now, it&#8217;s being used to distort both.
* * *
Alyssa Rosenheck is a bestselling author and named by Architectural Digest as one of the top photographers in the U.S. Through her forthcoming book White. Blonde. Jew. (Spring 2026) and firsthand experience on post-war delegations to Israel, she confronts modern antisemitism while inspiring truth-tellers and cultural clarity.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Malnourished toddler in Gaza fights for life amid ongoing Israeli attacks

How Hamas Photo Propaganda Dupes The West And Fuels BDS

Boycott Divest Sanction

Gaza

Hamas

Israel

New York Times

Photography

Cincinnati Nighttime Skyline

Violent Black Mobs Beat Up White People In Cincinnati. The Media Remain Silent.

Blacks

Cincinnati

Matt Walsh

Violence

Whites

You can’t say Stephen Colbert didn’t try.
“The Late Show” host spent years spreading every anti-Trump narrative in the media. The “Very Fine People” speech. Russian Collusion. The Ballad of Stormy Daniels. Pee-Pee tapes. If it was critical of the president, Colbert pounced and seized.
True? False? Fake News? No matter. Colbert was on the case, weaponizing his nightly broadcast as an in-kind contribution to the DNC.
Except it didn’t work. Trump returned to the Oval Office earlier this year. And, now, Colbert won’t be around the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City to watch Trump complete his second term.
<div id="attachment_952651" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952651" class="size-large wp-image-952651" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-864x576.jpg" alt="People participate in a protest titled 'Colbert stays! Trump must go!' outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City on July 21, 2025. &quot;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,&quot; a staple of late-night US television, will end in 2026, the CBS network said, days after the comedian blasted parent company Paramount's $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump as &quot;a big fat bribe.&quot; (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images</div>
“The Late Show’s” cancellation sent shock waves through Hollywood. Supporters decry the decision, ignoring the cold, hard math behind the move. Reports say the show loses CBS $40 million (or more) a year.
Why would any business keep a show on the air for that price?
“The Late Show” became free therapy sessions for those who still can’t believe the country elected the real estate mogul – twice. They tuned in to hear their beliefs reflected back at them, aided and abetted by Colbert’s smug delivery.
It must have felt empowering to hear him call Trump Vladimir Putin’s [bleep] holster at the height of the Russian collusion scandal. Did it matter that it was all built upon a lie?
Apparently not. And Colbert never felt compelled to apologize for misleading his audience.
The Colbert we see today isn’t the one we were first introduced to on, where else, “The Daily Show.” His shtick at the time, expanded via “The Colbert Report,” was mocking a Bill O’Reilly-style commentator.
He excelled at the role, earning some respect even among right-leaning viewers. He put the funny first, much like he did as part of the “Strangers with Candy” sitcom years earlier.
<div id="attachment_952649" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952649" class="size-large wp-image-952649" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 8: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Barack Obama (L) talks to television personality Stephen Colbert during a taping of Comedy Central's &quot;The Colbert Report&quot; in Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University on December 8, 2014 in Washington, DC. This is President Obama's third appearance on &quot;The Colbert Report&quot; that will broadcast its final show on Dec. 18. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images</div>
He seemed a smart choice to succeed David Letterman on “The Late Show” in 2015, but he initially struggled in the ratings against “The Tonight Show” juggernaut. Then, Colbert found his inner Bernie Sanders and turned the showcase into a hard-Left platform.
The move paid dividends. “The Late Show” soon became the ratings leader before the rise of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!”
The shift didn’t help the show’s longevity. The bill has come due. Why?
He neglected to heed the Ghost of Johnny Carson. The late-night king knew well enough to mock both sides of the aisle and have fun doing so.
The joy seeped from Colbert’s performance. So did any sense of balance. Now, you’re as likely to see a “Pod Save America” host on his show as a Tom Cruise or Sydney Sweeney.
Progressive viewers may vote for Sen. Adam Schiff, but on a charisma scale of 1 to 10 he’s a 3, at best.
What happens next? Colbert vows to go down fighting, slamming President Trump with every sketch and monologue in his waning days. Oh, like he’s done the past nine or so years? The Legacy Media will <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/07/24/trump-epstein-files-late-night-hosts/85356533007/">amplify them all</a>, hoping to sway the public against Trump beyond their cartoonishly biased reportage.
Reporters will miss crafting headlines like this as much as they miss Colbert: &#8220;Late-night guys are giddy with Trump and Epstein jokes after latest developments.&#8221;
How can Colbert possibly do more to attack the Trump administration at this point? He can’t, unless he takes a page from “The View” playbook.
Unhinged conspiracies. Fear-mongering on steroids. Undisciplined rants that cause the studio audience to clap like seals and sane viewers to watch their jaws go slack. That’s all Colbert has left, and he risks losing whatever cultural heft he has remaining if he goes down that road.
Does he really want to start sharing “Legal Notes” like “The View” does to protect himself from lawsuits?
<div id="attachment_952655" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952655" class="size-large wp-image-952655" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-864x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK CITY - JULY 21: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert during Monday's July 21, 2025 show. (Photo by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images</div>
Plus, he’s only 61. Surely, he wants to keep working in comedy once “The Late Show” expires. He’s a natural fit for video podcasting, where the modest budgetary requirements all but guarantee his success.
Sane progressives will see right through any “View”-sized transition, meaning he’ll peel off some of his base along the way. Maybe the show will lose more than $40 million over the next 10 months.
The upside for Colbert’s late-night competitors? With “The Late Show” out of the way, they’ll be more progressive viewers for them to attract, at least on paper. No Colbert? Let’s see how Jimmy Kimmel is attacking President Trump today.
It’ll be a sugar high, at best.
Late-night TV is dying. Blame YouTube, the rise of funny social media accounts or comedians who actively chased away more than half the country with their polemics. Colbert is far from alone on that front. Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel all lean to the Left. And they kissed conservative viewers goodbye some time ago.
“<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/5612703584001">Not good riddance but riddance,”</a> as Kimmel infamously said about his shift to the hard Left.
The format likely would perish with or without Colbert’s handiwork. We stopped collecting 8-track tapes some time ago, too. His Trump obsession, and fueling insults like “Clapter” to the lexicon, a term for jokes meant to spark applause, not laughter, made matters worse.
The biggest irony? While audiences no longer find Colbert’s shtick funny, a certain two-term president is having the last laugh.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Late Night Collapse: Colbert’s Fall And The Death Of Balanced Comedy

Late Night Collapse: Colbert’s Fall and the Death of Balanced Comedy

David Letterman

Jon Stewart

Stephen Colbert

We live in an age of narrative. Narrative matters more than the facts, and many of the people who know that work in the media, and many of them are opponents of Donald Trump&#8217;s agenda.
That means that any time President Trump tries to forward his agenda, he may face down actual false stories that are promulgated by the media that are antithetical to his actual agenda items.
The latest example is this insane example that has been totally under-covered, but is indicative of the way that so many in the media actually cover these stories. They don&#8217;t actually have personal knowledge of the story. They just report a story.
And it turns out the story is not true.
The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/20/ice-secretly-deported-grandfather">reported</a>:
<blockquote>An 82-year-old man in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a> was secretly deported to Guatemala after visiting an immigration office last month to replace his lost green card, according to his family, who said they have not heard from him since and were initially told he was dead.
According to <a href="https://www.mcall.com/2025/07/18/luis-leon-allentown-grandfather-ice-guatemala/">Morning Call</a>, which first reported the story, longtime Allentown resident Luis Leon – who was granted political asylum in the US in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – lost his wallet containing the physical card that confirmed his legal residency. So he and his wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.
When he arrived at the office on 20 June, however, he was handcuffed by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, who led him away from his wife without explanation, she said. She said she herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
The family said they made efforts to find any information on his whereabouts but learned nothing.
Then, sometime after Leon was detained, a woman purporting to be an immigration lawyer called the family, they said, claiming she could help – but did not disclose how she knew about the case, or where Leon was. On 9 July, according to Leon’s granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming Leon had died.
A week later, however, they discovered from a relative in Chile that Leon was alive after all – but now in a hospital in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/guatemala">Guatemala</a>, a country to which he has no connection.</blockquote>
So his family had said they couldn&#8217;t locate him and were told he died, and then he turned up in Guatemala. The DHS stated, “The family of the individual allegedly told reporters he was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia. This claim is completely false. There&#8217;s no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia.” Furthermore, said the DHS, ICE has not deported Luis Leon.
Even the idea that he entered as a refugee from Pinochet is not true. This is an effort to demonize ICE agents, who are already facing an 830% increase in assaults against them.
The story is important because it demonstrates how information flows in the modern world, especially in the online world, where this went totally viral on X. 
Why does it work this way? Because X is a machine built for instantaneous response. Mark Twain famously suggested, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” That was somewhat true when Mark Twain was saying that back in the late 19th century, but it is much more true now when the online world means that lies are promulgated at an extraordinary rate, a truly extraordinary rate.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2244-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
And it&#8217;s true over and over and over again.
Take, for example, the case of Mahmoud Khalil, who was freed by a court after the Trump administration tried to deport him. He was a person who had garnered a student visa under false pretenses. He got a student visa claiming that he was coming to the United States to study, when in fact he was coming to the United States in order to act as a professional agitator.
He came to work with Students for Justice in Palestine and various other groups on the Columbia University campus, where he was going to promote wild anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas sentiment.
And so Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that this is not what we are looking for in our immigrants. You&#8217;re gone.
So Khalil argued he was exercising his free speech rights. And Rubio fired back that we get to decide who comes into this country. We have the plenary power at State to decide whether someone is violating the edict, and we make the decision as to whether someone is of benefit to the United States.
The entire media came to Khalil&#8217;s defense, suggesting that Khalil was just a normal student who had no support for terrorist groups, that all the talk about him supporting terrorist groups was just false; he never would do something like that. He&#8217;s just a normal Left-wing guy who just really, really doesn&#8217;t like what Israel is doing in Gaza.
All of that blew up yesterday in an interview on CNN. He said the Trump administration is “weaponizing anti-Semitism.” He&#8217;s not really antisemitic. He&#8217;s not really a threat in any way. It&#8217;s just that the Trump administration is using antisemitism as a way of throwing out people they don&#8217;t like.
In the interview, he was asked multiple times whether he condemned Hamas, a designated terrorist organization in the United States, for what they did on October 7 and beyond. Over and over again, he refused to denounce Hamas.
Do you need people in the United States who don&#8217;t condemn State Department-labeled terrorist groups? That was Marco Rubio&#8217;s entire case. That was the case of the Trump administration when they tried to deport him.
It seems relatively inarguable. It&#8217;s one thing if you&#8217;re already a United States citizen; We don&#8217;t get to kick you out for having terrible views in the United States if you are a citizen.
But if you lie about why you came to the country and you came here as a political agitator on behalf of terrorist organizations, we should probably kick you out.
But the entire media went along with the idea that he was a wounded innocent who was merely parroting the rhetoric of mainstream Democratic officials. That was never true.
And by that time, it was too late for the debunking to happen.
This is happening all over the world. It&#8217;s not just true of the Trump administration immigration agenda. It&#8217;s true all over the world. The claims that are currently being made by mainstream media parroting the Gaza Ministry of Defense —which is controlled by Hamas — saying Israel is shooting people who are trying to get food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, are lies.
What is happening, however, is Hamas is infiltrating those lines, and they&#8217;re literally shooting at the IDF soldiers trying to draw fire. In response, Israel is attempting to separate Hamas terrorists from civilians. Hamas is literally killing people who are taking the aid from Israel because they wish to hijack the aid.
Another lie: Extremist local Jewish West Bank residents had set fire to the 1,500-year-old church of Saint George in the Palestinian village of Taiba. This is part and parcel of a broader attempt right now by some to claim that Israel is targeting Christians, which is not true. They&#8217;re doing this based on this false report, and also the lie that Israel purposefully targeted a church in the Gaza Strip. They did not purposefully target a church in the Gaza Strip. That would be a moral, intellectual, and strategic absurdity.
What would generate that? Why would Israel purposefully target a church? Clearly it was an accident. But it&#8217;s been run with by many of the people who are now trying to generate outsized pressure on Israel by claiming somehow that Israel is filled with people who hate Christians, which is very strange, considering that Israel is literally the only place in the entire region where Christians can live safely and securely while practicing their religion.
The story turned out to be false. The report was spread so widely, even American officials repeated it before investigating.
What actually happened? Local Jewish residents were fighting the fire. There are no burn marks anywhere on the church. It doesn&#8217;t have a roof because it hasn&#8217;t had a roof for a long time; it’s essentially an ancient site. There is contemporaneous footage showing young men from nearby farms running up the hill with fire extinguishing equipment, according to The Jerusalem Post.
This is, again, one of these narratives that runs out of control very, very quickly and is spread on services like X that do a terrible job of separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of what is true and what is false.
It is that which leads to wild distrust on every issue.
It is very difficult to lock down the facts. One of the things I try to do on my show is to take enough time when a controversial claim is made to determine whether or not it is true. And so I might wait a few hours to determine what actually happened in a given situation, or even a couple of days in murky circumstances.
But that is not what the internet favors these days. What the internet actually favors is an immediate response, right now, without information. And if you wait, you are condemned for waiting. The idea is that if you wait, you must have some secret sympathies in some way or another. Whereas, if you just react and jump to your preferred conclusion, that somehow means you are more honest in some way.
It’s not true. Waiting is frequently the best thing to do in unclear circumstances so as to allow time for the truth to arise. That is the thing that actually should matter.
You can speculate; you can theorize, but people aren&#8217;t in the business anymore of speculating or theorizing. They simply jump to whatever conclusion is the most advantageous for their narrative and for their position, and then they insist that position is true regardless of the next set of facts that comes out.

The Guardian Newpaper To Stop Using Elon Musk’s Social Media Platform

Media LIE: The Illegal Immigrant Horror Story That Wasn’t

Anti-Semitism

Immigration

Mahmoud Khalil

The Guardian

A new study reveals how media in the United States and Europe simply parroted inaccurate information from the terrorist group Hamas and represented it as truthful.
The Network Contagion and Research Institute released their comprehensive report, titled, “<a href="https://networkcontagion.us/reports/7-15-25-the-4th-estate-sale-how-american-and-european-media-became-an-uncritical-mouthpiece-for-a-designated-foreign-terror-organization/">The 4th Estate Sale: How American and European Media Became an Uncritical Mouthpiece for a Designated Foreign Terror Organization</a>.”
The report started by illuminating how the media virtually unanimously purveyed a uniform narrative in which they lied about the efforts of the U.S. Department of State’s aid initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was delivering meals and direct food assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“Within days of GHF’s first meal deliveries, it became the target of a deliberate narrative assault, driven less by verifiable facts than by the demands of a competing narrative,” the report states. “Reports and evidence of violence at aid sites began to surface, and international and U.S. media outlets, social media influencers, and NGOs started publishing articles that ascribed blame to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or GHF for intentional violence against civilians, war crimes, and complicity in the crime of genocide. The reports quickly condensed into viral headlines, but the claim that the IDF was systematically murdering civilians was usually sourced from Hamas-run ministries or anonymous accounts, and often unverified. Moreover, evidence that Hamas could be responsible for violence around aid sites – evidence provided by non-Hamas Palestinian sources, by Hamas’s online communications, and by video that in some cases shows Hamas operatives deliberately firing on Palestinian civilians– was almost never suggested.”
“A core failure of media coverage is the routine elevation of the Gaza Health Ministry, a Hamas-run agency, as a trusted source on culpability for violence. &#8230; many mainstream media outlets remain willing to rely on figures and ‘facts’ taken from the Gaza Health Ministry,&#8221; the report continues. “The media framed a narrative sourced unreflexively from Hamas affiliates – a narrative which aims to uproot any challenge that undermines the terrorist-designated entity’s governance over aid distribution in the Gaza Strip. This effort transformed reporting into narrative laundering: the process of circulating unverified or unreliable information and framing it as a legitimate window into truth.”
“Our results suggest that the GHF was targeted and undermined by a collection of adversarial actors and institutional amplifiers acting synchronously and convergently,” the report continues. “Major media headlines cited Hamas-linked officials more than any other source – making a foreign terrorist organization one of the leading voices shaping news about GHF. Of the high-engagement news articles NCRI analyzed, Hamas-linked officials and organizations, such as the Gaza Health Ministry, were directly cited in headlines more than any other named source. In nearly three-quarters of those cases, it was not disclosed in the headline that the source was a Hamas affiliate.”
One example from the report: “The Washington Post retracted early versions of a report that explicitly stated Israeli troops killed over 30 Palestinians near a U.S. aid site in Gaza. The original headline attributed to ‘health officials’ the claims about Israeli troops being responsible for the deaths, but the journalists failed to clarify that this attribution solely reflected a claim from the Gaza Health Ministry. This consequently gave readers a false impression that Israeli responsibility had been independently confirmed.”
Another: “CNN corrected its report of a shooting near a Gaza aid site in which at least 31 Palestinians were allegedly killed. The original article uncritically reported the Gaza Health Ministry’s claim that the Israeli military was responsible without making clear that this accusation had not been independently verified.”
“A particularly salient example of this occurred when Gazan pharmacist Omar Hamad introduced the conspiratorial narrative that the GHF intentionally laced bags of flour with the narcotic Oxycodone. This claim went viral on X, racking up over 25.7M views across just 21 posts,” the report noted.
“While originating from traditional sources (NGOs, UN bodies, humanitarian advocates), these narratives are rapidly absorbed by future assassins like Elias Rodriguez or online networks that reframe them through radically different lenses on both the right and left,” the report opines.
“The belief that Israel is intentionally starving children or deliberately targeting hospitals under the pretense of counterterrorism is not grounded in verifiable fact. These are not legitimate policy critiques; they are fabricated atrocity narratives that reframe Israel&#8217;s actions as genocidal, regardless of evidence to the contrary. What’s most alarming is the shift from political disagreement to dehumanizing conviction. The experimental results show that exposure to these narratives moves individuals to endorse conspiracy-level accusations and adopt a moral framework in which Israel is no longer a flawed actor, but a fundamentally evil one,” the report concludes.

Pinocchio

Study Shows How U.S. And European Media Parrot Hamas Propaganda, Present It As Truth

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Terrorism

World

Conservatives criticized NBC News over a report comparing a Republican congressman&#8217;s use of a digital signature with former President Joe Biden&#8217;s use of an autopen to grant presidential pardons.
In an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/lead-investigator-james-comer-biden-autopen-digital-signature-rcna216719">article</a> published on Tuesday with the headline, &#8220;Lead investigator into Biden&#8217;s use of an autopen signed letters with a digital signature,&#8221; the outlet examined letters from Rep. James Comer (R-KY) in Adobe Acrobat and found they were signed digitally. Comer is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating Biden&#8217;s use of the autopen.
Biden recently admitted he used the autopen for mass pardons, but &#8220;did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-admits-he-used-autopen-for-mass-criminal-pardons-says-he-didnt-review-every-case?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Biden+Admits+He+Used+Autopen+For+Mass+Criminal+Pardons%2C+Says+He+Didn%E2%80%99t+Review+Every+Case">according</a> to The New York Times. Instead, the former president &#8220;signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence.&#8221;
A Comer spokesperson called the comparison &#8220;absurd.&#8221;
&#8220;Using digital signatures for official correspondence is a common practice for both Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives. Chairman Comer has never hidden the fact that he uses a digital signature when appropriate, and he approves all official correspondence that is signed digitally,&#8221; a spokeswoman from the House Oversight Committee told NBC News. &#8220;Legally binding subpoenas issued by Chairman Comer always bear a wet signature and are never signed using an autopen or digital signature. Comparing Chairman Comer’s use of digital signatures for letters to the unauthorized use of an autopen in the Biden White House for legally binding executive actions is absurd and misleading. The two are not even remotely comparable.&#8221;
Later in the story, NBC News noted digital signatures are widely used in Congress.
&#8220;The use of digital signatures has been common in Washington for decades, both in the White House and in Congress,&#8221; the report said. &#8220;Members of Congress and their staff regularly use printed versions of their signatures to respond to the voluminous amount of correspondence they receive.&#8221;
Comer responded to the story on social media.
&#8220;There&#8217;s still time to delete this, Ryan,&#8221; he said in response to one of the report&#8217;s authors, Ryan Nobles. The post included a photoshopped image of Nobles in clown makeup.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
There’s still time to delete this, Ryan. <a href="https://t.co/61bly5fTsW">https://t.co/61bly5fTsW</a> <a href="https://t.co/PIcuiBRpIj">pic.twitter.com/PIcuiBRpIj</a>
&mdash; Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepJamesComer/status/1945128228298924064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Conservatives tore into the outlet on social media.
&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to understand why this was written, other than to push Democrat propaganda and avoid covering the investigation into Biden&#8217;s decline,&#8221; Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist, said. &#8220;Is the argument from @ryanobles and @MZanona that Comer doesn&#8217;t know he&#8217;s sending these letters/subpoenas he talks about all the time?&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I&#39;m trying to understand why this was written, other than to push Democrat propaganda and avoid covering the investigation into Biden&#39;s decline. Is the argument from <a href="https://twitter.com/ryanobles?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ryanobles</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/MZanona?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MZanona</a> that Comer doesn&#39;t know he&#39;s sending these letters/subpoenas he talks about all the time?
&mdash; Mollie (@MZHemingway) <a href="https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1945117695168373138?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;This is easily one of the media&#8217;s lamest attempts to downplay a Democrat scandal,&#8221; GOP communications specialist Greg Price posted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;Using Adobe Acrobat to sign a letter is totally the same thing as Biden&#39;s un-elected staff using his autopen to issue presidential pardons without his knowledge.&quot; 🤡
This is easily one of the media&#39;s lamest attempts to downplay a Democrat scandal. <a href="https://t.co/cmaHV0B2B1">https://t.co/cmaHV0B2B1</a>
&mdash; Greg Price (@greg_price11) <a href="https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1945120324955046162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;NBC News has no idea how Adobe Acrobat works. Just amazing,&#8221; conservative pundit Stephen L. Miller said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
NBC News has no idea how Adobe Acrobat works. Just amazing. <a href="https://t.co/8kEq7dWAlY">https://t.co/8kEq7dWAlY</a> <a href="https://t.co/ImoJS7VcM8">pic.twitter.com/ImoJS7VcM8</a>
&mdash; Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1945099770802082232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Imagine being so stupid and corrupt as to write this article and think it’s even remotely analogous to a cabal of White House staffers taking advantage of a president with dementia and using his mental infirmity as an excuse to commandeer the powers of the presidency,&#8221; said The Federalist CEO Sean Davis.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Imagine being so stupid and corrupt as to write this article and think it’s even remotely analogous to a cabal of White House staffers taking advantage of a president with dementia and using his mental infirmity as an excuse to commandeer the powers of the presidency. <a href="https://t.co/qMidPL7v03">https://t.co/qMidPL7v03</a>
&mdash; Sean Davis (@seanmdav) <a href="https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1945120352943673402?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
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