#leo terrell

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

“We have a president of the United States who was potentially involved in all of those entanglements with foreign entities,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “which could lead to complications or compromise as the president now.”  Hegeth’s comment serves as a searing indictment of his current boss, President Donald Trump, whose “entanglements with foreign entities" deepen with each new investigative report on his family’s sprawling business interests and attempts to cash in on the presidency. 

But of course, Hegseth wasn’t talking about the recent Wall Street Journal investigation revealing an apparent quid pro quo in which a Trump family company received a half-billion dollar investment from an Emirati prince days before the president took office, then the Trump administration funneled AI chips to the prince’s firm. The quote is actually from July 2023, and it shows Hegseth using his prior role as Fox News host to denounce then-President Joe Biden. It is not an overstatement to say that arguing against foreign money influence on the White House was a defining principle for right-wing media during the Biden years. But their arguments were based in fantasy, and the Trump family’s corruption is both much more straightforward and involves sums of money that are larger by orders of magnitude. Thanks to Trump’s propensity to hire the people he saw on his television, many of those who loudly complained about the purported corruption of the Biden family — and even called for the criminal prosecution of President Biden — are now working within the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Fox smear machine that once went into overdrive promoting conspiracy theories about presidential corruption has gone quiet.

The Trump family’s corruption is orders of magnitude worse than the Biden allegations

Fox’s effort to turn Hunter Biden’s foreign business interests into a political liability for his father dates to Trump’s first administration, but became an obsession once Joe Biden took office in 2021. While the network’s narratives were never credible — and some even appeared to be the result of a Russian disinformation campaign — the pressure of its all-consuming coverage and its media power within the GOP eventually goaded congressional Republicans into an ill-fated impeachment effort, at which point the whole edifice collapsed.  But the Fox conspiracy-mongering takes on a new light given that some of the people who pushed it now work for a president who embarked on self-enrichment schemes of staggering scale and eye-popping corruption in his first year back in office.  While feverish claims of a “Biden Crime Family” involved a total of less than $7.5 million paid to Biden family members over the years — and nothing to Joe Biden — Trump had already “used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion,” the editorial board of The New York Times reported on the anniversary of his second inauguration.

Trump and his adult children oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign and includes international real estate deals through the Trump Organization; his social media company and its parent, “which trades like a meme stock”; immense holdings in cryptocurrency; and an array of consulting and venture capital positions held by his sons that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency even as they frequently conflict with U.S. policy (by contrast, the right’s core allegation of Joe Biden aiding his son’s foreign business interests involved him carrying out U.S. policy as vice president). 

[...]

They called for Biden’s prosecution; now they run the DOJ under Trump

Several Fox pundits who joined the Trump administration — including some who now serve in senior Justice Department posts — even argued at the time that Joe Biden’s actions warranted a criminal probe.  Fox host Sean Hannity asked Bondi — then a frequent Fox guest and now Trump’s attorney general — during an August 2023 segment whether anything would “ultimately happen to Joe and Hunter Biden.” Bondi replied that “when we have a new administration, absolutely Sean, it has to,” adding that a criminal investigation “must be opened” and that the Bidens would be “prosecuted” under a future Trump presidency.

Bondi also stressed in 2022 that if Trump had been president under the same circumstances, he would have “right away, recused himself” and had “a special prosecutor take over.”  Duffy argued that the FBI and Justice Department should be investigating the “shady” dealings to determine whether Joe Biden is “corrupt” and has “made money off of this.” But he claimed that “they won't do a forensic audit because they know that the money goes from foreign countries to Hunter Biden into Joe Biden's pocket.” 

Some Fox figures claimed to be concerned about corruption… when it was aimed at the Biden family.

Hannity.com- Far left takes even more extrem turn with Defund the Police Agenda

Since I can’t get Videos from Youtube anymore of Sean Hannity, I’m going to pull from his personal website.  I think it’s more censorship by big tech Google to suppress freedom of speech. What are they scared of?  This is a fantastic debate between Leo Terrel VS Cornel West! 

[contentcards url=”https://hannity.com/media-room/battle-of-the-year-leo-terrell-vs-cornel-west-youre-not-my-brother-youre…

Payton Armstrong at MMFA:

Right-wing media figures are exploiting the devastating Los Angeles County wildfires to further their crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, suggesting the fires are burning out of control because LAFD's chief is an LGBTQ woman who supports DEI initiatives, declaring “DEI = DIE,” and claiming that “it literally leads to death.”

Uncontained wildfires in Los Angeles County have forced thousands to evacuate

Wildfires in Los Angeles have killed at least five and forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes, and the fires remain largely uncontained. The Los Angeles Times reported that “more than 1,000 homes, businesses and other buildings have burned and at least two people are dead in wildfires burning across L.A. County, making this one of the most destructive firestorms to hit the region in memory.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/8/25, 1/7/25]

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley, who is the first woman and first openly LGBTQ person to serve in the role, said that “the fire is being fueled by a combination of strong winds and surrounding topography, which is making it extremely challenging for our personnel that are assigned to this incident.” She also said that the fires are “stretching the capacity of emergency services to their maximum limits.” [ABC7/KABC, 6/5/24; Los Angeles Times, 1/8/25, 1/8/25]

Right-wing media repeatedly used disasters in 2024 to baselessly attack diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. After a series of equipment malfunctions with Boeing passenger jets, right-wing media rushed to blame the failures on DEI policies. Several commentators also linked the Baltimore bridge collapse to DEI programs, declaring that “DEI equals die,” and Fox News' Jeanine Pirro recently responded to the New Orleans terror attack by calling the police chief “a DEI hire.” [Media Matters, 1/12/24, 1/25/24, 3/8/24, 7/15/24, 3/26/24, 3/30/24, 1/3/25]

Right-wing media figures are using the wildfires in the Los Angeles area to exploit anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ+ hatred all because the LAFD chief Kristin Crowley is a lesbian woman who backs DEI programs.

The faux outrage over DEI is part of the right-wing war on non-cis white male [conservative] Americans in leadership roles.

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump Calls On Newsom To Resign; Republicans Blame DEI For Inability To Contain Wildfires

Courtney Hagle and Bushra Sultana at MMFA:

President-elect Donald Trump announced Fox News contributor Leo Terrell will join the Justice Department as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon. Terrell has a long history of campaigning against civil rights protections, arguing that systemic racism against nonwhite people “does not exist” and that the “extreme left has declared war on white Americans and white police officers.”  Terrell also repeatedly defended Trump on Fox airwaves, saying that the judge in Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial is “compromised” and “should have been recused” and claiming that there was “nothing wrong” with Trump’s conduct when he tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” thousands of votes supporting him in the 2020 election after Trump lost the state.

Lis Power at MMFA:

Since the beginning of former President Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial, Fox News figures and guests have repeatedly challenged the integrity of the judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan. Throughout the duration of the trial, figures on Fox News have lobbed at least 220 such attacks at Merchan, suggesting that the judge has an anti-Trump bias so the “fix is in,” attacking his handling of the case as “supremely biased” and “severely compromised,” and claiming the judge should have recused himself.

The figures who launched the most attacks on the judge on the network were Hannity, followed distantly by host Laura Ingraham (12 claims), host Jeanine Pirro (11 claims), legal analyst Gregg Jarrett (10 claims), and host Mark Levin and contributor Leo Terrell (9 claims each). Notably, most of those figures host shows, and five out of the six have legal degrees.  The programs that pushed the most attacks on Merchan were opinion shows Hannity (52), The Ingraham Angle (26), and the network's weekday morning show, Fox & Friends (20). They were followed by so-called news-side show The Faulkner Focus (18) as well as weekend show Life, Liberty & Levin (13). While Fox personalities and guests issued the majority of attacks on opinion shows (150), they also impugned Merchan's impartiality 70 times on Fox’s so-called news shows. 

Gideon Taaffe at MMFA:

Right-wing pundits are drawing lines in the sand over whether to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The slim GOP majority in Congress has enabled the possibility of a few members of the party forcing a vote on removing the Republican speaker, and many MAGA-aligned personalities have stoked the flames while others say they back Johnson. 

Prominent House Republicans have called for Johnson to be removed from the speakership for his role in pushing for foreign aid spending without ties to spending on the U.S.-Mexico border. Earlier this year, Senate Republicans struck down a bipartisan border and foreign aid spending bill amid opposition from House Republicans, including  Johnson, and former President Donald Trump. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Thomas Massie (R-KY) have all called for Johnson to step down or risk a motion to vacate. [NBC, 4/19/24; CNN, 2/8/24]

Following the passage of over $60 billion to fund Ukraine’s defense efforts, Greene said, “Mike Johnson’s speakership is over.” She added: “He needs to do the right thing to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.” [CNN, 4/21/24]