Jun 7
Artist Matthew Boyle … spectacular!
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Artist Matthew Boyle … spectacular!
The AP is on the outs, but these new MAGA media stars are on the rise.
Ian Ward at Politico:
As she left the James S. Brady Briefing Room in early April, Natalie Winters, the newly minted White House correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room, tried to describe the relationship between the White House press corps’ old guard and the “new conservative media” who’ve entered the briefing room in the early days of the second Trump administration. “You know when you’re at a party and you see someone who you don’t technically know, but you know them like through a friend from social media, and it’s that awkward question of, like, ‘Do I say hi or do I not?’” Winters told me. “It’s a room full of that, except you know the people because you bash them on TV.” Not that she particularly minds the confrontation. Since securing credentials to cover White House events in January, Winters has distinguished herself as the enfant terrible of the “new media” set, the collection of non-traditional — and mostly MAGA-aligned — outlets that the Trump administration has welcomed to the White House as part of its campaign shake up the briefing room. “We’re the rising power,” Winters said.
Most of the members of the new media have adopted Trump’s hostile relationship to the mainstream media, but Winters goes further than most in her animosity: She has accused other White House reporters of taking part in “CIA psy-ops,” and she believes the liberal media is actively fomenting a “color revolution” against Trump. “They can criticize what we’re doing [at War Room] as, like, state regime propaganda or whatever,” she said as we walked along the National Mall. “But at the end of the day, I’m like, ‘Who’s running cover for the state?’”
Winters’ ire isn’t reserved just for what she views as the liberal parts of the media. “I think the fact that we’re there is almost more of an offense or an affront to [an outlet] like Fox,” she told me as we walked by Peter Doocy, the network’s White House reporter, “because it sort of shows that, like, the base was not appeased.”
The administration’s embrace of alternative conservative outlets continues a pattern from Trump’s first term, but the divide between the MAGA-friendly media and their more mainstream counterparts has become visible in the briefing room in a way it wasn’t before. Without dedicated seats of their own, a group of about a dozen new media reporters have taken to gathering in the “conservative corner” — as some reporters call it — along the far wall of the briefing room, near the “new media seat” that Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has set aside for a rotating cast of alternative outlets and conservative influencers.
The occupants of the conservative corner cut a sharp contrast to their seated colleagues: Many of the reporters in the gaggle are younger than the average White House correspondent, and a handful of them tote around hand-held cameras or other DIY live-streaming equipment. Their fashion choices — flashy ties and steep high heels — stand out in the sea of grey suits and sensible flats. They chatter like old friends (which many of them are from prior reporting gigs) or even romantic partners (which at least two of them are). “It’s a little bit of a who’s who of my friends in the conservative ecosystem that have suddenly popped up in the White House,” said Mary Margaret Olohan, the White House correspondent for Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire. Despite their shared sense of opposition to the media mainstream, not all the conservative outlets in the briefing room see eye-to-eye politically: “It’s a broad and diverse group, so not everyone is ideologically aligned,” said Olohan. The competitive nature of the White House beat — and the cramped layout of the briefing room — has also led to some minor kerfuffles among the new media cohort. “There’s a lot of the petty stuff of people being like, ‘When you raised your hand, you blocked my face!’” said Winters.
Their exile to the aisles may soon be over, though. In late March, reports started to trickle out that the White House is formulating plans to take control of the briefing room seating chart from the White House Correspondents Association, a move that many new media members are hoping could land them actual seats. The news had Winters dreaming of more fundamental changes to the briefing room: “Get some Serena and Lily in there, some Restoration Hardware cloud couches, some more pink, some rose gold accents,” she said. “Steve Bannon’s there, front row.” But any changes to the seating chart will merely be symbolic of the deeper shifts in the media dynamics in Trump’s Washington, where the mainstream press is fighting for viewers and relevance while the alternative conservative media steadily expands its audience — and basks in the warm glow of Trump’s affection. “In some ways, the revulsion to the new media people being there [stems from the] fact that we’re like a mirror,” said Winters, “a reflection of the fact that they’re dying.”
Brian Glenn
Real America’s Voice
Chief White House correspondent Brian Glenn was something of a MAGA celebrity even before he called out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit to the White House during the question-and-answer portion of a tense Oval Office meeting in March. But his public needling of the Ukrainian leader instantly raised his stock on the right. [...] The episode was representative of the role that Glenn has played in the MAGA media ecosystem, first as a host for the conservative media company Right Side Broadcasting Network and now as the face of Real America’s Voice, which airs on the right-leaning streaming site Rumble. Glenn, 55, exudes the puckishness of an overgrown frat boy, a reputation that’s been bolstered by his long-term romance with Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
[...]
Cara Castronuova
Lindell TV
Yes, the “MyPillow guy” Mike Lindell has his own TV network — and it’s credentialed at Trump’s White House. But its White House correspondent, Cara Castronuova, might have an even more colorful background than Lindell: After studying journalism in college, Castronuova became a championship boxer and boxing announcer, which she parlayed into a career as a celebrity fitness trainer, including on the NBC reality show Biggest Loser. She has also worked as a stuntwoman and stunt coordinator and voiced characters for the popular video game Grand Theft Auto, according to her IMBd page. Castronuova, 45, decided to turn to political commentary during the pandemic, and she helped organize the “Justice for J6” rally in September 2021 calling for the release of people arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 riots. In late 2024, she was hired by Lindell TV, which Lindell founded last year to cover “election integrity issues.” (Lindell played a major role in spreading false claims about election fraud in 2020 and was subsequently sued by two voting machine companies. The cases are ongoing.)
[...]
Mary Margaret Olohan
The Daily Wire
The Daily Wire has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the conservative media boom, buoyed by the enduring popularity of its founder and editor emeritus Ben Shapiro, whose podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show, continues to rake in over 7 million subscribers on YouTube. At the White House, the digital outlet has trained its coverage on the kind of conservative culture-war issues that Shapiro and the Wire’s other big-name hosts have become famous for railing against. [...]
Daniel Baldwin
One America News (OAN)
Trump started praising OAN late in his first term, as his relationship with Fox News began to sour. But the president’s soft spot for the network has seemingly continued into his second term, even as he has mended his relationship with Fox. Its White House correspondent, Daniel Baldwin, operates out of a much-coveted tent on the North Lawn, and its correspondents were recently given a workspace at the Pentagon. The network’s coverage of the White House predates Trump, dating back to OAN’s founding in 2013, but its unapologetically pro-Trump sensibility is right at home in the “new media” ecosystem.
[...]
Monica Paige Luisi
Turning Point USA
Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA made headlines during the last election cycle for its sprawling get-out-the-vote effort in key swing states, and the organization’s media arm has been rewarded with a coveted spot in the briefing room to cover Trump. The group’s White House correspondent, Monica Paige Luisi, is an alum of OAN and Newsmax who said she’s especially focused on covering the economic issues that matter to TPUSA’s college-aged audience: “College-age students who are looking ahead to their futures and really want to know, Will I be able to afford a home when I graduate college?” she told me. In response to Trump’s recent tariff announcement, for instance, she posted a meme on X with the caption, “yay ❤️.”
[...]
Matt Boyle
Breitbart
Breitbart isn’t exactly new, having been on the White House beat since its erstwhile leader, Steve Bannon, became the chief ideologue behind Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. But after falling on hard times following Bannon’s ouster from the White House in 2017, Breitbart is back in a big way under the second Trump administration. The website’s White House correspondent, Nick Gilbertson, is a staple of the briefing room, and its Washington bureau chief, Matt Boyle, is the administration’s go-to reporter for chummy on-the-record interviews with Cabinet-level officials — which Breitbart often publishes as straight write-ups with minimal editorializing.
[...]
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
The Daily Signal
Founded in 2014 as the in-house publication of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, The Daily Signal spun off as an independent publication in 2024. Still, the outlet’s coverage reflects the ideological sensibility of the Heritage Foundation under its current president, Kevin Roberts, who has moved away from Heritage’s traditional commitment to small-government, free-market conservatism in favor of a kind of MAGA-lite populism. The outlet’s White House correspondent, Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell, is a former Fox News intern and graduate of the conservative liberal arts mecca Hillsdale College.
[...]
Natalie Winters
War Room
Steve Bannon’s internet show has extended its reach from Rumble into the briefing room, led by the 24-year-old Winters. She started co-hosting War Room while Bannon was in prison in 2024 for defying a Congressional subpoena, and has since become the polarizing face of the new conservative media set, thanks in large part to her edgy online persona and flashy wardrobe: In January, Winters kicked off a transparently sexist tabloid fury after she showed up to a White House briefing wearing a somewhat coquettish shirt-and-sweater combo.
Politico reports on 8 MAGA media influencers who show up to the White House Press Briefings under Karoline Leavitt. Those 8 rotate for spots in the “new media” seat(s).
Elaine Parker told Breitbart News that Americans and small businesses do not have the resources to protect themselves from the IRS.
How the second Trump administration grants access and status to conspiracy theorists, propagandists, and far-right influencers.
Anna Merlan at Mother Jones:
Jack Posobiec, a far-right activist, podcaster, and early booster of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, has been lucky at least twice. In April 2017, during the first Trump administration, he was granted White House press credentials while working for the Canadian conservative news outlet Rebel Media. At the time, this was news all on its own: Posobiec has associated with white nationalists and promoted a dangerous conspiracy theory that, among other things, ultimately resulted in a gunman shooting up a pizza parlor.
Posobiec didn’t last long in the briefing room, spending most of his time sparring with other reporters, lobbing softball questions, and delivering approving commentary from the White House lawn about President Donald Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. He left Rebel Media the next month, after the outlet found he had plagiarized material from white supremacist Jason Kessler, and subsequently co-authored a book praising fascist leaders like Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet.
Nearly eight years after his stint in the White House, Posobiec, now a senior editor at Human Events, another far-right publication, was invited by newly appointed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to accompany him on his first overseas trip. Hegseth didn’t give any particular reason publicly why Posobiec had been invited, and in the end, he didn’t go—because he was instead accompanying Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine, where Politico reported that he was present when Bessent greeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It’s not just Posobiec: From the moment Trump returned to office, his second administration has prioritized giving access and status to an array of far-right influencers and news outlets, including figures with checkered pasts and thin or nonexistent journalistic credentials. In doing so, the administration has created a swell of flattering media coverage, a gauzy bubble around its every decision, no matter how destructive or incoherent. This new state media displays unquestioning loyalty, and its propaganda pipeline is speedier than ever, ensuring that every executive order or new move by the Department of Government Efficiency is greeted with rapturous pseudo-reporting the moment it’s announced.
As part of this new order, the White House press briefing room is now chock-full of conservative podcasters, influencers, and representatives of right-wing media outlets. Nine days after Trump reassumed office, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to the podium for her first briefing to announce that the White House would encourage what she called “new media voices” to apply for press passes, including “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators.” “Starting today,” she added, “this seat in the front of the room, which is usually occupied by the press secretary staff, will be called the ‘new media’ seat.” To further drive the point home, for her first questions as press secretary, she called on reporters from Axios and Breitbart, which described as part of the new media landscape. (Breitbart was launched in 2007, Axios in 2017.) The Breitbart journalist, Matt Boyle, began his question by praising the Trump White House and Leavitt for creating this new access.
[...]
“For the most part, this new crop of people who have been given extremely good access are not journalists in the traditional sense,” says Margaret Sullivan, executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia University and a former public editor for the New York Times.
“They’re closer to propagandists than journalists,” Sullivan adds. “I don’t know if you could call it ‘coverage.’ It’s positive exposure for the Trump administration. They’ll be part of a cheering squad.” To contrast with the warm reception rolled out for Boyle, Leavitt also made it clear that the White House planned to have a combative relationship with what she called “legacy media” outlets that hadn’t provided fawning coverage of the president. “We know for a fact there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, about his family, and we will not accept that,” she said in the January 29 briefing, while addressing Associated Press journalist Zeke Miller. “We will call you out when we feel that your reporting is wrong or there is misinformation about this White House.” In a cutthroat example of retaliation, in mid-February, the AP was barred from briefings, news conferences, and events until it agrees use the term “Gulf of America,” the new name Trump has given to the Gulf of Mexico. As a global news outlet, the AP has chosen to continue to use the longstanding and internationally recognized name. On Friday, it launched a lawsuit over its exclusion that argued the press agency has a constitutional right to “choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government.”
Leavitt, who is 27, has her own history of producing articles of questionable news value. She was previously paid by allies of Chinese businessman and convicted fraudster Guo Wengui to put her name on op-eds in right-wing American news outlets praising his work. Leavitt did not disclose that Guo allies paid her to write the stories, and at least two of the articles were removed by the outlet Townhall after Mother Jones reported on them. Leavitt, who previously served as Trump’s campaign spokesperson, also appeared in a Project 2025 training video unearthed by the investigative outlet ProPublica, despite having personally denied any links between the campaign and Project 2025.
Other figures in the reshaped White House briefing room include Natalie Winters, a correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room. Winters was also paid by Guo backers to write flattering stories about the Chinese businessman. (In response to our reporting, Winters falsely accused Mother Jones of being a “Beijing propaganda front” in an article for Headline USA, a right-wing site.) Mike Lindell Media Corp., owned by My Pillow founder and election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, has not one, but two White House correspondents. The Daily Wire has sent Mary Margaret Olohan, author of a book about people who have, in the words of its subtitle, escaped “the gender ideology cult,” who has Instagrammed herself partying at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “We belong in the briefing room,” Olohan declared to other Daily Wire figures during a broadcast from the White House lawn. “We need to be bringing the American public these stories and sharing with them the truth that legacy media has no intention of ever sharing with them.” To date, Olohan’s work carrying out that mission has included tweeting screenshots of executive orders, a rapturous video of Trump walking into the room, and a photo of a list of accomplishments that Leavitt’s staff handed to reporters. As an example of how the new media seats work, look to former ESPN host Sage Steele, who has become increasingly involved in right-wing media circles after settling a lawsuit against her ex-employer. She was in one of the seats February 5, when she asked a question about “men in women’s sports,” just hours, as the Wrap noted, before she stood behind Trump at at an event where he signed a transphobic executive order that purported to “keep men out of women’s sports.” Another person given the seat for a day—clearly meant to be a place of honor for administration allies—was Chris Pavlovski, CEO of Rumble. Leavitt read a lengthy statement from the podium praising Rumble, which hosts a variety of conservative and far-right content, and reiterated Trump’s enthusiasm for the platform. Two days before Pavlovski made his appearance, the White House announced it was launching an official Rumble channel, which is packed with news-light, propaganda-heavy videos, including a recent one titled, “America’s Decline Is Over.” [...] Even before Trump took office again, there were signs that far-right and conspiracist figures would be given special access to his presidency. On November 13, shortly after he won reelection, Trump ally and dirty-tricks specialist Roger Stone went on Alex Jones’ Infowars show to read a statement from the president-elect, announcing that Tulsi Gabbard would be nominated to serve as the director of national intelligence. Trump allowed Stone and Jones to scoop his own announcement, which he waited to post on his social media network Truth Social several minutes later.
Mother Jones examines the new MAGA state media mouthpieces such as Natalie Winters and Karoline Leavitt.
See Also:
The Guardian: White House social media Trump-style: bad taste, sycophancy and trolling
Justin Horowitz at MMFA:
Prior to serving as clean-up man for Trump’s disastrous comments that he would cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle said he would consider serving as White House communications director in a hypothetical second Trump term.
During an interview with CNBC on March 11, Trump suggested that the country could bring down spending by cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump told CNBC. Following his comments, Trump turned to Breitbart and Boyle to help with damage control. Boyle published an interview with Trump where he pledged to “never touch Social Security or Medicare.” Several Trump-aligned figures and accounts are touting Breitbart’s story to cover for Trump’s gaffe. Boyle covering for Trump comes after he said he would be interested in being the former president’s next communications director if he wins another term in November. Boyle made that comment during an interview with podcaster and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Breitbart News reporter Matthew Boyle may very well be in the next Trump Administration.
Donald Trump went running into Boyle for damage control after his disastrous Social Security comments on CNBC's Squawk Box Monday.
See Also:
MMFA: Trump's disastrous CNBC interview where he signaled openness to cutting Social Security shows the perils of the MAGA media bubble
Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor to President Donald Trump with documented ties to white nationalists, told Breitbart radio listeners on Sunday that the most important thing they could do is continue to support Trump, …
Jared Holt at RWW:
Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor to President Donald Trump with documented ties to white nationalists, told Breitbart radio listeners on Sunday that the most important thing they could do is continue to support Trump, even as he endures a “Pelosi-led legislative coup” to impeach him.
On the Oct. 6 episode of “Breitbart News Sunday” on SiriusXM Patriot, Miller told Breitbart listeners that the recent announcements of an impeachment inquiry targeting Trump for his apparent request to the president of Ukraine to investigate the Biden family ahead of 2020 elections “violates every notion of due process at the center of the American center of government.” According to Miller’s retelling, Trump was simply fulfilling his obligation as president to seek and root out corruption in government when he spoke to the president of Ukraine and has been subjected to an unjust “Pelosi-led legislative coup.” Miller said that the whole situation was simply “beyond comprehension.”
Miller said that the most important thing for people to do at the moment is to support Trump.
From the 10.06.2019 edition of SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Sunday:
Steve Bannon was one of the senior Trump campaign officials who reached out to Roger Stone, who was arrested Friday morning by FBI agents. A 24-page indictment obtained by special counsel Robert Mueller details communications between Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, and high-ranking campaign officials, including Bannon, reported CNBC.
Travis Gettys at The Raw Story:
Steve Bannon was one of the senior Trump campaign officials who reached out to Roger Stone, who was arrested Friday morning by FBI agents.
A 24-page indictment obtained by special counsel Robert Mueller details communications between Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, and high-ranking campaign officials, including Bannon, reported CNBC.
The indictment alleges that Stone communicated with top-ranking Trump campaign officials about his efforts to release emails stolen by Russian hackers and dumped online by WikiLeaks.
Breitbart Thinks This Trump Plan Isn't Cruel Enough (TWEET/AUDIO)
Breitbart Thinks This Trump Plan Isn’t Cruel Enough (TWEET/AUDIO)
Just before the close of business on Friday, Donald Trump rolled outhis proposal to reform our immigration system. Almost no one likes it. Pro-immigration activists, liberals, and Democrats think it’s too heavy-handed, partly because it would dramatically reduce immigration quotas and make it far more difficult for families to be reunited. Meanwhile, most conservatives are up in arms over plans…
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