Fox News Celebrates Trump's Fascist Takeover
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 9/1/25
Last week Fox News hosts rejoiced over the federal takeover of Washington D.C., praised Trump for an excessively long cabinet meeting and demonized all transgender people after another tragic mass shooting at a Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
When President Donald J. Trump declared that he would send National Guard troops into Chicago the network celebrated the idea of U.S. military personnel fighting crime in the third largest city in the country. The word "‘Chicago’ appeared 132 times in the transcripts last week. But according U.S. News & World Report Chicago did not even make its list of the top 25 most dangerous cities in the United States for 2025-2026 .
Other important topics for the Murdoch owned media empire included Cracker Barrel’s decision to go back to its original logo, Gavin Newsom’s social media posts, a recent Democratic National Committee summer meeting and the ICE arrest of Kilmar Abrego Garcia an undocumented immigrant who has been treated like a pawn in Trump’s brutal crackdown on illegal immigration.
The network also continued to ignore the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, massive anti-war protests in Israel, the Trump administration’s attempts to covertly undermine the Danish government in Greenland and the DOJ’s resistance to release documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, a deceased convicted child predator with ties to the president.
Shows I watched last week on Fox News:
Fox & Friends
The Five
Jesse Watters Primetime
Trump press conference and executive order signing - Monday 8/25/25
Oval Office meeting - Trump and the president of South Korea
Cabinet meeting on Tuesday 8/26/25
Everybody Loves a Police State!
On Monday on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Jesse Watters compared the military occupation of Washington D.C. to Disney World.
“Trump is turning D.C. into Disney World. That's not me saying it. That's the media. Forty-seven is molding D.C. into his own personal Epcot, a political theme park where troops keep the peace and the White House glitters like Mar-A-Lago. I took my kids to Epcot. It was clean, friendly and fun. Why would anyone be against that? With a little imagination and some pixie dust, Trump turned the Capital into the most magical place on Earth. . . The National Guard's carrying nine millimeters and m-4’s, and we've gone 12 days without a murder in D.C. It's the longest streak since before the pandemic. Trump has done so much. The U.S. marshals gave him a badge. Trump's going to protect whites and Blacks whether they like it or not.”
On Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” Brian Kilmeade didn’t seem to know how democratic representation worked.
“I'm tired of the mayors and governors speaking for the people. I just want to go. Gianno Caldwell wrote about it today. His brother was assassinated in Chicago. I want to go into those areas gang infested and say, what do you think?” said Kilmeade.
“They didn't get the script. They're off script, right?” said Charlie Hurt.
“So what do you do? You need help. And if you don't think you need help, that's. That's fine. But I want you to speak. I don't want,” said Kilmeade.
Ainsley Earhardt interrupted him.
“It’s not a winning message. They're basically saying we like the crime. If they say we, we don't want to clean up our city, and we don't want the National Guard in here, I don't understand why you wouldn't want it. But why would I? I'm begging for it in New York.”
Charlie Hurt mentioned tyranny.
“I understand that there are constitutional arguments to have about sending the National Guard into a city like Chicago, or so we can have those debates. But the idea that you're more concerned about that tyrant tyranny, and you're not recognizing the tyranny of crime. Real crime that kills people in those neighborhoods, then you don't care about the DNC.”
No one at Fox News acknowledged that using the military for law enforcement could result in the death of civilians or members of the National Guard.
Jesse Watters Spewed a Bunch of Racist Nonsense
On Monday on “The Five” Jesse Watters stressed that most crime in the cities that Trump wants to send in the National Guard is “Black-on-Black.”
“Now a majority of the crime is ‘Black-on-Black’, and I don't hear any Black leaders besides Harold Ford, Tyrus and myself talking about the need to reduce crime in these neighborhoods. . .What about Al Sharpton? Al Sharpton was sitting cross-legged at Martha's Vineyard next to Joy Reid the other day. He never talks about Black-on-Black crime. Donald Trump should win an NAACP Image Award if he can clean up, don’t laugh, if he could clean up these Black communities because it is a real, real problem, he can put it next to the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Watters.
The strange reference Watters made to himself when discussing Black leaders is to a DNA test he took years ago that showed that 0.1% of his DNA came from sub-Saharan Africa. Watters has joked repeatedly that this makes him a Black American.
Later that night on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Watters brought it up again.
“Black-on-Black crime is going to keep raging if everyone's so afraid to talk about it. You can't arrest your way out of drugs, gangs and broken homes, but it's a good start,” said Watters.
Watters is repeating a stereotype about Black families - ‘drugs, gangs and broken homes.’ He would find similar patterns in lower income white communities in economically blighted areas across the country.
The next day on “The Five” Watters repeated the same talking points.
“Well over 90% of the Black victims of shootings are Black. I didn't say that correctly, but you get the point,” said Watters.
Then on “Jesse Watters Primetime,”
“Trump has every right to use the guard to stop Black gangs from killing . . . over 90% of the shooting victims in D.C. are Black. . . Trump believes Black lives matter to Democrats?”
In the same program Watters made a racist remark about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).
“We can't let DEI slow down the USA.”
The next day on “The Five,” he made a racist joke about Cracker Barrel’s attempt at rebranding.
“The only thing that could have been worse if they had made it ‘Blacker Barrel,’ you know. You know, that would have been bad. This they can recover from.”
The next night he returned to blaming the crime on Black Americans.
“It seems like the politicians who don't experience crime want to keep the crime in the Black neighborhoods. Mr. Trump's loudest critics.”
The term ‘Black-on-Black’ crime is highly controversial for multiple reasons.
For starters it implies that other races don’t also have problems with crime. Most violent crime occurs between people who know each other so intraracial crime is not unique to the Black community.
White people are far more likely to commit violent crimes against other white people but the term ‘white-on-white’ crime is not commonly used.
Crime has always been linked to poverty and a lack of economic opportunity. According to a 2014 Justice Department report cited by Teen Vogue, people living below the poverty level had more than double the rate of violent victimization than people in higher income households regardless of race.
When race is factored out of crime statistics poor Black Americans commit crime at about the same rate as poor white Americans. The poverty rate is twice as high among Black families than white families due to systemic racism, housing and workplace discrimination, predatory lending, blighted urban communities, along with other factors.
The poverty and crime link is also not unique to the United States.
My hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, a heavily racially segregated city, is considered one of the worst examples of the racist practice of ‘red-lining,’ which shut out Black families from living in certain areas, and caused economic ruin to others.
Decades after the damage caused by red-lining St. Louis still grapples with high rates of crime and is losing a larger share of its population than any other city in the country. It’s usually in the top five cities for murder rates per capita.
Interestingly enough President Trump hasn’t mentioned St. Louis at all when discussing crime rates across the country. He also left out Memphis, Tennessee which has seen large spikes in crime rates in recent years. Both cities are in Republican led states that voted for Trump by wide margins in the last election.
Another huge blow to Watters’ racist ideas about crime is the example of New York City. The city has a large Black population (20.8%) yet one of the lowest violent crime rates per capita of any large city in the United States. New York City also has a large immigrant population as slightly more than one-third (36%) of the city is foreign born.
Source - Vitalcitynyc.org
Jesse Watters - Trans Panic
Last Wednesday a shooter fired into Annunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis killing two children and injuring 12. The shooter* died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The mass was in celebration of the new school year.
(Decoding Fox News does use the names or images of mass shooters. Focusing on the perpetuators of these extremely violent attacks encourages copy cat events)
Soon after the horrific attack it was revealed that the Annunciation shooter was a young person who identified as transgender.
Fox News, and Jesse Watters specifically referred to the shooter as a ‘trans shooter’ in most segments about the crime.
On Wednesday on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Watters spewed hatred and bile towards the transgender community throughout his segment about the horrific crime.
“A suicidal transgender who hates Trump, Christians and Jews, shoots up kids in a Catholic school, and the media wants to take away your handgun. So how are we supposed to protect ourselves from trans shooters? . . . I don't hate anyone who thinks they're trans. I feel sorry for them. But statistically, the trans population has been prone to violence . . . The left's weaponizing trans kids and turning them into culture warriors, and they've been turned loose against the church, schools and Trump. You see it, I see it. The Trans Klan has a militant wing and it's out for blood . . . Our leaders keep failing us. They failed us during Covid on trade, on immigration. They say they care about kids, but they locked them down and oversaw an obesity and chronic disease epidemic. And now there's a growing trans epidemic, and they won't even admit it. Just like crime, they created a crisis and then lie about it and blame you for not being compassionate. But their fake compassion is getting people killed.”
There are no data that show that transgender people are more likely to commit mass shootings than the rest of the population. According to reporting by Mother Jones The Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in which four or more people (not including the shooter) are shot or killed, estimated last year that fewer than 1% of the shootings it reviewed in the last decade were carried out by trans individuals.
According to TheTrace.org, in an article dated one month before the Annunciation shooting:
“The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive has recorded more than 5,300 mass shootings, defined as incidents in which at least four people were shot, excluding the perpetrators. Only four of those — less than one-tenth of 1 percent — were committed by people known to identify as trans or nonbinary.”
Nearly all mass shootings are carried out by cisgender men. Transgender people are more likely to be the victims of violence than the general population. Cisgender women also rarely commit mass shootings.
Mass shootings committed by members of the transgender community get much more focus and attention in the press than similar events carried out by cisgender men.
PBS News Hour - The Mass Shooter Hated Everyone
The PBS News Hour also covered the Annunciation shooting and included the following statement from Joe Thompson Acting U.S. Attorney District of Minnesota.
“The shooter expressed hate towards Black people. The shooter expressed hate towards Mexican people. The shooter expressed hate towards Christian people. The shooter expressed hate towards Jewish people. In short, the shooter appeared to hate all of us. There appears to be only one group that the shooter didn't hate. The shooter idolized some of the most notorious school shooters and mass murderers in our country's history.”
Fox Host Goes Rogue!
Last Monday President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order that would make flag burning a crime subject to a year in jail.
On Tuesday on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Watters invited Madison Alworth, a correspondent for Fox Business, to talk about a few news stories.
Watters: The president signed an executive order to stop flag burning. He says if you burn the American flag, you get one year in jail. It didn't take long, though, for protesters to grab a BIC and go to the White House.
His producers included a media clip of a man intentionally burning a U.S. flag in Washington D.C. to protest Trump’s executive order criminalizing flag burning.
Watters: Does Madison believe you should be able to burn the American flag?
Alworth: Honestly? Yes, I do. That's that's what the Supreme Court ordered.
Watters: You communist.
Alworth: No, I'm not.
Watters: Get out of the studio.
Alworth: I’m a lover of America. Do I think you should? Absolutely not. Do I think that this guy knew what he was doing? Yes. According to him, he's supposedly a veteran. So this is someone who served our country and protected the freedoms that we and as veterans fought really hard. Fought. So I think we should have a right. Doesn't mean we should do it. So, I don't want the flag to touch the ground, let alone be burned. So that doesn't mean that I don't think you should have that.
Watters: So you're a Swiftie and you think it's okay to burn the flag?
Alworth: I have lost, like, half of my Twitter followers from this one appearance on.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 and 1990 in two landmark cases, Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, that burning the American flag as a form of political protest is symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.
Emily Compango Defames Kilmar Abrego García
Another major story on Fox News last week involved the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who was mistakenly sent to a maximum-security mega-prison in El Salvador in March. Abrego Garcia has since said he was beaten and tortured while he was in custody in El Salvador.
After a long legal battle he was allowed to return to the U.S. to face new criminal charges related to human smuggling in Tennessee. Most of the case against Abrego Garcia is based on the testimony of Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, who was incarcerated on similar charges. Prosecutors and immigration officials reportedly worked together to secure Hernandez-Reyes's release in exchange for his testimony.
According to reporting by MSNBC the Trump Justice Department’s decision to bring the case reportedly led a high-ranking Tennessee prosecutor to resign over concerns that the case was “pursued for political reasons.”
A judge in Tennessee ruled that Abrego Garcia could be released to his family while he awaited trial. Three days after his release he was arrested by ICE agents in Maryland. The Trump administration is threatening to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda but so far his legal team has stalled that process.
On Wednesday on “The Five,” Emily Compagno, a former practicing attorney, made defamatory statements about the beleaguered immigrant.
“And to Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who prefers that he sent to Costa Rica. I would do we all would love to be in Costa Rica right now, but I think his wife would have preferred that he didn't punch her in the face. I think those children that he smuggled would have preferred that they weren't sexually assaulted and who've been smuggled across the border. I think there's a long line of people that would have preferred that he didn't enter their life. So I am excited for him to rot in Uganda.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia has not had a chance to defend himself in court on the human smuggling charges he faces in Tennessee. He has never been convicted of any crime in the United States.
Jessica Tarlov - Things Are NOT Looking Good For Republicans
On Friday on “The Five” Jessica Tarlov, the liberal voice on the program, pointed out to her co-hosts that things aren’t looking great for the president and his party.
“So, it's this is the kind of stuff that I hate having to talk about. But this notion that Republicans are coasting right now and the wind is beneath the sails of Donald Trump is just not borne out by what's really going on on the ground. And you can see it just today that Joni Ernst is not going to run for reelection in Iowa. She is someone who's very popular. She talked about for leadership roles. Suddenly she's not going to run. And what's really interesting is that earlier in the week, there was a special election in the Iowa State House, a seat that went with Trump 11.5 points, 20 points swing in the other direction. And now the Democrat has broken the Republican supermajority. The polling on the generic ballot has Democrats up 5 to 8 points. Mike Johnson and God bless him that he keeps going out there and doing media. He was embarrassed on our air with Bill Melugin and Dana this morning talking about crime and Republicans states. And he was on CNN. And John Berman says to him, you know, what are you going to do? The OBBB (One Big Beautiful Bill) is hugely unpopular. Says, oh, well, the provisions are in. And then John Berman reads out the provisions cutting snap, cutting Medicaid tax cuts for the rich, all under water. That is what the midterms are going to be about. There's it's not looking that peachy for Republicans.”
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS News Hour. The following list are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not. Source - PBS News Hour transcripts. This list has been slightly truncated due to space.
Updates to the Israel-Hamas War
On Monday, a pair of Israeli strikes on a Gaza hospital killed five journalists and more than a dozen others, including first responders. Some of their deaths occurred on live television in what Israel called a "tragic mishap." This incident follows strikes that killed six journalists in Gaza City two weeks ago, the single deadliest day of the war for those covering it on the ground. (PBS News Hour)
On Tuesday across Israel, protesters held a day of disruption to pressure Israel's leaders to negotiate a hostage deal with Hamas. A recent poll showed 80% of the Israeli people want the war to end and the return of all hostages. Meantime, more Palestinians tried to leave Gaza City after the latest strikes killed at least 18 people. According to local officials shelling killed at least 34 people across all of Gaza. (PBS News Hour)
On Wednesday Israel said that the evacuation of Gaza City is inevitable ahead of its planned offensive there. That came as Gaza health officials reported at least 39 deaths in Israeli attacks. They also said two more people died as a result of Israeli strikes on a hospital earlier in the week. That death toll now stands at 22, including journalists, first responders, and others. Israel says it's investigating the attack and maintains without evidence that six of those killed were militants. (PBS News Hour)
At the U.N. every Security Council member except the U.S. said that human actions are to blame for the famine in Gaza and warned that using starvation as a weapon of war is illegal. The acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said the assessment declaring famine isn't legitimate. (PBS News Hour)
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the estate of the late Jeffrey Epstein. The panel led by Republican Chair James Comer is seeking documents like Epstein's will and anything resembling a"list of clients." They're also seeking a book of letters reportedly compiled by his former partner Ghislaine Maxwell that was given to Epstein for his 50th birthday. It's the latest in a broader bipartisan effort to address public calls for more information about the handling of Epstein's case. His estate's attorneys have until September 8 to respond. (PBS News Hour)
Denmark summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country amid allegations of a covert influence operation by U.S. citizens in Greenland. Mark Stroh arrived at the Foreign Ministry just hours after Denmark's public broadcaster said that three Americans, all with ties to the Trump administration, have been working to whip up opposition to Danish rule in Greenland. The report did not name the Americans. President Trump has said he wants to control the mineral-rich island, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Both Greenland and Denmark have said it's not for sale. (PBS News Hour)
In Kyiv, a massive Russian barrage killed at least 21 people and wounded 48 more. Ukraine says it involved nearly 600 drones and 31 missiles. It's the first major combined attack on the Ukrainian capital in weeks and it comes as the U.S. struggles to move peace efforts forward. In the heart of the capital, the European Union said two successive strikes landed just 150 feet from the building housing its mission to Ukraine. No injuries were reported among staff and the building remains open, but: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen vowed that there will be consequences. (PBS News Hour)
Three European countries that were part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal launched a process to reimpose sanctions that were lifted a decade ago as part of the agreement. France, Germany and the United Kingdom accused Iran of breaking its commitments, starting a 30-day clock that could end with Iran’s economy further squeezed, arms deals halted and foreign assets frozen. (PBS News Hour)
Trump is trying to single-handedly block nearly $5 billion in foreign aid already approved by Congress through a process called pocket rescission, effectively cutting lawmakers out of the process. That is when a president asks Congress to cancel funds so close to the end of the fiscal year that Congress can't act on the request and the funds expire. In this instance, $3.2 billion would be cut from development assistance, along with $838 million from peacekeeping efforts, $520 million in contributions to the U.N., and $322 million from the State Department's Democracy Fund. (PBS News Hour)
President Trump abruptly fired Robert Primus, one of only two Democrats on the five-member Surface Transportation Board, just as regulators weigh the largest railroad merger ever proposed. Geoff Bennett spoke with Primus about the timing of his firing. (PBS News Hour)
By the Numbers
