No other Republican has done more damage to the United States than Mitch McConnell. In 2010, before he became Senate Majority Leader, he famously said his party's "top political priority should be to deny President Obama a second term." Once he became Majority Leader, he rammed ...read more
Fox News is reporting that the Democrats will take over the House in the 2018 midterm elections: Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years, Fox News projects, dealing a major setback to President Trump’s legislative agenda and ...read more
The 2018 midterms are potentially America's last chance to hold Donald Trump and his corrupt administration to account. But now, they have also become a referendum on Brett Kavanaugh and the sham hearings Republicans have foisted upon us. There were many red flags against ...read more
In Tucker Carlson's noble quest to protect Donald Trump and the racist right from marauding liberals taking over America with their gender politics, the Fox News host is doubling down on the parallel universe he inhabits. In a truly extraordinary claim, Carlson stated that thus ...read more
Last night's primaries in Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia garnered more attention for who lost rather than who won. In Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, the former Congressman and perennial Presidential candidate lost the nomination for governor this fall. Although his old ...read more
When Lt. Col. Oliver North became NRA President yesterday, gun lovers throughout America welcomed their new leader. CEO Wayne LaPierre called him "a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader" and Dana Loetsch praised him as "a total warrior ...read more
Neil Cavuto is no hero. The Fox News Channel host has always been a team player, dutifully cheerleading first for George W. Bush and now for Donald Trump. We've seen Fox News people occasionally criticize Trump and, before him, Bush, but we've never quite seen a non-Shepard-Smith ...read more
Fox News must be a strange place to work these days. While the network's coverage of president Trump has been steadfastly supportive, there are a few rogue journalists and presenters who have deviated from Rupert Murdoch's script. Shep Smith, Judge Napolitano, Neil Cavuto, and ...read more
Kanye West's recent statements make him appear like a permanent resident of the Sunken Place. The hip-hop giant recently got back on Trump's favorite social media outlet to send out a series of missives that have baffled his fanbase, most notably his praise for Candace Owens, an ...read more
While the money is no doubt good at Fox News, it must be a rather humiliating affair going on air day in, day out, knowing that you work for the least trusted cable news network in America. During a segment on Sunday on Media Buzz, Fox News host Howard Kurtz and pollster Frank ...read more
Why Geraldo Rivera went on Bill Maher's show last night to further incinerate his journalistic reputation is anyone's guess, but it seemed that the Fox News reporter is acutely aware of just how bad his credibility has gotten. Rivera was on the show for a one on one interview ...read more
In the least surprising news ever, Fox News is deciding to stick with Laura Ingraham after she publicly mocked 17 year old survivor of the Florida high school mass shooting in Parkland, David Hogg. Why? Because Ingraham and "free speech" are apparently the victim in all of this. ...read more
Every now and then, we get an email from the PR people of disgusting right wing media figures asking us to take something down or alter a piece that threatens to take away the ad revenue of their client. We've had emails from Milo Yiannopolous's people, Charles C. Johnson's ...read more
Regardless of Parkland massacre survivor David Hogg's political views, he is an 17 year old victim of a horrific event that no human being should ever have to go through. Yet a mainstream conservative media host saw fit to troll him on Twitter, mocking him for not getting into ...read more
Generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of identity politics and try my best not to categorize anyone according to their skin color or ethnicity. And this includes white people (I know, I'm a bad liberal). However, given I am white, I do feel I have some leeway in making ...read more
Breitbart.com loudly declared recently that "Americans 'Overwhelmingly' Believe Obama 'Improperly Surveilled' Trump Campaign'. According to the far right outlet, Americans are now ignoring the "disgraced" media that is failing to report on it and are turning to journalistic ...read more
One of the tactics the right in America has perfected is art of smearing the left as being un patriotic wusses. When liberals question issues like guns, economic inequality, and immigration control, Republicans have learned to hurl as much abuse at them as possible for hating ...read more
An amazing thing is happening over at Fox News in the wake of the report yesterday that Donald Trump attempted to fire Robert Mueller back in June of last year. Parroting the president's assertion that it was a "typical New York Times fake story" hosts on the network immediately ...read more
It's telling that this comparison to Stalin was laughed off by commentators on both the far right and far left, once again proving the usefulness of Jean-Pierre Faye's horseshoe theory that political extremists on both sides tend to resemble one another. After the comparison was ...read more
Fox News has always been a propaganda outfit and in the days after 9/11, they instituted a brand of "toxic patriotism" in which anyone who questioned a Republican president was essentially committing treason. In the Error of Trump, they're taking it to the limit by openly ...read more
The Banter Long Read: It occurred to me that if the programmed allure of rural America could be that strong to a lifelong city dweller like me, it must be nigh impossible to resist for actual rural Americans. It would also explain the unrelenting paranoia that their way of life ...read more
Just when you thought The New York Times couldn't sink any lower than their piece lionizing conservative Ben Shapiro, and then another one about Ohio Nazi Tony Hovater (who likes Seinfeld, Applebee's, and ethnic cleansing) their magazine, not to be one-upped, said "hold my beer" ...read more
After Gene Simmons was banned from Fox News for life after behaving atrociously towards its employees this past week, defender of all things idiotic Sarah Palin took to her trusty Facebook page to denounce Fox and wreck the English language in the process. It was a truly painful ...read more
The entire basis for Fox News host Sean Hannity's existence is the moral superiority he has assigned himself by virtue of his religion and political affiliation. Hannity has spent decades hammering liberals for their godless depravity, extolling the moral virtues of the Christian ...read more
Well this is something. Chris Ruddy, CEO of conservative platform Newsmax and close Trump friend and ally believes Fox News is so slavishly pro-Trump that it has zero credibility left as a news organization. From Politico: If Fox has shifted to protect itself on the right, Ruddy ...read more
Fox News, AM Hate Radio and right wing hate sites reached a dangerous new level of propaganda this week when they simply pretended Tuesday's brutal electoral losses for the GOP mostly didn't happen:Fox News host Sean Hannity was flogged on the internet Tuesday night for spending ...read more
After twenty years of bloviating about Judeo-Christian values, it turns out you were quietly subverting just about all of them. Which is fine. Outrageous hypocrisy is a great American pastime, and though your time has now passed, you had a nice run there for a while making angry ...read more
Today, special counsel Robert Mueller released his first indictments in the ongoing Russia scandal, beginning with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, as well as the confirmation that former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopolous ...read more
Do not fuck with Jake Tapper. That's the message Bill O'Reilly learned today in what has to be the best public takedown of the loudmouthed conservative in years. Perhaps in an attempt to remain relevant after he was booted out of Fox, O'Reilly figured it would be a good idea to ...read more
We've been writing about Hillary Clinton a fair bit here at the Banter lately, not because she's done anything in particular, but because she remains the focal point of right wing ire. A crazed killer murders 60 people in Las Vegas using high powered artillery? Let's jump on ...read more
The Alt Right's favorite schoolboy Tucker Carlson was given a ruthless beating on Twitter after attacking Hillary Clinton for not responding fast enough to the Harvey Weinstein yesterday, and deservedly so. Tweeted Carlson: Forgetting the somewhat inconvenient fact that he not ...read more
The Banter Long Read: Going after Sean Hannity is almost certainly a pointless task if your objective is to influence him or his viewers...To continue reading this article, please go here. You'll get unrestricted access to all our member's content, and your support directly goes ...read more
It now appears that Graham-Cassidy is officially dead thanks to Sen. John McCain, who bravely stood against his own party and stated unequivocally that he will not vote for the latest Obamare repeal bill. With that being done (which allows the sane to breath a huge collective ...read more
The first time I watched Fox News, I genuinely thought it was satire. Having moved to Los Angeles as a teenager from London, England, I had grown up watching the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 for news. While incredibly dry and often off putting, they all had serious presenters reporting ...read more
Tucker Carlson's one gift is his mastery of the art of the straw man argument. Day after day, the Fox News host brings in hapless liberals, scientists, feminists and activists and draws them into defending arguments they haven't made. He does this to serve his growing audience of ...read more
In the latest employee scandal at Fox News, it was revealed by the Huffington Post that Eric Bolling, co-host of “The Five,” was recently suspended from the network for sending lewd text messages to colleagues. This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone vaguely familiar ...read more
In an astonishing story broken by NPR today, a lawsuit has been filed alleging that the White House collaborated with Fox News and a wealthy Republican donor push the fake news story about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich. Here's what we know thus far (via CNN): The story was ...read more
With President Trump's inability to accomplish any tangible objective in office, Sean Hannity is turning on everyone he used to love in order to deflect attention away from the president's collapsing job approval numbers. In an astonishing failure of political leadership and ...read more
In response to the Banter's Alyona Minkovski's piece on Pete Hegseth's atrocious interview with Donald Trump on Fox News, Hegseth took to twitter to call us "#FakeNews" and labeled Alyona an "elitist, globalist, Leftist" who is "posing" as a journalist: If anyone took Fox News ...read more
Remember way back, when right wingers were outraged at the "lawless" President Obama? ...To continue reading this article, please go here. A Banter Membership gets you access to the magazine and all our Members Only content. Your membership also directly funds independent ...read more
For American journalists, interviewing the President of the United States is a big deal. Or at least it should be if you believe your job is to hold officials accountable. It’s a rare opportunity to sit down one on one with the leader of the most powerful country in the world. ...read more
Fox News is many things, but “Fair and Balanced” has never been one of them. I used to find it bewildering that a cable news channel that so obviously plays the role of Republican mouthpiece had the gall to pretend to be unbiased - and that viewers bought it. Eventually I ...read more
Tough luck for anyone who was hoping to feel satisfied after watching Megyn Kelly’s much anticipated interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The roughly 10 minute discussion was featured on the debut episode of NBC’s new program, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly. While she ...read more
Late on Tuesday night Donald Trump once again started people talking with his incomplete tweet containing a brand new, um, word: "covfefe." The internet went crazy, as did some news organizations. CNN, for example, had a covfefe field day, with the same headline about it ...read more
In what amounts to the most embarrassing moment of Sean Hannity's illustrious career of shilling for the GOP, the Fox News host was forced to back down on the vile conspiracy theory he has been propagating for the past few weeks. Hannity had gleefully been pushing the completely ...read more
Last week, Fox News latched onto the instantly debunked conspiracy theory that the tragically murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was communicating with Wikileaks. For the record, police maintain that Rich was killed in a botched robbery, and not at the behest of Hillary Clinton, ...read more
Right now, the conservative movement in America is so far beyond salvaging that the only solution is to put it into a box away from the rest of us and let it self-destruct. After the survivors rebuild and show that they can act like responsible adults, they can come back and ...read more
The disgraced former Fox News head Roger Ailes died this morning from unknown causes. Reported The New York Times: Roger Ailes, who shaped the images that helped elect three Republican presidents and then became a dominant, often-intimidating force in American conservative ...read more
With the news that Bill Shine has been forced out as co-president of Fox News, conservatives are beginning to panic about the rapid disintegration of the old guard that has set the network's far right agenda for the past 25 years... To continue reading this article, please go ...read more
First things first, we're really living up to the name "The Daily Fluffer" now, so thanks for the suggestion, Cenk. (Ben, go ahead and change the logo.)Last week, on the same exact day that Bill O'Reilly was fired from Fox News, Greg Gutfield thought it'd be hilarious to tell ...read more