Even as some Republicans turn on the ghastly Pete Hegseth, right-wing media can't handle the truth [View all]

Boat strikes: War crime or “fake news” hoax?
Even as some Republicans turn on the ghastly Pete Hegseth, right-wing media can't handle the truth

By Sophia Tesfaye
Senior Writer
Published December 4, 2025 9:05AM (EST)


(Salon) Bob Woodward reported in “Fear” that Donald Trump once offered a friend accused of sexual harassment a simple strategy: “You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back… if you admit to anything, you’re dead.”

That has since become the ethos of his MAGA movement. Today, anything that threatens Trump’s power, reputation or fragile ego is instantly alchemized into a hoax. “Every scandal you hear about Trump is a media hoax designed to destroy him,” Charlie Kirk told his MAGA audience. Right-wing media simply refuses to tolerate andy and all facts that disrupt the narrative ecosystem they’ve built around Trump. And now this machinery of denial is being used to excuse war crimes.

Even as the evidence of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ghastliness grows, with Republican lawmakers calling into question his competence and even conservative legal scholars warning that the laws of armed conflict have repeatedly been broken under his watch, MAGA media appears imperviously sealed within a bubble of denial. The right no longer debates truth. ​​So when Hegseth — himself a former Fox News host — oversees the slaughter of over 83 people for no reason other than they were “suspected” of having drugs on their boat, the media machine he built around him rushed to dismiss the killings as the latest “hoax” perpetrated by “fake news.”

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The Daily Caller, the right-wing publication founded by Tucker Carlson years ago and now a loyal MAGA mouthpiece, has promoted Hegseth’s “fog of war” excuses and published articles arguing that the strikes are being “misinterpreted” by mainstream media. Breitbart dismissed the Washington Post’s initial report as “a fabricated hit job on patriots defending our borders,” while Newsmax and OANN referred to the story as the “Venezuela boat hoax” and “another anti-military hoax by the deep-state press.” Even after the White House confirmed the core facts, MAGA media outlets didn’t correct themselves, but reflexively shifted from claims of falsehood to justification. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/04/boat-strikes-war-crime-or-fake-news-hoax/