As MAGA Infotainment Takes Over the House, Right-Wing Media Tries to Harness the Monster it Created

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

With the House speaker election saga dominating the week’s headlines and cable news coverage, right-wing media took an interesting turn against some of the very House Republicans they helped to make stars.

On Thursday’s episode of Fox News show The Five, the top-rated program on cable news, an “angry” Judge Jeanine Pirro ripped into the anti-McCarthy rebels in the GOP conference, calling them “egomaniacs.”

“They’re making the Republicans look ridiculous. First of all, I like Kevin McCarthy. Why wasn’t this done ahead of time? Why are we doing this in front of the public? We look like a bunch of fools. And Lauren Boebert – you know, with all due respect – the woman barely won her race,” Pirro said, with a telling use of “we” to tie herself to the GOP.

“This is an embarrassment,” Pirro declared later on, concluding: “They’re egomaniacs who’ve got no answers and they oughta just be quiet and just go along with the majority at this point.”

Pirro’s comments followed a very combative interview on Wednesday night between Boebert and Sean Hannity – who publicly supported Trump as president and Trump-backed candidates in 2022 like Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker. Boebert, like Oz and Walker, has been a guest on Fox News and found extensive, friendly media coverage elsewhere as well due to her vocal backing of Trump and support from the MAGA base.

Hannity repeatedly pushed Boebert on what her strategy was and appeared to work overtime trying to convince Boebert she has no viable alternative to McCarthy.

One Fox News host, however,  stands virtually alone among those backing the establishment of the party: Tucker Carlson, who threw his lot in with the anti-McCarthy rebels this week after some furious fence-sitting.

Overall, however, the network has remained mostly in McCarthy’s camp, and it has come under fire from the far right as a result. “Controlled Opposition Fox comes in hard for McCarthy,” wrote Steve Bannon on Wednesday night, noting on Hannity the circus was described as a “clown show.”

Criticism of the anti-McCarthy rebels hasn’t come just from Fox News hosts.

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro voiced his frustration with the apparent lack of a plan from anti-McCarthy members.

“Really, explain it to me. Who is the alternative who will lead Republicans to a brighter future? What is the policy objective sought? How are Americans helped?” Shapiro wrote on Twitter.

“You don’t have to be a McCarthy fan to ask a simple question: what is your actual plan here, guys?” he concluded, parroting a regular criticism of the so-called “entertainment wing” of the GOP – they lack policy or strategy beyond stoking anger and sense of grievance.

Ironically, of course, in all of this remains the fact that members of Congress, like Lauren Boebert and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), exist because of the free and friendly media attention they get for stunts exactly like the one they are currently pulling at the U.S. Capitol. Friendly media rarely pushes Boebert or Gaetz on policy positions or their legislative agenda so long as they continue to sound off on whatever culture war issue is dominating any given news cycle. You can tally their power in Fox News appearances and Breitbart headlines.

To that end, process and policy are clearly not Boebert’s concerns. She is making a stand to tank or exploit McCarthy in a brazen play for more power, attention, and followers on social media. Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade hammered Boebert and Gaetz on Friday for fundraising off the ongoing delay to elect a speaker, concluding, “that to me is a total insincerity.”

“We need a leader that is not of the broken system. Someone who is not beholden to the lobbyists but to the people who sent us here. Someone who can unite our party and most importantly someone who can deliver on the promises that we have all made to the American people,” Boebert said while nominating Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), a McCarthy supporter, in the 9th vote.

Boebert doesn’t lay out policy positions for how to fulfill those “promises,” just as McCarthy didn’t offer any actual details for policy in his so-called “Commitment to America.”

The New York Times’s Nick Confessore discussed this topic with Charlie Sykes this week and pointed out just how hollow McCarthy’s 2022 midterm platform was, especially when compared with Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America.”

“They actually wrote bills, they had detailed bills, each plank in that was like a piece of legislation,” Confessore notes of Gingrich’s winning platform, which he compared to McCarthy — whose proposal offered one-line platitudes. Confessore argued that the lack of substance in the House GOP has fueled the flames of infotainment in the party, as stoking outrage, both in media and Congress, is now a more valuable currency than policy positions.

Notably, even Gingrich, who with Rush Limbaugh pioneered many of the tactics used by today’s Freedom Caucus, has sounded the alarm on the nihilism and chaotic behavior of the anti-McCarthy members:

I would appeal to everybody watching. If you’re in the district of one of these so-called rebels, pick up the phone and call their office. I mean, what they’re doing is so destructive and candidly, so stupid. They have no endgame. They haven’t thought through what they’re doing and they’re throwing the equivalent of a temper tantrum.

The question moving forward for many of the political leaders on the right, which yes include certain cable news hosts, is how will a GOP-led House manage to govern at all if just 4 or 5 “egomaniacs” can hold the entire process hostage. Will the GOP get any of its agenda done? Let alone be able to keep the government funded and running.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!