Nine Predictions For Right-Wing Media in 2026

Daniel Paik via AP

Who had the conservative anti-wokester Bari Weiss of The Free Press on their bingo card as the new editor in chief of CBS News a year ago?  If you did, take a bow.  I certainly didn’t, and part of my job is to scour the back alleys and main streets of right-wing media looking for trends before they happen. Nonetheless, based on my close observation of right-wing media for the past eight years as president of TheRighting, I have a pretty good handle on who and what I think the MAGA world pundits and news professionals will focus on in the coming year. And if it’s anything like 2025, buckle up.  It’s going to be another bumpy year.  

Melania-mania will hit its peak

A full-length documentary feature film about the notoriously tight-lipped First Lady hits movie theaters January 30. At a later, undetermined date, Amazon Prime will stream the film and a companion, three-part docuseries. Amazon reportedly ponied up $40 million for the productions, so I anticipate a major marketing push. Already, the right-wing press has fawned over the anodyne trailer featuring many shots of her spiked heels, expensive gowns, and not much else.  Will the film reveal some of the inner secrets of the mysterious Trump-Melania marriage? Don’t count on it. She’s also the executive producer of the initiative. 

Intensifying negative coverage of powerful women of color

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), Kamala Harris, and Michelle Obama spent the last four months in the crosshairs of right-wing media for a litany of supposed sins.  There’s a small but growing faction of the MAGA media, fanned by President Trump’s rhetoric, that shows no interest in pumping the brakes on this line of attack in 2026.  They think they have a winning message for their base in 2026. Sadly, they’re probably right.

Zohran Mamdani will be under the MAGA media microscope

Ever since securing the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor last June, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani has been the target of intense right-wing vitriol. That was only the warm-up act.  The new, socialist mayor should brace himself for what is almost certainly to be an almost unprecedented wave of criticism and mockery from right-wing pundits directed at a big city mayor.  They will dissect every move Mamdani makes, and it’s going to get ugly.

California will no longer be the right’s most vilified state in the country

That distinction will now go to liberal Minnesota, home to Rep. Ilhan Omar, Governor Tim Walz, and the country’s largest Somali population. The state’s unfolding public assistance scandal, which escalated dramatically this fall, has kicked criticisms of the state’s progressive policies into overdrive. It has grabbed the attention of both MAGA media and President Trump, and they show no intention of letting up.

Right-wing media will ghost the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein

Despite mounting mainstream media coverage of files related to the late convicted sex offender, right-wing media will either ignore or dismiss any new revelations, except if they’re tied to prominent liberal men. (See below item)

Bill Clinton’s hot tub time machine

Is it just me, or does it feel like it’s 1998 all over again, when news of President Clinton’s relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was first revealed.  The frisky 42nd U.S. president now finds himself in hot water over a bare-chested image of him with an unidentified woman in a hot tub after the December release of more files related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The revelation once again cast Clinton as an immoral Democratic icon, who is now set up in 2026 to be ridiculed by right-wing media every time President Trump is mentioned in a story about Epstein.

More Bari-ium enemas for CBS News

Controversy-magnet Bari Weiss has been on the job for only three months as the conservative editor in chief of CBS News. But she’s already stuck it to the network’s most sacred cow last month by delaying (or possibly killing) a 60 Minutes segment critical of the Trump administration. This likely represents just the opening act of what looks to be a year-long defenestration of the fabled CBS News division.  A key question: Will staffers take it lying down?

“Rigged elections” will be right-wing media’s most popular term in November 2026

If early polls about the midterm elections are accurate, Democrats can at least expect to capture the House in eleven months and possibly even the Senate.  Get ready for an onslaught from the right – news outlets, social channels, talking heads, and various politicos – charging that any election lost by a MAGA politician was “rigged.”

Talk of Karoline Leavitt’s next career move will heat up

The job of White House press secretary already seems too small for the glib, camera-ready 28-year-old who probably dreams in MAGA talking points.  Two career paths seem plausible for Leavitt: TV anchor or political office (she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022).  Leavitt would have an adoring right-wing press to put wind at her back. The only speed bump in the way of her next move is her baby bump; she’s expecting child number two in May.  But don’t expect her pregnancy to blunt the speculation from the right.  A year from now, she will have already logged two years in her current role, which is way past the expiration date of Trump’s four previous White House press secretaries.

Howard Polskin is the President and Founder of TheRighting, a free newsletter that aggregates more than a dozen right wing headlines every morning for mainstream and progressive audiences.

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