Fox News isn't engaging in protected political speech. It's engaging in consumer fraud.
Whenever a new poll comes out showing Trump’s abysmal ratings, public reactions follow a pattern. Public comments don’t question Trump’s disapproval rating. Rather, millions of people question the flip side: how does 38% of the nation still support such an obvious charlatan? Are supporters delusional? Suicidal?
Specifically, does MAGA not know that 15 million Americans, mostly their own, have now lost health insurance because of him? Can they not read the Walmart price tags they hold in their own hands? Do they not know he’s weakening the NATO alliance their granddads fought for, or that he single-handedly empowered one of the most dangerous regimes in the world?
The answer is ‘No, no, and no.’ Nearly 40% of the country—38%, to be exact— can’t connect the dots on who’s making their lives harder. We don’t need another study to figure out why, because it couldn’t be more obvious: As of May 12, 2026, 38% of the nation still supports Trump because 38% of the nation watches Fox News, purveyors of pure Trump propaganda. And compared to other consumers, Fox News viewers do not diversify their sources.
After the 2020 election, the Pew Research Center did a deep dive to learn what Americans heard, perceived and knew about it. Researchers found, for example, that 63% of Fox News viewers had given Trump an “excellent” rating on Covid. Trump suggested injecting bleach into unspecified orifices while over 1 million Americans died, yet Fox viewers thought he did an excellent job??
More accurately it was a con job, perpetrated by Fox News.
Fox News propaganda
Coming into the present news cycle, the Pope-Trump conflict illustrates the con in real time. Pope Leo XIV criticized Trump’s war with Iran by condemning leaders who manipulate religion for military gain. Trump, manifestly devoid of impulse control, immediately shot back on Truth Social that the Pope was “weak on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy” as if he were a political adversary. In follow up Fox News Digital interviews, Trump doubled down and refused to apologize as Fox hosts clapped like seals.
While most media outlets questioned Trump’s sanity for attacking the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion people, Fox dissembled with headlines like, “60 Minutes accused of using left-leaning Cardinals to bait Trump into feud with Vatican” and “Pope Leo says remarks about world being ‘ravaged by a handful of tyrants’ were not aimed at Trump. When Trump dispatched Marco Rubio to patch things up with the Pope last week, most media reported that it didn’t work, but Fox called it a big success and applauded what a great job Rubio did.
Fox News even tried to accuse other media networks of intentionally ‘baiting’ a response from Trump. They invited Elise Stefanik onto the network to tell Pope Leo XIV to “stay out of politics,” while other guests labelled the Pope’s foreign policy views ‘wrong’ and ‘liberal.’ Sean Hannity questioned whether the Pope fully understood the Iran conflict, and several other Fox commentators questioned whether the Pontiff had “read the Bible” about geocomplexities in Iran. To be clear, not one Fox host questioned whether Trump had “read the map” before he delivered the Strait of Hormuz to the mullahs.
The First Amendment protects political speech but it does not protect fraud
The Pope example alone illustrates how MAGA is being lied to on a daily basis, but it’s just one example. Fox News serves up daily falsehoods about climate change, immigrants, public education, NATO, black crime, ICE, and the war in Iran to craft a pro-Trump narrative, assuming their lies are legally protected by the First Amendment as “political speech.”
Enough damage is now evident to challenge that legal assumption.
In 2010, Supreme Court republicans fast-tracked America’s slide into oligarchy when they ruled in Citizens United that corporate political donations were a form of free speech. Citizens United further clarified that, under the First Amendment, political speech warrants the “highest level of protection against government regulation” following the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan’s restatement, and an earlier ruling that any regulations on political speech must withstand the highest level of strict scrutiny.
But while First Amendment protection for political speech is old news, there’s another long-toothed maxim: The First Amendment does not protect fraud. In 2012, under United States v. Alvarez, the Court confirmed that fraud is a ‘narrowly limited class of speech’ not entitled to First Amendment protection. In Alvarez, the Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, a law that made lying about military medals a crime, because no one gained a ‘material advantage’ from the lie. Unless someone is profiting from their false speech, the court ruled, there’s no actionable fraud—they’re simply lying. But false speech connected to economic gain on one side and economic harm on the other is fraud, legally unprotected under the First Amendment.
Under this definition, Fox News is engaged in classic consumer fraud. Fox admitted in the Dominion case that they lied to their viewers for profit, and paid out nearly $1 billion in settlement as a result. But their lies didn’t stop after that case, they continue to sell 24/7 Trump propaganda as ‘news.’ They are perpetrating the same fraud, one that hooks viewers, profiting Fox and their corporate backers, while materially harming victims by convincing them to vote against their own economic interests.
Under Supreme Court precedent, Fox News isn’t engaging in protected political speech. It’s engaging in commercial fraud. And the victims aren’t just Fox viewers, even though studies show they are harmed the most: the entire nation is enduring political violence, extreme division and rumblings of civil war because 38% of the country is being lied to.
Albert Einstein once said, “A people that were to honor falsehood…would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long.” Is mere national survival a sufficient justification to require accuracy in the news again? Is survival legally sufficient to pass strict scrutiny? If it is not, if this high court strikes down a return to the Fairness Doctrine, it will be elevating partisan interests to the point of national suicide.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
Obviously what is needed is a legal system with enough backbone to pursue this. I saw what fox was from the outset, one of their first "tells" was the consistent repetition of "fox news, fair and balanced" . I was raised with enough awareness to recognize that one right off, one doesn't need to emphasize how "fair and balanced" they are if really are. My employment in the formative years of that wonderful network exposed me to their tactics far more that I wished. I distinctly remember Rush Limbaugh bragging about how he would say anything for ratings. My work took me into maintenance departments, housekeeping, kitchen workers, almost every facility had fox on the radio. Their brainwashing methods were obvious to me, the time of day of the talk shows......when the target audience is working and only half paying attention to the radio, the tactic of fast talking, never finishing sentences or trains of thought. They would open with some sort of bullet to get people's attention and then go off the rails. Day after day, over and over, constant repetition. They successfully turned opinion into news for 38% of the population. I've seen it a number of times where people say they only listen to news they agree with. The whole thing is fraud, the FCC (when they were a functional entity) should have pulled their broadcasting license and made them make it clear that all of their content is their opinion. There is no way this should have been allowed to happen. Good article Sabrina, keep it up
There is an old Italian saying “la madre dei cretini e sempre incinta.” Translated it means “the mother of idiots is always pregnant.” I think that sums up the Fox News watching MAGA audience.