Fox News

For President Trump, it’s all about appearances.

He’s busy with so many makeovers: The Versailles-ification of the Oval Office, which seems to sprout more gold leaf and ornamentation every time Trump assembles the media there. The paving of the Rose Garden, now Mar-a-Lago Patio North, crowded with white tables and yellow umbrellas just as at his Florida retreat. The estimated billion-dollar conversion of a Qatari luxury jet built for a king, more in keeping with Trump’s tastes than the “less impressive” Air Force One. Even a new golf cart, the six-figure armored Golf Force One. And, assuming Trump gets his way, as he mostly does, he’ll break ground soon on a $200-million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a veritable Hall of Mirrors nearly doubling the footprint of the White House.

The president has $257 million from ever-compliant Republicans in Congress to transform the nearby Kennedy Center into the “Trump/Kennedy Center,” as Trump immodestly suggested on Tuesday. (Meanwhile, the purported populist president has canceled grants to local arts groups across America and seeks to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, which underwrites cultural events in every state.) Even the medallions for the annual Kennedy Center Honors winners are getting a makeover — from Tiffany & Co., natch. Trump, having made himself the Kennedy Center chair after a first term in which he skipped the honors shows by popular demand, was there on Wednesday to announce the 2025 honorees.

Let’s pause here to consider just how Fox News and MAGA World would react if the president overseeing all this extravagance were named Biden, Obama or Clinton.

These preoccupations of the reality-show president are a metaphor for something much bigger, however — Trump’s virtually unchecked makeover of the entire U.S. government as well as its major institutions of education, culture, law and more, all in service of the appearance of gilded grandeur and raw power: His.

Consider recent events. After federal data showed worrying job losses in recent months — not a good look for the self-styled economic wizard — Trump fired the wonky bureaucrat who runs the Bureau of Labor Statistics in favor of a MAGA flunky disdained by economists of all stripes for his bias and ignorance. Only the best.

Cultural gems — eight Smithsonian Institution museums — are in for a Trumpian overhaul. “White House to Vet Smithsonian Museums to Fit Trump’s Historical Vision” was the Wall Street Journal headline this week. So Trump, the historical visionary who once seemed to think abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive and whose Homeland Security Department this week seemingly promoted a neo-Nazi book on its social media account, will curate American life and history for posterity. What could go wrong?

Though Vladimir Putin refuses to compromise or cease firing on Ukraine, making a mockery of Trump’s talk of brokering peace on Day 1, Trump plans to reward the war-crime-ing global pariah on Friday with the ultimate recognition: a summit on American soil. After all, a summit gets so much more media attention than a mere private phone call. So what if nothing comes of it, as with Trump’s first-term “summitry” with Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. It’s the televised power struts that count.

Want to look tough on crime? Trump the performance artist has militarized the nation’s capital just as he did Los Angeles, declaring a crime emergency in a city where crime is at a 30-year low. (As with the jobs numbers, the White House disputed the crime data.) The president called up 800 National Guard troops and myriad federal agents to patrol Washington, a power he declined to use for three long hours on Jan. 6, 2021, when the city actually did face rioting. Trump is so into scene-setting that he’d rather put FBI agents on the D.C. streets than leave them to their behind-the-scenes work on counterintelligence and anti-terrorism.

I don’t feel safer.

This isn’t just an anti-crime show for Trump, however. He says it’s also about beautification. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” he posted on social media. This from the president who was untroubled by his supporters defiling and defecating in the Capitol on Jan. 6. As a longtime resident, I don’t recognize the dystopian city he describes; as a citizen, I’m offended.

And of course Trump’s power play is also about fundraising. What isn’t about money for him? In an email solicitation on Tuesday, he boasted to would-be donors that he’d “LIBERATED” the capital from “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum.” You know what’s really scummy? Constant money-grubbing.

Washington and Los Angeles likely are just dry runs for Trump’s future shows of force. He’s repeatedly threatened similar crackdowns in other Democratic-run cities. And on Tuesday, the Washington Post broke the news of a Pentagon plan for a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” with 600 National Guard troops on permanent standby to deploy at Trump’s command. All of this is of dubious legality, but when has that stopped him?

Whether the subject is crime, tariffs, immigration, whatever, Trump just declares an emergency to supposedly justify his aggrandizement of power. Never mind that each emergency reflects a problem that’s long-standing and not a crisis. Absent these declarations, Trump would have to govern with Congress and pass legislation to try to actually solve problems, as the framers intended. That means time, tedium, policy details and compromise — hardly the stuff of a camera-ready wannabe action hero/strongman.

Say Trump’s orchestrated gerrymandering in Texas and other red states doesn’t work in the 2026 midterm elections and Democrats take control of the House. It’s not hard to imagine him declaring an emergency and sending in the military to seize voting machines. Trump was restrained from issuing just such an order after the 2020 election.

Yes, he’s a busy man. But you know what Trump hasn’t done? Release the Epstein files. Wouldn’t be good for appearances.

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President Trump once called Rupert Murdoch “my very good friend.”

But the 94-year-old media baron, whose fortunes have risen in tandem with Trump’s political ascent, has turned into an unlikely foe.

Trump has bristled over a Wall Street Journal report that he allegedly sent a suggestive letter to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denied sending the message, calling it a “fake,” and last month he filed a $10-billion defamation suit against Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., Murdoch and others.

The billionaire — who sits at the top of the world’s most prominent conservative media empire — has become the focus of the president’s fury.

“I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, a nod to “Fox & Friends,” one of his favorite TV programs. The Journal, he wrote, is a “Disgusting and Filthy Rag,” and Murdoch’s “‘pile of garbage’ newspaper.”

Trump’s attorneys applied more heat last week in a startling bid to force Murdoch to promptly appear for a deposition. In a motion, Trump’s lawyers cited the mogul’s age and health complications, which they said includes a recent fainting episode, and over the last five years, a broken back, a torn Achilles tendon and atrial fibrillation, which could make Murdoch “unavailable for in-person testimony at trial.”

Through a spokesman, Murdoch declined to comment.

The tussle provides a rare glimpse into the tangled relationship of two titans whose dealings date back a half-century when the Australian-born Murdoch arrived in the U.S. and bought the New York Post, a punchy tabloid with screaming headlines. Trump forged his reputation as a New York real estate tycoon, in part, by dishing scoops to the paper’s celebrity-hungry Page Six.

And Fox News would become one of Trump’s biggest champions. The network has long heaped on positive attention that helped Trump transform himself from reality TV star to the political hero of his Make America Great Again base.

The cable network gave Trump a platform for his unfounded “birther” conspiracies about former President Obama. And Trump’s political rise helped build Fox News into a ratings and financial juggernaut. This summer, Fox News ranks as America’s No. 1 network, according to measurement firm Nielsen, attracting more viewers in prime time than broadcast leaders NBC and CBS.

What’s more, a string of Fox News personalities have joined Trump’s administration, including former weekend host, now secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

Murdoch and Trump “feed off one another — they’ve had this relationship since the ’70s where they kind of benefit from one another,” said Andrew Dodd, a journalism professor at the University of Melbourne. “But they also have these turns where they’re against each other.”

Gabriel Kahn, a USC journalism professor and former Wall Street Journal reporter, said the tension is real.

“As much as Rupert has pumped up Trump World over the last 10 years, Rupert really sees himself as the kingmaker — not the lackey,” Kahn said.

Trump’s social media posts over the years reveal bouts of frustration with Murdoch and his media properties.

The two men have different political philosophies: Murdoch is known to be a small-government Reagan Republican, “not a true conservative populist” in the MAGA vein, according to one Republican political operative who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Insiders and observers point to a series of slights, including a 2015 remark Murdoch made on Twitter a month after Trump descended on the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his first presidential bid, and then ignited a firestorm with anti-immigrant comments.

“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch asked a decade ago.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch and his father, Rupert Murdoch, in 2018.

(Adrian Edwards / GC Images)

Murdoch, at turns, tried to recruit or boost rival presidential hopefuls. Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis received flattering coverage on Fox News early in President Biden’s term.

By that time, Trump was back at Mar-a-Lago after losing the 2020 election and Fox News was navigating treacherous terrain. The network was the first major outlet to call Arizona for Biden on election night, riling Trump and his supporters who viewed the move as a betrayal, one that short-circuited their claims the election had been stolen. Fox News witnessed an immediate viewer exodus.

To win back Trump supporters, the network gave a platform to Trump surrogates who suggested machines flipped votes for Biden, despite the fact that Murdoch and others knew such claims were false, court filings revealed.

Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic sued for defamation. Discovery in the Dominion lawsuit revealed that, two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Murdoch wanted to carve some distance, writing a former executive: “We want to make Trump a non person.”

In a 2023 deposition, Murdoch conceded missteps of spreading the unfounded theories. Fox that spring agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million — one of the largest payouts ever for a U.S. libel suit. The Smartmatic case is still pending.

“They promulgated the ‘Big Lie,’” Dodd said of Fox News’ post-2020 election coverage. “Now, in the twilight years of his life, Murdoch [may be] thinking: ‘Well, this man really is not worth supporting any longer.’”

Such a shift would not be out of character. Murdoch, in the past, has promoted political leaders and governments, only to pull that support.

In the 1970s, after initially backing Australia’s then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Murdoch allegedly directed his editors to “Kill Whitlam,” in a political (not violent) sense. Twenty years later in Britain, Murdoch abandoned the Conservatives after being a close ally of former leader Margaret Thatcher. He famously threw the weight of his tabloid, the Sun, behind Labor’s Tony Blair.

After years of backing Tories, the Sun shifted back to Labor and Keir Starmer last year, saying that “it is time for a change.”

“Murdoch has a long career of breaking what he makes,” Dodd said.

His vast empire, divvied between News Corp. and Fox Corp., allows his outlets to have different leanings. The Journal has lent more skeptical coverage to Trump. It broke stories about Trump’s hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal. This year, its editorial board called his high tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”

Fox News, however, remains staunchly in the president’s camp. Murdoch is “putting one part of the organization in attack mode while keeping the other [Fox News] in reserve while it benefits from the base of the person that he’s attacking,” Dodd said.

The media baron has long relished his proximity to power. He attended Trump’s second inauguration in January and participated with business leaders in an Oval Office meeting a few weeks later.

Murdoch was reportedly among Trump’s circle of VIPs in New Jersey on July 13 for the FIFA Club World Cup soccer championship match.

Two days later, a Journal reporter emailed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, advising that the paper was preparing to publish a story about the Epstein birthday letter, according to Trump’s lawsuit. Trump’s lawyers pushed back, saying the allegations were false.

Trump called Murdoch, according to court filings. “Murdoch advised President Trump that ‘he would take care of it,’” Trump wrote in a July 17 post on Truth Social, the day the story published. “Obviously, he didn’t have the power to do so,” Trump wrote.

Trump sued the next day. A Dow Jones spokeswoman responded: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

The legal dustup comes after a string of controversial wins for the president.

Last month, Paramount Global agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a dispute over “60 Minutes” edits of a Kamala Harris interview, a lawsuit that 1st Amendment experts said had no merit. In December, Walt Disney Co. paid $16 million to end a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over inaccurate statements by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos — an outcome derided by some 1st Amendment experts who thought Disney would eventually prevail.

“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote. “It has truly turned out to be a ‘Disgusting and Filthy Rag.’”

Murdoch watchers don’t expect him to capitulate.

“In this bizarre world that we live in, Rupert is actually one of the few people who might be willing to stand up to Trump,” Kahn said. “Remember, Rupert loves newspapers, he loves the scoop and he loves to stir the pot.”

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

Fox News host Jesse Watters acknowledged Thursday that his program made a mistake in reporting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s phone conversation with President Trump during last month’s immigration raids in Los Angeles.

Newsom filed a $787-million defamation lawsuit against Watters and Fox News on June 27 after the host reported on comments Trump made about a phone call with the governor as tensions heated up over the raids and the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard.

Newsom’s lawsuit said Watters lied on his prime-time program about the timeline of his conversations with the president.

After the lawsuit was filed in a Delaware court, Newsom’s lawyers said they were prepared to drop the suit if the governor got a retraction and a formal on-air apology. The suit claims Fox News willfully distorted the facts about the Trump call to harm the governor politically.

Asked for a reaction to Watters’ remarks about the matter, Newsom showed no signs of backing down. “Discovery will be fun,” he said in a statement. “See you in court buddy.”

Watters’ on-air persona is snarky and tongue-in-cheek and he did not deviate from it when he addressed the Newsom matter. He acknowledged he misunderstood Newsom’s social media post on Trump’s remarks and used the words “I’m sorry.” But it was far from a fulsome apology.

“Fox News invited [Newsom] on the show to talk it out man to man, but he said no,” Watters said.

The dust-up began after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on June 10 that he spoke to Newsom “a day ago — called him up tell him you’ve got to do a better job, you’re doing a bad job.” Trump’s comment gave the impression that the two spoke on the same day 700 Marines were deployed in Los Angeles.

Newsom refuted the claim in a post on X. The governor had already said publicly he spoke to Trump after midnight Eastern time on June 7 and the National Guard was not discussed. They never spoke after that.

“There was no call,” Newsom posted on X. “Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

Trump sent Fox News anchor John Roberts a screen shot showing the June 7 date stamp of the phone call, which Watters showed on his program to assert that Newsom was lying when he said they did not speak.

When Watters showed a clip of Trump’s June 10 comments about the call on his program, it omitted the portion where the president said he spoke to Newsom the previous day. A banner at the bottom of the screen read: “Gavin lied about Trump’s call.”

Watters told viewers Thursday he believed Newsom’s X post asserted that the two had not spoken at all.

“‘Not even a voicemail’ — we took that to mean there was no call ever,” Watters said.

“We thought the dispute was about whether there was a phone call at all when he said without qualification that there was no call,” the host continued. “Now Newsom’s telling us what was in his head when he wrote the tweet. He didn’t deceive anybody on purpose, so I’m sorry, he wasn’t lying. He was just confusing and unclear. Next time, governor, why don’t you say what you mean.”

The $787-million figure in the lawsuit is the amount Fox News paid to Dominion Voting Systems to settle another defamation case in 2023. Fox agreed to pay the company, which said the network aired false claims that its voting equipment was manipulated to help President Biden win the 2020 election.

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

Kat Timpf wants fans of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” to know why she will be missing from the show this time around — if only so the internet can’t develop nutty theories about where she might be hiding.

The comedian and co-host of Greg Gutfeld’s hit late-night show had a very dramatic start to maternity leave in February when she found out she had breast cancer and then 15 hours later went into labor with her son. She had a double mastectomy in March and returned to the show in the middle of June.

On Monday, she announced the upcoming break on the show. Tuesday on Instagram, she wrote, “I’ll be back on Gutfeld! in a few weeks! Huge thanks to those of you who have taken the time to offer me words of kindness and support. I love u all so much.”

She included a video clip from “Gutfeld!” in which she gave more details.

“When I came back, I said I still had some surgeries to go,” she said, referring to upcoming reconstructive work. The first one, she said, is next week.

“Even … the best case scenario of breast cancer can involve quite a road to feeling whole again,” Timpf said. “So this is the first step in that. Just so the internet can’t come up with theories about where I am, that’s where I am. Thank you everyone for all your support, vibes and prayers or however you show that. I really appreciate it and I can’t wait to come back soon.”

Fellow Fox News contributor Guy Benson, weekend “Fox & Friends” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy and “The Five” contributor Kennedy — who earned praise for her work filling in for Timpf on “Gutfeld!” during maternity leave — all posted well wishes in comments on the post.

“Never been more impressed with Kat Timpf,” Campos-Duffy wrote. “The very definition of a strong mom!”

Some viewers earlier this year worried that the comedian’s double-mastectomy decision was rash, given that her cancer had been found early, at Stage 0.

“Every case of breast cancer is very different,” the “I Used to Like You Until…” author said upon her return to Fox News in June. “There are a lot of details of mine that I haven’t shared, but I just wanna say, you know, trust that I’m making the best decision for me and my family. I’m getting the best medical advice that I could possibly be getting.”

As legacy news brands turn to podcasters to court online audiences, another digital media upstart has been invited to sit at the grown-ups table.

Fox News Media this week signed a licensing deal with the makers of “Ruthless,” a popular conservative podcast, a move aimed at expanding the network’s digital reach.

The five-year-old podcast is co-hosted by public affairs and digital advocacy consulting firm Cavalry LLC’s founding partners Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook, as well as Shashank Tripathi, a commentator known by the pseudonym “Comfortably Smug.” It will operate under the Fox News Digital division led by Porter Berry. The co-hosts will also get exposure on the Fox News Channel.

The move is another sign of traditional media outlets looking for ways to appeal to audiences who are no longer in the pay-TV universe. Faced with a slow but steady decline in audience levels due to competition from streaming, upstart digital operations are seen as a route to reach those consumers.

Podcasts — particularly those hosted by comedians such as Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz — proved influential in the 2024 presidential election as more traditional news outlets felt their relevance waning.

“Ruthless” has gained a large following among men aged 18 to 45, a group that is spending less time with traditional TV, where Fox News is the most-watched cable channel and often tops broadcast networks in prime time. The podcast is regarded as the conservative answer to “Pod Save America,” the popular digital program led by four former Obama aides, which is produced by Los Angeles-based Crooked Media.

Recent “Ruthless” episodes covered anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and Elon Musk’s proposal for a new political party.

Fox News Media has a stable of podcasts hosted by the network’s on-air talent such as Will Cain. But “Ruthless” is the first outside entity to join its digital platforms, and similar deals could follow.

Fox News has a multiyear deal with “Ruthless,” which will share in the revenue the podcast generates across the network’s various platforms. The “Ruthless” partners will retain editorial control over the podcast, although their right-leaning worldview is in keeping with other commentators on Fox News. They will also serve as Fox News contributors appearing on the TV network’s programs.

Others media giants have gotten into the more freewheeling online sphere by working with podcasters and YouTubers.

ESPN reached into the digital media space when it picked up sports commentator Pat McAfee’s program — a hit on YouTube — for its TV networks. McAfee retains control of the program, which is licensed by the Walt Disney Co. unit.

Earlier this year, Fox News parent Fox Corp. acquired Red Seat Ventures, which provides ad sales, marketing and production support for digital content creators, many of them aimed at politically conservative audiences.

There may be more such deals ahead.

The Fox News announcement follows reports that David Ellison, whose company Skydance Media has a merger agreement with Paramount Global, has engaged in talks about acquiring The Free Press, a popular digital news site launched by former New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss.

The entity, which produces Weiss’ current affairs podcast “Honestly” and uses the independent newsletter publishing platform Substack, would operate separately from Paramount Global’s CBS News division, according to one person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Jacqui Heinrich, senior White House correspondent for Fox News, just vetted the story of her own engagement to U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick on Tuesday. The verdict? It ain’t fake news.

The Pennsylvania Republican asked Heinrich for her hand in marriage in a lavender field in Provence, France, according to People. Promoting that story, the journalist wrote on X, “Fact check: true.” Then she tacked on a couple of appropriately lovey emojis.

“The cooking was the dealmaker. Congrats Jacqui!” Fox News contributor Joe Concha said in comments. Chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst chimed in with, “Love this news,” while Jessica Tarlov, who speaks for Democrats on “The Five,” wrote, “Ahhhhhh congratulations!!!”

Fitzpatrick popped the question on June 29, People reported, before he had to hustle back to vote on the just-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. His inspiration came from something Heinrich told the Boston Globe last summer, ahead of the 2024 election: “I’ve always dreamed of eating my way through the French Riviera and Provence, with sun-drenched days at the lavender fields punctuated by crisp wines and salty butter.”

So Fitzpatrick, 51, booked a summer trip to France as a birthday gift for Heinrich, who turns 37 in November. But the journalist was concerned, she told the celebrity outlet, that her beau would have to cut the trip short to vote against Trump’s bill, which the president signed into law on July 4. Did Fitzpatrick want to postpone the trip, she wondered?

“He was like, ‘We are going. We’re going to the lavender fields. All I want is to see the lavender fields at sunrise,’” she told People. “All the time I’ve known this man, he has never been desperate to see a field of flowers at dawn. So I had a feeling that [a proposal] was the goal.”

What was supposed to be a 10-day trip was whittled down to only a couple of days.

After arriving in Nice, France, they drove two hours in darkness to catch the sunrise in the town of Valensole, known for its lavender and truffles. The town is built into a hill overlooking a small river valley, and a lavender festival is held there annually on the third Sunday in July. But the OBBBA waited for no sweet-smelling shrub, so attending the festival was definitely out.

Fitzpatrick had an agenda. He stopped at one particular lavender field and suggested Heinrich go for a stroll while he took some photos of her, she told People. As she took in the view, a photographer and a drone appeared, she said, and Fitzpatrick was asking her to marry him and presenting a ring he had procured from her family’s longtime jeweler.

The photos, as seen on the outlet’s website, are lovely. Heinrich, who has been dating Fitzpatrick since the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors, said yes.

“I love his brain,” Heinrich told People of her fiance, a five-term congressman who was previously an FBI special agent and federal prosecutor. Fitzpatrick was also embedded with U.S. Special Forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to his biography.

“I love the way he approaches problem-solving and solving complex issues. He’s strong and a man of faith, who brings me closer to God.,” Heinrich said. “He’s sweet and gentle and kind — all of the easy qualities in a person that just make him a joy to be around and life brighter.”

There’s also a handy little bonus in this pairing, as revealed on the congressman’s website: Should Heinrich find herself in need of an attorney, a certified public accountant or an emergency medical technician, she’s definitely covered, because Fitzpatrick is licensed as all three.

Critics of President Trump may have cheered the defamation lawsuit filed by Gov. Gavin Newsom against Fox News for giving the White House a spoonful of its own litigious medicine.

Newsom is suing the conservative-leaning network alleging it intentionally distorted the facts in its reports on the timeline of the governor’s conversations with Trump amid the deployment of the National Grard in Los Angeles during immigration raids in the city.

But legal experts are concerned that it may just be the bipartisan escalation of an ongoing trend: use of defamation suits as a political weapon. The tactic, largely used by Trump and his allies until Newsom’s salvo, has put the media business and its legal defenders on high alert.

“There has been an outbreak of defamation lawsuits over the last 10 years since President Trump came on the scene and threatened to open up the liable laws,” said Ted Boutros, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. “It has been remarkable and has a chilling effect on speech.”

Trump has aggressively used the courts to punish media outlets he believes have crossed him.

Trump extracted $15 million from ABC News after George Stephanopolous said the president was convicted of rape rather than sexual abuse in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll. He’s pushing for a massive payment from CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview he claims was edited to make former Vice President Kamala Harris more coherent.

Although CBS denies Trump’s claims and 1st Amendment experts say the case is frivolous, the parties are reportedly headed for a settlement.

Trump is also continuing his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register over a poll that showed him losing Iowa in the 2024 election, moving it to state court Monday after the case appeared to be faltering at the federal level.

Trump hasn’t stopped there.

Last week, he threatened CNN and the New York Times with legal action over their coverage on an early intelligence report that said the military attack on Iran’s nuclear program had only set it back a few months. On Monday, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on border policy, called for the Department of Justice to investigate CNN for reporting on the existence of an app that alerts users to ICE activities.

“We have crossed over into a new world,” said Lee Levine, a retired 1st Amendment attorney whose clients included CBS News. “Everybody has taken note and tried to position themselves the best that they can to weather the assault.”

Newsom, a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, took his shot last week with a suit alleging Fox News intentionally manipulated its coverage of a late-night June 6 phone call he made to Trump. Trump later falsely stated on June 10 that the two were in contact “a day ago,” while Newsom asserted they never spoke after June 6.

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

The governor’s legal team alleged the conservative network’s coverage covered up Trump’s false statement that the two had spoken on June 9 while a banner on the bottom of the screen said “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”

The suit asks for $787 million — the amount Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems to settle its defamation case over false statements — if Newsom doesn’t get a retraction and on-air apology from host Jesse Watters who presented the segment on the calls. (Fox News has called the suit a publicity stunt and said it will fight it in court.)

Andrew Geronimo, director of the Dr. Frank Stanton First Amendment Clinic at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, believes Newsom’s actions are tailored to get the public‘s attention rather than that of the court itself. Newsom has been aggressive in his efforts to combat misinformation disseminated by right wing media outlets, and the lawsuit clearly turned it up a notch.

Experts say high-profile politicians have the ability to get their message out without going to court. “The idea that there is this dollar amount in the millions that they’ve been damaged by the reporting rather than coming out there and account the facts straightforwardly I think is sort of laughable,” Geronimo said.

The calls for possible legal actions against journalists reporting on information leaked by government officials, as is the case in the Iran intelligence stories, is considered a far more troubling development.

The long-term danger is that the suits can ultimately weaken laws that protect press freedoms, such as the ability to publish government information as long as it was obtained in a lawful matter.

“With everything the U.S. Supreme Court has been doing lately, all of these press protections could be on the table,” Geronimo said. “Journalists for years have relied on Supreme Court case law that, if someone leaks something to them, they can publish it as long as they did not participate in the illegal collection of it.”

The chilling effect could be particularly acute for large publicly owned media companies that have business before the government. It’s unlikely that CBS parent Paramount Global would settle over “60 Minutes” if it did not have an $8 billion merger deal pending that requires approval of the Federal Communications Commission now led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr.

“The fusion of libel suits and government officials in office is a pernicious development,” said Boutros. “When you have the president of the United States… wielding defamation suits when they have some degree of power over those companies that they can assert, that puts the companies in a terrible position.”

It also puts more strain on the legal system. While Trump and Newsom are getting headlines, Boutros noted there are similar politically motivated defamation cases coming in with “useless claims that we have to litigate.”

“It’s costly for people who are just participating in a public debate,” he said. “We’d rather have less business and more freedom of the press.”

Kayleigh McEnany and husband Sean Gilmartin welcomed their third child — a girl.

“We are overjoyed to announce the newest member of the ‘Outnumbered’ family,” Emily Compagno said Monday during the Fox News Channel show she co-hosts with McEnany. She noted that viewers could see the baby “letting out a big yawn” in photos provided by her mom and dad.

Avery was born on Wednesday, the network said.

McEnany tweeted Monday that she and her husband are “so in love with our new baby girl, Avery Grace! Blake and Nash love their baby sister, and we are enjoying this beautiful time in life!”

McEnany was a tad more nuanced in notes given to Compagno, who quoted the three-time mom as saying that while big sister Blake, 5, “can’t stop thinking about the baby,” big brother Nash, 2, had “finally warmed up to her.”

In her announcement, the former White House press secretary included Psalm 139: 13-14, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Compagno said the “Outnumbered” crew, headed by Harris Faulkner, was “wishing Kayleigh and Sean all the best as they continue to grow their beautiful family.” She told McEnany to please come back, but “not too soon.”

McEnany announced back in March that she and Gilmartin were expecting their third child.

“It’s very sweet. It’s been a special time,” she said. “I’ve been pregnant during Christmas and during Thanksgiving, and my daughter Blake now knows, so she runs up and holds my stomach and is like, ‘Let me kiss the baby.’ ”

The baby got in just under the June deadline that McEnany shared at the time.

McEnany and Gilmartin, a pitcher who retired from professional baseball in 2022, started dating in 2015 and got married in 2017. After working in broadcast media initially, McEnany served as press secretary to President Trump from April 2020 through the end of his first term in January 2021, landing at Fox soon after.

She’s one of a host of former press secretaries who have landed jobs on cable and broadcast news.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is suing Fox News for defamation, alleging that the news outlet intentionally manipulated its coverage to give the appearance that the governor lied about a phone call with President Trump.

The governor’s demand for $787 million in punitive damages escalates his aggressive effort to challenge misinformation. The lawsuit, announced Friday, places Newsom at the forefront of the political proxy war between Democrats and Republicans over the press by calling out an outlet that many in his party despise.

“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the suit states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”

Newsom, a potential presidential candidate, said he decided to sue in part because Fox failed to change after admitting in a legal settlement two years ago to spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.

In response to Newsom’s lawsuit, Fox criticized the California governor, accusing him of undercutting the 1st Amendment.

“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” Fox News said in a statement Friday morning.

The case stems from comments Trump made about a phone call with Newsom as tensions heated up between the two leaders over immigration raids and the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles.

Trump told reporters on June 10 that he spoke with Newsom “a day ago.”

“Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job,” Trump said. “Causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.”

Newsom immediately rejected Trump’s timeline on social media.

The governor had already spoken publicly about talking to Trump on the phone late in the night on June 6 in California, which was early June 7 for Trump on the East Coast. Newsom said the National Guard was never discussed during that call. They didn’t talk again, he said.

“There was no call,” Newsom posted on X. “Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

Trump attempted to fire back at Newsom through Fox and shared a screenshot of his call log with anchor John Roberts. The log showed that a phone call occurred on June 7 and provided no evidence of a call on June 9 as Trump claimed.

“It is impossible to know for certain whether President Trump’s distortion was intentionally deceptive or merely a result of his poor cognitive state, but Fox’s decision to cover up for the President’s false statement cannot be so easily dismissed,” the complaint states.

Newsom’s legal team said Roberts initially misrepresented the situation to viewers “to obscure President Trump’s false statement of fact.”

Then during an evening broadcast on June 10, Fox News host Jesse Watters showed a video of Trump’s comments about the phone call but omitted the president saying that it happened “a day ago.” The edit made it appear that Newsom alleged the two never spoke at all.

“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” Watters then asked.

A banner at the bottom of the screen during the segment claimed “Gavin lied about Trump’s call.”

Newsom’s lawyers said Fox “willfully distorted the facts” and defamed Newsom to tens of millions of people.

“Fox advanced this lie about Governor Newsom out of a desire to harm him politically,” the complaint states.

Newsom is particularly attuned to his critics on Fox, a conservative-leaning television network that he describes as the epicenter of a right-wing media ecosystem that misleads the public to benefit Trump and his allies. Similar to reports of Trump watching CNN, the governor regularly follows Fox political coverage. He pays close attention to the outlet’s assessment of his leadership.

Fox commentators and opinion hosts, such as Watters, are given a wide berth to express their views, even when they contradict the reporting of its nonpartisan correspondents. They aggressively defend Trump and his policies, while often casting California as a failed state with incompetent leadership.

But Newsom has also benefited from Fox and used his appearances on the network to brandish his image as a brawler for Democrats and his standing as a potential future presidential candidate.

Fox hosted a much talked about debate between Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023. The California governor also participated in a sit-down interview with Sean Hannity, which drew praise from within and outside of his party.

During a talk on the social media website Substack on Friday, Newsom said he started going on Fox to disrupt propaganda and the network’s narrative about Democrats.

“I have a high threshold for the bulls— on Fox, is the point,” Newsom said. “I wouldn’t do this unless I felt they really did cross the line.”

The amount of the governor’s request for damages was a subtle dig at the outlet.

Fox agreed two years ago to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to drop a lawsuit related to the network’s false claims that voting machines were manipulated to help President Biden win the 2020 election. The news organization settled the case rather than put its executives and on-air talent on the witness stand in a high-profile trial.

Fox faces a similar lawsuit from Smartmatic, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based voting machine company that claims its business had been hurt because of the network’s reporting.

The news outlet has maintained that reporting on Trump’s fraud claims was newsworthy and protected by the 1st Amendment. Barring a settlement, the case could go to trial next year.

In a letter to Fox, Newsom’s lawyers said they will voluntarily dismiss the governor’s suit if the outlet retracts its claims that he lied about speaking to Trump.

“We expect that you will give the same airtime in retracting these falsehoods as you spent presenting and amplifying them,” his lawyers stated. “Further, Mr. Watters and Fox News must issue a formal on-air apology for the lie you have spread about Governor Newsom.”

The governor said any damages he might receive from the lawsuit, punitive or otherwise, would go to charity.

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

Turns out Kat Timpf is now one of the people she used to want to throw up on.

Timpf’s transformation was revealed Monday in her return to Fox News’ late-night show “Gutfeld,” where she had a regular co-host seat before going out on maternity leave in February.

That leave included a breast cancer diagnosis that came just 15 hours before she gave birth. Soon after delivery, she had a double mastectomy.

“For you keeping score, Kat had sex, which in getting pregnant cured her cancer, meaning sex cures cancer,” host Greg Gutfeld explained. That said, the show did welcome back its missing libertarian with semi-seriousness.

“We’re super happy Kat’s returned. We missed her dearly. We know the future will still be hard for her. There will be other hurdles, I’m sure, but we have faith in her, as much as I hope she has faith in us, to be here when things get rough or when things get better,” Gutfeld said, “but she still complains. So, please welcome Kat back and congratulate her for kicking out a baby and kicking cancer.”

Timpf quickly laid it all out there about what she’d done on her three-month spring break.

“So, I am boob-free,” said the co-host, who is married since 2021 to former Army Ranger Cameron Friscia. “I am cancer-free as well. So, I’m very, yeah, I’m very excited about it.

“It was, it was a hard thing to go through, and it still is, as you know, you mentioned, I still have reconstruction surgeries ahead. I still have things to go through, tough thing to go through, easy decision to make because, like, I didn’t want to risk my life for some f— 32 As.”

“Been there,” co-host Tyrus joked.

Seriously, Timpf says she loves being a mom, even with the personal drama that accompanied it.

“The whole thing, the way that it happened, it really was truly insane,” she said. “I really had a day between the cancer diagnosis and the labor, and we don’t know for sure what happened. I could have gotten cancer because I was pregnant, and even if I did, he’s still so worth it, because I love him so much. And I know that’s so cheesy, and I know that’s so gross, and I used to hear people say that, and like how I can’t imagine my life without him.

“And I used to want to throw up on them, but now I’m one of those people.”

Tyrus, left, Kat Timpf, Greg Gutfeld, Kennedy and comedian Dave Angelo on Fox News’ late-night show “Gutfeld!”

(Fox News)

“Yeah, you know what?” Gutfeld said. “It’s called a transformational experience where you couldn’t even go back in time and explain to yourself what it’s like.” (He had his own transformational experience slightly before Timpf did: The 60-year-old and wife Elena Moussa welcomed baby girl Mira in December.)

Fill-in host Kennedy, a mother of two, said she was just trying not to cry now that Timpf was back and a mom and healthy, and finally Tyrus got to welcome back his “partner in crime,” saying, “It’s been f— horrible. Thank God you’re back.” He also lobbied for Kennedy to get a permanent chair on “Gutfeld!”

Then he announced he had a surprise for the kiddo he had nicknamed “Big Ben,” thanks to a sonogram picture he saw where the baby was the same length as a wristwatch.

“I have a gift for Big Ben, because every young man starting out in the world needs to have — now, he can’t have it right now, you got to wait, but — he needs to have his own Godzilla,” the comic and former pro wrestler said. “So, this is for Big Ben’s first — this is Big Ben’s first action figure. Not a doll.”

“This ain’t girl stuff. This is an action figure for Big Ben.”

Gutfeld, meanwhile, had already given the gift of advice to Baby Timpf-Friscia. During his monologue, he noted that the little guy “came into the world already a hero, for he saved his mommy’s life.”

“If I were him, I would hold that over her head every chance I get,” Gutfeld said. He specifically suggested the child use it as leverage to get his hands on the car keys before he is legally old enough to drive and possibly to procure some Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

And, because the show has running jokes about the hosts of “The View,” he couldn’t help but compliment Timpf for tackling her cancer, noting she had “tackled it head-on, like Joy Behar shoving aside security at a KFC grand opening.”