First Draft: 📺 Trump Advisers Trash Fox for Nearly Convincing Him to Blow Up the World

First Draft: 📺 Trump Advisers Trash Fox for Nearly Convincing Him to Blow Up the World On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, benefiting Americans 65 and older. This week, the Trump administration announced an end to key subsidies under the program, affecting millions of older voters. (substackcdn.com)Happy Thursday! Swin here. Last October, I reported on how (zeteo.com › trump addiction fox news american democracy) “our country is falling apart because one old man, Trump advisers and former administration officials say, won’t stop ‘yelling’ at his TV.” Nowadays, it’s not just a U.S. problem; it belongs to the world. And that goes triple for the week when President Donald Trump is once again insisting (huffpost.com) “we are going to beat the fucking shit out of” Iran.In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll dive right into how Trump’s addiction to his television set has brought us thiiiiiiiiiis close to a global catastrophe that would somehow be worse than all the other global catastrophes he’s already caused. Plus, Anthony Fauci takes the Fifth more than 100 times in front of a panel of grandstanding Republican senators, in a tawdry spectacle truly worthy of this debased political age.Subscribe now (zeteo.com › subscribe?) (substackcdn.com)‘Finish the Job’ (substackcdn.com)Trump in the Oval Office on July 29, 2026. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.If you’re a reporter covering the inner workings of the Trumpland elite, day in and day out, you hear the R-word a lot. Constantly. It’s unavoidable and incredibly annoying, but it is what it is. It’s their favorite word (montclair.edu), apparently. Trump administration officials and their prominent allies love using it, and when I’m doing my job (which involves communicating with many of them regularly), it’s probably the noun I hear most (youtu.be › R9Fx7pKKU3s).I bring this up because in the past three weeks or so, multiple Trump administration officials have repeatedly used a very specific term when complaining to me about the president’s illegal war on Iran: “Fox News retards.” (I’m sorry; I hate the slur, too. This is how they all talk.) Several others close to President Trump and his White House who I’ve spoken to lately also aggressively use the R-word to describe perennial guests and commentators at the conservative cable-news giant.Subscribe now (zeteo.com › subscribe?)The reason is simple: President Trump is a TV addict, and he looks to Fox as a bastion of emotional comfort, (mis)information streams, and vociferous political support. There is basically one major institution left that Trump trusts and is glued to that has been routinely pumping out “finish the job”-style Iran war propaganda, and that’s Fox. Most of the professional Republican class desperately want Trump to move on and back off a war that’s driving up gas prices, wreaking havoc on the administration, and potentially dooming Republicans in the midterms. They want Trump to tamp the bloodlust down a smidge. Fox has been pushing him for months to ratchet it up, and it’s had a conspicuous effect during the past two weeks when the war h