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EXCLUSIVE — SINGMAN RISING: Throughout former President Donald Trump’s progressively fraught relationship with Fox since leaving the White House, little-known Fox News Digital reporter Brooke Singman has seen her stock soar, becoming one of the ex-president’s trusted messengers and landing dozens of exclusive interviews with him. “It’s what comms people say: ‘Give it to Brooke.’ She will print it as a press release on Fox Digital,” one Republican operative told The Daily Beast. For example, in the wake of the FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago last year, the former president was criticized for fomenting violence among his supporters toward the government. In an August 2022 interview with Singman, however, Trump asserted that he “will do whatever” he can “to help the country,” adding that the “temperature has to be brought down.” The chumminess with Trump’s inner circle has caused other GOP presidential campaigns to grow wary of Singman. “I think that there’s a lack of trust there,” one rival campaign aide said. “I would be hesitant in putting my principal in front of her because of that reason. Whatever you say around her gets back to the Trump team.” In fact, the general feeling is that she could be angling for a job in a prospective second Trump administration. “I’m sure she’d jump at the chance to be press secretary,” said one Fox source. Singman has recently reached out to CNN for a potential job, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks, and has been meeting with talent agency CAA about a potential move. NewsNation also reached out to Singman in May about a potential role, according to sources, but she ended up rejecting the offer due to the network’s relatively small audience. A pair of CAA agents also followed Singman on Instagram recently. Another insider added that she flaunts her close relationship with Team Trump. “She brags about it,” the source noted. Singman and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Confider subscribers are getting an early preview of this story. Read the rest of our exclusive profile on Brooke Singman’s meteoric rise at Fox News tomorrow at The Daily Beast.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/The Hill TV
EXCLUSIVE — GRAY AREA: While anchors at the self-described “centrist” cable news channel NewsNation blast MSNBC for supposedly “pandering to the far left” in its coverage of the bloody Gaza conflict, the network’s corporate cousin faces its own internal drama over a host’s strident criticism of Israel following the Hamas terror attacks. Briahna Joy Gray, co-host of The Hill’s online morning show Rising, has drawn fire from staffers at the Beltway political outlet for what some describe as her “pro-Hamas” and “fringe” commentary. During recent broadcasts, she has gotten into extremely heated and at times profane arguments with libertarian co-host Robby Soave over Soave’s belief that the “American Left,” namely Black Lives Matter and Democratic Socialists of America, is backing Hamas. Besides getting into literal shouting matches with her co-star, the former Bernie Sanders press secretary has faced internal criticism for, as one Hill newsroom source put it, seemingly “finding ways to justify Hamas’ actions.” In broadcasts last week, Gray fumed over conflicting reports about whether Hamas terrorists decapitated babies, suggesting it was a propagandist lie to dehumanize Palestinians and justify genocide. She also seemed to downplay the killing of Israeli children, describing it as part of combat. “We also have to hold space for 140 Palestinian children who have been killed in this last weekend of conflict,” Gray said on Wednesday. “And it is awful, even if we don’t have the same images of them and even if they were killed from bombs from the sky instead of in hand-to-hand combat.” Another point of contention is how she appeared to equate the terror attacks with Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression of Gaza. “Violence is not a violation of international law. Resistance is not a violation of international law,” she declared on Thursday, referencing the American Revolution and the Ukraine war as analogous situations. Several Hill reporters expressed concern over Gray’s “reckless” commentary, worrying that her status as co-host of their morning show would make their job talking to lawmakers in Washington harder. “Where is our leadership? Clearly, no one from Nexstar is paying attention,” one source said. “There is no way they would be OK with this.” Notably, the uproar comes just a year after The Hill ditched longtime Rising contributor Katie Halper for calling out Israel as an “apartheid state” over its treatment of Palestinians. In fact, the program has been a source of controversy and friction at the outlet for some time, and has seen a fair share of its hosts leave abruptly. Gray’s commentary has yet to be noticed by NewsNation, which is also owned by Nexstar. The channel has taken on a largely pro-Israel stance in its reporting of the conflict, similar to the rest of conservative and mainstream media, leading it to take swings at MSNBC for its “victim blaming” of Israel, specifically taking aim at Muslim-American hosts. “That ridiculous commentary set the tone for much of MSNBC’s coverage throughout the weekend, where many hosts seemed determined to say, ‘Well, what about the Palestinians?’” NewsNation anchor Dan Abrams, for instance, raged last week. Gray and a representative for Nexstar did not respond to a request for comment.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
BATTLE LINES: The turmoil hasn’t been limited to Nexstar newsrooms. NBC News had its own dust-up last week after an employee in the engineering department used an all-staff Slack channel to promote a Microsoft Teams event for staffers to grieve the lives lost in Hamas’ attack and discuss on-the-ground stories from family and friends. But the post devolved into chaos after a producer for MSNBC’s Ali Velshi questioned a lack of Palestinian representation at the event. The engineering staffer then tagged an HR rep and claimed the meeting was “not about Palestinians and Jews/Israelis.” “Anyone entering this group needs to denounce terror and what happened on Saturday,” the engineering staffer wrote, noting that claims of “freedom fighting” and rationalizations “do not belong here.” The producer rejected the insinuation, asking the staffer: “Why are you speaking for me? Your comments are extremely offensive.” They accused the engineering staffer of “equating the loss of Palestinian civilian life with terrorism and saying that I have no right to grieve, as you do.” “You’re putting words in my mouth demanding that I denounce terror, as if I had anything to do with it,” they continued. “Not sure how you have managed to twist all this from asking, where can I, as someone with friends who are currently trapped in both Gaza and Israel, go to grieve?” The back-and-forth was shut down by an NBCU comms rep’s reply, who promised a follow-up event for both sides to engage, but it was indicative of how the nuances of the Middle East conflict have drawn frontlines within some news organizations. (The Slack exchange was first reported by Semafor.) Those, too, have broken out into a public sphere. Tate James, a video producer at NBC News Digital, threw some public shade at chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel reporting an Israeli military spokesperson’s claims that “Hamas likely boobytrapped the road heading south from northern Gaza” and caused an explosion that killed 70 Palestinians. “[T]o be clear, the spokesman who said this also said he’s not an expert and the evidence he provided was that some people tweeted about one video,” James tweeted. “Many people, not only here, but across the country and the world, have understandably been struggling to comprehend the horrors that occurred last weekend and the ensuing war,” an NBCU News Group spokesperson said in a statement. “We are giving our team members the support and space that they need during this time.”
MSNBC’S RATINGS RUT: Whether fair or not, the painting of MSNBC’s Israel coverage as being too sympathetic to Hamas may have impacted its ratings since the conflict started last weekend. Starting with the Sunday after the terror attacks through this past Thursday, MSNBC averaged 1.209 million total viewers and 133,000 in the key 25-54 demographic during its primetime hours. Compared to the previous week, the network witnessed a drop of 29 percent in total primetime viewership and 23 percent in the demo. The network’s daily audience also slipped to 907,000 viewers, marking a 24 percent decline from the previous week. The other cable news networks, meanwhile, have seen their numbers surge due to round-the-clock war coverage in the same period. Fox News’ daily viewership has surged by 30 percent and skyrocketed to 51 percent in the key demo. The conservative channel’s primetime ratings have also seen a boost, jumping 13 percent in total viewers and 33 percent in the 25-54 demographic. CNN has also experienced a ratings jump across the board for its breaking coverage of the conflict, posting gains of 17 percent in daily viewership and 38 percent in its primetime demo audience.
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IN PLAIN SIGHT: The Washington Post lost congressional reporter Camila DeChalus to her old stomping ground CNN… Emile Doak is stepping down as executive director of The American Conservative, the magazine co-founded by right-wing firebrand Pat Buchanan.
MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK
—Taking issue with the BBC’s much-criticized decision to refrain from labeling Hamas militants “terrorists,” Jewish sports reporter Noah Abrahams announced that he was resigning from the British news organization in protest. The BBC, however, noted that Abrahams was a freelancer and didn’t “have any future work lined up with the” broadcaster. Read more about that here.
—MAGA pillow magnate and election conspiracist Mike Lindell, whose lawyers ditched him recently because he has “no money,” recently paused his ubiquitous television spots amid escalating financial struggles. But he vowed that MyPillow would be coming back with a vengeance. Read about it here.
—Employees of The Washington Post were informed last week that the vaunted newspaper will offer buyouts to roughly 10 percent of its workforce as part of a plan “designed to reduce our workforce” by 240 people. Read more about the job cuts here and here.
—The Epoch Times has floated a heap of unfounded conspiracy theories on the right, including Donald Trump’s claims about a stolen election, and made millions. Read Beast alum Brandy Zadronzy’s profile of the conservative media operation here.
—This Anna Delvey-esque story has it all: An Indian prince. A duplicitous lover. Crimes and cons across multiple continents. An AirMail reporter and editor detail here how nearly none of it was real.
—Six BBC News reporters were taken off the air after either tweeting or liking posts that showed support for Palestine or criticized Israel. Read more about the actions the BBC is “urgently investigating” here.
***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***
In its haste to lay blame for the escalating tensions between Israel and Hamas, Fox News suggested last week that President Joe Biden’s chilly relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have been a contributing factor to the bloody terror attack. To make that case, several hosts claimed that Biden hadn’t invited Netanyahu to the White House yet. “It appears that the White House has allowed their feelings about Bibi Netanyahu…to impede them from having an open dialogue with him and showing support for him that would be strengthening the U.S.-Israeli alliance,” Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum declared last week. “[Netanyahu] hasn’t even been invited to the White House which is unprecedented, I think, in presidential U.S. history.” The only problem with MacCallum’s statement was that it was absolutely false. When Biden and Netanyahu met in New York City last month, the president extended an invite for a White House visit before the end of the year. MacCallum, however, wasn’t the only one to make that false claim on Fox’s airwaves. Sitting in on The Five’s panel, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade repeated the lie, only for liberal panelist Jessica Tarlov to immediately correct him. “Eight months later?” Kilmeade grumbled in response.
Confider will return next week with more saucy scooplets. In the meantime, subscribe here and send us questions, complaints, or tips here or call/text us 551 655 2343.
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