Steve Bannon escalated his war on Fox News with calls for the Department of Justice to investigate whether the network is “cheerleading [the U.S.] on to war” with Iran on behalf of a foreign government.
As President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters were rocked by disagreements about whether the U.S. should join Israeli’s attacks against Iran’s nuclear program, Bannon accused the network of not being “true MAGA.”
The president invited Bannon to the White House for lunch on Thursday to signal to the isolationist wing of his base—which also includes Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—that he was taking their concerns seriously.
Their meeting had little impact on his decision-making, though, as just a day later the president gave the go-ahead for the U.S. military to drop more than a dozen massive “bunker-buster” bombs on uranium enrichment sites buried deep underground—sites that only U.S. weapons could penetrate.
Bannon, a former senior Trump adviser who was pushed out of the White House in 2017, opened Friday’s episode of his show War Room with a montage of pro-war voices before calling for a FARA investigation into Fox.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires individuals that do political and advocacy work on behalf of foreign governments, companies, and other organizations to register with the Department of Justice.
“People on the right are now confronting an unpleasant reality, a great unmasking: The Murdochs don’t put America’s interest first,” Bannon told Semafor on Sunday, a day after the U.S. struck Iran. “There needs to be a thorough FARA investigation into Fox’s relationship with a foreign power.”
His implication was that Fox News is a paid Israeli proxy, though there’s no evidence to support that claim, according to Semafor. Reached for comment by Semafor, the network declined to comment. The Daily Beast has contacted Fox News as well.
Bannon’s show did immediately return a request for comment.
FARA doesn’t prohibit any specific activity, but it does require representatives of foreign entities to disclose their relationships and activities, along with any payments made in support of those activities. Failure to comply can result in fines of up to $10,000 and up to five years’ imprisonment.
“I think we need to see if they represent a foreign government as an agent,” Bannon said Friday. “If they go and check the cellphones, see the data, check the emails back and forth, what they were pushing on the American people. What are they pushing on the American people? Where did this information come from?”
He said he and his fellow isolationists agreed with Trump that the Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons but that they believed there were “many paths” to get there.
He also accused Fox and other Iran hawks of selling a “phony sense of urgency” and “upselling” their goals from toppling Iran’s nuclear program to full-scale regime change.
U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have tried to downplay the impact of the strikes, which hit three nuclear sites on Saturday, saying the attacks were not an act of war and that the goal wasn’t regime change.
Trump, however, quickly cast doubt on that claim, writing in a Truth Social post, “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
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