Abstract
What position do far-right news outlets occupy in contemporary U.S. politics, and how did Trump use the power of the presidency to contribute to their rise among Republican legislators and mainstream American media? We posit that Trump’s position as president, in conjunction with his populist communication style that favored far-right outlets, contributed to the legitimation of such outlets. We first analyze Trump’s tweets during his presidency (January 2017–January 2021) mentioning three far-right outlets (One America News Network, Newsmax, and Breitbart), conceptualizing these messages as authority signals that symbolically lend legitimacy to the media sources. We then provide rich descriptive information regarding subsequent mentions of the far-right outlets in four national mainstream newspapers as well as appearances by GOP (Republican) members of Congress in the far-right outlets. We find significant and positive correlations between Trump’s tweets and mainstream media coverage of One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, and significant and positive correlations between Trump’s tweets and GOP Congressional interviews on OANN and Newsmax. Together, these results represent an example of presidential authority signals that bolster far-right outlets and aid in their legitimization among legislators and the mainstream press. The findings shed light on the role of political leaders in the recent mainstreaming of the far-right across many democratic countries.
Recent journalistic accounts and polling suggest a nontrivial portion of voters now turn to far-right news outlets to learn about politics. In the latter part of Trump’s presidency, viewership for Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN) surged compared to earlier years 1 (Richwine 2020; Stelter 2020). A 2021 study of roughly 10,000 Americans found that 10% of respondents reported a far-right outlet as one of their most-used sources of news (Lorenz et al. 2023). A 2022 poll found 41% and 31% of Republicans state they trust Newsmax and OANN, respectively (Economist/YouGov 2022). Yet beyond this, little is known about the prominence of these outlets and the factors that help account for the rise in once-obscure far-right media.
This paper first provides novel descriptive data regarding the attention paid to far-right outlets in American politics by mainstream media and Republican politicians. We consider far-right outlets as hyper-partisan sources that promote extreme conservative views (Kaiser et al. 2020; Rae 2021), are prone to sharing misinformation, and do not follow traditional journalistic norms (Benkler et al. 2018). 2 In studying far-right and hyperpartisan media, we focus specifically on Breitbart, Newsmax, and OANN. This paper also examines how political elites’ rhetoric aids in far-right outlets’ elevation, specifically highlighting the role former President Donald Trump’s supportive tweets played in increasing coverage of these outlets by the mainstream press and increasing interviews granted by Republican members of Congress to these outlets. Taken together, we provide rich descriptive information regarding the attention far-right outlets enjoy in contemporary American politics and evidence of one pathway to that increased attention.
We view this increased attention paid to far-right outlets (henceforth, FROs) as evidence of their legitimation among the mainstream media and Republican members of Congress. Journalistic outlets gain credibility and authority through discourse that is accepted by others (Carlson 2017). We suggest Trump’s position as president, coupled with his populist rhetoric that attacked the institutional press and prioritized less critical FROs, helped signal the authority of far-right sources. Increased attention through coverage of and interviews granted to the FROs in response to Trump’s authority signals suggests their acceptance and the FROs’ legitimation in the eyes of the institutional press and GOP legislators.
Prior research studies the influential role of politicians’ rhetoric in elevating FROs among followers: Trump’s tweets about outlets like OANN increase rank-and-file Republicans’ interest in consuming them (Archer 2023). Yet, little is known about how other key actors in U.S. politics—particularly members of Congress and mainstream media—respond to increased communication about far-right media. Thus, our overarching research questions ask: How much attention is paid to FROs by Republican members of Congress and the broader media ecosystem, and how did Trump use the power of the presidency to aid in FROs’ rise?
To address these questions, we first analyze Trump’s tweets that mention our three FROs, conceptualizing these as authority signals that seek to bestow legitimacy on these media sources. We then provide novel descriptive data of mainstream media mentions of FROs, as well as interviews granted to these outlets by Republican members of Congress. Finally, we report positive correlations between Trump’s tweets and mainstream media coverage of OANN and Newsmax. We also find positive correlations between Trump’s tweets and GOP interviews on OANN and Newsmax. Taken together, this paper helps situate FROs in the current American political landscape and suggests presidential authority can be leveraged to promote FROs, aiding in their elevation and legitimation. Even more, this study provides evidence of the rise of far-right media in the U.S. beyond surveys (e.g., Knight Foundation 2022) and builds on literature examining the influential role of elite rhetoric in shaping views about media (e.g., Smith 2010).
Authority Signaling as a Means to Legitimize Far-Right Outlets
Our interest lies in describing FROs’ place in U.S. politics and understanding their elevation within the context of Donald Trump’s presidency. News outlets gain legitimacy through a relational process as their authority is “performed through discourse” (Carlson 2017: 10). By sharing and amplifying FROs with favorable coverage, Trump signaled to fellow Republican Party elites and the institutional press that FROs are authoritative sources. Importantly, authority and legitimation require acknowledgment and acceptance by others (Carlson 2017; Friedrich 1972: 90). To shed light on whether Trump’s signaling about FROs was accepted, we focus our study on GOP legislators’ appearances on FROs and mainstream media coverage of FROs in response to Trump. Increases in both are evidence that the mainstream press and Republican elites view FROs as both worthy of attention and authoritative, or having “the right to be listened to” (Carlson 2017: 8).
Trump’s ability to elevate FROs stemmed from his position as president. During this time, Trump’s power increased exponentially beyond that derived from his career as a businessperson and entertainer. His de jure authority granted by the election (Herbst 2003) coupled with the symbolic power of the presidency, which draws further media attention (Carlson et al. 2021; Scacco and Coe 2021), enhanced his ability to elevate FROs through authority signaling. Authority signals implicitly or explicitly imply the legitimacy of individuals or ideas (Chadwick et al. 2020). Trump frequently employed authority signaling in his engagement with FROs, especially on X, formerly Twitter. 3 Before his account was banned, Trump could tweet news from FROs as president and suggest his followers consume it (explicit signaling), or he could implicitly signal authority by agreeing to be questioned by these outlets over others. Through these actions, Trump signaled the authority of FROs, their content, and the extreme views in which they are grounded.
Notably, Trump is not unique in his ability to signal the authority of far-right, anti-democratic media. Though political and media contexts differ, of course, by country, all leaders of countries have this power. The case of Trump sheds light on how other leaders could leverage their authority to normalize far-right ideologies and media for illiberal aims (Mudde 2022). Given this, we must be attuned to such forms of influence, particularly as they relate to the mainstreaming of the far-right (Brown et al. 2021), which is on the rise across many democratic countries. As described below, conditions were ripe in the U.S. for Trump to use his presidential power to contribute to the mainstreaming of the far-right among the American media and fellow members of his party (Mudde 2022). In so doing, we also suggest similar processes can—and likely do—occur in other countries.
Populist Communication in a Highly Fragmented Media Landscape
Trump’s signaling of FROs aligns with his broader populist communication style (de Vreese et al. 2018; Jagers and Walgrave 2007) and was made possible by the vast array of conservative outlets in the fragmented media landscape. Generally, populism emphasizes the tension between people and “corrupt elites” (Fawzi 2019; Mudde 2004: 543), which can refer to political elites, media, the state, intellectuals, or economic powers (Jagers and Walgrave 2007: 324). With his presidential power and a populist communication strategy, Trump elevated FROs that praised him and denigrated the perceived oppositional mainstream media (Meeks 2020) that published critical or investigative articles. These praises and attacks are also instances of authority signaling.
The “first generation” of conservative media leaders built the foundation for the right-wing media we know today between the 1930s and 1970s (Hemmer 2016). GOP politicians of this era (e.g., former Vice President Spiro Agnew) also expressed displeasure with and alleged bias against the mainstream media. These political and media figures paved the way for what would emerge as the “second generation” of leaders alongside an insular right-wing ecosystem that exists counter to the mainstream (Benkler et al. 2018; Hemmer 2016). Fox News, which was created in 1996 and became the pinnacle of the right-wing media ecosystem (Benkler et al. 2018), enjoyed Trump’s favor without exception in the past (Meeks 2020). He even sourced presidential talking points from Fox News (Carlson et al. 2021: 112–3).
However, after his first two years in office, Trump increasingly attacked Fox News, often alleging the channel was biased against him or attacking their ratings and reporters (Archer 2023). At the same time, he drew attention to newer, more loyal FROs, such as OANN and Newsmax (Archer 2023). In an exemplary tweet criticizing Fox News, Trump wrote, “Many great alternatives are forming & exist. Try @OANN & @newsmax, among others!” FROs like Breitbart, OANN, and Newsmax represent a newer, more extreme class of right-wing outlets: Breitbart was founded in 2007, Newsmax launched in 1998 but started its cable channel in 2014, and OANN began broadcasting in 2013. Though Fox News still attracts more viewers, Newsmax and OANN have become increasingly competitive with Fox since the 2020 election (for more on their ratings and histories, see Bomey 2020 4 ). Furthermore, the Supplemental Material includes original data depicting the three FROs’ Twitter followers throughout Trump’s presidency. 5 After the 2020 election, Newsmax and OANN especially experienced surges in followers, which aligns with journalistic accounts documenting their Trump-friendly election denialism and increased popularity among his supporters 6 (e.g., Barr 2020a).
We distinguish between FROs (e.g., OANN, Newsmax, and Breitbart) and Fox News because the latter is less politically extreme than its peers within the right-wing media ecosystem (Lorenz et al. 2023), though their topic coverage overlaps (Benkler et al. 2018). Unlike simply partisan news outlets, FROs can be viewed as “hyper-partisan news,” a term that accounts for the underlying populist tension and pitting of far-right media against the elite mainstream media (Rae 2021). Hyper-partisan news outlets are “transgressive in style, openly ideological, extremely biased in favour of a political leader and attacks the other side’s point of view, often at the expense of facts” (Rae 2021: 1118, emphasis added). Fox News only occasionally criticizes Trump, but FROs are even more loyal. OANN and Newsmax’s delayed acceptance of the 2020 presidential election outcome is illustrative of their firm pro-Trump stance 7 (e.g., Barr 2020b). Similarly, Peacock et al. (2021) explain that “what sets [hyper-partisan news] apart from traditional partisan media. . .is their tendency toward anti-system messages (e.g., anti-government, antiparty, and/or anti-mainstream media)” (p. 214). Taken together, the anti-system and extremely pro-Trump stance of FROs shed light on Trump’s motivation for legitimizing them and attempting to create the impression that the far-right media are de facto positioned as equivalent—but opposite—to the mainstream press. 8
Operationalizing Trump’s Authority Signals and Evidence of Their Acceptance
Trump’s tweets about FROs can be viewed as authority signaling; by highlighting their content or merely mentioning them alongside other news outlets, Trump indicated that he viewed these FROs as trustworthy and a better choice for news (Chadwick et al. 2020) than the mainstream news sources he frequently attacked (Kreis 2017; Meeks 2020; Ross and Rivers 2018). Beyond positive mentions of an outlet, authority signaling includes promoting an article, show, or appearance on the outlet.
Because acceptance of these authority signals by others is crucial for meaningful authority and constitutes the legitimacy of power (e.g., Carlson 2017; Friedrich 1972: 90), we examine the acceptance of Trump’s tweets about FROs in mainstream media’s coverage of these outlets, focusing on mentions in four mainstream newspapers: the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal. These national outlets have the largest U.S. circulations 9 and set the agendas of other news outlets (Golan 2006; Langer and Gruber 2021); therefore, they are representative of how the institutional press responds to Trump’s rhetoric about FROs.
We also examine interviews granted by Republican members of Congress to FROs as evidence of acceptance of Trump’s authority signals. The Republican Party’s acceptance of Trump’s candidacy solidified his authority and paved the way for his presidency. As a result, as Mudde (2022: 103) writes, “the Republican Party can be seen as his far-right party” (original emphasis). Other Republican politicians following Trump’s lead suggest acceptance of his authority. As such, we expect that GOP legislators will grant interviews to FROs as a response to Trump’s endorsement of them.
In sum, we expect positive correlations between Trump’s authority signaling about FROs and the dependent variables of GOP politician interviews in far-right media and mainstream media coverage of these outlets. Such patterns would support our theoretical argument that Trump’s authority signaling represents one powerful means by which FROs were legitimated in the eyes of Republican legislators and the mainstream press.
Methods
The Supplemental Material provides an overview table of the datasets for our key independent and dependent variables, and we describe the data collection process in greater detail below.
Trump’s Tweets
Following Meeks (2020), we downloaded all of Trump’s tweets from the Trump Twitter Archive. The Trump Twitter Archive is a public database that previously used the Twitter Scraper script to download and archive tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account before switching to checking Twitter every 60 seconds and recording all of Trump’s tweets. 10 We searched for Trump’s tweets that contain the official Twitter handles of our three FROs (“@OANN,” “@Newsmax” or “@newsmax_media,” and “@BreitbartNews”) to identify posts mentioning these outlets. 11 We also searched for tweets including “@FoxNews” for context. For our time span of January 1, 2017 to January 8, 2021, 12 the archive returned 119 OANN tweets, 23 Newsmax tweets, and 136 Breitbart tweets. For reference, there were 528 Fox News tweets and a total of 26,380 tweets by Trump during this period including retweets.
We further categorized each tweet mentioning each of the FROs using a modified version of Meeks’s (2020) coding protocol. 13 Specifically, each tweet was categorized as (1) a negative statement about the FRO, (2) a positive statement about the FRO, (3) a promotion of an upcoming or current appearance on the FRO by Trump or an administration official, or (4) an endorsement of the FRO via sharing a link or story from the FRO, retweeting one of its posts, or encouraging people to check out the FRO. Tweets could contain more than one category.
Figure 1 illustrates the number of Trump’s tweets about the FROs and Fox News throughout his presidency. Notably, mentions of all three FROs generally increase over time, especially in the second half of his administration. Our coding finds that none of his tweets about OANN, Newsmax, or Breitbart were negative in tone. Instead, the largest percentage of Trump’s tweets about each FRO (OANN: 78%, N = 93; Newsmax: 65%, N = 15; Breitbart: 99%, N = 134) was an endorsement. These authority signals explicitly aimed to elevate the FROs. Notably, this also unfolded amidst a backdrop in which Trump tweeted less frequently about Fox News, and his tweets about the channel became increasingly negative (Archer 2023).
Trump’s tweets, January 2017–December 2020.
Taken together, Trump’s rhetoric about these conservative news sources shifted throughout his presidency: he increasingly promoted far-right alternatives such as OANN, Newsmax, and Breitbart in the second half of his administration yet he tweeted less about Fox News in the final months of his presidency.
Mainstream Media Coverage of FROs
To capture mainstream media’s coverage of FROs throughout the Trump presidency, we used ProQuest to identify all news articles in the online versions of The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal that mention OANN, Newsmax, or Breitbart. 14 Again, these newspapers have the largest U.S. circulation (Turvill 2021) and set the news agendas for other outlets (Golan 2006; Langer and Gruber 2021). We count the number of articles that mention each FRO, as the unit of analysis in our models is the number of each newspaper’s articles covering an FRO in each month. If a story and/or its headline mentions an FRO multiple times, then that counts as one article covering the FRO in our dataset.
Republican Members of Congress Appearing in FROs
Our second dependent variable of interest examines the frequency of appearances by Republican members of Congress (MoCs) on our three FROs. We collected these data from two sources: YouTube and NELA-GT. Because our interest lies in GOP MoCs’ acceptance of Trump’s authority signaling about FROs, we wanted only to capture direct appearances (in the case of OANN and Newsmax) or exclusive interviews (in the case of Breitbart).
To capture appearances in our two video-based sources (OANN and Newsmax), we turned to their YouTube channels, as we were unable to find transcripts of their broadcasts for the entire Trump presidency. Using the YouTube Data API (v3) (Google n.d.) and YouTube Analytics API (Google n.d.), we retrieved the titles and descriptions of all videos from OANN and Newsmax between January 20, 2017 and January 19, 2021, that contained the full name of a GOP MoC (for code, see Jang 2022). For each MoC, we further limited the search to the period they were in office. This yielded 684 videos for OANN and 710 for Newsmax. In examining the data, we noticed false positives wherein a MoC was mentioned in the description of the video but did not give an interview to the outlet. An analysis of titles and descriptions for true positives revealed consistent rhetorical cues related to a direct appearance of a GOP MoC. We added these cues 15 to the query, which yielded 170 videos for OANN and 214 for Newsmax. If a video’s title and/or description contained the name of a GOP MoC during the time period in which they served, plus at least one of the cue words within four words before or after their name, this counts as one appearance in our dataset. In our models, we analyze the number of appearances on these FROs per month.
To identify when a GOP MoC gave an exclusive interview to Breitbart, we used the NELA-GT database, which includes large multi-labeled news datasets that have been collected and published every year since 2018 by the MeLa Lab to support long-term news research. 16 Breitbart, like many other digital-native news sites, does not often conduct original interviews—a significant amount of their reporting comes second hand (e.g., “Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said last night on Fox News”). As such, interviews actually conducted by Breitbart staff often mention this specifically (e.g., “Jim Jordan spoke to Breitbart News”). To identify true positives, we examined Breitbart articles that mentioned GOP legislators we knew to be frequent interviewees (Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Kevin McCarthy). This, in consort with literature on journalistic rhetoric on sourcing (Mellado et al. 2021), yielded verb cues we used to strengthen the query. 17 As with the YouTube data, we modified the query to return stories from Breitbart containing the name of a GOP MoC during the time period in which they served and having one of the verbs located within four words before or after the string “breitbart news.” We analyze the total number of appearances of Republican MoCs per month in our models; each article sourcing or referencing an exclusive interview with Breitbart counts as one appearance in our dataset.
Results
We first provide novel descriptive evidence of the attention paid to FROs in the contemporary media and political landscape by describing our key variables. Next, we consider each dependent variable’s relationship to Trump’s authority signaling tweets first with bivariate and concurrent correlations. We then assess models with the lagged independent variable that control for the lagged dependent variable, Time and Time2 to help account for industry-wide patterns and shocks to the media environment (e.g., technological advances) that would affect our dependent variables across this period, and month-level fixed effects (i.e., dummy variables for the months of January, February, March, and so on, with December as the suppressed baseline) to account for variation due to between-month differences in news cycles. We run these models separately for each FRO so they examine within-FRO variation; this helps account for differences across the outlets that could affect their proclivities to be covered in mainstream media outlets or MoCs’ willingness to appear on them. Robust standard errors are also used. While we use these modeling choices to sharpen our understanding of the relationship between Trump’s tweets and our two dependent variables, other factors, such as changing norms in the broader political ecosystem, may not be fully captured in our analyses. Therefore, we remind readers that these data are observational, and our findings are ultimately correlational. 18
Far-Right Outlets in Mainstream News
Figure 2 illustrates the number of mainstream media stories mentioning OANN, Newsmax, and Breitbart each month over the course of Trump’s presidency. Generally, we observe increases in monthly mainstream media coverage of OANN and Newsmax over time, especially in the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today. The trend lines for the Wall Street Journal, the closest ideological competitor to the FROs, are rather flat suggesting potential reluctance by the WSJ to remind audiences of another option for political information. Finally, mainstream media coverage of Breitbart decreased over time, a pattern likely related to the political fortunes of its co-founder Steve Bannon. Given his connection to Breitbart, the FRO was likely covered more by mainstream outlets during Bannon’s tenure in the Trump administration in 2017.
Articles mentioning FROs in the mainstream media, January 2017–January 2021.
We view this increased coverage of FROs as suggestive of their legitimation in the eyes of the mainstream media but also probed further to characterize the tone of this coverage. A graduate research assistant unaware of our hypotheses conducted a content analysis of 10% (N = 298 articles) of the mainstream media articles mentioning one of the FROs, coding the articles as supportive, neutral, or critical of the FRO. 19 There were no positive stories about the FROs. Instead, the results suggest the mainstream press largely covers FROs in a neutral manner, as 86% of stories about Breitbart, 85% of stories about Newsmax, and 75% of stories about OANN were neutral. There were fewer critical articles (which included fact checks): 14% of stories about Breitbart, 15% of stories about Newsmax, and 25% of stories about OANN were classified as critical. While the downstream effects on public opinion are outside the scope of this paper, the largely neutral coverage suggests mainstream media may further legitimize FROs among their audiences. Those who read such coverage may respond by simply viewing FROs as another neutral, relevant information source about politics.
To understand the relationship between Trump’s authority signals about FROs and their coverage in mainstream media, we follow Wells et al. (2020) and report both concurrent and lagged regression models. In the initial bivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions in Table 1, we uncover mostly positive and significant correlations between Trump’s tweets about OANN and Newsmax and their mentions in mainstream media, yielding some support for our expectations. Yet for Breitbart, the correlations are negative and insignificant.
Trump’s Tweets and Mainstream Media (MSM) Coverage of FROs, Bivariate.
Note. Cell entry is OLS coefficient with standard error in parentheses. FRO = far-right outlet; OANN = One America News Network.
p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. ***p < .001, two-tailed.
In models that account for the temporal order of our argument, we regress coverage of each FRO in each mainstream outlet on Trump’s tweets about the FRO lagged by one month. 20 Because the lagged dependent variable and month-level fixed effects are included as controls, coefficients for our key independent variable (Trump’s tweets) correspond to the average within-month change in mainstream media coverage of the FRO. 21
Table 2 first reports the effects of Trump’s tweets about OANN on subsequent mainstream media coverage of OANN. While all four columns indicate positive coefficients, as expected, only two approach marginal significance: the New York Times (b = 0.64, p = .11) and Washington Post (b = 0.55, p = .11). Table 2 also reports positive coefficients for Newsmax for all four mainstream news sources but only two reach significance: mentions in the Washington Post (b = 3.82, p < .001) and USA Today (b = 1.22, p < .001). Substantively, these effect sizes are quite large and suggest, for instance, that each of Trump’s tweets mentioning Newsmax corresponds with a nearly four-article increase in the Washington Post’s mentions of Newsmax. Finally, Table 2 reports mostly negative coefficients for Breitbart, against expectations, though only the effect for the New York Times reaches marginal significance (b = −0.34, p = .10). 22
Trump’s Tweets and Mainstream Media (MSM) Coverage of FROs.
Note. Cell entry is OLS coefficient with robust standard error in parentheses. FRO = far-right outlet; OANN = One America News Network.
p < .05. **p < 0.01. ***p < .001, two-tailed.
Republican MoCs Appearing In/On Far-Right Outlets
Figure 3 illustrates the number of interviews given to all three FROs during the Trump presidency, broken down by members of the House of Representatives and Senate. We follow previous work and separate the two chambers given their differences in re-election cycles and the ideological makeup of their constituencies, which may contribute to differences in who appears in/on the news (Wagner and Gruszczynski 2018). We observe increases over time for all three FROs: GOP MoCs in both chambers increasingly appeared on OANN, Newsmax, and Breitbart. In our dataset, only nine interviews were granted to OANN by Republican legislators (of both chambers) in 2017, but that number rose to 23 in 2018, 42 in 2019, and 90 in 2020. From January 2017 through the end of 2021, 47 different Republican members of the House and 22 Republican senators appeared on the channel. The two House members who appeared on OANN most often were Devin Nunes (14 times) and Jim Jordan (12 times); the two senators who appeared most often were Rand Paul (six times) and Mike Lee (five times). Some members of GOP Congressional leadership appeared on OANN as well: Senate Majority Leader (and later Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell appeared four times, and House Majority Leader (and later House Minority Leader) Kevin McCarthy appeared four times. Steve Scalise, Republican Whip, appeared seven times.
Appearances by Republican members of Congress on FROs, January 2017–January 2021.
For Newsmax, Republican legislators granted only two interviews in 2017, five interviews in 2018, eight interviews in 2019, and then 76 interviews in 2020. From January 2017 through the end of 2021, 49 different Republican members of the House and 20 Republican senators appeared on Newsmax. GOP MoCs appeared on Newsmax at much higher rates than OANN–five appeared ten times or more: Jim Jordan (19 times), Doug Collins (17 times), Matt Gaetz (16 times), Rand Paul (11 times), and Ted Cruz (10 times). Mark Meadows, who later served as Trump’s Chief of Staff, appeared seven times, and GOP leadership also appeared on Newsmax: Kevin McCarthy four times, Steve Scalise four times, and Mitch McConnell two times.
Clearly, in the latter years of the Trump administration, both OANN and Newsmax experienced upticks in the number of interviews granted to them by Republican legislators. These interviews were not confined to the new wave of conservative politicians elected in 2018 and included key figures in GOP leadership.
MoCs appeared on Breitbart the most frequently, likely due to the outlet’s strong connection to Bannon and the resulting name recognition it enjoyed predating Trump’s presidency. Republican legislators granted 122 interviews to Breitbart in 2018, 326 in 2019, and 733 in 2020. 23 Since Bannon left the Trump administration in August 2017, the increases in interviews granted to Breitbart in the latter part of Trump’s presidency are striking. From January 2018 through the end of 2021, 162 different Republican members of the House and 58 Republican senators gave interviews to Breitbart. Notable for the number of interviews they granted to Breitbart are House members Ron DeSantis (now Florida’s governor, 79 times), Jim Jordan (56 times), and Marsha Blackburn (now a senator, 51 times), and Senators Tom Cotton (76 times), Josh Hawley (55 times), Ted Cruz (49 times), Rand Paul (49 times), Mitt Romney (45 times), and Kelly Loeffler (42 times). GOP leadership also gave interviews to Breitbart with Kevin McCarthy granting 103 interviews, Mitch McConnell granting 66, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan granting 30, and former GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney granting 38.
Similar to the last section, we present below the bivariate and concurrent models first to provide initial correlations. Then, we present models that regress the number of appearances by GOP MoCs by chamber on Trump’s tweets about each FRO from the previous month to model the temporal order of interest with controls for the lagged dependent variable, Time, Time2, and month-level fixed effects; robust standard errors were used. 24
The bivariate, concurrent models in Table 3 provide initial evidence in support of our general expectations for positive relationships between Trump’s tweets about a given FRO and appearances by MoCs on that outlet. Positive and significant correlations emerge between Trump’s mentions of OANN and GOP members of the House and Senate’s appearances on the outlet. Similarly, House Republicans increasingly appeared on Newsmax in months when Trump tweeted more about the channel. Finally, Republican senators were more likely to appear on Breitbart when Trump mentioned the outlet in his tweets.
Trump’s Tweets and MoCs’ Appearances on FROs, Bivariate.
Note. Cell entry is OLS coefficient with standard error in parentheses. FRO = far-right outlet; OANN = One America News Network.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, two-tailed.
Table 4 is comprised of the models that regress FRO appearances by GOP MoCs by the chamber on Trump’s tweets lagged by 1 month. The results suggest the effects are largely concentrated among Republican members of the House of Representatives, as the coefficients for senators’ appearances all fail to reach significance. Column 3 of Table 4 indicates that increases in Trump’s tweets about Newsmax (b = 0.22, p = .03) are correlated with increases in interviews that Republican members of the House granted to that outlet. This effect is marginally significant for OANN (b = 0.25, p = .07). Interestingly, the coefficient for Breitbart (b = −1.69, p = .003) among members of the House is negative and significant. 25 The results for Republican senators are all insignificant.
Trump’s Tweets and MoCs’ Appearances on FROs.
Note. Cell entry is OLS coefficient with robust standard error in parentheses. MoCs = members of Congress; FRO = far-right outlet; OANN = One America News Network.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, two-tailed.
Discussion and Conclusion
This study leverages multiple datasets and methods to better understand the prominence of FROs in current U.S. politics and how Trump used the power of the presidency to legitimate far-right news outlets within the Republican Party and in the broader media ecosystem. To our knowledge, it is the first study to provide descriptive data shedding light on the prevalence of FROs in the mainstream press and among GOP elites, and the first to characterize the direction and strength of the relationship between Trump’s rhetoric and the rise of these outlets.
Descriptively, we find increases in Trump’s authority signaling tweets about FROs over time, the number of mainstream media stories mentioning FROs, and Republican MoCs appearing on/in FROs. We find significant and positive relationships between Trump’s authority signaling tweets and mainstream media mentions of OANN and Newsmax. Lagged models further suggest a strong correlation between Trump’s signaling and increases in mainstream media mentions of these two outlets. We also find positive and significant relationships between Trump’s authority signaling tweets and GOP MoCs appearing on or in these outlets, particularly OANN and Newsmax. Lagged models suggest Trump’s authority signaling tweets largely affect Republican members of the House, not their Senate colleagues. To be sure, we do not suggest that Trump’s tweets—or his communication more broadly—are solely responsible for the increased popularity among Republican legislators and mainstream media attention of FROs but rather suggest that populist leaders can contribute meaningfully to the mainstreaming of extremist media in this regard.
Through Trump’s populist communication style, which denigrated mainstream media while elevating far-right media, he signals that FROs are worthy of attention. These authority signals further legitimate FROs not only to other members of the GOP but also to the mainstream media. While some have contended there is minimal potential for FROs to take hold in the U.S. (Heft et al. 2020), mainstream coverage has contributed to their normalization and brought them into “the sphere of legitimate controversy” (Nygaard 2020). Taken together, once fringe outlets have been conferred with newfound authority and legitimized in the political sphere, contributing to the mainstreaming of extremist views and dangerous anti-democratic beliefs like white supremacy.
When news outlets choose to cover an organization or interview an individual, they bestow importance on those entities, elevating them to something worth knowing about or someone worth listening to (Carlson 2017). As the mainstream press amplifies FROs, they communicate that FROs are something worth knowing about to their audiences. This could have downstream implications for consumers of mainstream news, particularly conservative viewers, who may interpret increasing coverage of FROs as a sign of their legitimacy. Notably, Google Trends data show spikes in searches of these outlets—especially Newsmax and OANN—in the run up to and in the months after the 2020 presidential election. 26 Far-right outlets, and their extreme viewpoints, have been elevated beyond their fringe status, with more Americans searching for and turning to these extreme outlets for news (Lorenz et al. 2023).
Trump’s authority signals about FROs were picked up loud and clear by Republican MoCs as well, especially those in the House. Given their gerrymandered districts and constant re-election concerns (Mayhew 1974), it makes sense that House members would exhibit a greater sensitivity to Trump’s tweets relative to their Senate counterparts. The rise in interviews to FROs on its own is striking: from 2018 to 2021, Breitbart saw a 500% increase. From 2017 to 2021, OANN saw a 900% increase in interviews with GOP MoCs and Newsmax saw a 3700% increase. Such patterns suggest the impact of Trump’s authority signaling.
Trump’s legitimation of FROs continues to be consequential in other related ways, illustrating his lasting impact on U.S. politics. During the 2022 midterms, scores of Republican candidates simply refused to engage with mainstream or local news. 27 When GOP candidates limit such access to mainly far-right sources, “fewer news outlets can provide a broad view of American politics, not to mention scrutiny.” 28
Trump is credited with bringing the far-right into the mainstream in the U.S. (Mudde 2022). Yet he is not the first—nor the last—to employ populist communication and authority signaling tactics. We posit Trump serves simply as a case of an anti-democratic, populist leader who manipulated presidential norms for illiberal means. He attacked mainstream media in attempts to de-legitimate them while heavily promoting far-right alternatives. As a result, he set the stage for future leaders to further wreak havoc on democracies from the inside.
Our study also raises important questions for future research. While we show the relationship between Trump’s tweets and Republican MoCs’ appearances in/on far-right news, additional analyses can shed light on which MoCs appear on these outlets and under what conditions. For instance, those with ambitions for prominent party leadership positions (e.g., House Speaker) or national office may appear on these outlets to garner national attention. And those in a primary or safer districts may be more likely than those in a competitive general election setting to appear on FROs given these outlets’ more extreme audiences. Furthermore, the sharp rise in appearances is not alone explained by Trump’s authority signaling. This seems especially true for senators, who increasingly appeared in/on FROs, though our analysis does not show much impact of Trump’s tweets in this rise.
In addition, while our descriptive data show an increase in Republicans granting interviews to Breitbart, our analysis suggests a negative relationship between Trump’s authority signaling tweets and these appearances. Trump’s tweets also had little effect on mainstream media coverage of Breitbart. Of the three outlets examined, Breitbart had the most existing cache among Republicans. Perhaps Breitbart did not need or benefit from Trump’s authority signaling in the way less well-known outlets did. Future work might further investigate reasons for these observed differences as well as the extent to which other FROs (e.g., The American Spectator or The Blaze) benefit from popular politicians’ rhetoric based on their preexisting level of name recognition or lack thereof.
The impacts of legitimating and mainstreaming far-right news outlets are manifold. Authority signaling by former President Trump in favor of FROs symbolically lends some of his authority to those outlets, in turn legitimizing them. Our study provides correlational evidence of this process in the eyes of both GOP elites and mainstream news media. Our study also reveals the power of the presidency and the fragility of institutional norms. Trump, like all presidents, was upon election endowed with presidential power. Along with this power were norms of presidential communication that the press and the public came to expect, such as formal press appearances and polished written statements vetted by staff (e.g., Cook 2005). Yet, Trump violated many presidential communication norms during his tenure, exposing how they could be exploited to a degree previously unheard of. In so doing, he raised the levels of tolerance for such behavior from a president and helped facilitate the legitimation of far-right outlets and their extreme ideologies.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612241235630 – Supplemental material for Presidential Authority and the Legitimation of Far-Right News
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612241235630 for Presidential Authority and the Legitimation of Far-Right News by Allison M. N. Archer, Carolyn E. Schmitt, Shannon C. McGregor and Heesoo Jang in The International Journal of Press/Politics
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Israel Waismel-Manor for helpful feedback and Robert Alvarez for his assistance with coding. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, the 2022–2023 University of Houston Assistant Professor Excellence Lecture Series, New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, the University of North Carolina’s Carolina Data Science Now, and the University of Houston Department of Political Science Behavior Working Group. We thank those in attendance at each of those presentations for their valuable feedback on the paper.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Carolyn Schmitt, Dr. Shannon McGregor, and Heesoo Jang’s research is supported by the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, and its philanthropic supporters, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Siegel Family Endowment, Luminate, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
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