A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
There was no single story headlining conservative media on Friday, but many outlets continued to cover several ongoing topics.
Wiretapping
As the Daily Caller and a handful other conservative outlets reported, “The chairman and vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee said they have seen no evidence that Trump Tower was wiretapped before or after the 2016 election.” Breitbart nevertheless continued to suggest that the president’s accusations may have been credible in “Spicer Calls Out Media Hypocrisy on ‘Wiretapping’ Allegations,” alluding to the allegation that “surveillance of the Trump campaign … could be evidence of a ‘deep state’ effort to undermine the Trump administration.” The Daily Caller, meanwhile, wrote, “The White House continues to change its answer as to what Donald Trump meant when he said Barack Obama ordered the surveillance of Trump Tower shortly before he won the election.”
Bill O’Reilly, at least, seemed satisfied that the case is closed. In conversation with Bret Baier on the O’Reilly Factor, the host described Trump’s allegations as “insanity” and stated, “The whole thing is now settled that there was no FISA warrant requested by the Obama administration.”
On Friday, the Daily Caller published a post titled, “Flashback: Barack Obama Allegedly Wiretapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel In 2010.” Trump later brought up that fact during a joint press conference with Merkel, suggesting that it was something they had something in common.
Budget
Trump’s proposed budget was not as big of a story on right-wing media as it had been the day before. Still, Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, received a generally positive reception for a press conference in which he claimed that cuts to Meals on Wheels were warranted and that climate change spending was “a waste of money.” A headline on the Blaze read, “Trump’s Budget Director Outrages Liberals With Blunt Answer on Climate Change.” Meanwhile, the headline on a Breitbart post rounding up tweets from Judd Apatow, Rosie Perez, Billy Eichner, and others proposed, “Celebrities Melt Down Over Trump Budget Cuts.”
Campus Activism
In “Feminists at Oberlin, Bucknell, Temple Host Wikipedia ‘Edit-a-Thon,’” Breitbart described attempts to resist Wikipedia’s gender biases in largely neutral terms. The article nevertheless generated almost 2,000 comments, many of them suggesting that this demonstrated the online encyclopedia’s leftist slant.
The Daily Caller mocked Emmerson College for suggesting that the word homosexual is offensive and questioned the University of Maryland’s decision to hire an undocumented student coordinator. And a short National Review blog post described contemporary college education as “heavily subsidized daycare for 18–22 year olds,” claiming that “some students break into tears when a professor challenges an idea they believe.”
A popular Facebook post from Fox News also mocked liberals’ supposed “snowflake” qualities:
