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Welcome back to False Flag! Pro-Trump rapper Nicki Minaj has entered the MAGA civil war, enlisting herself to support Trump in his occasional efforts to overcome criticism from Israel supporters and end the Iran war.
Minaj’s recent comments focus on a building intra-Republican dispute over Alex Bruesewitz, an informal Trump adviser who also functions as Trump’s liaison with the rapper. Bruesewitz has been desperate to prove pro-Israel opponents of an Iran settlement are being secretly being paid off, a theory he’s tried to prove by working to uncover all kinds of undisclosed promotion. (And sometimes he succeeds: Brusewitz was an early critic of the ‘gay Harley-Davidson’ campaign, for example.)
Bruesewitz’s allegations about Israeli astroturfing have angered Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fl.), a staunch Israel supporter. On Wednesday, Fine said he would vote against any rule brought forward by House Republican leadership until Bruesewitz is exiled from Trump’s circle. But that won’t happen if the “Anaconda” rapper has anything to say about it. In a tweet responding to Fine, Minaj said Bruesewitz is “100% LOVED by the Barbz”—a reference to her “Barb” fan army. As Nicki once put it, “Yes, you’ll get slapped if you’re lookin’, ho.” Careful!
Today, we’re talking about someone with a deluded fan army of his own: conservative reporter and Trump adviser John Solomon, who is now poised to have his greatest triumph yet with Trump’s big speech tonight. To support our work covering this crazy cast of characters, sign up for Bulwark+! It’s highly informative and never dull.
-Will
Can This Pseudo-Journalist Destroy American Democracy?
The post-truth era gets its post-truth journalist—only this time, he’s operating from inside the government.
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DONALD TRUMP’S PRIMETIME ADDRESS Thursday is shaping up to be a grab bag of conspiracy theories, all of them intended to help Republicans take control of the midterms. He might declare that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are somehow fake senators; or announce a national emergency on voter fraud. The latest reporting suggests Trump will claim China tried to steal the 2020 election.
Whatever Trump does, it’ll be because of John Solomon—a star conservative reporter who is, somehow, also a White House staffer. For nearly a decade, Solomon has had a hand in the creation of nearly every major MAGA grievance narrative, from the Russia investigation to Ukraine to 2020 election fraud. Solomon has a pretty clear M.O.: He’ll spin a story that seems like a massive exposé, getting it trumpeted on Fox News and throughout the right-wing media ecosystem before it has a chance to deflate under scrutiny, as it usually does.
Now in his gig as a short-term White House staffer, Solomon has been digging up the raw material necessary for both prosecuting Trump’s enemies and the expected attempt at electoral chicanery.
Yet this narrative impresario and his brand of quasi-journalism remain largely unknown outside the world of right-wing media.
In 2007, when Solomon was an investigative reporter at the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review was already complaining that his stories amounted to the “John Solomon special”: front-page revelations that, when scrutinized, turned out to be little more than a “steady stream of mediocrity.”
Now, thanks to his role in the Trump administration, Solomon has a chance to work that magic on a much larger scale.
Typically, MAGA muckrakers are liars or crackpots, like Mike Lindell, or that one rogue falconer (but not the one you’re thinking of). Compared to these folks, Solomon is a veritable Walter Cronkite. He has a serious journalistic background after working for Post and the Associated Press, and he dresses in ties and navy suits. His veneer of seriousness provides a valuable service for the MAGAverse. Watching him can almost feel like watching a grizzled mainstream investigative journalist who just happens to validate Trump’s obsessions.
A story from the final days of the first Trump administration shows how much Solomon lives in the Trumpworld pocket. The day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows called Solomon to the White House to review a binder of newly declassified files from the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia—just the kind of document handout Solomon loves.
Meadows wanted Solomon to publish the contents of the binder on Inauguration Day. Solomon’s staffers at his website, Just The News, scrambled to scan them all. Then a new envelope arrived for Solomon, with new files “he was permitted to write about,” according to a lawsuit Solomon later filed against the Justice Department.
Unfortunately for Solomon, the whole plan got botched when a White H