Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer interviewed Secretary of Energy Chris Wright on the topic of gas prices Wednesday, getting a series of responses that repeatedly blamed Democrats and the war in Ukraine.

The polling numbers for President Donald Trump and the GOP have been brutal as his second term has progressed, with Americans’ views on his handling of the economy — a topic on which he had previously outpolled Democrats — taking a dive. One major issue that has been dragging down polling for the Republicans is the president’s war in Iran, specifically because of its impact on gas prices.

Hemmer kicked off the segment by reporting on how oil and gas prices are “now spiking in response to renewed fighting in the Middle East, according to AAA,” with the national average price of gas now $4.36 per gallon, up $0.04 since Tuesday, and well over the $3.18 price from a year ago.

He then introduced Wright and mentioned a report by Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst regarding a “U.S.-contracted vessel” that was hit during an Iranian attack.

Citing two sources, Yingst reported that the incident happened earlier this week “around the Strait of Hormuz,” with “four Iranian drones, and at least one missile” targeting the vessel.

“One of the projectiles struck the vessel and caused minor injuries, including smoke inhalation,” Yingst added. “The injured are being treated in a Gulf country. Some ‘U.S. personnel’ were onboard.”

In light of that reporting, Hemmer asked Wright, “Is this where we are in America with the price of gasoline for the foreseeable future?”

Replied Wright:

Look, President Trump is simply not going to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. Not only would that destabilize the region but it would forever drive up energy prices. President Trump is about energy addition, about driving energy prices down. You commented how low gasoline prices were at the end of last summer. That’s what Trump energy policies do. But in a conflict, yes, this has taken some energy resources out of the marketplace. It is causing a short-term sacrifice for Americans right now. But this is to end Iran’s ability to forever drive up energy prices.

Hemmer brought up the upcoming midterm elections and commented that “by all accounts” gas prices were “having a major drag on Republicans” and “giving Democrats a big target,” cueing up a video of several congressional Democrats bashing President Donald Trump for “making everything more expensive,” “making this economy worse and worse and worse,” because “costs are up for groceries, for healthcare, for energy, for gasoline” and “families are saying they are getting crushed at the gas pump.”

“I mean, it’s a hard thing to defend,” said Hemmer, noting a recent Wall Street Journal headline that said Americans had spent $100 billion more on fuel during the Iran war and asking Wright for his reaction.

Replied Wright:

It’s a little rich to hear that from Democrats. President Biden celebrated shutting down oil and gas production, closing refineries. Newsom has closed two large refineries in California over the last 12 months. That’s how you drive up energy prices permanently. The Trump administration has done everything we can to reverse those policies. We’re working with American refiners right now to increase American refining capacity to help people build new production facilities in our country. We’re about energy addition. That’s the only way to lower prices in the long term. Gasoline prices were higher four years ago in the Biden administration with normal life. Now we have a major conflict with Iran that we will win and we will resolve, and that has temporarily pushed them up. Believe me, President Trump does not want Americans paying any more than necessary for energy prices. But the world cannot live with a nuclear armed Iran and diesel prices, gasoline prices, all of them will be coming back down. That is President Trump’s energy addition policies. You saw them before this conflict. You will see them for the rest of this administration.

“Would you be brave enough to put a timeline on when [energy prices] come down?” asked Hemmer.

Wright said that he “certainly can’t predict Iranian behavior” but insisted the administration had “risen the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf to record highs right now, about 18 million barrels flowed out yesterday — basically pre-conflict levels.”

“Oil production, we’re fixing that problem,” he continued. “Refining is the bigger problem. That is impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the loss of refining capacity in Russia. Of course we’re still reeling from the Democrat-driven closure of refineries across the United States. If we had the refinery lease that were closed we would have lower gasoline and diesel prices today. But we will fix that problem, but we can’t unwind all the Democrat damage immediately. I wish we could.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

The post Fox Anchor Confronts Trump’s Energy Chief About Gas Prices, Gets Canned Non-Response first appeared on Mediaite.

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TOP STORY

’60 MINUTES’ GETS ITS FIRST REPORT CARDS

The first episode of Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton’s 60 Minutes aired Sunday, and for a lot of people, despite the turnover the show’s experienced, the actual episode seemed to be more of the same — exactly what they expected. But for some of our authors, it’s just too soon to determine what the heck is actually going to unfold for the program this season.

That’s partly because some members of the conservative-leaning media will be looking for any chance to call the reimagined show a success from the jump, and partly because their more liberal counterparts have already written it off.

THREE TAKES

Barrett Media’s Morning Edition, Garrett Searight — It’s too soon to claim Bari Weiss’ first stab at 60 Minutes was a success, Searight wrote today. Searight believes conservative media will call the race before it’s even really begun. “Conservative media figures across radio, television, podcasts, and social media will call it a win [if it gets a big rating],” Searight continued. “That’s poppycock. Mularkey. Balderdash. Pick your favorite synonym for ‘b*llshit’, because that’s what a one-episode victory lap amounts to.” The show may still end up a success, but “nobody watching a single Sunday broadcast can prove that’s what’s happening, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to how ratings actually work.”

Newsbusters, Nicholas Spinnato — But counter to what Barrett’s Searight believes, one conservative outlet DID NOT jump to praise the new 60 Minutes. Despite plenty of concern from the Left that a Weiss-run 60 Minutes would offer little more than Trumpian propaganda, for Spinnato, Sunday’s episode “continued to showcase the program’s liberal bias.” Ahead of the season premiere, a Newsbusters study determined the “show had a nearly five-to-one bias of liberal stories compared to conservative ones over the past six seasons.” As Spinnato concluded, “In reality, the season premiere did not feel that much different compared to the previous seasons, as the show led with two familiar faces in correspondents Norah O’Donnell and Lesley Stahl, and the pair, especially Stahl, still showed their anti-Trump bias.”

Status, Oliver Darcy — The episode relied on an exclusive from an American service member identified only as “Bravo” — and how the show obtained that conversation, as well as interviews with Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is of note, Darcy insisted. Sources told Darcy that “Weiss personally secured the interview with the help of Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer who has become a de facto Pentagon adviser.” As one person put it, the two are so close that Weiss can simply pick up the phone and call Jennifer. Despite that, the Trump White House was apparently still “unsure” about how CBS would handle the segment because “the piece could backfire and remind Americans about a deeply unpopular war.”

TAKEAWAY: What’s interesting about the early assessment from partisan critics of 60 Minutes is that both sides seem to have incredibly high or low expectations. It almost feels like the Left-leaning newsletters believe 60 Minutes is going to resemble Pravda, while the Right-leaning newsletters are expecting a stream of hard-hitting stories about Democrats. Assuming neither side is correct in their assessment of how it will play out, will they give a fair hearing to what 60 Minutes actually becomes, or will they just play to the script that they have seemingly already written? Much has been made about how 60 Minutes will be a barometer for CBS News as a whole — and that is true. But the evaluations of 60 Minutes will be a barometer for the newsletter critics as well. Are they capable of casting aside preconceived notions and giving the show a fair evaluation on the merits?

TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS

SCOOP CJR’s The Media Today, Ivan L. Nagy —Russia is set to hold the country’s first parliamentary election since launching its 2022 invasion of Ukraine this weekend, and “the stakes are low” for President Vladimir Putin since “the country’s sole pro-peace party was banned from running for seats in a chamber that holds no effective power anyway.” But the moment is still an “uncomfortable” one Putin, because Russians are once again paying attention to war coverage. As Mediazona editor Alexander Borodikhin told Nagy, a lot of that coverage is culled from “social media posts and eyewitness accounts from gas stations” and he and the magazine’s team have “scraped publicly available data, including bank registries of gas station transactions, to create a map that tracked the availability of fuel” to get to the truth. Roman Anin, the founder of the similarly “exciled” iStories, also told Nagy, “We still work with reporters inside Russia, but I can’t disclose any details about our cooperation for security reasons—these journalists risk their freedom to do their work.”

SCOOP POLITICO Playbook, Will Steakin, Dasha Burns, Adam Wren — Gavin Newsom said he won’t run for president if Kamala Harris opts to launch a campaign in 2028, but some aren’t so sure, Playbook wrote today. Mark Buell, former finance chair for Harris and a donor to both, said, “I don’t believe it.” Elsewhere, Rahm Emanuel had something to say about Newsom’s recent fly fishing segment with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “While Gavin and I both enjoy fly fishing this is what the joy looks like. Also, if you are talking while fishing, you let the big ones get away and you’re likely to say something big,” he texted Playbook.

ANALYSIS Awful Announcing’s The A Block — ESPN’s College Gameday was talk of the virtual town yesterday after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) paid a pretty disastrous appearance to the program over the weekend, and now The A Block is asking a pertinent question: what exactly does the show want to be, anyway? “For three decades, the show operated on a simple, almost monastic premise: put smart people in front of a rowdy campus crowd and let them talk football for three hours,” The A Block noted today. Unfortunately for viewers who enjoyed the format, “That show no longer exists in its original form, and pretending otherwise is an act of willful denial.” Now they’re met with “a hybrid organism — part sports program, part variety hour, part corporate mouthpiece — stitched together by whichever storyline generates the most engagement that week” and “none of this is accidental.”

ANALYSIS The Free Press, Amanda Knox and Jed Rubenfeld — The Press offered two takes on Patrick Clancy, ex-husband of Massachusetts mom Lindsay Clancy, who was on trial this month to determine if she should be held criminally responsible for killing the pair’s three children Cora, Dawson, and Callan. First, Amanda Knox (who was arrested and tried in Italy in 2017 for the murder of her then-roommate) insisted Patrick “can’t win” no matter what is decided. After Patrick ran a marathon in memory of his children in April 2024, “strangers cheered his name along the course,” she noted. “But two years later, the internet, which spent this summer obsessively watching the trial for his children’s murders, dug up the footage and turned against him.” Jed Rubenfeld also took those who have accused Patrick of committing Lindsay’s horrific crimes to task. While Patrick may be able to sue those who have defamed him, he “can’t stop the tide because it is driven by two phenomena that are basically untouchable.”

ANALYSIS The Washington Sun, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Jasmine Wright, and Manuela Silva — Congress has “scrambled to respond to the wild AI news cycle”’ this week, but is doing so “while at the same time moving ahead with plans to raise billions from investors to build more advanced stuff that could also annihilate civilization while at the same time moving ahead with plans to raise billions from investors to build more advanced stuff that could also annihilate civilization.” In the short term, it doesn’t seem the Trump administration will be doing much to ease the fears of those worried about AI. It’s also true that “Democrats also haven’t decided how scared they should be.”

BUSINESS OF MEDIA 

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson revealed that while overall search traffic from Google has declined, the number of digital subscribers converting directly from Google links has actually gone up! Owens isn’t really shocked, but it’s an interesting observation, anyway. QUOTE “That makes intuitive sense. Low-intent users are often satisfied with a simple answer from a chatbot. The people who click through to the source are more likely to be genuinely interested in the subject and want to go deeper. And the more interested someone is in a topic, the more likely they are to pay for access to additional information.”

The Publisher Newsletter, Peter Houston — 104-year-old Hearst UK’s Good Housekeeping achieved its highest revenue ever in 2025 alongside double-digit growth in digital and print advertising. Managing Director Liz Settle highlighted that consumer trust in magazine brands is rising as trust in social media platforms erodes, with AI search tools actively directing readers toward verified publishers. QUOTE “Central to Settle’s excitement for the future of magazines is Hearst’s own  data that shows trust in magazine brands is rising at the same time it is ‘dropping off a cliff’ for social media platforms.”

The Ankler’s The Wakeup, Sean McNulty — A little studio business: Paramount and Netflix have concluded their output partnership with Skydance Animation after producing four feature films. Skydance’s fifth animated feature, John Lasseter’s Cosmic Motors, is shifting to Paramount for a theatrical release next year as Netflix expands its animation slate with Sony Animation. QUOTE “Well, at least this relatively brief relationship is going out on a high note with Swapped…”

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Google is testing a Search Console-based licensing initiative that pays select news publishers when their content contributes significantly to Gemini and AI Overviews responses. Industry critics contend the pay-per-value model operates primarily as a legal shield while leaving independent creators shut out from payouts. QUOTE “But as always with news like this, my first question is: Which publishers will actually get paid? I can see from my own analytics that all the major LLMs are crawling my newsletter, yet as an independent publisher, I have little hope that Google or any other AI company will cut me a check anytime soon.”

ADWEEK Daily, Brittaney Kiefer — Audio hardware brand Sonos is launching a new creative campaign under chief marketing officer Colleen DeCourcy. It’s aimed at restoring consumer trust, which seems to be a theme of today’s stack, no? The brand push follows a controversial 2024 app update that damaged consumer perception. QUOTE “It also articulates for the first time that Sonos is not just a speaker company but an end-to-end sound system.”

The Poynter Report, Tom Jones — Newsletter business! The Poynter Institute presented its “Make a Mark” leadership award to Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell and Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson. The award recognizes media leaders who produce journalism that is both financially sustainable and highly relevant to modern audiences.

OTHER COOL STUFF

POLITICO Playbook — Vice President JD Vance offered an unexpected television critique, calling Emily in Paris a “masterwork of American television” and “the Shakespeare of our time,” framing the show as a “massive cultural criticism of millennial decision-making.”

The Ankler’s The Wakeup — Oprah Winfrey is set to host a three-day immersive live show called Oprah Winfrey’s AHA at the Las Vegas Sphere in April, featuring performances by musician Jacob Collier and poet Ocean Vuong.

WHAT GOT MISSED?

POLITICO Playbook, Will Steakin, Dasha Burns, Adam Wren — Trump will “headline a big-ticket RNC fundraiser in Manhattan on Monday, Sept. 21,” Playbook revealed today, citing an invitation they received. “The get-in price for the “intimate reception & photo opportunity” is set at $150,000 per couple.” For all the anonymous grousing from Republicans about Trump not helping their cause in the midterms, it feels like this story should’ve gotten a bit more attention.

NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY

POLITICO Playbook, Will Steakin, Dasha Burns, Adam Wren — Playbook led things by announcing their new newsletter editor Kyler Alvord, so today’s Newsletter of the Day is a very newsletter-y pick indeed. Alvord joined Playbook by way of People, where he worked as the lead politics editor. Playbook also devoted significant space to all things AI, very much proving Steakin, Burns, and Wren constantly have their collective finger on the pulse of what Americans are paying attention to, even when the government is trying to distract.

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.

The post ’60 Minutes’ Gets Its First Report Cards — But Will Partisan Critics on Both Sides Judge it Fairly? first appeared on Mediaite.

It may attract a grip of red-blooded American males, but some female athletes told CNN they have a big problem with Sydney Sweeney’s latest ad.

CNN reported on Monday that the ad for Novig, a sports betting app, made Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer livid.

Palmateer vented the “hypersexualized” ad — featuring Sweeney holding two footballs up to her bare chest and hanging out in the locker room — was “very damaging, especially for young females getting into sport, for females in general, [and was] just hypersexualized content.”

She said she was in “absolute utter disbelief” when she saw the ad debut last week, before marveling at, “How far you can put women’s sports backwards in the space of a 42-second commercial.”

CNN’s report focused on reactions from Australian athletes. Oddly, no American women were included in its online story.

A snapshot of the ad which has some critics riled up (Photo Credit: Novig)

CNN reported four-time Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus slammed the ad on her Instagram account, with the Aussie athlete saying it “infuriated” her.

“Not only is this a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, but every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is — teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity … the list goes on,” she ranted.

Two other Australian athletes — swimmer Lani Pallister and boxer Skye Nicholson — bashed Sweeney as well, with Nicholson urging companies to “Stop sexualising women in #sport.”

Their outcry follows the pretty big reaction on social media last week to the ad’s debut, right before the NFL season began.

And of course, Sweeney was at the center of another low-stakes controversy with her “great genes/jeans” ad for American Eagle last year. Some critics claimed the ad pushed stealth “Nazi propaganda,” but it hasn’t hurt sales, apparently, because American Eagle’s stock price has surged more than 50% since then.

Watch above via CNN.

The post CNN Reports Female Athletes Hate Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Hypersexualized’ Naked Gambling Ad first appeared on Mediaite.

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There's a reason Bissell's Little Green Machine has a dedicated following among pet owners (not to mention kid owners): It's a powerful upholstery cleaning tool that can do the work of an upright steam cleaner, and can be carried in one hand. But there's an even more compact version, the Bissell Little Green Mini Portable Carpet Cleaner, that's just as powerful and even more portable, making it an especially good bet for, say, cleaning out your car after taking your dog on a long road trip. Right now, you can grab one for $89.99, 10% off the usual price, straight from Bissell.

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Nothing compares to you… except this random Irish journalist.

While speaking to reporters on Sunday, President Donald Trump ignored a question about a protest against him in Dublin to tell a journalist she bears a striking to the late Irish singer Sinead O’Connor.

“You know, you remind me of somebody,” Trump said while pointing at the reporter. “A very cute Irish singer who passed away recently. You know who that is? Sinead!”

The president said it in a bit of a funky way, pronouncing it “SHI-NEED.”

“Sinead O’Connor?” the reporter asked back.

“Yeah, you look like Sinead O’Connor,” Trump confirmed with a smirk on his face. “And that’s a compliment, because she sang beautifully.”

Trump’s kind words about O’Connor stand out, considering she wasn’t the president’s biggest fan.

The singer — who rocketed to fame with her 1990 cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” — said she believed Trump was the “biblical devil” in a 2020 interview. And beyond her musical career, O’Connor is probably best known for ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live — a move which led to swift condemnation from Catholics worldwide. She died in 2023 at the age of 56.

Trump never got around to answering the reporters question, which was about protesters griping about his visit and claiming the U.S. was funding Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.

The president did opt to answer some other big questions he received, including one about AI, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, as well as Elon Musk and OpenAI boss Sam Altman, called for more regulation; they all said they were worried AI could go rogue and break free of human control, if the pace of innovation was not slowed down. Trump said he wasn’t too concerned about it, though.

“Well I’ll say this, we’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins,” Trump said. “We can put guardrails [in], we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up. And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

Watch above.

The post Trump Tells Reporter She Reminds Him of Sinead O’Connor: ‘A Very Cute Irish Singer’ first appeared on Mediaite.

ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos straight-up asked Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) Sunday if he pledged his allegiance to Donald Trump, just like the GOP midterm convention goers did last week.

The president led his pledge “to the greatest president in the history of the United States,” as thousands of people followed along at the convention meant to energize Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.

“Congressman, thanks for joining us this morning. Do you pledge your allegiance to Donald Trump?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“I pledge my allegiance to my constituents, which I always have,” Lawler answered. “It’s why I’ve been rated among the most bipartisan and effective members of Congress. I’ve been praised by presidents of both parties, including Joe Biden and Donald Trump, because I work to get things done. You know, my best friend in Congress is a Democrat, Josh Gottheimer, and we work tirelessly on issues that matter to our constituents and the American people.”

Stephanopoulos proceeded to ask Lawler if he supports the $5,000 dividend Trump promised to Americans if Republicans prevail in the midterm elections.

“If so, why haven’t Republicans already passed it?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“You know, George, I support putting money back in the pockets of hard working Americans, which is why we passed the single largest tax cut in American history,” Lawler said. “It’s why I fought to lift the cap on SALT from 10,000 to 40,000. Standing up to President Trump on that issue, delivering the largest tax cut for my constituents, putting more than $4,000 back in their pockets. So whether you talk about tax cuts, whether you talk about dividends —”

“But I asked you about the president’s $5,000 dividend,” Stephanopoulos interrupted. “Do you support that or not? It’s a yes or no question.”

“No, George, it’s not a yes or no!” Lawler shot back. “Here’s the answer. Whether you call it a tax cut, a stimulus, which is what the Biden administration did — and you said that was the greatest anti-poverty program since the New Deal, when Biden passed the stimulus check — so, obviously, you don’t have a problem when they’re handing money back to the American people through a stimulus check, or you call it a dividend. The question is, how do you pay for it? How do you be able to to pass the legislation to put more money back in the pockets of hardworking Americans? That’s the objective. We should all be wanting to do that.”

Watch the clip above via ABC News’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

The post Stephanopoulos Kicks Off Tense Interview With GOP Lawmaker By Asking Blunt Question: ‘Do You Pledge Your Allegience to Donald Trump?’ first appeared on Mediaite.