MSNBC’s Fox News-Style Coverage of Trump’s Iran Strikes

When President Donald Trump unilaterally ordered U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025, the response from Democratic leaders and progressive voters was swift: condemnation of an unconstitutional escalation that risked dragging America into another endless war.

Yet MSNBC, a network long branded as the liberal counterweight to Fox News, abandoned its critical lens and echoed the same jingoistic framing as its conservative rival. In doing so, it exposed the limits of corporate media’s dissent—even when covering a Republican president’s reckless militarism. 

The Fox-ification of MSNBC’s War Coverage

From the moment Trump announced the strikes, MSNBC’s tone mirrored the triumphalism typically reserved for Fox News segments. Rachel Maddow’s declaration—“We are now in war with Iran”—framed the conflict as an inevitability rather than a choice, stripping context from Trump’s decision to bypass Congress and ignore diplomatic off-ramps .

The network’s chyrons and headlines emphasized the “spectacular military success” of the strikes, parroting Trump’s rhetoric without scrutiny . Missing was the outrage that greeted similar unilateral actions by past Republican presidents; instead, MSNBC treated the escalation as a fait accompli. 

This uncritical approach stood in stark contrast to the actual Democratic response. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner lambasted Trump for “risking American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war” without congressional authorization .

Even Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, had publicly contradicted the administration’s justification for the strikes, testifying months earlier that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon—a fact MSNBC downplayed in its coverage . 

The Corporate Media Playbook: Normalizing War

MSNBC’s failure to challenge the administration’s narrative reflects a broader bias in corporate media: the tendency to default to hawkish positions under the guise of “neutrality.” While Fox News cheered the strikes as a “historic moment” , MSNBC’s Maddow reduced complex geopolitics to a binary—“war with Iran”—without examining Trump’s motives or the intelligence disputes behind the attack . 

Key omissions in MSNBC’s reporting included: 

1. The Diplomatic Backchannel:

The U.S. had privately assured Iran that the strikes were limited and not aimed at regime change—a detail buried in CBS and Reuters reports but absent from MSNBC’s prime-time coverage . 

2. The Humanitarian Toll:

While Iranian state media reported over 200 dead in prior Israeli strikes, MSNBC focused on U.S. military tactics rather than civilian consequences . 

3. The Legal Controversy:

Legal experts argued Trump’s strikes violated the War Powers Act, yet MSNBC offered no substantive debate, unlike BBC’s analysis of congressional pushback . 

Why This Matters 

The Democratic base, overwhelmingly opposed to Middle East interventions, was betrayed by MSNBC’s coverage. Progressive lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the strikes “grounds for impeachment” , while MSNBC’s pundits treated the war as a strategic game. This disconnect reveals a deeper truth: corporate media, regardless of partisan branding, often prioritizes access and ratings over holding power accountable. 

When even “liberal” media fails to challenge Republican militarism, it normalizes the erosion of checks and balances. MSNBC’s Fox-like framing of the Iran strikes wasn’t just a failure of journalism—it was a surrender to the very forces it claims to oppose. 

Final Thought:

If MSNBC won’t question a Republican president’s war, who will? The answer, increasingly, is independent media and grassroots voices—the only spaces where dissent survives. 

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