\n<\/p>\n
Liz Truss, Britain\u2019s shortest-serving prime minister, began the first edition of her YouTube show with a vow to unmask \u201cthe evil-doers\u201d attempting to bring down Britain, the US and Europe. She would, she explained, reveal how an \u201cinternational network of leftists work to subvert democracy and the will of the people\u201d.<\/p>\n
Despite her bleak monologue, Truss pointed to hope from across the Atlantic. \u201cWe\u2019re going to look at the Trump revolution and see how this can be achieved in Britain,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be talking to the leading lights of the Maga movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the show\u2019s launch, there was one particularly enthusiastic supporter. \u201cThis is the beginning of a kind of revolution,\u201d said John Solomon, a controversial veteran US journalist. His conservative Just the News platform will host the former prime minister\u2019s new podcasts.<\/p>\n
British fellow travellers, including a pro-Reform adviser who has appeared on Maga media outlets, have also helped her set up the Liz Truss Show. Its staging is competent, if basic. Truss has amassed 10,000 subscribers in her first week and across the same period her debut had 67,000 views.<\/p>\n
It is a modest start, but in making common cause with Solomon, Truss is being thrust into a well-developed conservative ecosystem producing and amplifying Maga talking points. Its obsessions include alleged censorship by the mainstream media and a desire to remove a conspiratorial \u201cdeep state\u201d \u2013 which Truss blames for the swift end of her calamitous premiership.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Truss at the Conservative party conference in October 2022 during her short stint as British prime minister. <\/span> Photograph: Stefan Rousseau\/PA<\/p>\n \u201cJust the News is not well-known beyond the Maga-verse, but it does have gravitas there, mostly due to Solomon, who gives commentary on Maga platforms like [Steve] Bannon\u2019s War Room and has even interviewed Trump,\u201d said Alex Hinton, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University who has closely studied the Maga movement.<\/p>\n Truss\u2019s attempt to import Maga media to Britain has pushed her closer to controversial figures such as Solomon.<\/p>\n He set up Just the News following criticism after he was accused of pushing false stories about Joe Biden\u2019s anticorruption effort in Ukraine, as well as controversial stories about the former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.<\/p>\n His claims were amplified across the pro-Trump media, with Solomon appearing as a regular guest on Sean Hannity\u2019s influential Fox News show. Trump himself boosted Solomon\u2019s reporting.<\/p>\n Solomon made the Ukraine claims in a series of columns for the political newspaper the Hill, where he had already been re-labelled as a columnist after colleagues complained about his work. His claims were central in Trump\u2019s demand for the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens in 2019. Those demands led to impeachment charges against Trump. The Senate later acquitted the president.<\/p>\n Weeks after Solomon left the Hill in October 2019, the outlet announced it was carrying out a review of his work relating to Ukraine. It concluded Solomon had used unreliable sources and said he \u201cfailed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n Solomon did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s requests for comment on the Hill\u2019s findings or his support for Truss\u2019s new show. However, he has previously said: \u201cI stand by each and every one of the columns that I wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Truss is entering the same conservative ecosystem as Maga influencers such as Steve Bannon.<\/span> Photograph: Caitlin O\u2019Hara\/Reuters<\/p>\n Solomon\u2019s own media appearances are a sign of the conservative ecosystem Truss is entering. He discussed his support for Truss\u2019s project on a show he co-hosts on Real America\u2019s Voice, a rightwing cable channel that is home to the Maga influencer Steve Bannon and on which Tucker Carlson also appears. Truss has already interviewed Bannon on one of her first podcasts.<\/p>\n In linking up with Solomon and Just the News, Truss has become a minor player in a much wider network of conservative media outlets that often amplify each other\u2019s content.<\/p>\n Solomon\u2019s own podcast and Real America\u2019s Voice show have repeatedly hosted figures such as Mike Benz, a rightwing influencer whose criticism of USAID was cited by Elon Musk as justification for shutting down the foreign aid agency.<\/p>\n Benz talks about conspiracies involving George Soros and USAID and states there is an \u201cindustrial censorship complex\u201d opposing conservative voices. He popularised the false idea that Taylor Swift was a \u201cpsychological operation\u201d asset for the Pentagon.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Benz was given an exclusive interview with Marco Rubio, in which the secretary of state announced he was closing the Global Engagement Center, which focused on combating foreign disinformation. Benz had accused it of anti-conservative censorship. Benz did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n While Truss\u2019s stilted style and political travails have invited ridicule in Britain, some US observers do not dismiss her attempts to reinvent herself as a British branch of the Maga media.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to take folks like that seriously, even if you may not want to take them literally,\u201d said Rob Flaherty, a deputy campaign manager on Kamala Harris\u2019s 2024 presidential campaign who served in the Biden White House.<\/p>\n \u201cYou saw how in 2024 President Trump leveraged that ecosystem to get his message out there. Certainly that ecosystem exports and influences conversation abroad. It seems relatively clear to me that the conditions in the UK are similar to what allowed this alternative media ecosystem to thrive here.\u201d<\/p>\n Alan Finlayson, a professor of political and social theory at the University of East Anglia, said the online conservative ecosystem was already having an impact in Britain.<\/p>\n \u201cDigital media knows no borders,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a kind milieu within which stuff flows \u2013 sometimes taking an extreme form and sometimes less so \u2013 but which is connected.\u201d<\/p>\n Hinton said the growth of the online right in the UK recently meant the \u201cpotential to have a growing impact is significant\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Truss speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, US, in February 2024. <\/span> Photograph: Shawn Thew\/EPA<\/p>\n \u201cBoth Truss and [the Reform UK leader, Nigel] Farage recently appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where I watched as they hit Maga talking points ahead of the king of Maga, Trump,\u201d he said. \u201cMaga, the professed anti-globalist movement, has become a global hegemon.\u201d<\/p>\n Truss\u2019s first show contained signs that she hopes to appeal to an American audience, too, with references unlikely to chime with a British viewer: \u201cWe\u2019re now poorer than Mississippi,\u201d she said at one point. \u201cIt\u2019s like Huckleberry Finn without the steamboats.\u201d<\/p>\n Solomon has been involved in attempts to build an alternative conservative media network for years. He was instrumental in the setting up of the Informing America Foundation (IAF), a little-known non-profit group that hands millions to conservative media across the US.<\/p>\n IAF has also funded Bentley Media Group, the parent company of Just the News, according to 2023 tax filings. It funds an array of local US conservative media, including in key swing states. IAF and Just the News did not respond to requests for comment on whether they financially supported Truss\u2019s new show. A representative for Truss also did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Solomon said last year that the IAF now had \u201can ecosystem that [reaches] more than 120 million Americans a month\u201d. He has said he has no formal role at the IAF, but that it shares office space with Just the News.<\/p>\n <\/span>Truss is following the US journalist John Solomon\u2019s advice on bringing Maga media to the UK.<\/span> Photograph: Anadolu\/Anadolu Agency\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Hinton said Truss\u2019s arrival was a \u201cmedia marriage of convenience\u201d for both parties. \u201cIt gives Just the News an international and UK foot in the door \u2013 and her British stature will bring the network a degree of cosmopolitan prestige,\u201d he said. \u201cTruss, meanwhile, gets the opportunity to refurbish her image.\u201d<\/p>\n Advising Truss on the show is Joseph Robertson, a political strategist and Reform member who has spent time in the US. Appearing on a Real America\u2019s Voice show last month, Robertson said Britain would effectively have \u201ccommunist rule\u201d should the government\u2019s digital ID policy go ahead.<\/p>\n Like Truss, Robertson backs the downfall of the \u201cadministrative deep state\u201d. He has also advocated for Britain to become \u201cDubai on Thames\u201d, with deregulation and stricter law and order.<\/p>\n In setting up her show, Truss appears to be following Solomon\u2019s advice on how to bring Maga media to the UK. He told her \u201cone of the wisest things\u201d done by major conservative funders such as the late Bernie Marcus, who co-founded Home Depot, and Richard Uihlein, a billionaire owner of an office supply company, was to develop an alternative \u201ccommunication system\u201d when Trump first came to office.<\/p>\n \u201cWe created a communications infrastructure that could get around the legacy media and get the word out,\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n Some believe Truss\u2019s bigger problem may be that she simply is not very good at the medium. \u201cThe people who are successful will have charisma and the ability to capture attention,\u201d said Craig Oliver, David Cameron\u2019s former communications chief. \u201cI would say that\u2019s a strike against her.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe has never been good at this,\u201d said Finlayson. \u201cWhen she tries to be dramatic and scary, it\u2019s ludicrous.\u201d<\/p>\n Flaherty, however, said critics should be wary of writing off Truss\u2019s chances of finding validation in the Maga universe. \u201cThe alternative media ecosystem has no shortage of comeback stories,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is always possible to rebrand yourself when you give in to a rabid political fanbase.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liz Truss, Britain\u2019s shortest-serving prime minister, began the first edition of her YouTube show with a vow to unmask \u201cthe evil-doers\u201d attempting to bring down Britain, the US and Europe. She would, she explained, reveal how an \u201cinternational network of leftists work to subvert democracy and the will of the people\u201d. 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