An attendee wears a MAGA hat at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., September 10, 2026. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare
Right-wing commentators are telling their audiences to brace for an unnamed global catastrophe while Republicans confront the prospect of heavy midterm losses, according to The Bulwark’s Will Sommer.
“I want to tell you to prepare for impact,” Glenn Beck told his audience Wednesday, Sommer wrote.
The trend started in late October, when the U.K. urged households to hold emergency supplies and right-wing accounts presented that and older European guidance as evidence of a pattern, Sommer continued.
It grew further after a Fox News report on a Pentagon initiative called FORTRESS, meant to let domestic bases run on their own for ninety days. Dan Bongino, the far-right commentator who briefly served as President Donald Trump's FBI deputy director, told followers to take that model home, saying “make FORTRESS my house, FORTRESS my apartment.”
Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson said Trump was about to launch a nuclear war, pundit John DeSouza forecast “10 to 20 days ... of total and complete darkness,” and white supremacist Nick Fuentes suggested an AI-driven cyberattack.
Even some elected lawmakers are getting in on the action. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) posted a video saying he’d been swamped with messages asking for inside information, and that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told him the plan was a “best practices move.” Buckley Carlson, Tucker’s brother, rejected that.
Sommer suggested that fixating on the end of the world may be easier than dwelling on a Democratic wave, and that pundits profit from prepping products. He noted Beck pointed listeners to a medication sponsor that sells ivermectin, the antiparasitic drug conspiracy theorists pitched as a COVID cure, and later told them to become ham-radio operators and avoid joining armed bands.
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