Outlet That Called Hallmark Movies Fascist Propaganda Mocked MAGA Then Wrote Its Own Obituary
On Wednesday, the website that once branded Hallmark Christmas movies fascist propaganda declared MAGA in "total structural collapse."
For three decades, Salon had sneered at Christmas greetings, small-town America, and the voters who elected Donald Trump.
Less than 24 hours later, it published one more piece, and this time the subject was Salon.
Salon Declared MAGA Dead the Day After the Midterms
The gloating came from senior writer Sophia Tesfaye on November 4, the day after the midterms.
She wrote that Trump's second term "has culminated in such total structural collapse" and that conservative influencers "went straight for the circular firing squad."
Her explanation was that Trump had been stripped of "establishment Republican guardrails" like Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell.
Salon, apparently, now misses Mitch McConnell.
Then she twisted the knife: "MAGA was always a Trump-specific phenomenon."
Salon's account on X piled on that same day: "Alex Jones blames Donald Trump, who blames Fox News, who can't get over culture wars."
Nobody at Salon seemed to notice the floor giving way under their own desks.
Salon Saw Fascism in Christmas Trees and Hot Cocoa
The Hallmark shot came from Salon's Amanda Marcotte in December 2019, when she called the network's holiday movies "the platonic ideal of fascist propaganda."
Small towns, snow-dusted main streets, and a couple falling in love over hot cocoa – that's what had Salon worried about fascism.
Days earlier, Marcotte claimed conservatives had turned "Merry Christmas" into code for an obscenity aimed at everyone else.
In 2021, Salon announced that "the Satanists are right" in their fight against Texas's pro-life law.
That isn't journalism for a country.
It's a sneer aimed at Middle America, and Middle America stopped clicking a long time ago.
Salon's Farewell Note Never Mentioned Trump
On Thursday, November 5, the site posted an unsigned note titled "Goodbye from Salon."
"Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication," it read.
The culprit wasn't Donald Trump, Fox News, or anybody's firing squad.
The note admitted the site's "publishing model is no longer sustainable."
RedState's Rusty Weiss caught the timing – the day Salon spent mocking conservative media was its final full day of publishing.
Even on the way out, the farewell insisted Salon "was never just a website" but "an idea about what journalism could be."
Salon Was Bleeding Money Since the Dot-Com Craze
David Talbot and a band of San Francisco Examiner veterans launched Salon in November 1995.
It went public on the NASDAQ in June 1999, at the height of the dot-com craze.
By late 2002, it had piled up $80 million in losses, and by October 2003 its stock was trading for five cents a share.
That same year, the outfit that loved lecturing America about economics was asking readers for donations to cover the rent.
Its paid subscription program once signed up 130,000 readers, and by 2011 it was down to about 10,000.
Not even a roster that once featured Jake Tapper and Glenn Greenwald could turn it around.
In late 2016, Salon got evicted from its New York offices over $90,000 it owed the landlord.
In 2018, it asked readers running ad blockers to let the site use their computers to mine cryptocurrency instead.
By 2019, the whole operation sold for $5 million – less than a beach house in Malibu.
Daily Kos Is Already Checking the Exits
Within a day of the farewell, Daily Kos ran a post with a title that read like a hostage note: "Salon shuttered its doors. Daily Kos isn't immune."
That's the same left-wing media that spent the week telling you conservative media was finished.
Tesfaye herself wrote that "right-wing media spent years confusing its ability to dominate a conversation with its ability to represent a country."
Read that line again and tell me it isn't the most accurate description of Salon ever written.
Fox News, talk radio, and the independent conservative sites built their audiences by talking to the Americans the coastal press wrote off as rubes.
Salon built an audience of people who already agreed with Salon, insulted everyone else, and then ran out of people who agreed with Salon.
The movement Salon called dead on Wednesday is still on TV, still on the radio, and still reading this.
Salon's total structural collapse is the only one that actually happened.
Sources:
- Rusty Weiss, "Unreal: Lefty Rag Salon Mocked MAGA's 'Total Structural Collapse' – Then Shut Down the Next Day," RedState, November 5, 2026.
- Staff, "Salon Ends Publication After 31 Years," IJR, November 5, 2026.
- Gabriel Hays, "Salon's Marcotte: Hallmark Movies Are Fascist Propaganda," NewsBusters, December 26, 2019.
- Gabriel Hays, "Salon's Marcotte: 'Merry Christmas' Is Conservative Code," NewsBusters, December 23, 2019.
- Alexa Moutevelis, "Depraved Salon Pro-Abort Admits Satanists Are Right," NewsBusters, September 9, 2021.
