(REUTERS)
February 25, 2026
The billionaire head of a Berlin-based global mass media behemoth that owns influential outlets including Politico, reportedly met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.
Mathias Döpfner serves as chairman and CEO of Axel Springer SE, a publishing group that operates in dozens of countries and counts U.S. private equity firm KKR — co‑founded by Republican donor Henry Kravis — among its principal owners. According to Forbes, Kravis gave one million dollars to Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration committee.
In the U.S., Axel Springer also publishes Business Insider and Morning Brew.
New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin reported that Wiles met with Döpfner in, according to a source, "an introductory, get-to-know-you meeting."
The meeting comes just one day after President Donald Trump delivered his controversial State of the Union address and less than nine months before the midterm elections.
Döpfner sent an email to his top executives before the 2020 election, asking if they would like to join him to pray for the re-election of Donald Trump, according to reports. The email came one year before Axel Springer sealed the deal to purchase Politico.
“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” Döpfner wrote in the email, The Daily Beast reported, citing an article in The Washington Post.
“No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfner added.
“When asked about the message,” The Daily Beast reported, “Döpfner initially denied it existed, going so far as to say: ‘It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.’ When confronted with a printout of the email, he explained that he may have sent it ‘as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.’ ‘That is me,’ he added. ‘That could be.'”
In a 2022 analysis titled "The Scandalous History of America’s Newest Media Baron," Foreign Policy reported: “The new owner of Politico, Axel Springer, has a decades-long record of bending journalistic ethics for right-wing causes.”
The billionaire head of a Berlin-based global mass media behemoth that owns influential outlets including Politico, reportedly met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.
Mathias Döpfner serves as chairman and CEO of Axel Springer SE, a publishing group that operates in dozens of countries and counts U.S. private equity firm KKR — co‑founded by Republican donor Henry Kravis — among its principal owners. According to Forbes, Kravis gave one million dollars to Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration committee.
In the U.S., Axel Springer also publishes Business Insider and Morning Brew.
New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin reported that Wiles met with Döpfner in, according to a source, "an introductory, get-to-know-you meeting."
The meeting comes just one day after President Donald Trump delivered his controversial State of the Union address and less than nine months before the midterm elections.
Döpfner sent an email to his top executives before the 2020 election, asking if they would like to join him to pray for the re-election of Donald Trump, according to reports. The email came one year before Axel Springer sealed the deal to purchase Politico.
“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” Döpfner wrote in the email, The Daily Beast reported, citing an article in The Washington Post.
“No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfner added.
“When asked about the message,” The Daily Beast reported, “Döpfner initially denied it existed, going so far as to say: ‘It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.’ When confronted with a printout of the email, he explained that he may have sent it ‘as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.’ ‘That is me,’ he added. ‘That could be.'”
In a 2022 analysis titled "The Scandalous History of America’s Newest Media Baron," Foreign Policy reported: “The new owner of Politico, Axel Springer, has a decades-long record of bending journalistic ethics for right-wing causes.”
Fox News just distorted CNN's documentary on Christian nationalism
Kayleigh McEnany at the 2022 Young Women's Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA in Grapevine, Texas (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Kayleigh McEnany at the 2022 Young Women's Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA in Grapevine, Texas (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
February 22, 2026
ALTERNET
This Sunday night, February 22, CNN is airing reporter Pamela Brown's documentary on Christian nationalism, a far-right form of evangelical fundamentalism closely tied to the MAGA movement. Brown, in the documentary, notes that Christian nationalists are hailing the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — who was fatally shot during an event in Utah last year — as a martyr for their cause. And she interviews Matthew Taylor, a religious scholar at Georgetown University; Taylor makes a clear distinction between "radicalized" Christian nationalists and the many Christians who reject their belief system.
In a February 21 segment, Fox News' Kayleigh McEnany — who served as the fourth White House press secretary during President Donald Trump's first administration — attacked the documentary as a "hit piece on the resurgence of Christianity in America." But according to Mediaite reporter Colby Hall, McEnany's comments were both misleading and painfully lacking context.
Hall, in an article published on February 22, points out that Brown interviewed self-described Christian nationalist Andrew McIlwain, a Texas resident, in the documentary and discussed Kirk's murder with him. During that part of the documentary, according to Hall, Brown made a statement that "Fox's audience never heard" — which was, "Kirk's death happened at a moment of unprecedented alignment between Christian nationalists and the Trump Administration."
Hall explains, "That sentence is not an aside. It is the documentary's thesis in miniature. It clarifies that the project is not an attack on churchgoing or orthodox belief. It is an examination of the political alignment between a self-described Christian nationalist movement and executive power. Fox cut it. Instead, McEnany presented the film as an assault on faith itself and amplified a Georgetown professor's warning about 'radicalized' Christians. She insisted the framing was 'so off base,' collapsing any distinction between Christianity as religion and Christian nationalism as an ideology seeking to shape public policy…. By trimming Brown's contextual line and McIlwain's own articulation of a faith-centered political vision, Fox transformed a documentary about political theology into an imagined attack on believers."
Hall adds, "The audience was invited to reject a caricature while being shielded from the actual argument…. The central question Brown is asking — whether a movement that openly ties America's future to 'scripture' and enjoys 'unprecedented alignment' with a presidential administration warrants scrutiny — never made it to the people most likely to vote on it."
ALTERNET
This Sunday night, February 22, CNN is airing reporter Pamela Brown's documentary on Christian nationalism, a far-right form of evangelical fundamentalism closely tied to the MAGA movement. Brown, in the documentary, notes that Christian nationalists are hailing the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — who was fatally shot during an event in Utah last year — as a martyr for their cause. And she interviews Matthew Taylor, a religious scholar at Georgetown University; Taylor makes a clear distinction between "radicalized" Christian nationalists and the many Christians who reject their belief system.
In a February 21 segment, Fox News' Kayleigh McEnany — who served as the fourth White House press secretary during President Donald Trump's first administration — attacked the documentary as a "hit piece on the resurgence of Christianity in America." But according to Mediaite reporter Colby Hall, McEnany's comments were both misleading and painfully lacking context.
Hall, in an article published on February 22, points out that Brown interviewed self-described Christian nationalist Andrew McIlwain, a Texas resident, in the documentary and discussed Kirk's murder with him. During that part of the documentary, according to Hall, Brown made a statement that "Fox's audience never heard" — which was, "Kirk's death happened at a moment of unprecedented alignment between Christian nationalists and the Trump Administration."
Hall explains, "That sentence is not an aside. It is the documentary's thesis in miniature. It clarifies that the project is not an attack on churchgoing or orthodox belief. It is an examination of the political alignment between a self-described Christian nationalist movement and executive power. Fox cut it. Instead, McEnany presented the film as an assault on faith itself and amplified a Georgetown professor's warning about 'radicalized' Christians. She insisted the framing was 'so off base,' collapsing any distinction between Christianity as religion and Christian nationalism as an ideology seeking to shape public policy…. By trimming Brown's contextual line and McIlwain's own articulation of a faith-centered political vision, Fox transformed a documentary about political theology into an imagined attack on believers."
Hall adds, "The audience was invited to reject a caricature while being shielded from the actual argument…. The central question Brown is asking — whether a movement that openly ties America's future to 'scripture' and enjoys 'unprecedented alignment' with a presidential administration warrants scrutiny — never made it to the people most likely to vote on it."
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