A familiar face has been enlisted for the Trump administration’s execution of its vaunted immigration agenda. The longtime TV talk show host Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, has accompanied Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers while they conducted raids around Chicago.
“It’s a pretty high-risk mission we are going on,” McGraw said in the opening monologue of the podcast episode, in which he outlined ICE’s stated priorities under the new administration: close the border, remove dangerous criminals from communities and rescue missing children. “How could anybody disagree with that?” McGraw asked. “This truly is a targeted mission because they are not sweeping neighborhoods like people are trying to imply.”
ICE was not the only agency represented in the huddle before the operation. Also present were agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.
“What I’ve seen is a far cry from what you may be hearing on the news,” McGraw said from behind his studio desk. “That’s why I wanted to go and see this from the inside out.”
The first suspect detained by ICE recognized McGraw.
“How do you know me?”
“I’ve seen Dr. Phil on TV,” the man responded.
“This is an example of sanctuary cities,” Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s “border tsar,” chimed in. “We got an illegal alien convicted of sex crimes involving children and he’s walking the streets of Chicago.”
“You been charged with sex crimes with children?” McGraw asked.
“Not really,” the man responded.
Between arrests, McGraw and Homan discussed coverage of the ICE effort, arguing that it relied on a “false narrative” of broad sweeping raids.
“That’s why it’s imperative we control the narrative,” Homan said. “We have folks like you and your show and your network out here showing people the truth. Dr. Phil is going to show them exactly how we do this.”
McGraw first became a fixture in U.S. living rooms in the late 1990s as a weekly guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” the most popular talk show in the history of American television. In 2002, McGraw got his own syndicated show, “Dr. Phil,” which was on air for a staggering 21 seasons. On it, McGraw leveraged his background as a clinical psychologist to offer advice to his guests, many of whom were kids and teens. McGraw often counseled parents to send their children to a facility for “troubled youth” called Turn-About Ranch.
The show’s run ended in 2023, but in 2024 Dr. Phil returned to TV on his own network, Merit Street Media, and launched “Dr. Phil Primetime” with backing from the Trinity Broadcasting Network. While marketed as a Christian broadcaster, Trinity also features hosts who have made a name for themselves in conservative media, such as Charlie Kirk, a radio talk show host and the president of Turning Point USA, a national organization that cultivates young conservative social media influencers, and Kirk Cameron, an actor who in recent years has pivoted toward evangelical activism, most prominently through his public opposition to Drag Story Hour events. While some of the content may be faith-based, Trinity also produces content that is primarily political.
In addition to its backing from Trinity, McGraw’s new media network, which includes both his TV show and the podcast for which he accompanied Homan on the ICE raids, boasts an affiliation with Red Seat Ventures, a conservative and true-crime podcast network recently acquired by Fox. The “clients” section of the network’s website states: “Red Seat works with Dr. Phil to grow and monetize his substantial YouTube and Podcast assets,” including those produced by Merit Street Media.
McGraw’s ride-along with Homan runs parallel to his evolving business dealings with partisan media ventures and is one of the latest steps in the TV star’s rebranding as a right-wing media personality. McGraw spoke at Trump’s controversial Madison Square Garden rally over the summer. He stated that he was not endorsing Trump but defended the president as “not a bully.” McGraw had also interviewed Trump earlier in 2024 for his Merit Street Media show. As Deadline reported, McGraw “sided with the former president’s claims that his prosecutions were rigged.”
Partisan media outlets are largely personality-driven, and personalities like daytime TV’s Dr. Phil present a means for them to reach an even broader audience. Interestingly, Red Seat Ventures lists Chris Hanson, of “To Catch a Predator” fame, as one of their clients as well. Similarly, the stand-up comedian and host of “Family Feud,” Steve Harvey, reportedly signed on and took an equity partnership in Merit Street Media. “Dr. Phil Primetime” is followed by Nancy Grace, known for hosting numerous shows, including Court TV’s “Closing Arguments,” from the late ’90s until 2007. Merit Street Media describes her as “a former prosecutor, true crime survivor, and tireless justice warrior.”
Merit Street Media seems to have found its niche in rebooting famous daytime TV hosts from the ’90s and 2000s, employing their talents for entertainment in a sensationalized marriage of true crime and partisan media. While less overtly political than, say, Fox News, Merit has benefited from its access to the Trump administration.
After all, today’s culture wars partly trace their roots to past moral panics, which ’90s talk shows hosts and showrunners milked with great success — from the “satanic panic” over secret satanist cabals to the “war on Christmas,” which Bill O’Reilly and other right-wing media personalities insisted was being waged by secular forces out to undermine Christianity. McGraw’s podcast is itself reminiscent of the wildly popular TV show “Cops,” which merged reality TV, entertainment and ideological messaging by sending film crews to accompany police officers around the country.
On a February episode of the podcast, McGraw emphasized that he examined “how targets were identified, prioritized, approached and taken into custody.” He disputed claims that ICE raids were targeting schools and churches after a 2021 policy, which had required exceptional circumstances or higher-level approval to carry out such operations, was lifted. McGraw emphasized that raids were targeting violent and dangerous individuals with criminal records.
In early March, a federal judge rejected the Denver Public School District’s request for a preliminary injunction to reinstate the sensitive locations policy. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico stated that no such actions targeting schools have occurred since the policy change. McGraw reached the conclusion that ICE is engaged in sophisticated operations to target the worst criminal offenders. To drive home the point, Merit Street’s coverage repeated words like “focus” and “precision.” In other words, McGraw’s commentary aimed to portray the Trump administration’s actions around immigration in the most positive light.
Homan also claims ICE officials are prioritizing undocumented immigrants with a criminal record and that raids are not conducted at schools or churches. Yet whether such raids will be allowed to take place is being contested in the court system, and the fear that ICE raids could occur in schools or churches is not unfounded, especially given the revocation of the 2021 policy. Similarly, the administration’s assertion that those who have entered the U.S. without documentation will be considered criminals has led to fear that undocumented immigrants with no criminal backgrounds could be targeted for deportation.
Trump administration officials appear uniquely aware of the coverage their actions will receive and have seemingly taken steps to shape that coverage in their favor. In essence, deportations become performance, and McGraw’s collaboration with ICE, reminiscent of “Cops,” serves as an extension of the Trump administration’s messaging about its immigration agenda.
If the sentiments expressed by supporters of the president’s agenda on X, Instagram and other social media platforms are any indication, the ICE version of “Cops” is working as intended. Like the reality shows that preceded him, McGraw’s portrayal of law enforcement creates a spectacle designed to shape public perception.
“Cops” first premiered on the Fox network in 1989, making it older than long-running shows like “Law and Order.” Having been on the air for over 30 years, “Cops” could be thought of as the progenitor of law enforcement-based reality television in the U.S.
The podcast “Running From Cops,” hosted by the writer and director Dan Taberski, took a close look at the show’s troubled legacy. The podcast team went through the full catalog of episodes and found that 84% of police interactions featured on the show ended in arrests. (In Season 2, 61% of interactions ended in arrests, while by Season 30, 95% of interactions ended in arrests.) Exact statistics around law enforcement interactions are difficult to measure, but it’s generally understood that the majority of police interactions do not result in arrests. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, just 0.2% of police interactions ended in arrest in 2020.
“Cops” may have been reality TV, but it was still TV, and on some level, one might expect the show to feature arrests more frequently than they occur in real life. But the show leaned into sensationalism for entertainment’s sake, and the show’s critics argued that it had an unmistakable ideological and racial undercurrent. Over a third of the arrests featured on the show were for drug offenses, three times the rate in real life, the “Running from Cops” podcast found. Numerous studies have found suspects featured on the TV show were more likely to be nonwhite, while law enforcement officers on the show were overwhelmingly white. Stephan Chao, a former executive producer on “Cops,” said on the “Running From Cops” podcast that the NAACP had contacted the show regarding their portrayal of Black suspects.
CBS, which took over “Cops” in 2013, discontinued it in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. A&E canceled a similar program called “Live PD,” which featured body camera footage in addition to a camera crew. (“Cops” was acquired by Fox Nation in 2021, with the show’s 34th season premiering in 2022.)
In 2020, an investigation revealed that “Live PD” footage capturing the death of Austin, Texas, resident Javier Ambler had been destroyed by law enforcement on the orders of Robert Chody, the sheriff of Williamson County. Chody has since been prosecuted for tampering with evidence. In 2021, Texas passed Javier Ambler’s Law, which, in most cases, prohibits law enforcement-based reality TV in the state.
The genre is rife with problematic portrayals of crime and questionable relationships with law enforcement agencies. Contracts around these shows typically grant a great deal of oversight to the featured agencies. In most cases, the result portrays law enforcement in a positive light.
It’s no surprise that McGraw’s new partisan media venture is able to emulate this formula and apply it to Trump’s immigration policies. McGraw highlights heinous crimes like sexual assault and other violent offenses in a way that emphasizes the criminal backgrounds of the suspects who are featured.
Echoing the talking points of the Trump administration, McGraw’s program emphasizes that those targeted for deportation are the “worst of the worst” criminal offenders. Yet NBC has reported that, according to a senior Trump administration official, almost half of those detained by ICE did not have a criminal record.
The narrative that deportations are limited to severe criminal offenders contradicts the Trump team’s promise to undertake the largest deportation operations in American history. In the second Trump administration, immigration policy is about both actions taken and about the optics they create. Deportation becomes a spectacle, carried out with awareness of its coverage.
This is not to say the current administration’s actions and their effects are any less real. Satellite imagery obtained by Sky News revealed a makeshift tent city cropping up in the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Although no deported migrants are believed to be held at the base as of this writing, others have reportedly been sent to Panama, where they are left without recourse or the ability to leave, despite not being Panamanian.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham announced that she and her team toured the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for an upcoming episode of her show “The Ingraham Angle.” Pacing down an empty cement hallway, Ingraham opens the video stating, “Welcome to the mock facility at Guantanamo Bay,” adding that she had spent the day touring the facilities with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“I think the message is clear: If you break the law, if you are a criminal, you could find your way at Guantanamo Bay,” Hegseth told Ingraham. “You don’t want to be at Guantanamo Bay.”
Beyond TV, the Trump administration continues to leverage its connections with pro-Trump online influencers over various issues. Assembled last summer to live tweet the presidential debate, many of these same influencers — such as Chaya Raichik, who runs the account Libs of TikTok, and Rogan O’Handley, who runs the Instagram account DC Draino — were invited to the White House on Feb. 27 and gifted binders of supposed files regarding the infamous billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Pictures of far-right internet personalities posing with binders full of purported evidence related to child sexual abuse struck many as tone-deaf. Supporters of the proposed release of information around the infamous sex trafficker were left unsatisfied after the binders turned out to be a rerelease of heavily redacted information that has already been made public.
The account House Judiciary GOP on X posted a link to what it claimed were all of the released Epstein documents but instead directed users to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video. The bizarre “Rickrolling” around child sexual assault and human trafficking by an official GOP account left a bad taste in the mouths of those eagerly awaiting the release of new information.
Several influencers copied and pasted language given to them verbatim from the Trump administration, which included: “This is the most transparent administration in American history.” The National Post reported that “several of the influencers present held up their binders for the assembled press, most of whom were there to cover the British Prime Minister’s visit to the White House.” But these influencers then learned that Attorney General Pam Bondi did not want the distribution of the binders made public, the National Post reported, with one source calling it a “clusterfuck.”
Doing damage control, Bondi claimed the same day that the FBI field office in New York was withholding “thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.”
While perhaps a failed PR stunt, the revelations reveal an increasing willingness to rely on political influencers and partisan media personalities to spread the administration’s message. The president’s agenda-setting extends beyond the bully pulpit he typically enjoys and into the fractured media ecosystem of partisan news and entertainment.
“I’m not here for the Dr. Phil show. I’m here for our news organization at Merit TV and we are here to tell your story and have your back,” McGraw clarified for the room of federal agents during their pre-mission huddle. “We’re 100 percent on your side, there’s no question about it.”
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