After Trump's first term ended, the Left spent two years hunting down his people and trying to make sure none of them could ever work again.
The media figures who led that campaign built their careers lecturing America about honesty and accountability.
The editor who ran that campaign at Forbes just lost his job – and it had nothing to do with anything he published.
Randall Lane's Forbes Blacklist Targeted Kayleigh McEnany and Trump Officials
Randall Lane was the chief content officer at Forbes – the man who controlled what the magazine published for 15 years. He didn't just dislike Trump. He used the Forbes masthead as a weapon.
In January 2021 – days after Biden's inauguration – Lane published a column warning the entire corporate world: hire any of Trump's former communications staff, and Forbes would treat everything your company said as a lie.
His targets included Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sean Spicer, Stephanie Grisham, and Kellyanne Conway.
McEnany a "propaganda prodigy at 32 who makes smiling falsehood an art form," Lane claimed.
He praised Obama press secretary Jay Carney and Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart as men who walked out of the White House and into million-dollar careers with their credibility intact.
Those would be the same credibilities built on spin, misdirection, and the kind of omissions Lane had no problem with – as long as they came from the right team.
Lane's contempt for conservatives didn't stop at blacklisting. When government transparency journalist Adam Andrzejewski published a column at Forbes exposing that Dr. Anthony Fauci was the highest-paid employee in the entire federal government, NIH executives sent a complaint email directly to Lane.
Within 24 hours, Andrzejewski's editor called with new rules: no more writing about Fauci, all future topics required pre-approval.
Ten days later, his column was canceled entirely.
The same day Forbes axed the Fauci reporting, the magazine published a glowing piece about Fauci's portrait being hung in the Smithsonian.
Forbes Fires Randall Lane Over Undisclosed $6 Million Conflict of Interest
Lane was fired in July 2026 after Forbes discovered he had accepted roughly $6 million from RJ Shook, the founder of Shook Research.
Shook Research isn't some random company. It has partnered with Forbes since 2016 to produce the magazine's rankings of top wealth advisers – lists including Top Wealth Advisers, Best-in-State Wealth Advisers, and Top Women Wealth Advisers.
The payment surfaced only because Shook sold a majority stake in his company to a private equity firm, PPC Enterprises, in August 2025.
The new management reviewed emails from the acquisition and found the transaction.
They alerted Forbes.
Forbes confronted Lane.
Lane admitted it.
Forbes' own employee handbook explicitly prohibits staff from personally benefiting from the company's business relationships and requires approval for any outside business activities.
Lane called the $6 million a personal gift – compensation, he claimed, for years of informal advice he had given Shook dating back to a 2013 humanitarian trip the two took together.
He offered this in his public statement: "I made a mistake, and I take responsibility for it. I should have disclosed the gift, and failing to was a serious error in judgment."
The man who told America that Kayleigh McEnany made smiling falsehood an art form forgot to mention $6 million sitting in his personal account while deceiving his publication’s readers.
The Pattern Is the Point
Lane was a gatekeeper – the kind who decides who gets to speak and who gets destroyed for trying.
The entire time he was running blacklists and killing Fauci investigations, he was pocketing $6 million from a business partner his employer never knew about.
The Lincoln Project ran the same play – sanctimonious virtue as cover for personal enrichment – and those grifters got exposed too.
Lane believed in power, not principle, and a private equity firm reviewing routine acquisition emails just proved it.
Sources:
- Joe Concha, "Forbes editor who blacklisted Trump officials fired over secret $6M payment," Fox News, August 2026.
- Staff, "Forbes Editor Fired After $6 Million Payment," Newsmax, August 12, 2026.
- Staff, "Forbes Top Editor Ousted After Taking $6 Million 'Gift' From Magazine Partner," Mediaite, August 12, 2026.
- Lindsay Kornick, "Canceled at Forbes Over Fauci Investigations," Fox News, April 2, 2022.
- Monica Showalter, "Forbes Editor Fired Over $6m Payoff Had Threatened Companies Who Dared Hire Outgoing Trump Admin Officials in 2021," American Thinker, August 18, 2026.
- Staff, "Steve Forbes won't blacklist Trump officials following op-ed," Washington Examiner, January 2021.
