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      Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson 'not credible' after Jan 6 coverage, says White House – video

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      White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson was ‘not credible’ given his misrepresentation of the January riots after obtaining footage from Republican house speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Carlson aired his first segment on the riots on Tuesday, where he described the mob that attacked Capitol Hill as ‘peaceful sightseers’. Jean-Pierre told reporters: ‘As it relates to the Tucker Carlson question, we agree with the Fox Nation’s own attorneys and executives who have repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular’

      White House calls Tucker Carlson ‘shameful’ for misrepresenting January 6 footage – live More

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      What did Fox News really think of Trump and the 2020 election?

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      ExplainerWhat did Fox News really think of Trump and the 2020 election?Revelations stem from evidence in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against the networkFox News’s reputation as an unyielding backer of Donald Trump is in tatters after revelations that many of its top executives and on-air personalities never believed his lies about the 2020 election, and even personally disliked the former US president.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreThe details stem from documents released as part of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine firm Trump and Fox News singled out for unfounded allegations of rigging in the aftermath of the presidential race two years ago.The case is viewed as potentially the biggest financial threat to Fox News since it came on the air in 1996, but the details that have trickled out have already reshaped views of the network and shown a broad gulf between what its top personalities tell their viewers in public and what they privately believe.Here are the key things to know:When did the lawsuit begin?Dominion sells voting machines and tabulators and has headquarters in Denver, Colorado and Toronto, Ontario. It filed its lawsuit in March 2021, claiming Fox News spread lies about the 2020 election in an effort to stop viewers from switching to other networks.The firm’s complaint singled out some of Fox’s biggest personalities, such as Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro “and their chosen guests”, saying they plucked “defamatory falsehoods” from obscure far-right websites and broadcast them to their tens of millions of viewers. “Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” Dominion said.When will the case go to trial?The trial is scheduled to begin on 17 April, and expected to last five weeks.Why do we know so much about behind-the-scenes happenings at Fox News?Dominion began making evidence in the case public in mid-February as part of court filings, which included emails and text messages exchanged between Fox News personalities and executives, as well as depositions made as part of the suit.What did Fox News hosts really think about the 2020 election?Even as they went on the air to cast doubt about whether the vote went off fairly, many Fox News personalities privately doubted Trump’s claims. “He’s acting like an insane person,” Hannity, one of the network’s best-known personalities, allegedly said of Trump, according to a Dominion court filing.They also released messages from the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, in which he wrote that it was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere”, and the then president’s insistence on doing so was “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Carlson, Fox’s most popular commentator, took aim at Sidney Powell, a top lawyer for Trump who repeatedly claimed on air that Dominion’s machines changed votes from Trump to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. “Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote to a producer, later calling her “dangerous as hell”.Murdoch also said that several of the network’s top stars “endorsed” Trump’s false claims, and “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” according to a deposition in the case.What do we now know about their views of Donald Trump?Publicly, Trump has few friends like the personalities on Fox News. Privately, some of them loathe him. The case’s filings reveal that Carlson, for instance, wrote of Trump: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Murdoch felt that Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani were “both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.” And on 4 January, two days before Trump riled up a crowd of supporters who went on to attack the US Capitol, Carlson wrote in a text, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights.“I truly can’t wait.”Why did Fox News continue promoting election lies?With competitors like Newsmax and One America News Network waiting in the wings, Fox executives apparently feared losing their dominant place among America’s conservative viewership if they broke with Trump over the 2020 election.“We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers,” Fox News’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, told Murdoch the day before the January 6 attack.The network’s concern with maintaining advertising revenue also comes through in the documents. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” Murdoch said in his deposition, when asked why Fox allowed the conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell to run ads for his MyPillow product on the network.Fox has released its own evidence to argue against some of Dominion’s assertions, including comments from the Fox Corp co-chairman and CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, who said he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by a dip in the network’s ratings after the 2020 vote.TopicsFox NewsUS elections 2020TV newsTelevision industryUS politicsDonald TrumpexplainersReuse this content More

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      Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files show

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      Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files showEmail from billionaire mogul among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting SystemsRupert Murdoch said Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of Donald Trump’s voter fraud lie, according to an email submitted as evidence in a defamation lawsuit brought by an election operations company.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreDominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked allegations that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Trump, in favour of Joe Biden.Documents that became public on Tuesday offered a window into Fox’s internal deliberations. They show executives, producers and hosts discussing concerns about the network’s reputation and casting doubt on the plausibility of Trump’s claims.More than 6,500 pages were released. The full extent of the evidence is not clear as many filings are heavily redacted.In one exhibit, Murdoch, now 91 and chairman of Fox Corporation, emailed the Fox News president, Suzanne Scott, the day after Biden’s inauguration, asking: “Is it ‘unarguable that high-profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?”In an earlier exchange, Murdoch wrote that it had been suggested that primetime hosts say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won”. Murdoch told Scott some version of this would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen” and reasoned that Trump would “concede eventually”.According to the Dominion filings, Murdoch emailed a friend that the notion state legislators could change the election outcome – an idea gaining traction on the right – “sound[s] ridiculous. There’d be riots like never before.”“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch continues, referring to a news conference by the then Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.”In a text, Murdoch described the claims of election fraud as “really crazy stuff”.These exhibits and other material included in Dominion’s summary judgment motion are part of the company’s effort to prove Fox News either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice”, which public figures must prove in defamation cases.Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general found no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election. Trump’s allegations have been rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed.The lawsuit has given a stunning insight into the gap between what Fox News presented to millions of viewers and what its top stars thought and said in private, as well as their dread of losing audience to competitors.Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the host Tucker Carlson texted a producer to say: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”In an exchange more than a month earlier, Carlson said what Trump “is good at is destroy[ing] things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Fox News argues claims by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and protected by the constitution. The network said in a statement the newly released documents show Dominion using “distortions and misinformation” to “smear Fox News and trample on free speech”.Fox News has said that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would chill press freedom.Its evidence includes more context of testimony and messages that it says Dominion “cherry-picked” and “misrepresented”.For example, Fox News cites additional testimony by the Fox Corp chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, who said under oath he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by declining ratings after the election.In a reply brief, Dominion pushes back: “The charges Fox broadcast against Dominion are false. Fox does not spend a word of its brief arguing the truth of any accused statement.”“Finally, Fox has conceded what it knew all along,” the brief reads.The exhibits released on Tuesday had several references to accusations against Dominion made by the Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. In one email, the Fox News host Dana Perino referenced a Powell interview with another host, Maria Bartiromo, saying “this is nuts”. Carlson said in a text message: “Sidney Powell is lying.”In another exhibit, Hannity said he was giving Powell time to produce evidence but stopped having her appear on-air after she failed to deliver. Hannity has been quoted by Dominion during a deposition as saying he “did not believe” claims by Powell “for one second”.In his own deposition in January, Murdoch was asked by a lawyer for Dominion, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?”The media mogul replied: “Yes.”He added later: “The election was not stolen.”A Dominion spokesperson said the “emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place – Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company.”The trial, set to begin on 17 April, is slated to last five weeks. But there is little sign of it making an impact on the tone and tenor of Fox News coverage. Carlson has this week used footage of the deadly January 6 attack to falsely portray it as a largely peaceful gathering, earning rebukes from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “It wasn’t about the country, it was about the ratings. It wasn’t about objective, honest journalism. It was about Maga [Make America great again, Trump’s slogan] propagandism.“It’s about further ingratiation of Fox and its cohorts, the folks on TV, being loyal to Trump to the point that they were so afraid of losing him. It is like the worst, most dependent relationship in history because the consequences go beyond Fox and Trump.”Reuters contributed reportingTopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsUS television industrySean HannityUS elections 2020Joe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footage

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      Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageFox News continues to claim January 6 was peaceful while legal filings show him saying Trump is good at ‘destroying things’The Fox News host Tucker Carlson told an associate he “hated” Donald Trump “passionately”, new filings in a $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems revealed.Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files showRead moreEven as the filings were reported on Tuesday, Carlson continued to broadcast January 6 security footage in his attempt to cast the deadly attack on Congress as “peaceful chaos” arising from a protest of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson said in a text on 4 January 2021, two days before the riot. “I truly can’t wait.”He also wrote: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Many observers think the Dominion suit, over the broadcast of lies about electoral fraud by Trump and his allies, could prove seriously costly to Fox News.Hosts and executives up to and including Rupert Murdoch have been shown to have said Trump was lying, and to have ridiculed surrogates including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell but to have broadcast their claims regardless.In one message newly revealed on Tuesday, the host Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and said “no one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”In a statement, Fox News said Dominion was “using further distortion and misinformation in its PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on freedom of speech and freedom of the press”.Carlson is Fox News’ premier primetime host. Last month, over protests from Democrats and Fox News’ rivals, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, chose to give Carlson more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol on January 6.After Carlson’s first broadcast on Monday, Democrats, Senate Republicans, the chief of Capitol police and the family of an officer who died the day after the riot were among those to condemn him.The police chief, Tom Manger, said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions”, “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” and “fail[ed] to provide context about the chaos and violence … before or during these less tense moments”.Manger also said Carlson’s staff did not reach out to “provide accurate context”.The family of Brian Sicknick, who was 42 when he suffered two strokes and died a day after battling rioters and being sprayed with chemicals, decried “the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network”.Nine deaths have been linked to the Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,000 people have been charged and hundreds convicted of offences including seditious conspiracy.Trump escaped conviction in an impeachment trial and has not been criminally charged. A House committee made four referrals to the Department of Justice.On air on Tuesday, Carlson claimed Democrats had shown “hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger” over his use of the January 6 footage. It was “not outrage”, he said, but “fear. It’s panic.”He then focused on Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, saying footage would show the January 6 security failure was her fault.The media continued to pore over the filings in the Dominion suit.In another text, Carlson said of “the last four years” under Trump, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files show

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      Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files showEmail from Murdoch among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against FoxRupert Murdoch said that Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of voter fraud claims, according to an email submitted as evidence in the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox.Dominion is suing Fox News Networks for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked claims that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Donald Trump, in favor of his rival Joe Biden.The reams of documents that became public on Tuesday offer a window into Fox’s internal deliberations as it covered the election. They show top executives, producers and hosts discussing concerns about the network’s reputation and casting doubt on the plausibility of Trump’s claims of election fraud.Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleRead moreMore than 6,500 pages were released on Tuesday, although the full extent of the evidence is not clear as many filings are heavily redacted.In one exhibit, Murdoch, chairman of the Fox Corporation, emails Fox News president Suzanne Scott the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, asking: “Is it ‘unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump but what did he tell his viewers?”In an earlier exchange with Scott, Murdoch wrote that it had been suggested to him that the network’s primetime hosts say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won.” Murdoch told Scott that some version of this would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”According to Dominion’s unsealed filings, Murdoch emailed a friend that the notion state legislators could change the election outcome – an idea that had been gaining traction on the right – “sound ridiculous. There’d be riots like never before.”“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch continued, referring to a news conference by then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.”These exhibits and other material included in Dominion’s summary judgment motion are part of the voting machine company’s effort to prove the network either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice,” which public figures must prove to prevail in a defamation case.Fox has defended its coverage, arguing claims by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and protected by the first amendment of the US constitution. The network said in a statement the newly released documents show Dominion using “distortions and misinformation” to “smear Fox News and trample on free speech.”Fox has said that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would “stop the media in its tracks” and chill freedom of the press.Fox’s evidence includes more context of testimony and messages that it says Dominion “cherry-picked” and “misrepresented” in its summary judgment filing.For example, Fox cites additional testimony by Fox Corp co-chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch, who said under oath that he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by declining ratings after the election.Dominion has alleged Fox continued to push the stolen election narrative because it was losing viewers to right-wing outlets that embraced it.In another exhibit, Fox News host Hannity said that during an interview with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, he was giving her time to produce evidence but stopped having her appear on-air after she failed to deliver. Hannity has been quoted by Dominion during a deposition as saying he “did not believe” claims by Trump’s lawyer “for one second.”A Dominion spokesperson said in a statement that the “emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place – Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company.”The trial, set to begin on 17 April, is slated to last five weeks.TopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsUS television industrySean HannityReuse this content More

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      ‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who died

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      ‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who diedCondemnation of ‘so-called new network’ comes after Tucker Carlson shares footage from attack courtesy of Kevin McCarthyThe family of Brian Sicknick, the US Capitol police officer who died the day after the January 6 attack on Congress, condemned Tucker Carlson and Fox News as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, after the primetime host made first use of security footage from the riot bestowed by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker.Fox News hit with election complaint after Biden ad given to Trump son-in-lawRead moreA statement on Tuesday said: “The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News.”Fox and Carlson, the family said, “will do the bidding of [Donald] Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line and all who suffered on January 6, due to the lie started by Trump and spread by sleaze-slinging outlets like Fox”.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack on the Capitol by supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.Trump aimed to stop certification of Biden’s win. The process was only delayed but lawmakers including the vice-president, Mike Pence, were sent running for their lives.More than 1,000 people have been charged and hundreds convicted on charges including seditious conspiracy. Hundreds remain wanted by authorities.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. The House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals regarding Trump to the Department of Justice.Last month, to protests from Democrats and media groups, McCarthy made 41,000 hours of security footage available to Carlson and Fox News.Carlson had already claimed January 6 was a “false flag” attack, staged by authorities to entrap Trump supporters. On Monday night, he tried to portray those who stormed the Capitol as peaceful protesters.Saying the tapes showed “mostly peaceful chaos”, Carlson said: “Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.”In return, the Sicknick family lambasted Carlson and Fox News.Fox News, they said, “has shown time and time again that [it is] little more than the propaganda arm of the Republican party, and like Pravda will do whatever [it is] told to keep the hatred and the lies flowing while suppressing anything resembling the truth.“Fox does this not for any sense of morality as they have none but for the quest for every penny of advertising money they can get from those who buy airtime from them.”Recent revelations from filings in a $1.6n defamation suit from Dominion Voter Systems include Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’ owner, indicating he knew Trump’s claims were false but saying his motivation for accommodating election deniers was to stop viewers deserting.The Sicknick family also called McCarthy a “disgusting excuse for a House speaker”. Later on Tuesday, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, was asked if McCarthy had made a mistake in giving Carlson the tapes.He said: “My concern is how [the riot] was depicted, which was a different issue. Clearly the chief of the Capitol police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed first-hand on January 6.”McConnell’s Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer, lamented “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television” and said Carlson had shown “contempt for the facts [and] disregard of the risks [while] knowing full well he was lying to his audience”.Carlson, Schumer said, “told the bald-faced lie that the Capitol attack, which we all saw with our own eyes, somehow was not an attack at all”.Decrying efforts to make a martyr out of Ashley Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot dead by a police officer on January 6, the Sicknick family said Carlson was “downplaying the horrid situation faced by US Capitol police and DC Metro police who were incredibly outnumbered and were literally fighting for their very lives”.Sicknick, 42, was sprayed with chemicals, for which his attacker was jailed for nearly seven years. Sicknick died the day after the riot, after suffering two strokes. A medical examiner said he died of natural causes but his name remains linked to January 6. His body lay in state at the Capitol.Sicknick’s family said “his sense of duty and incredible work ethic were the driving force which sent him back in spite of his injuries and no doubt contributed to his succumbing to his injuries the following day.Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleRead more“What will it take to silence the lies from people like Carlson? What will it take to convince people that the January 6 insurrection was very real, it was very violent, and that the event was orchestrated by a man [Trump] who is every bit as corrupt and evil as Vladimir Putin.“The Sicknick family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that. Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit organisations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it.“Leave us the hell alone and instead of spreading more lies from Supreme Leader Trump, why don’t you focus on real news?”Fox News did not comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackFox NewsUS television industryTelevision industryWashington DCRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fox News reportedly imposes ‘soft ban’ on Donald Trump

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      Fox News reportedly imposes ‘soft ban’ on Donald TrumpThe former president has not made a weekday showing on the channel since appearing on Sean Hannity’s show in SeptemberFox News has imposed a “soft ban” on Donald Trump appearing on the channel, his inner circle is reportedly complaining, even as the broadcaster extends a warm invitation to other Republican hopefuls in next year’s presidential election.Trump not entitled to immunity from civil suits over Capitol attack, says DoJRead moreThe news startup Semafor reports that the cooling of relations between the former president and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding Trump at arm’s length. The former US president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September.Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are currently frequent guests on Fox. Media Matters for America, a watchdog that keeps a close eye on the network’s output, has counted seven weekday appearances by the former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley since she launched her presidential bid last month.Even the lesser known right-wing activist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who threw his hat into the ring last week, has appeared four times on Fox. Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to compete with Trump though he has yet to declare, is also repeatedly seen on the network.Semafor said it based its story on information supplied by four members of Trump’s circle. It quoted an unnamed individual “close to Trump” saying: “Everyone knows that there’s this ‘soft ban’ or ‘silent ban’. It’s certainly – however you want to say, quiet ban, soft ban, whatever it is – indicative of how the Murdochs feel about Trump in this particular moment.”The Guardian asked Fox News to confirm or deny the existence of such a ban, but did not immediately receive a reply.The undeniable tailing off of Trump’s exposure on Fox comes at a tense moment for the network, which is battling a $1.6bn lawsuit from the voting machines company Dominion. The suit claims that Fox News Network, with the complicit approval of its parent company Fox Corp, allowed wild defamatory conspiracy theories to proliferate on its platform, falsely accusing Dominion machines of stealing the 2020 presidential election from Trump by flipping votes from him to Joe Biden.In excerpts of a deposition given in the case by Rupert Murdoch in January, the owner and chair of Fox Corp admitted that he knew that several Fox hosts were endorsing lies about the election being stolen from Trump yet he chose not to stop them. Legal and media experts have suggested that the admission places Murdoch’s empire in considerable legal and financial peril.During Trump’s rise to the White House in 2015-16, and his ensuing years in office, he was virtually inseparable from Fox News. He regularly made impromptu calls into his favourite shows, and in the single year 2019 posted 657 tweets responding to content aired by the channel or its sister outlet Fox Business.In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 election, Fox hosts were permitted to continue broadcasting lies about massive voter fraud. But since the stolen election campaign reached its nadir on 6 January 2021, with the insurrection at the US Capitol, followed later that year by the lodging of lawsuits by Dominion and another voting machine company, Fox has gradually backed away.In turn, Trump has increasingly vented his anger towards his former media friend. This week he posted a rant on his social media platform Truth Social in which he accused Murdoch himself of peddling “fake news” after the Fox chief was revealed to have said in a deposition that he did not believe the stolen election lie from the beginning.“If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the presidential election of 2020, despite massive amounts of proof to the contrary, was not rigged & stolen, then he & his group of Maga hating globalist Rinos [Republicans in name only] should get out of the news business as soon as possible,” Trump said.There is no evidence that the election was rigged, as numerous top officials, including Trump’s own former US attorney general Bill Barr, have attested.TopicsDonald TrumpRupert MurdochFox NewsFoxUS politicsnewsReuse this content More