Donald Trump Apparently Furious Fox Execs Won’t Perjure Themselves to Bolster his Election Fraud Conspiracy
It’s been a tough few weeks for Donald Trump on the legal front. On the political front, he’s soaring in
Tristan Green
It’s been a tough few weeks for Donald Trump on the legal front.
On the political front, he’s soaring in the polls and donations are pouring in.
But legally, his peril has increased tenfold in recent days as news broke that special counsel Jack Smith may be eyeballing evidence of Trump violating the Espionage Act.
However, it wasn’t just Smith, his peril in New York and Georgia, or the aftermath of January 6 causing the former POTUS to lose sleep over the weekend.
In the early hours of Monday, Trump took to Truth Social to blast Fox News.
See: DONALD TRUMP’S BRAGGING MAY HAVE VIOLATED ESPIONAGE ACT
Trump Slams Fox for Maintaining the Truth
Fox News is currently facing a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, a voting technology company that says they were defamed by Fox hosts in the weeks after the 2020 election.
Hosts and executives have offered somewhat competing defenses to the court. Hosts have for the most part suggested that they genuinely believed the fraud conspiracy, so there was no intent to defame.
Executives, on the other hand, have said that it was clear that there was no voting system fraud and that hosts said what they did to bolster a political candidate – Donald Trump – at his behest.
Trump feels as though execs are throwing his only friends at Fox – the hosts – under the bus.
But what he wants them to do is perjure themselves to bolster his election fraud claims.
Trump blasted on Truth Social just before 3AM on Monday morning, “IF FOX WOULD FINALLY ADMIT THAT THERE WAS LARGE SCALE CHEATING & IRREGULARITIES IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WHICH WOULD BE A GOOD THING FOR THEM, & FOR AMERICA, THE CASE AGAINST THEM, WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED AT ALL, WOULD BE GREATLY WEAKENED.”
In other words, if they would just go along with his conspiracy theory, they’d be safe – of course, his conspiracy theory is false. So they would have to lie, since they’ve already admitted they knew it was fake.
Trump added, “BACK UP THOSE PATRIOTS AT FOX INSTEAD OF THROWING THEM UNDER THE BUS – & THEY ARE RIGHT! THERE IS SOOO MUCH PROOF, LIKE MASS BALLOT STUFFING CAUGHT ON GOVERNMENT CAMERAS, FBI COLLUDING WITH TWITTER & FACEBOOK, STATE LEGISLATURES NOT USED, etc.”
There is no widespread proof of voter fraud, and certainly no proof that there was enough fraud to change the outcome of the election.
Donald Trump Wants Fox to Keep Peddling his Falsehoods
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But what’s happening with Fox has a ripple effect elsewhere for Trump personally.
After all, Trump is unlikely to involve himself in vindicating other people unless it benefits him directly.
When it comes to the January 6 defendants, many of whom have been sentenced to serious prison time, Trump has hailed them as patriots and defenders of truth.
Defending them helps Trump himself, because it bolsters his claim that the election was stolen and he was (and by extension, the January 6 insurrectionists were) just there to defend the lawful winner – which he, of course, says was him.
And when it comes to Fox, again Trump benefits from defending the hosts. Because they were pushing the idea that there was enough election fraud to delegitimize the results of the 2020 election, which is Trump’s pet conspiracy.
If they’re exonerated, then so is his theory. Which means he wouldn’t be culpable for the attempted insurrection, he would just be a defender of liberty.
It’s all tied together, and Trump’s push for the execs to promote his conspiracy theory benefits him in the end.
But so far, they’ve been unwilling to tow the party line. They claim they are defending the right to free speech and a free press – but won’t go so far as to defend what Trump peddled.
NPR reports, “In a pre-trial ruling this month, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis asserted there is no question that the contested statements Fox aired about Dominion were false.
Thousands of text messages and email exchanges revealed in legal documents show that Fox personalities and executives knew the claims their hosts and guests blasted on air were false.
Two of those guests were Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, and Sidney Powell, a Trump ally and attorney. (Dominion has separately sued both Giuliani and Powell but there have been no rulings in either of those cases.)
Both appeared dozens of times across Fox programming in the weeks following the election and peddled baseless conspiratorial claims, including that Dominion had financial ties to California Democrats and that the company was created to rig elections in favor of the late-Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.”
Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6B, and will be watched closely even by those who are critical of the network. The defamation case could have far-reaching effects for other media companies as well.