Donald Trump went after media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his network Fox News in rants on Truth Social where he once again pushed the baseless and debunked claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
Mr Murdoch has admitted during a sworn deposition that Fox News hosts pushed the fact-free narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Mr Trump, a recent filing in a voting machine company’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Fox shows.
The Fox News chair said hosts such as Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election”.
“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” he added, according to legal filings related to the defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.
“There was so much Voter Fraud & Irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election that it amazes me how weak and ineffective Fox News is at portraying itself in the lawsuit against them,” Mr Trump wrote on Tuesday. “They look too scared and frightened to reveal the massive amounts of voter fraud & Irregularities already found, and it would actually help them in the lawsuit. Instead Fox News wants to silence its anchors and reporters, the reason so many of their viewers fled. The Election was that of a Third World Country!”
“Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers, who will again be leaving in droves - they already are,” the former president said. “There is MASSIVE evidence of voter fraud & irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election. Just look at the documentary ‘2000 MULES’ and you will see large scale ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, or votes cast without Legislatures approval, or just recently, the FBI/Twitter Files Scandal. RIGGED!!!”
Dominion Voting System filed a 192-page document in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit, in which they outlined testimony and messages sent by Fox News staff that reveal that the network aired bogus claims about voting “irregularities” which they privately said were “nonsense” and “bull****”.
The latest court filing in the case shows that Mr Murdoch and the leaders at Fox News gathered just days after the 2020 election and discussed worries that there was “mounting viewer backlash to Fox” after the outlet accurately projected that President Joe Biden would win the state of Arizona.
They agreed that they would include “wild claims” on air that the election had been stolen from Mr Trump because “positive impressions of Fox News among our viewers dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen”, according to the documents.
The top anchors said in private that they didn’t believe the claims put forward by Mr Trump and his allies but still allowed them to appear on the network to push that false narrative, legal filings reveal.
Mr Murdoch at one point said Fox Vice President Bill Simmons should be removed from his role “right away” because of the Arizona projection to send “a big message with Trump people”.
