Fox News Lied to its Audience About the Charges Against Donald J. Trump and January 6th

A condensed overview of 18 hours of Fox News for the week ending 8/6/23

Aug 08, 2023

Last week former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on charges related to his role in violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. This is the third criminal indictment the former president has faced since he left office.

Fox News anchors reacted as they’ve done in the past - they minimized the charges against Trump, twisted the facts in the indictment and claimed that Trump was somehow representative of every disgruntled American.

The network framed Trump’s plight as, “If the federal government can do this to Trump, they can do it to anyone. The former president is not just fighting these charges to save himself he’s defending every American from the evil tyranny that is the Biden regime.”

Fox News personalities and guests falsely claimed the charges against Trump were a violation of his freedom of speech, they downplayed the severity of the January 6th attack and used every opportunity to bring up various unverified claims of criminal misconduct by Hunter Biden and his father.

The Fox News strategy was simple - lie, minimize, and deflect.

Shows I covered last week

Fox & Friends
The Five
The Ingraham Angle
Trump’s indictment, I added - Special Report with Bret Baier, Jesse Watters Primetime, and Hannity

A Fox News Guest Gives Up the Game in about One Minute

Fox hosts pushed the idea that Donald J. Trump is being criminally prosecuted based on his opinion of the 2020 presidential election. A seasoned attorney on “Fox & Friends,” summed up the real reason the former president is facing criminal charges.

Trump is being charged with crimes involving fraud not speech. On Wednesday Elliot Felig, a former state prosecutor, broke down the charges against Trump using a simple analogy.

“So, he has a First Amendment right to say the election was stolen. They can say that all over the country. You can say it all over T.V. He has a right to file lawsuit after lawsuit claiming that the election was stolen to try to stop the certification. However, where he got in trouble is when they assembled these electors in the various states after Joe Biden had been declared the winner by the secretaries of state or by the governors, had them sign a certification saying we are the duly elected and duly certified electors.
That's where he's going to argue there was no good faith basis. That's where he's going to say the fraud took place. If I can make an analogy right, I could come on your show. I can say I'm Elon Musk's long-lost son and I'm entitled to inherit all of his billions and billions of dollars when he dies. I can say that all over the country, even though it's false.
Even though it's stupid, right? It’s the First Amendment. But if after Elon Musk passes away, I walk into probate court, hand up a document that says, hey, this is Elon Musk’s will, I know it's not his will, and it says I'm his son. And I say, I get all these billions of dollars. Guess what?
Then I've committed fraud, that I've committed forgery that I've maybe done on attempted grand larceny. And Jack Smith is going to make the argument that that's where they were not acting in good faith, that when they had these false certificates prepared, when they asked Mike Pence to accept those rather than they other certificates, that's where he's going to argue the fraud was,” said Felig.

Clutch Your Pearls! - Laura Ingraham was DEEPLY offended by CNN

On Thursday Laura Ingraham opened “The Ingraham Angle,” by showing a brief media clip from CNN, “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.”

“We just saw the former president actually being handed an umbrella by his coconspirator, Walt Nauta,” said Cooper.

In the clip Cooper was speaking over a statement former President Donald J. Trump was making about his criminal indictment. Ingraham viewed this as a grave injustice.

“That little routine that they pulled when the president started speaking. That kind of sums up the media's culpability in perpetuating a fraud upon the American public. They're not journalists. They're liberal hacks who don't like or trust the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last election. Of course, they weren't going to actually cover what a former president of the United States was saying in his own defense. But we will,” said Ingraham.

Ingraham then cut to Trump’s statement.

“This is a very sad day for America. And it was also very sad driving through Washington, D.C., and seeing the filth and the decay and all of the broken buildings and walls and the graffiti. This is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America. So if you can't beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him. We can't let this happen in America,” said Trump.

At the end of Trump’s brief statement Ingraham scolded CNN for not including it.

‘Well, shame on the regime media for not having the decency to cover this case as it should be covered or those remarks. But none of us should be surprised. The New York Times, The Washington Post, other cable networks, they're teaming with unindicted coconspirators. At every turn. They seek to protect the party in power and convict the Republicans in a coordinated effort to interfere with the next presidential election,” said Ingraham.

Of course, CNN like Fox is a 24-hour channel dedicated to covering the news. The brief clip Ingraham highlighted was one example. Several other programs on CNN did include Trump’s statement in full.

Ingraham’s outrage over a 30 second clip of the former president is peak hypocrisy considering Fox News refused to air the primetime installments of The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Fox News was the only major news network that refused to broadcast the hearings. The network did include them on Fox Business which has a much smaller audience.

January 6th Was No Big Deal

On Wednesday Laura Ingraham minimized the violent attack on the United States Capitol.

“For me, the words farcical, ridiculous, abusive. Those words came to mind. But after going over the document for the second time earlier today, I realized it's far worse than any of that. What Jack Smith and his boss, Merrick Garland, are doing, not just to Trump but to the nation going forward is devastating. Now, the DOJ, the White House, every member of Congress knows the truth. The ragtag group of MAGA supporters who busted into the Capitol on January 6th, they had no meaningful effect on the democratic process on that day. Only propagandists could call it an insurrection,” said Ingraham.

Ingraham was completely re-writing history. A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died as a result of the riot on January 6th.

According to reporting by the New York Times, one protester, Ashli Babbitt, was shot by Capitol Police while three others died during the riot. Kevin D. Green died from a heart attack, Rosanne Boyland was accidentally crushed in a stampede by other rioters, and Benjamin Philips died of a stroke.

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died the day after the attack of a stroke. Two other officers, Jeffrey Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department and Howard Liebengood of the Capitol Police both committed suicide soon after the attack.

After the bipartisan report was released in June two other Metropolitan Police officers Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag also committed suicide in July.

Roughly 140 police officers were injured during the attack some sustained severe career-ending injuries.

Rioters were seen on camera screaming, “Hang Mike Pence,” while also threatening then Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Jesse Watters Thinks it’s Time to Re-litigate the 2020 Election

On Thursday on “The Five,” Jesse Watters put a lot of focus on the idea that possible fraud in the 2020 election wasn’t thoroughly investigated.

“Some really smart lawyer. Earlier on, Fox said that if they're going to bring in Barr as a witness, they get to cross Barr and say, okay, what you told Trump, there was no election fraud. What did you do to investigate it? How many man hours did you spend? How much money did you spend? Where did you go? What did those lieutenants tell you?
I mean, you can't say everything's fine. It was like two weeks he checked for fraud. Okay, everybody has the right to be suspicious in this country. If you have a COVID election where they blow out all of the signature requirements, they blow out all of the deadlines, and then they blast out all these unsolicited ballots into the ecosystem with no chain of custody.
You're not suspicious? You have a right to be suspicious. And all these state legislators had no power to do anything about it. It was just done via judicial fiat. And then Zuckerberg lends, I think it was a half a billion layers over all of these election volunteers all over the State Worker Act. These people were activists that were running this thing.
So if someone sends you an affidavit that says there's monkey business in Detroit, the president has every legal right to call the, you know, Michigan State legislature and say, can you guys look into this? Maybe you want to send an alternative slate of electors for me. And by the way, it's not a big deal to send an alternative slate of electors.
You know what? They did win like what a half dozen alternate electors came in. They had the real ones. Then they got the alternate ones and then they just threw the other ones in the trash. It it it didn't it didn't mean anything. It just an alternative elector that,” said Watters.

It’s a bit breathtaking that Watters would bring up election fraud considering Fox News paid out $787.5 million in a defamation settlement to Dominion Voting Systems and still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voting technology company Smartmatic.

Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade Fight About Trump

On Friday things got a bit spicy on “Fox & Friends,” as Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade openly fought about Trump’s case.

“He got a bunch of bad advice from his lawyer as he was doing what his lawyers, who Mike Pence referred to a couple of days ago and it his crackpot lawyers or three he believed he actually had won. Now, here's the problem with that. Ty Cobb, who actually was employed by Donald Trump during the Mueller investigation, he was one of Trump's lawyers, said that he tweeted this or he put this on Facebook. He said there will be evidence from several witnesses in this case that Donald Trump knew he lost. He said, I lost. And then Ty Cobb goes on to say, it's going to be a D.C. jury. And this is the last line of Ty Cobb. He said, Donald Trump, he's toast, said Doocy.

Brian Kilmeade interrupted.

“Who cares what Ty Cobb says?. . Everybody around Trump in in casual conversation, in serious conversation on tour and beyond, Trump won’t go five seconds without him saying he won the election? He was down Sean Hannity Throw for not defending him,” said Kilmade

Fox & Friends Begs Trump to Join the Fox News Republican Debate

On Thursday on “Fox & Friends,” Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade all seemingly begged Trump to join the Fox News Republican Debate in August.

“You know what? Regarding the Fox debate, I think the one thing one reason Donald Trump will want to show up is Donald Trump does not want to see the ratings the next day. And 50 million people watched because it's going to be on all the Fox platforms. But he's not going to want to see Ron DeSantis in the center podium because that was Trump's podium during the debate,” said Doocy.

Later on, in the discussion Brian Kilmeade weighed in.

“So, real quick on this poll, 46%. The New York Times poll are still considering voting for a different candidate. Governor Ron DeSantis, a solid second head to head if it is just one on one 62% to 31%, Trump beats his second closest rival. Obviously, it's Ron DeSantis, everybody else in single digits. It should be interesting. But to me, if I see this poll and I'm Donald Trump, I feel great about what my poll numbers are. But why risk why not go for, you know, go to the clincher by showing up at the debate on August 23rd,” said Kilmeade.

Ainsley Earhardt also pushed the same idea.

“You can’t take your voters for granted. I hope he does show up because voters want to hear from him . . . you don't get too excited and take your voters for granted,” said Earhardt.

Fox News and the Latest Crazy Conspiracy

On Friday Pete Hegseth sub-hosting for Laura Ingraham introduced a truly bizarre new theory. The segment was so long and convoluted so it was difficult to pull a succinct clip.

The basic premise was that Barack Obama stayed in Washington D.C. after the end of his second term in order to secretly influence and control the Justice Department. The source of this wild accusation was David Garrow, the author of “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.”

Hegseth never explained how Obama would pull strings in the Justice Department while Trump was president. Apparently just being in close proximity to the White House was all it took.

In the extended segment on “The Ingraham Angle,” Hegseth offered no evidence that supported this claim. Garrow has been widely criticized over his use of FBI files in a book he wrote about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Many scholars believed the FBI documents were part of a smear campaign against the civil rights leader and are not accurate.

Fox News promoting a false story about Barack Obama reeks of desperation.

Stories Fox News Ignored

Every week I compare the hours I watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following is a list of stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.

Firefighters battled a wildfire that consumed over 80,000 acres across the Mojave Desert last week.
An Islamist State group (ISKP) took responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 54 people at a Taliban event in Pakistan.
Two rival Palestinian factions battled in a refugee camp inside Lebanon killing at least 9 people including a popular Palestinian general with the Fatah group.
Fifteen African nations imposed sanctions on the junta that overthrew the democratically elected President in Niger. France, Italy and Spain began evacuating its citizens from the country. The U.S. State Department ordered all remaining non-emergency personnel and eligible family members to leave Niger. The U.S. Embassy remains open. Protests in support of Niger coup broke out in the capitol.
U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky surpassed Michael Phelps’ record by winning 16 individual world titles, in little over a year.
PBS produced a segment about how the billions of dollars paid to state and local governments in opioid settlements from pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies is being spent.
President Biden signed an executive order to reform how the military justice system handles sexual assault claims. The changes, which received bipartisan support in Congress, remove criminal complaints from the victim’s chain of command, and gives the authority to trained prosecutors.
The U.S. economy added 187,000 new jobs last month, which was slightly lower than analysts expected. The rate last month is closer to pre-pandemic levels of job growth.
North Korea finally issued a response on the fate of Private Travis King, an American soldier who inexplicably dashed into North Korean territory during a civilian tour of the Demilitarized Zone. A Pentagon spokesperson said that the DPRK has responded to United Nations Command but could give no more information.
PBS produced a segment about the U.N. World Food Program. Global hunger has dramatically increased due to conflicts around the world including the war in Ukraine and climate change.
Dozens of Congressional Democrats were petitioning to end expedited screening of asylum-seekers in Border Patrol custody saying they were not getting access to lawyers as promised.
Two Trump supporters in Michigan were charged with felonies for an effort to illegally access and tamper with voting machines.
New Jersey Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver died last Tuesday of a sudden illness at the age of 71. She was one of New Jersey’s most prominent Black leaders.
The family of Henrietta Lacks reached a settlement with a biotech company for the use of her cervical cells in research without her consent or any compensation. Her cells were the first human cells to ever be successfully cloned.
PBS produced a segment about the demise of local newspapers. Over the past two decades 2200 weekly newspapers closed down in cities and towns all across the country.
A federal court sentenced a man to death for the murder of 11 people in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The massacre was the highest-casualty antisemitic hate crime in U.S. history.
The extreme heat that hit over 80% of the world’s population in July was likely caused by climate change according to a new analysis by the nonprofit research group Climate Central.
Beijing, China recorded its heaviest rainfall in 140 years which has resulted in extreme flooding and 21 deaths.
Pope Francis rebuked Portugal Catholic leadership over the sexual abuse of minors when he visited the country for World Youth Day.
Developments in the Ukraine war: Russia damaged Ukraine’s grain trade after an attack on Odessa. Moscow was hit with drone attacks while Russian missiles killed six in Ukraine President Zelenskyy’s hometown in central Ukraine. Ukraine attacked a Russian port in the Black Sea with drones.
The U.S. military is considering adding armed troops to commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz to prevent Iran from seizing and harassing civilian vessels. Additional warships, aircraft and Marines have been deployed to the region to prevent further Iranian aggression.
In South Korea a man drove his car into pedestrians outside of a shopping mall and began stabbing random people. Fourteen people were injured in the attack. This is the second stabbing attack in two days.
South Korea decided to press on with the World Scout Jamboree as thousands of scouts left the event early due to extreme heat.
Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the racially motivated mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. PBS focused on how the mass killing has affected survivors and the families of the victims.
Texas A&M will pay a $1 million settlement to Kathleen McElroy, a Black journalist and academic over an offer of tenure that was reduced to a one year position. McElroy’s hiring faced conservative backlash over her support of diversity programs.
The city of Phoenix, Arizona experienced a brief respite from extreme heat for two days before temperatures climbed to over 100 degrees again.
New cases of COVID-19 are on the rise across the United States including a spike in hospitalizations. The number of overall hospitalizations still remains an all time low.
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was sentenced to 19 more years in prison over charges that he promoted "extremism.” Navalny was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin before he was jailed.
A court ordered a re-enactment of the Parkland school shooting, complete with live ammunition as part of a civil lawsuit against a former sheriff’s deputy accused of failing to do enough during the massacre. The same deputy was cleared of criminal wrongdoing for his role in the mass shooting.
Justin Pearson and Justin Jones both won back their seats in the Tennessee state legislature after being expelled for participating in a gun control demonstration.
Diana Taurasi is the first WNBA player to score over 10,000 points in her career. Taurasi has played in the league for 19 years.
An American tools machine company Haas may be indirectly supplying parts used in Russian weapon systems. The company said it stopped all sales to Russian firms after the country invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Representatives from the WGA Negotiating Committee sat down with Hollywood’s biggest studios on Friday. The meeting was not productive.
The Biden administration launched a new Bureau for Global Health Security and Diplomacy. John Nkengasong, ambassador-at-large for global health diplomacy, was chosen to lead the agency.
According to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll Republicans are far less likely to view climate change as a serious threat. A majority of Democrats and Independents thought that climate change should be given a priority over the economy while 72% of Republicans believed the exact opposite. The polling showed 70% of Republicans viewed climate change as just a minor threat or no threat at all.
Protests increase as Japan is set to release waste water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.