Fox News apparently does not like former President Donald Trump’s election fraud claims, so much so that the network edited them right out of an interview he gave over the weekend.
“It’s a disgrace what’s happening, and I don’t think the country’s going to stand for it,” Trump told Fox News host Dan Bongino during an exchange that aired on Saturday.
He pointed to rising violent crime, the move to defund the police, a growing border crisis and the increase in political prosecutions as evidence the country is on the wrong track.
Fox chose to remove what Trump said next.
“Fox News EDITED and CHANGED what President Trump said, censoring out 45 accurately describing the Fake Election,” his spokeswoman Liz Harrington tweeted.
WOW. So I went to post a clip from President Trump’s great interview from @FoxNews last night, and lo and behold, Fox News EDITED and CHANGED what President Trump said, censoring out 45 accurately describing the Fake Election.
Here is what President Trump said: pic.twitter.com/4aNKXioky4
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) August 8, 2021
“You have a fake election, you have an election with voter abuse and with voter fraud like nobody has ever seen before, and based on that and based on what happened they are destroying our country,” Trump told Bongino.
And here is what Fox News posted to YouTube: pic.twitter.com/P7B6Otbv4S
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) August 8, 2021
Harrington also tweeted a link to the whole interview, which Fox posted on YouTube, so people could have the full context.
See the jump edit here on YouTube:https://t.co/LYojfEN4jR
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) August 8, 2021
The spokeswoman made clear that Bongino had nothing to do with the deletion and likened the move by Fox as right out of Big Tech’s playbook.
This had nothing to do with @danbongino, the interview happened to be on his show. Dan is a great friend of America First.
It was @FoxNews who cut out President Trump’s statement about the Fake Election, just like they have cut out coverage of election fraud ever since
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) August 8, 2021
In a Sunday Facebook post, Bongino disavowed the network’s decision.
“I was not made aware of ANY edits made to my interview with President Trump on the Fox News Channel YouTube account,” he wrote.
Do you think Fox News has become more liberal?
Yes: 88% (7 Votes)
No: 12% (1 Votes)
“However, it’s my show and I’m responsible for what happens with it. I’m looking into this and I will provide a full account of what happened on my podcast tomorrow. I owe it to you,” Bongino added.
“I’ve been a staunch ally to President Trump from the beginning, even when others sold him out. And I have the receipts to back it up.”
Fox stirred the ire of Trump supporters when its decision desk called an early victory for Biden in Arizona on election night, despite hundreds of thousands of outstanding ballots to be counted.
Trump political adviser Jason Miller tweeted the night of the election, “There are still 1M+ Election Day votes out there waiting to be counted – we pushed our people to vote on Election Day, but now Fox News is trying to invalidate their votes!”
2/ We only need 61% of the outstanding, uncounted Election Day votes in Arizona to win.
These votes are coming from “our counties,” and the 61% figure is very doable based on what our other Election Day votes are looking like.@FoxNews should retract their call immediately.
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) November 4, 2020
In the days ahead, Trump in fact closed the gap dramatically from being down nearly 93,000 votes to 10,500 votes, the smallest margin of any of the swing states.
No other news outlets called Arizona for Biden election night, though the Associated Press did early Wednesday morning, Nov. 4.
NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN all waited nine days after the election until Nov. 12 when most of the ballots were counted to declare Biden the winner, NPR reported.
Many felt Fox’s early call of Arizona for Biden set the tone for the night that the Democrat could beat the incumbent president.
The network was not nearly so quick to put North Carolina in the win column for Trump.
Fox declared the Tar Heel State for Trump on Nov. 14 (11 days after the election), though the 45th president carried it by nearly 75,000 votes.
Who knows? Maybe Fox removed Trump’s election fraud claim to Bongino out of concern YouTube would take down the whole video.
Some of the former president’s biggest supporters — like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin — remain on air, but the network seems skittish about putting Trump on himself.
In June, Fox cut away from Trump’s speech at the southern border wall in Texas when he raised issues related to election fraud.
Now the network is editing his words for its social media posts.
The American people are certainly capable of weighing Trump’s claims about election fraud for themselves without censorship from Fox News.
