With hundreds of thousands of ballots remaining to be counted and major swing states too close to call, President Donald Trump gave a press conference Thursday evening declaring himself the winner of an election he claims was rigged against him. Journalists and news outlets immediately called out the president for lying:
Fox News anchors handled Trump's deranged and dishonest address as if it were completely normal
Fox anchor Bret Baier: “Stealing an election, corruption, leveling a lot of charges”
Written by Nikki McCann Ramirez
Research contributions from Katherine Abughazaleh
Published
Multiple networks — but not CNN — cut away from the presser after it became clear the president was simply using the media coverage in an attempt to falsely undermine public confidence in the election. But even CNN criticized Trump’s lies.
Meanwhile, Fox “hard news” anchors Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier treated the speech with kid gloves, repeating Trump’s claims while offering little pushback.
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Citation
From the November 5, 2020, edition of Fox News' The Story with Martha MacCallum
MARTHA MACCALLUM (ANCHOR): The president coming out and basically saying that he believes the election has been stolen. He didn't take any questions, Bret. People yelling them on his way out the door.
BRET BAIER (ANCHOR): Yeah. He said Big Media, Big Money, Big Tech, and pollsters, suppression polls, essentially have affected this race, he said, from the beginning. Also talked about several lawsuits that have already been launched and many more he says that are coming, challenging the handling of the ballots in various states, alleging that things are happening in these states. Those state registrars and secretaries of state are pushing back on that so far.
MACCALLUM: Yeah, he keeps talking about the fact that later on more votes kept coming in. We know the mail-in ballots were collected, were announced, after the day-of ballots, which was the order that we were told that that would happen in, but he says that we have so much evidence, so much proof that the election was stolen, so that is what will need to be produced if indeed it is there.
BAIER: Stealing an election, corruption, leveling a lot of charges, the president of the United States, who we haven't heard from really since the early morning hours after the election, and now this battle continues with his campaign fighting in numerous states.