As witnesses testified that former President Donald Trump and his campaign manufactured bogus claims that the election was rigged against him during the second day of public hearings from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, Fox News seemed more focused on discrediting the committee’s process than engaging with its findings.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s testimony revealed how unhinged many in his camp were in pushing Trump to declare victory on election night and pursue baseless election fraud claims. Notable moments from today’s hearing included when Barr told the committee that Trump grew “detached from reality,” Jared Kushner’s testimony revealed that Rudy Giuliani was pushing Trump to go further with election misinformation, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) showed how the Trump campaign misled donors.
Despite all of the objective evidence showing Trump’s effort to defraud the public, and specifically his own supporters, regarding the election outcome, Fox News argued that the testimony presented was unimportant while complaining that the committee did not include pro-Trump perspectives — specifically, Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Jim Jordan (R-OH), who sided with the insurrectionists in voting to block certification of the Electoral College results and helped Trump spread his election lies, while Jordan is himself implicated in Trump’s coup plot. This represents a change of tactics from last week, when Fox shunted the committee’s prime-time hearing to its little-watched sister network while unleashing a torrent of lies and misinformation on its own audience.