Fox News has undercovered reporting about then-President Donald Trump’s praising Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for his response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the state. The network briefly referred to the story 5 times for a total of just over 3 minutes. 

Fox has highlighted attacks against Walz over the same issue, and Trump’s own vice presidential pick, JD Vance, recently attacked Walz over his response to the protests. However, back in 2020, Trump referred to Walz as an “excellent guy” and said, “I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days,” according to audio obtained by ABC News. 

According to the ABC reporting, Trump repeatedly praised Walz on a phone call to other governors:

Fox News viewers likely missed this story. From the time when ABC published its reporting on August 7 through August 11, Fox News referred to the story 5 times for a total of just over 3 minutes. The network aired the audio of Trump praising Walz just 1 time. Fox’s “news-side” show America’s Newsroom mentioned the comments along with the 2024 Trump campaign downplaying the praise in the audio. On The Five, the audio was mentioned by one of Fox News’ Democratic personalities, Jessica Tarlov.  

Meanwhile, MSNBC’s reporting on the audio underscored the hypocrisy of the GOP attacking Walz over his handling of the protests, while the party’s leader praised Walz at the time. As guest and radio host Zerlina Maxwell noted, “I think when your attacks can be easily disproven, they're very weak.”

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “Walz” (including misspellings), “Trump,” “former president,” “governor,” “vice president,” “nominee,” “candidate,” or “Minnesota,” within close proximity of any of the terms “George Floyd,” “Black Lives Matter,” “BLM,” “unrest,” or “Minneapolis” or any variations of any of the terms “riot,” “protest,” or “violence” also within close proximity of any of the terms “leak,” “audio,” “phone,” “call,” “National Guard,” “big numbers,” “very happy,” “support,” “laud,” “encourage,” or “praise” from August 7, 2024, when news media obtained audio of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump praising Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz for his response to the 2020 George Floyd protests as the governor of Minnesota, through on August 11, 2024.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when Trump's phone call praising Walz's response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the call. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the call with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the call without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the call scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.