Fox News, the network that avidly promoted President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results, is now almost silent on a major story from over the weekend: the reports in both The New York Times and Axios that Trump is flirting with martial law.
The news outlets reported over the weekend that Trump met with conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell and his disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, with Trump pondering whether to seize voting machines for examination, and perhaps even to appoint Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election.
Powell has at times divided even parts of right-wing media with her theories about an international conspiracy of South American communists, billionaire philanthropist George Soros, and computer servers in Europe all coming together to change the election results. Flynn has been publicly calling for Trump to impose martial law in order to nullify the election, telling Newsmax last week that “within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place them in those states and basically re-run an election in each of those states.”
Outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr, who stated earlier this month that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud that would shift the election result, also reaffirmed to reporters on Monday: “If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one. But I haven't, and I'm not going to.”
But over the weekend, the whole topic got scant discussion on Fox News. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked only one question about the Times report to President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in the context of questioning whether Biden believed that Trump had committed an “abuse of power” in contesting the election.
In response, Psaki largely brushed off the topic, trying to focus instead on important issues facing the Biden administration such as the COVID-19 pandemic and unemployment. “We know that he has tried to challenge the results of the election. They were certified this last week,” Psaki said.