Donald Trump looks at supporters as he departs after playing golf at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling Virginia, Sunday Nov. 8, 2020. Source: AP
Donald Trump accuses Fox News of election interference in another sign of fractured relations
November 10, 2020
As the US election slips away from Donald Trump, his relationship with the country’s most-watched news network appears to be souring.
Donald Trump has accused Fox News of interfering in the US election, marking the latest fracture in a relationship that has strained several times since election day.
Fox News has been a long-time supporter of Mr Trump’s, and his term as president has been packed with often uncontested appearances on the conservative-leaning network, owned by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Mr Trump has still not conceded the election, with he and his associates continuing to peddle still-unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
In a tweet on Tuesday morning AEDT, Mr Trump said Fox was among various US news networks and publications whose polling was “so far off” it amounted to “tampering with an election” and all “should be called out for election interference”.
Earlier on Tuesday, Fox joined multiple other networks, including ABC News in Australia, in cutting away from a press conference when White House press secretary Kayleigh repeated Mr Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
“This election is not over, far from it … We want every legal vote to be counted and we want every illegal vote to be discarded,” Ms McEnany told reporters at a briefing.
Fox host Neil Cavuto soon butted in, saying, “I just think we have to be very clear, she’s charging the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting”.
“Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing this.”
Fox triggered the wrath of the Trump campaign on election night after it became the first news network to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden.
The Trump campaign disputed the call, claiming the president remained in contention in a state that it said would be critical to victory for both candidates.
A Donald Trump interview on with Fox News is broadcast in a bar on February 2, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images North America
Fox defended its decision, saying that even though not all votes had been counted, Mr Biden’s lead appeared insurmountable.
Mr Trump’s campaign website said Fox’s “decision desk” director Arnon Mishkin had “prematurely called Arizona for Joe Biden before hundreds of thousands of ballots had been counted. Even left-leaning election analysts like (FiveThirtyEight’s) Nate Silver have criticised the decision, but Mishkin is standing by his terrible decision despite and refusing to retract his unjustified call.”
Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son in law and one of his senior advisers, spoke with Mr Murdoch seeking to reverse the Arizona decision, The New York Times reported. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Mr Trump did not personally complain to Mr Murdoch, who told the newspaper: “If he had, I would not have interfered or changed our call”.
As of Tuesday, several news networks have still not called Arizona for either Mr Trump or Mr Biden, with 98 per cent of ballots counted.
TV stations switching off
Fox on Tuesday joined a growing number of news networks since election day to pull out from or fack-check a live White House press conference.
On Thursday, the three big US broadcast networks – ABC, NBC and CBS – all cut away from Mr Trump while he continued to allege widespread voter fraud.
“We have to interrupt here, because the president made a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting,” Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News said.
“There has been no evidence of that.”
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams said: “OK, here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States.”
Jake Tapper of CNN said it was “a sad night for the United States of America to hear their president say that, to falsely accuse people of trying to steal the election”.
Fox did not cut away from that particular press conference, according to The New York Times, though the network’s White House correspondent and the anchor at the time later pointed out there was no supporting evidence for the claims.
SBS Additional reporting by Reuters, AFP.
