Fox News helped Donald Trump pretend to care about 9/11 by showing a clip of him visiting a New York City police station– even though he made the visit all about himself. But his “rigged election” claim was a bridge too far for the network that is being sued for more than $4.3 billion for promoting Trump’s election lies.
Trump is a New Yorker but he opted out of attending the ceremony at ground zero marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with President Joe Biden and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Instead, Trump ducked into a midtown police station “to honor 9/11 heroes,” Fox ludicrously claimed.
Not surprisingly, the one Trump really wanted to honor was himself. Sure, he acknowledged that the police do “an incredible job.” But he didn’t want to spend too much time on anyone else. Before long, Trump bragged that the New York Police Department had endorsed him during the last campaign. “You know that, right? First time they’ve ever endorsed a candidate,” Trump claimed.
“It’s a great honor. Having that endorsement meant more to me than anything,” Trump said, dubiously. Then, after sniping about “the fake news” being there, he took questions. As The New York Times put it, "he spent most of his time treating the visit as a campaign-style rally."
He was asked whether he’ll run again. “I think you’re going to be very happy,” Trump teased.
Trump spent a lot of time bashing President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, while claiming to “hate” to be doing so “on this day.” After boasting about his dealings with “the top guy, Abdul” in Afghanistan and how "there was nothing he was to be doing with us,” Trump whined, “All of a sudden we have a rigged election and all of a sudden we flee Afghanistan.”
Eventually, Neville broke away. She said, “He did not miss any opportunities to air grievances, including claiming that the election was rigged which it was not, it has been proven in court multiple times. It has been proven that the election wasn’t rigged by election officials.”
It’s a good thing that she corrected Trump’s Big Lie and sort of called out his boorish behavior but let’s not forget that Fox promoted the Big Lie – until it threatened to cost the Murdoch network big bucks. Now that it faces two lawsuits, each seeking more than a billion dollars, this is at least one Trump lie the network is willing to refute.
Interestingly, FoxNews.com posted the video of Neville debunking Trump, without noting that was its content. Fox called the video “Trump visits NYPD station to honor 9/11 heroes” (even though we only saw Neville speaking in the clip) and described it as “Fox News’ Arthel Neville on former President Donald Trump’s visit to a police station in Midtown Manhattan.”
It’s almost as if Fox was afraid to draw attention to her fact check.
You can watch Neville below, from Fox’s coverage of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Mediaite has video of Trump’s comments about the rigged election.
Agree fully, although I expect Fox(not)News will revert back to willfully biased “infotainment” as soon as the lawsuits are over. It’s time the USA decided that infotainment is dishonest, criminal behaviour, not free speech: tantamount to shouting fire in a crowded theatre.