As part of its whitewashed gushing over Rush Limbaugh, Fox “news” anchors Bill Hemmer and Harris Faulkner repeatedly prodded Donald Trump to talk about his false election-fraud conspiracy theory without explaining any of the truth to viewers.
Fox’s YouTube video of Trump’s lengthy phone call to Fox News about Limbaugh’s death ends at 12:59 but Trump blabbed on the air for another 10 minutes. The first 13 minutes were devoted to celebrating Limbaugh and his support for Trump.
But at about 13:17, anchor Bill Hemmer asked, “What did Rush Limbaugh tell you after the election of November 3rd? What were those conversations like?” Notice Hemmer did not say that Trump lost the election. It’s nearly impossible to believe that Hemmer didn’t know Limbaugh was a supporter of Trump’s Big Lie about it.
Trump didn’t need any more prompting:
TRUMP: Well, Rush thought we won. And so do I, by the way. I think we won by a substantially and Rush thought we won. … Many professionals do. And I don’t think that could have happened to a Democrat. You would have had riots going all over the place if that had happened to a Democrat. We don’t have the same support at certain levels of the Republican system.
Hemmer, who plays an objective news anchor on TV, didn’t challenge a word. He didn’t mention that Trump lost 61 of his 62 cases challenging the election and that he was unable to produce any evidence that the election was stolen. The only case Trump won, in Pennsylvania, did not change the outcome of his loss there. Nor did Hemmer point out that Trump’s own attorney general said there was no election fraud. And Hemmer certainly never pointed out that 57 U.S. Senators just voted Trump guilty of inciting the lethal January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. At the very least, Trump asked his supporters to interfere in the election certification. But neither Hemmer nor cohost Harris Faulkner said anything about any of that.
Hemmer followed up by prodding for more, this time asking how much contact Trump had had with Limbaugh “over the next two months about that.”
Later, Faulkner slobbered, “We are gracious, joined by President Number 45, Donald J. Trump.” She changed the subject to ask how Trump and Limbaugh became friends “and that he knew almost instantly that you were the one he wanted to support.”
Then, when Faulkner asked if Trump and Limbaugh talked about what might come next for Dear Leader, Trump reverted to his election lie, this time implicitly validated by Faulkner:
TRUMP: Well, we didn’t talk too much about that. I didn’t want to talk about that too much, either, because I was disappointed by the voter tabulation. I think it’s disgraceful what happened. We were like a Third World country on Election Night, with the closing down of the centers and all of the things that happened late in the evening and he was furious at it. And many people are furious. You don’t know how angry this country is. And people are furious but he was somebody – at the same time, he thinks about the past but he projects out to the future. That was Rush.
FAULKNER: Mmmhmm.
[…]
TRUMP: But he was somebody that really felt that was a very important victory for us, so we should have had it, that we did have it. But he was somebody that felt that was a very important election and I did too. I mean, I did too. You see what’s happening now.
FAULKNER: Yeah.
You can watch Hemmer and Faulkner aid and abet the Big Lie below, from Fox’s February 17, 2021 coverage of Limbaugh’s death.
