Donald Trump doubled down on his false claims of fraud in the 2020 election while speaking to Sean Hannity during a town hall recorded in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that aired Tuesday night on Fox News.
The town hall was pre-taped, so Fox News could have edited the claims, which have been repeatedly debunked, out of the interview before airing it. Instead, they were aired apparently unedited. Interestingly, this occurred just three months after Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million.
The moment came when Hannity noted the upcoming 2024 election, and asked Trump if he now embraces voting by mail and early balloting.
“I do, but I also have to say something else, because a lot of people,” Trump said, at which point he was interrupted by Hannity.
“But this is important,” Hannity said in an apparent attempt to steer trump away from the topic.
“Including you, don’t talk about,” Trump said, ignoring Hannity. “They also create phony ballots and that’s a real problem.”
The audience burst into applause at this, and Trump, shouting to be heard said, “but they create a lot of phony ballots.”
Perhaps unrelated, Dominion sued Fox News for defamation because several of the network’s biggest stars repeatedly shared, or invited guests who did so, lies and conspiracy theories alleging that Dominion had somehow helped rig the 2020 presidential election.
Fox settled the lawsuit after a trove of evidence uncovered in discovery, much of it concerning the network’s biggest star, Tucker Carlson, revealed that network personnel fully understood the claims were false. In a statement announcing the lawsuit, Fox was apparently not required to apologize, but it did acknowledge “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”
“This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” Fox added.
The settlement was announced on April 18. Just 6 days later Tucker Carlson was fired. Fox is still being sued by another voting system company, Smartmatic, for essentially the same reasons Dominion sued. Related, Fox News is also being sued for defamation by a man who was repeatedly linked by Tucker Carlson to a conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6 attack Donald Trump incited was a false flag designed to discredit Trump. As with Dominion and Smartmatic, this is very, very false.)
Donald Trump is of course not an employee of Fox News. The network didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap about Trump’s comments regarding the election.
Some other highlights from the event:
Trump claimed Joe Biden announced “three days ago,” that apparently “we have no ammunition.” Biden did not say this. He did however say that Ukraine is running low on ammunition and the U.S. can’t provide an unlimited amount, while explaining why the U.S. is sending cluster bombs instead.
Trump claimed the U.S. has reached “almost a communistic state” under Joe Biden. (It has not.)
Trump claimed (as with everything else, falsely) that Mexico paid for a border wall.
