Fox News has long styled itself as “fair and balanced”. Just asking questions.
Here’s a sample of its coverage after the 2020 US presidential election until the January 6 insurrection. As Fox News might say: “We report. You decide.”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, November 4 2020
“In a lot of ways, what happened Tuesday night could not have been worse for this country or its future. The outcome of our presidential election was seized from the hands of voters, where it rightly belongs, and now resides in the control of lawyers and courts — and highly partisan, clearly corrupt big city bureaucrats. No matter what happens next, that is a tragedy. Many Americans will never again accept the results of a presidential election.”
Newt Gingrich, The Ingraham Angle, November 4 2020
“We are at the beginning of the second presidential campaign of 2020. Just as Andrew Jackson responded to the corrupt bargain of 1824 by tearing apart the establishment and winning the presidency in 1828, just as Abraham Lincoln rejected the threats of the slave-owning Democrats and insisted on preserving the union in 1860, I think the millions and millions of Americans who went out to rallies, who formed boat parades — and Arizona formed a 96-mile-long parade of Trump supporters — I think as they watch Joe Biden’s Democratic Party steal the election in Philadelphia, steal the election in Atlanta, steal the election in Milwaukee, I think the more information that comes out, the greater the rage is going to be.
“President Trump is going to be forced by his own supporters and by the objective reality of the truth, the facts that are beginning to come out, he will be forced into a situation exactly like Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. He either has to fight and protect America, or he has to surrender to corrupt sources, starting with the Biden family corruption spreading out to the corruption of the Democratic machines, going on to the corruption of places like The New York Times.”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, November 5 2020
“On election night, early returns showed that the president has a significant lead in the states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. Two days later, we are still counting votes and awaiting the results in those states. Why? Why did a bunch of different states shut down voting on election night?”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, November 9 2020
“As of tonight, tens of millions of Americans suspect this election was stolen from them. That means we now live in a country where a large percentage of our population no longer believes that our democracy is real. That is sad. It is also dangerous; it could easily get worse.”
Laura Ingraham, The Ingraham Angle, November 10 2020
“70% of Republicans feel like the presidential election was neither free nor fair, according to a new morning consult political poll. Now of that group, 78% believe mass mail-in voting led to widespread fraud. 72% of that group thinks the ballots were tampered with. Nevertheless, Biden is pretending that the election has been certified and that all legal challenges have been resolved.”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, November 11 2020
“It’s been more than a week since the final votes were cast and many of Donald Trump’s 72 million voters still believe this election was fundamentally unfair. They’re right about that. Democrats completely changed the way we voted in this election. Our system has never been more disorganised and it’s never been more vulnerable to manipulation.”
Sean Hannity, Hannity, November 12 2020
“Many Americans do not believe that this election was fair. And make no mistake: every American has a right to feel that way. I feel that way. It’s a corrupt and embarrassing disgrace, we, you, the American people, deserve more. We are capable of so much more.”
Sidney Powell, Justice with Judge Jeanine, November 14 2020
“I am working on the massive aspect of system-wide election fraud definitely impacting the swing states and likely going far beyond that. We’re talking about the alteration and changes and millions of votes, some being dumped that were for president Trump, some being flipped that were for president Trump. Computers being overwritten to ignore signatures, all kinds of different means of manipulating the Dominion and Smartmatic software, that of course, we would not expect Dominion or Smartmatic to admit.”
Sidney Powell, Sunday Morning Futures, November 15 2020
“President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes, that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose. We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections. He was fully briefed on it. He saw it happen in other countries.”
Pete Hegseth, Fox Across America, November 16 2020
“The president has all this support, all the 73 million people that voted for him, in light of the demonisation of him for four years, I just find it hard to believe. I really do. I’m not saying that conspiratorially. And when you look at the major metropolitan areas like Milwaukee, like Detroit, like Philly, like Pittsburgh, like Atlanta, the pause in the voting that you made reference to, there’s shenanigans going on. And the president’s doing a service by highlighting how dangerous the idea of ubiquitous mail-in ballots with no accountability and no voter ID and no voter signature. You can drive a truck through these election results and future election results, which is bad for all of us. I don’t like where it stands right now. It’s just — so much in it stinks to high heaven.”
Steve Scalise, Hannity, November 16 2020
“Forgotten men and women of this country haven’t gone away. There’s still a lot of anger out there about the fact that there were widespread irregularities in the select number of states. You know, they’re boarding up windows, not letting poll watchers watch what’s going on, even though the state laws say that. And then they wonder why people question the results or the integrity of the process.”
Hogan Gidley, Fox Across America, November 18 2020
“We have a lot of people who are dead who didn’t just vote. They requested ballots. They got mail-in ballots. They filled out mail-in ballots. They sent mail-in ballots into the election places and actually cast votes as dead people. And I think that’s what we are now discovering is wrong with a lot of these polls. I guess they should have surveyed more dead people because it seems like they were pretty active this past election.”
Rudy Giuliani, Hannity, November 19 2020
“You know, the whole mail — this whole mail thing was really done so they could steal the election. They knew they couldn’t beat him. He destroyed them at the ballot box on Tuesday.”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, November 20 2020
“The dishonesty is brazen and you can begin to understand why so many Americans have lost their faith in our institutions, including in our elections. Why? Because the people managing them are dishonest and incompetent.”
Kayleigh McEnany, Fox & Friends Weekend, November 21 2020
“We’ve got to continue fighting this, and the federal courts are the path and, hopefully, up to the Supreme Court, because voter fraud is real, and they seized on a pandemic and created an electoral epidemic — one that was inexcusable, a system that should never have happened.”
Lin Wood, Justice with Judge Jeanine, November 21 2020
“My lawsuit proves to have it deemed unconstitutional and unlawful, and they’re going to have to figure out a way to have a new down ballot vote and the electors and the legislature will have to select the president of the United States, which I’m confident will be Donald Trump. He won this election by record landslide across the nation. They stole — they tried to steal this election, judge, and now they are trying to destroy the evidence.”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, November 23 2020
“The 2020 presidential election was not fair, and no honest person would claim that it was. The system was rigged against one candidate and in favour of another, and not in ways that were hidden from view.”
Donald Trump, Sunday Morning Futures, November 29, 2020
“All I can say is I haven’t heard, with all of the fraud that’s taken place, nobody has come to me and said, ‘Oh, the FBI has nabbed, you know, the people that are doing this game. The FBI is looking at Dominion,’ which nobody even knows where they’re based, which nobody even knows where the votes are counted. What’s going on in this country is not to be believed.”
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, December 7 2020
“Well, you’ve heard a lot of allegations of high-tech fraud in last month’s election: people messing with the software, putting unauthorised thumb drives, etc, but maybe not enough about low-tech fraud, traditional fraud. There’s evidence there was quite a bit of that.”
Sean Hannity, Hannity, December 9 2020
“Most Americans now, some cases in polls as high as 80%, say they see fraud in this recent election. Tonight one thing is very clear. If we don’t fix what is a broken, corrupt election system, the country is in deep trouble.”
Sean Hannity, Hannity, December 10 2020
“We are not dumb. We’re not blind. We can see the entire thing stinks to high heaven … We know that very specific election laws … were totally and completely and utterly ignored [in] Georgia, Pennsylvania, many other battleground states. [They] just decided to change things on their own.”
Sean Hannity, Hannity, January 4 2021
“We’ll preview the march for Trump rally that is set to take place this Wednesday. Thousands and thousands of Americans planning to hit the streets in our nation’s capital demand election accountability. Now this comes as Senator Ted Cruz is leading what is a growing effort to officially challenge the electoral college results on the very same day … That is Ted Cruz, Senator Josh Hawley, at least 10 other senators joining now over 140 House lawmakers demanding what would be a 10-day emergency election audit from states with serious voting irregularities. This is an important, this is a critical, this is a necessary step in an election that is clearly wrought with serious issues.”
Laura Ingraham, The Ingraham Angle, January 5 2021
“We will make sure in the coming weeks, months, and years, that Americans know who lied to them and what they did and when they did it and, when we needed the truth most, who denied it.”
Mike Huckabee, Fox & Friends, January 6 2021
“If they truly believe this election was absolutely done with integrity, then they ought to be the ones standing up and insisting that there be a full audit. The unreasonable part is that the press has pretended that there is no evidence [of election fraud] … That’s simply a lie. There is evidence and that’s what hasn’t been looked at.”
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