- Trump repeated the false claim that he won re-election in his first interview since the Jan. 6 insurrection.
- Fox News hosts Harris Faulkner and Bill Hemmer didn’t correct Trump’s false claims on live TV.
- Trump called into Fox to talk about conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, who died Wednesday.
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Fox News hosts Harris Faulkner and Bill Hemmer let former President Donald Trump use Fox’s airwaves to repeat the false claim that he won re-election in his first interview since the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Trump called into Fox on Wednesday afternoon shortly after news broke that his ally, conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, died at 70 years old following a battle with lung cancer. Exactly six weeks after his loyalists stormed the Capitol building in a deadly insurrection, the former president repeated the lie that the election was stolen from him. Neither TV host interrupted, pushed back, or corrected Trump’s false statements.
“Rush thought we won and so do I, by the way. I think we won substantially,” Trump said. “I don’t think that could have happened to a Democrat, you would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat.”
Trump said he was “disappointed with voter tabulation” and added, “we were like a third-world country on election night.” He argued that “a lot of other people felt that way, too” and that there is widespread “anger” about his loss.
“Many people are furious, you don’t know how angry this country is,” Trump said.
The Fox hosts declined to ask Trump any questions that didn't relate to his relationship with Limbaugh, whose legacy the network covered extensively covered on Wednesday. The interview came just a few days after the Senate acquitted Trump following his impeachment trial on the charges of inciting the Jan. 6 riot. Seven Republican senators voted to impeach Trump, while others, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted to acquit but blamed Trump for the insurrection.
When reached for comment, a Fox spokeswoman pointed Insider to Hemmer's statement on air that questions unrelated to Limbaugh were "not appropriate" for their Wednesday interview with Trump.
"Mr. President, we probably have a hundred questions for you, but so many of them are not appropriate for this venue, so we'll keep it on this topic for now and we appreciate your time today," Hemmer said.
—Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 17, 2021
—jordan (@JordanUhl) February 17, 2021
Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the US popular vote and earned the presidency with 306 electoral votes by flipping battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Trump refused to concede and waged an unsuccessful legal fight. As his legal losses mounted, he demanded Georgia's secretary of state "find" the votes he'd need to win and also tried to get his Justice Department to intervene.