On MS NOW, Angelo Carusone explains why Fox News is “doing damage control by ignoring” Trump's election lies
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From the July 17, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): What I thought was amazing is that the network that paid close to $1 billion because Dominion Voting Systems was able to prove known falsity, which is the very, very high standard that gets you to malice when you say something isn't true. This is how that network dealt with Donald Trump's speech about election interference that wasn't.
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Again, it reminded me of sort of the apologies to Smartmatic and Dominion after the lies were told about voting machines. Angelo, your thoughts?
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT, MEDIA MATTERS): A few things. One, I want to just add some color to that too, because the -- immediately after the speech ended, Bret Baier said that Fox News could not independently verify anything that the president said. This morning on Fox & Friends -- so the night after Trump's speech, the thing that he demanded broadcast airtime from -- they did not talk about his speech one time during the entire three-hour show. So, I mean, that has been the reflection of Fox News' coverage.
And I'm glad you pointed out the Dominion case because this is not journalistic courage on their part. It's a legal position. It's a liability position. The statements there are not intended to persuade or help shape, you know, undermine Trump or to break with him necessarily or break that narrative that he's trying to push amongst the faithful. They're liability disclaimers because they got burned for carrying this water, as you noted, already with the Dominion stuff. And I think that's the thing we have to keep in mind here. They're indicating that they're not going to be the ones building the scaffolding for the lies that, you know, like they did the last time. But they're not undermining them actively either. From their perspective, the best thing they can do is protect themselves and then do damage control by ignoring. And that's this position that they've staked out.
But broadly, the audience that he's speaking to is getting this directly because this was not -- the speech was not designed to convince. It was designed to arm a movement of deniers that have been simmering for a few years. And so that really is the audience.