A Fox News anchor, the network’s White House correspondent, and two of its prime-time hosts all apparently decided to lie to their audiences on Tuesday about a dispute over when Donald Trump last spoke to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with each dissembling over what Trump or Newsom said rather than admitting that the president was wrong. And Trump’s own furious response to an inaccurate Fox chyron apparently set off that Orwellian chain of events.

A reporter asked Trump at an Oval Office event on June 10 when he last spoke with Newsom, whom the president has suggested should face arrest for his handling of rioting in the Los Angeles area. Trump replied that he called Newsom “a day ago” to criticize his response. 

Newsom’s X account quickly reposted the video clip of the Oval Office exchange, saying, “There was no such call.”

As is often the case with Trump, it’s difficult to determine whether the president had been deliberately lying about the call, accidentally misspoke, or had some sort of senior moment. But the president quickly doubled down — albeit while directly proving his own initial statement was inaccurate.

Fox “news side” anchor John Roberts discussed the dispute a dozen minutes after Newsom’s post. He aired the video of Trump saying he had called Newsom “a day ago,” and provided Newsom’s post on X “pushing back.” Roberts promised to “try to get to the bottom of that and find out when the call actually happened."

Notably, on-screen text during the segment read, “Newsom says Trump never called him over L.A. riots.” That’s not true — Newsom responded on X to Trump’s claim that they had spoken “a day ago,” but the governor previously discussed a call with the president that he said occurred “late Friday night, about 1:30 plus, his time” in which he said Trump “never once brought up the National Guard."

That error may have proved crucial. The president, who is notorious for his obsession with Fox’s programming, was apparently watching Roberts’ show on Air Force One and took the time to quickly call the anchor to respond, as Roberts relayed on-air a half hour after his initial segment. He told viewers that Trump had told him he had a call with Newsom that lasted 16 minutes on which the president told the governor to “get his ass in fear and stop the riots” and that he produced “evidence” Newsom was “a liar."

Roberts also posted Trump’s statement on X, as well as an image of a call log showing that Trump placed a call to Newsom at 1:23 a.m. ET on June 7 (for Newsom, in California, 10:23 p.m. PT on June 6). MAGA influencers quickly presented that as case-closed proof that Newsom had lied and Trump had been vindicated.

The “evidence,” as Trump put it, that he spoke with Newsom on June 6/7 does disprove the claim from the inaccurate Fox chyron that Trump “never called” the governor. But Trump producing proof of a June 6/7 call to which Newsom already attested, but not the June 9 call he claimed, also suggests the latter did not occur. It only proves Trump’s Oval Office statement correct if one pretends that June 6/7 occurred the day before June 10.

Telling Fox viewers that the president was wrong about something, however, is not really in the job description for the network’s employees — such acts of reporting could even irritate the network’s audience enough to drive them to a competitor.

Roberts finessed that difficulty on-air by lying to his viewers about what the president had initially said. The Fox anchor claimed that Trump had said in the Oval Office that he phoned Newsom “the other day, maybe yesterday,” while not calling attention to the fact that the call log he had obtained placed the call several days earlier.

In another report on the dispute the following hour, Roberts again hid that Trump had been wrong, falsely claiming the president had said he spoke to Newsom “yesterday or the other day.” 

Notably, neither of Roberts’ segments about Trump’s response aired the video of Trump’s June 10 claim that he had spoken to Newsom “a day ago,” which had been included in the initial report that provoked the president.

Others on Fox followed Roberts’ lead in shielding their viewers from the fact that Trump had said something that wasn’t true.

Peter Doocy, Fox’s White House correspondent, aired Trump saying he spoke to Newsom “a day ago” in a segment on Special Report, the network’s flagship “news side” broadcast. But he then suggested Trump’s response to Roberts disproved Newsom’s denial, saying, “Newsom then claimed, ‘There was no call, not even a voice mail.’ A screenshot of an iPhone call log provided to Fox's John Roberts shows two calls from the president to Newsom on Saturday. One lasted for 16 minutes.” 

Fox’s hardcore Trump propagandists, of course, were all-in on the notion that Trump had caught Newsom in a lie.

Trump crony and Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity claimed on his radio show, “I just love when politicians get caught red-handed in a lie. Gavin Newsom saying that Trump never even called him, and Donald Trump actually takes a picture of his phone showing that they talked … for 16 minutes."

Jesse Watters, whose show generally amounts to a reheated TV version on the day’s takes from MAGA influencers, aired a version of Trump’s Oval Office statement about his call with Newsom that was cut to exclude the president’s statement that the exchange happened “a day ago.” Watters then lied about Newsom’s response.

“Newsom responded and he said there wasn't a phone call — he said Trump never called him, not even a voice mail, he said,” Watters claimed. “But John Roberts got Trump's call logs and it shows Trump called him late Friday night and they talked for 16 minutes."

“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” Watters asked.

Watters also falsely claimed on The Five that “Gavin Newsom said Trump never called me. Trump showed his phone to John Roberts, he had a 16-minute conversation."

Watters added, “They just tell you you are not seeing what you are seeing and think they can get away with it."

Indeed.