Update (8/1/24): This piece has been updated with more examples.
Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner co-moderated a panel interviewing former President Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. The major headline coming out of the panel was Trump’s claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, his likely opponent in the 2024 election, “was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person.”
Faulkner went on Fox News following the panel to discuss the event, immediately going into spin mode for Trump.
Asked about her “take on what happened,” Faulkner’s first takeaway was: “What I loved about what you couldn’t see today was how much of that audience was enjoying the moment of hearing from a candidate that they might not always agree with.”
Faulkner was then asked to respond to two claims Trump made during the speech: that he was “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln” and “his questions about whether or not Kamala Harris is Indian or Black.”
Conveniently, Faulkner didn’t respond to either.
As Fox News did its best to spin Trump’s performance at the NABJ convention, the network leaned heavily on Faulkner. In a series of appearances, Faulkner continued to both defend Trump’s performance and attack one of her co-moderators, ABC News’ Rachel Scott.
Appearing on Hannity, Faulkner claimed Scott was “driven solely by emotion,” suggesting that her exchange with Trump was “personal” and not focused on the things that matter.
While again complaining about the interview going down “an emotional road, or a gotcha moment,” Faulkner praised her own performance for getting “us back on track to having … a real conversation.”
The following morning, Faulkner appeared on Fox & Friends, where she continued to attack Scott, claiming again that she created “gotcha moments” and seemed to have “an agenda.”
Faulkner lamented that “so much of what America is focused on today and so much of what that started with with all that emotion and the gotcha moments from the interviewer who was seated directly to his left has really overtaken the fact that we had an opportunity to talk with the president, who walked into a racial storm yesterday.”
Faulkner continued to attack her peers as “journalists, activists, whatever you want to call people who let their politics show,” and she complained that Scott failed “to show humanity” by not acknowledging the assassination attempt against Trump.
Faulkner wasn’t the only Fox anchor to try to help spin Trump’s performance, but she was the only one to do so after helping moderate the event in question.
