Former President Donald Trump’s chief spokesperson said Sunday that Fox News edited a new interview with Trump to remove unverified claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Liz Harrington, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson who was appointed as Trump’s personal spokesperson in June, accused Fox News of censorship after Trump appeared on Bongino’s Saturday night show, Unfiltered, to discuss and criticize Democratic policies under the administration of President Joe Biden.
“Fox News DELETED President Trump’s words,” Harrington tweeted after the interview, sharing a YouTube video that allegedly shows a “jump edit.”
Harrington claimed that the network edited out a quote from Trump calling the election “fake” and mentioning “voter abuse” and “voter fraud.”
This is just as bad as Big Tech. They are putting President Trump’s honest statement, and the concerns of tens of millions of Americans, down the Memory Hole.
I guess it’s FILTERED after all, @dbongino.
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA)
Trump has repeated unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in most of his speeches and public appearances since leaving office. The interview that aired with Bongino on Fox News August 7 did not show Trump mentioning election fraud allegations, though he did claim that Democrats were against voter ID as he slammed efforts to broaden voting rights.
“This is just as bad as Big Tech. They are putting President Trump’s honest statement, and the concerns of tens of millions of Americans, down the Memory Hole,” Harrington tweeted. “I guess it’s FILTERED after all, @dbongino.”
Newsweek reached out to Fox News for comment. This story will be updated with any response.
At the heart of the Capitol riot on January 6 is the claim that November’s presidential election was stolen. Trump has been the chief propagator of the falsehood, despite his former Attorney General Bill Barr’s insistence that there wasn’t evidence that fraud had changed the election outcome.
Most cable networks, including NBC, CBS and ABC, cut away from Trump’s White House news conference on November 5 as the then-president dived into false claims about widespread voter fraud, casting doubt on the integrity of the election. Some news anchors also broke into their live broadcasts to fact-check and correct the false claims.
Conservative media outlets including Newsmax, One America News Network (OAN) and a few Fox News opinion hosts amplified the claim, lending credence to the Trump campaign’s legal challenges that have all been tossed out of court.
In February, Fox News started airing a new package debunking election fraud claims that its own hosts and guests have spread after voting company Smartmatic issued a legal threat against the network, accusing it of engaging in a “disinformation campaign.”
The package featured a voting technology expert discrediting a range of conspiracy theories that had been pushed by hosts Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo.
