Fox News Ran A Disclaimer Over Trump’s Lie-Filled CPAC Speech So They Wouldn’t Get Sued (Again)

There was a brief period when Fox News didn’t air 2020 election nonsense. It probably wasn’t because they’d had a crisis of conscience; it was almost certainly because they didn’t want to get sued. It didn’t work. Both Dominion and Smartmatic voting machine companies filed a lawsuit against the network, which they’ve attempted to have dismissed. But even the news channel that lets Tucker Carlson say whatever are clearly not taking too many chances.

On Sunday night, they surrendered their air waves to former president Donald Trump’s predictably bonkers speech at the second CPAC of the year so far. It was a Greatest Hits package, with lots of voter fraud mishegoss, plus some new ones. This is probably the first time he’s bragged, at least in public, about being impeached twice. But while he spoke, especially about voting machine conspiracy theories, Fox News tried their best to distance themselves.

“THE VOTING SYSTEM COMPANIES HAVE DENIED THE VARIOUS ALLEGATIONS MADE BY PRESIDENT TRUMP AND HIS COUNSEL REGARDING THE 2020 ELECTION,” read a chyron, which stayed on the screen as he spoke, for over 30 seconds.

It was the barest minimum of butt-covering, unlikely to make any Trump supporter doubt the efficacy of his claims, but also unlikely to result in further lawsuits. It’s a similar tactic adopted by the even more die hard pro-Trump networks OANN and Newsmax, which have to tow a line between airing propaganda and not getting sued off the air.

But most non-Trumpists just thought it was somewhere between amusing and pathetic.

Meanwhile, the failed blogger in question, who lives in resorts with strangers and who can’t speak without getting disclaimers from even his biggest cheerleaders, continues to be the Republican frontrunner for 2024.