'How the hell is this legal?' Critics react to Fox doctoring interview to suggest Newsom lied
Social media reacted badly to Fox News deceptively editing video to claim Gov. Gavin Newsom lied about a disputed phone call.
Last week, President Donald Trump told reporters he had “called” Newsom and suggested he “do a better job” over violent protests of Trump’s immigration policies.
“He’s done a bad job, causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death. If we didn’t send out the National Guard, and last time we gave him a little additional help, you would have — Los Angeles would be burning right now,” Trump claimed.
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Newsom denied ever getting the call, however, and called Trump “a stone-cold liar” for making the claim.
“We talked for almost 20 minutes and he barely—this issue never came up,” Newsom told reporters. “I tried to talk about L.A., he wanted to talk about all these other issues. … He never once brought up the National Guard. He’s a stone-cold liar. He said he did. Stone. Cold. Liar. Never did.”
Newsom called trash on what Trump described as a “Monday” call, but Fox News entertainer Jesse Watters, of Jesse Watters Primetime, aided the president by muddying the waters on the exact date of the call. Watters removed Trump’s claim of calling Newsom “a day ago (meaning Monday),” and instead began Trump’s quote with “Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job …”
Watters then accused Newsom of lying: “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?”
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Conservative talk radio show host Doug Kellett railed Fox for the tampering. “FNC goes out of its way to prop up a failing and shameful President,” Kellett posted on X.
“How the hell is this legal,” complained another critic on Bluesky.
“I'm sure that @JesseBWatters will be taken off the air for this ... or that the @FCC will have something to say about it,” sniped another X user, possibly referencing the strong hand Trump’s FCC is wielding against news organizations that aren’t Fox News.
In March, Trump’s FCC commissioner Brendan Carr announced he was opening an investigation into the Walt Disney Co. and its ABC television network to see whether they are “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” Trump himself recently sued CBS ’60 Minutes’ for allegedly ‘manipulating’ footage of a Kamala Harris interview by deleting the former democratic candidate’s “word salads” regarding violence in Gaza.
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CBS later released full transcripts and video of the Harris interview, showing the company had presented different parts of the interview for two different shows.
Read MediaITE’s full post at this link.
