Fox News added a disclaimer regarding 2020 election fraud during former President Donald Trump's speech on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, angering many viewers who saw the move as censorship.
The Fox News disclaimer read, "The voting system companies have denied the various allegations made by President Trump and his counsel regarding the 2020 election."
This is a real disclaimer that ran on Fox during Trump's CPAC Dallas speech: "THE VOTING SYSTEM COMPANIES HAVE DENIED THE VARIOUS ALLEGATIONS MADE BY PRESIDENT TRUMP..." pic.twitter.com/cTvWJgV9DK
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 11, 2021
Trump said during his keynote speech, “And now, it’s also because I got more votes, 75 million, than anybody in the history of the presidency, and far more than Clinton, far more than Obama, and a record 12 million more than 2016."
He added, "Think of it, in the history usually they go down a little bit second term and they win, but they go down a little bit.”
Smartmatic, the company behind the Dominion Voting System machines, sued Fox News Media for $2.7 billion following remarks aired on the network after the 2020 presidential election, according to The New York Times.
In April, Fox News Media filed a response, saying, "The press does not lose its protection if the allegations are disproven; instead the reporting is part of the truthseeking process,” according to The Hill.
“That is why virtually every media outlet in the country covered the President’s election-fraud allegations without fear of being sued if they were disproved in court. Smartmatic’s efforts to erode that bedrock constitutional protection are dangerous and should be rejected,” it added.
Trump also issued a statement on Sunday that criticized the establishment media and its treatment of him.
“I am proud to inform you that the Lamestream Media has hit the lowest approval ratings ever recorded. I think it would be fair to assume that I had something to do with that,” he said.
.@POTUS45:
“I am proud to inform you that the Lamestream Media has hit the lowest approval ratings ever recorded. I think it would be fair to assume that I had something to do with that.”
FULL STATEMENT: pic.twitter.com/E24ZH7rF8J
— Natalie Harp (@NatalieJHarp) July 11, 2021
Trump added, "They are not only dishonest and corrupt, they are truly, according to a recent poll, the enemy of the people."
Fox News also cut off its live coverage of Trump's remarks at the nation's southern border on June 30 after he began discussing his allegations of fraud in the November election.
Despite heavy promotion of the event, the network abruptly returned to studio coverage after Trump claimed he had defeated Democrat Joe Biden "in a landslide."
"We had an election where we did much better than we did the first time and amazingly we lost," the former president said during his remarks.
"I just want to thank the people of Texas because we won in a landslide. It wasn't even close," Trump added.
"We got 12 million more votes than we got the first time," he continued.
"We better get our elections straightened out because you're going to have a runaway country, you're going to have a banana republic, you're going to have a third world country here pretty soon because our elections are a mess," Trump continued.
Despite numerous allegations of voting irregularities, no court has ruled that there was widespread fraud that affected the results of the 2020 election.
via wnd