After Legal Threat, Fox Shows Aired Identical Fact Checks Of Election Conspiracy-Mongering

Judge Jeanine Pirro in February 2017. (MIKE THEILER/AFP/Getty Images)
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After their parent company received a lengthy, angry letter from a voting machine manufacturer at the center of multiple election conspiracy theories, three separate programs on Fox News and Fox Business aired an identical interview fact-checking some of their hosts’ own claims this weekend, enraging viewers and surprising the fact-based community.

The company, Smartmatic, has been smeared repeatedly by Fox News and Fox Business hosts — not to mention the President’s lawyers and others in the right-wing fever swamps — as a key player in a plot to rob Trump of a second term.

Earlier this month, Smartmatic sent a lengthy legal notice to Fox News demanding a public retractions “on multiple occasions … and across the various platforms used by Fox News to disseminate the false and defamatory statements.”

“The prominence of the retraction, including being featured during prime time slots, must match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications,” a lawyer for Smartmatic demanded. 

It’s not yet clear whether Smartmatic is satisfied with the interview that aired several times over the weekend, which was with the election technology expert Eddie Perez, and performed by a nameless, faceless producer. 

But the segment itself was completely surreal.

In a tight three minutes, Perez debunked many of the same falsehoods that the three shows have perpetrated for months. In addition to Dobbs’ program, the interview aired on “Justice with Judge Jeanine” Saturday night and “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” the following morning. 

“I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change, alter — anything related to vote tabulation,” Perez said in response to the anonymous producer’s first question. And later: “I’m not aware of any direct connection between George Soros and Smartmatic.” 

That would be news to Dobbs’ viewers: As Smartmatic itself pointed out in its letter earlier this month to Fox News, Dobbs claimed in November that “the chairman of Smartmatic is very very close to none other than Mr. Soros,” and therefore that the company consisted of “left-wing radicals.” 

An attorney for Smartmatic, Erik Connolly, told TPM: “Smartmatic cannot comment on the recent broadcast by Fox News due to potential litigation.”

Perez, the global director of technology development and open standards at the Open Source Election Technology Institute (OSET), apparently didn’t know that he would be part of a legal cover-your-ass maneuver. 

“I was never informed that the content would be for Mr. Dobbs’ show,” he told CNN, adding: “I am not accustomed to seeing Lou Dobbs air very straightforward factual evidence.”

Fox viewers, struck with the truth, weren’t happy.

Not only were identical interviews aired on each of the three shows, their introductions were nearly identical as well. Dobbs said of Perez: “We asked him for his assessment of Smartmatic, and recent claims about the company.” 

A day later, Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe, guest-hosting for Jeanine Pirro, said “We asked him what he knew about Smartmatic and the claims some have made about that company.” Bartiromo, on Sunday morning, read the same exact line before airing the interview. 

Over the weekend, OSET’s social media team parried away Trump fans angry that their favorite shows had aired something contrary to the weeks of election misinformation to which viewers had grown accustomed. 

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Notable Replies

  1. Tucker Carlson will have to air a segment connecting Smartmatic to Boy Scout pedophilia.

  2. FOX News - Official Apology for prominently airing lies about the election and voting machine companies, etc.:

    Hopeless - tried to post a Kristen Wiig gif saying “sorry” … to no avail…

    That is, FOX is about as sincere in their apologies as Wiig’s crazed character Gilly.

  3. fact-checking some of their hosts

    Sounds like they need some reputable hosts.

  4. Outstanding. We’ve reached a point in our modern world where even when the lying liars admit that they’re lying, their mouth breathing, dumbfuck viewers don’t believe it when they have to tell the truth. We’re fucked until we get those motherfuckers working off of objective facts.

  5. The most important part of this story is the reaction of FOX viewers and why Donald Trump cannot remain a relevant force in the GOP and concede defeat.

    This shows that GOP base created Donald Trump and not the other way around. For Trump to do anything but contest the election, much like Trump did for most of Obama’s two terms with the racist birther lie, would cost Trump the base of the Republican Party.

    As has been said many times, the overwhelming support for Donald “grab her by the …” Trump by White Evangelicals, Black Evangelicals vote over 95% for Democrats, proves beyond all doubt that “values” in front of the word voter is and has always been code for race.

    That said, by refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Joe Biden’s substantial 2020 election victory Donald Trump is doing exactly what the Republicans did in response to every Democrat victory since 1976. That is none of the last 3 Democrats elected president in 5 different elections had their victories accepted as legitimate by the Republican base.

    The reason the Republican base believes Trump won the election is NOT because they believe Trump got more total votes than Joe Biden. Rather, the reason the Republican base has not accepted a Democrat victory in over 40 years is because the Republican base believes that to win requires a majority not of all votes but of White votes.

    If Trump were to ever accept the will of ALL the American people and conceded the election the Republican base would turn on Trump and Trump knows this. Therefore regardless if Trump’s refusal to concede is making it harder for the Republican Party, Trump is doing what is best for Trump and keeping control of the Republican base with the hope it will continue to give him control of the Republican Party.

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