This is a major new story, because the PR implications are enormous: America’s #1 conservative media outlet is AWOL in the election fraud debate.
Which means, if Republicans are going to win the PR argument, we must do it without Fox News as a counterbalance to the mainstream media.
After President Donald Trump’s primetime address on voter fraud on Thursday evening, the media noticed something curious: Fox News Channel was ignoring the story.
Mediaite: Fox & Friends Completely Ignores Trump’s Election Speech — Doesn’t Mention It Once in 3-Hour Show
As other networks picked apart President Donald Trump’s prime-time address to the nation early Friday morning, Fox News went in a completely different direction.
Fox & Friends produced not one mention of the president’s address from the night before, during which the commander in chief once again attempted to cast doubt on the integrity of American elections — pointing a finger at Venezuela and China.
Instead, the regular lineup of co-hosts Brian Kilmeade, Ainsley Earhardt, and Lawrence Jones discussed the latest campaign of U.S. airstrikes against Iran, the air quality crisis choking much of America, disastrous flooding in Texas, the World Cup, and a “phenomenal” speech — by Marco Rubio.
Near the end of the three-hour show, the F&F crew turned it over to America’s Newsroom host Dana Perino for a preview of the 9 a.m. show. In it, she also did not mention the speech.
Mediaite wasn’t the only outlet that noticed this omission. Over on CNN, Brian Stelter told viewers, “And here’s maybe the best tell of all: Fox News did not spend much time on this after the speech. They moved on right away. Fox News barely talking about this speech this morning. That tells me some of Trump’s allies in MAGA media know this might not be a winning issue for him.” [emphasis added]
Actually, it tells me Brian Stelter — CNN’s “chief media analyst” — knows a helluva lot less than I do about how the news media actually functions.
Here’s the CNN clip:
Fox News aired Trump's elections speech, on both cable and broadcast, but moved on quickly. This morning, Fox is barely talking about Trump's obsession at all… pic.twitter.com/7aRHxrK6gw
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 17, 2026
Other left-leaning outlets adopted similar talking points.
The New Republic: Trump’s Favorite News Show Totally Ignores His Election Fraud Speech
President Trump’s rant to the nation about election fraud Thursday night was full of inaccuracies, previously known information, and claims unsupported by evidence. On the biggest conservative TV network, Fox News, which Trump watches regularly, no one is giving it much attention Friday morning.
[…]
Laura Ingraham didn’t even discuss the speech, even though Trump was scheduled to speak just two hours later. Jesse Watters gave it a passing mention at the end of his show, prioritizing one of his correspondents interviewing people in bathing suits at Central Park. Sean Hannity gave the speech a small amount of discussion and said his show would look into it in the coming days.
The Nation’s sub-header told its readers, “Not even Fox News buys Trump’s new lies, but they will be used to undermine the midterms.”
From the article:
Surprisingly, there are some lies so outrageous that even Sean Hannity is reluctant to endorse them.
[…]
In fact, [Trump’s] speech was so disgracefully packed with lies that even some of the president’s most loyal lapdogs decided to keep their distance from it.
[…]
The lukewarm response from flunkies like [Hannity] is telling. They were right to want nothing to do with the speech.
The left-wing media is pushing this interpretation because it directly undermines President Trump’s argument and credibility: “Not even Trump’s ‘flunkies’ at Fox News believe this nonsense! The president is lying again!”
It was a clever way to score political points.
But the truth, alas, is even darker and more disturbing.
About two years ago, I pitched a cybersecurity expert to a prominent Fox News producer. S/he is someone I’ve worked with since Barack Obama’s first term. (For obvious reasons, I don’t want to reveal his/her name, but he/she produces one of FNC’s most high-profile Monday through Friday TV shows.)
The topic I pitched was cyber vulnerabilities in U.S. voting machines.
The producer sent me a one-sentence reply: “I like it - but We don’t touch election fraud in any capacity.”
Nothing else needed to be said. Unless you’re a total moron (or CNN’s “chief media analyst”), you could read between the lines: One of the longterm consequences of Fox News settling its lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million is that FNC programming will avoid discussing voter fraud.
The topic appears to be forbidden. Fox News shuns it like the plague. (Or like Taco Bell’s lettuce.)
Which means, FNC’s silence on Trump’s voter fraud claims isn’t an editorial decision; nor does it mean that the president’s speech was “so disgracefully packed with lies that even some of the president’s most loyal lapdogs decided to keep their distance from it.”
And it absolutely, positively, 100% doesn’t mean what Brian Stelter told CNN’s viewers was the “best tell of all” — that “some of Trump’s allies in MAGA media know this might not be a winning issue for him.”
It means FNC’s silence was a legal/business decision from ownership.
To my knowledge, this hasn’t been reported elsewhere. When AP covered the Dominion settlement, it wrote:
Fox News agreed Tuesday to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million to avert a trial in the voting machine company’s lawsuit that would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election.
The stunning settlement emerged just as opening statements were supposed to begin, abruptly ending a case that had embarrassed Fox News over several months and raised the possibility that network founder Rupert Murdoch and stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity would have to testify publicly.
[…]
Outside of the $787.5 million promised to Colorado-based Dominion, it was unclear what other consequences Fox would face. Fox acknowledged in a statement “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” but no apology was offered. [emphasis added]
Apparently, (at least) one of the other consequences is that FNC will bend over backwards to avoid discussing voter fraud — especially cyber vulnerabilities — even after the president of the United States went on national TV and accused our #1 geopolitical rival of interfering in American elections.
Go to the Fox News website right now and check it out for yourself. The omission is glaring.
This matters, because today’s political wars are fought with media assets. The mainstream news/entertainment media, celebrity culture, and the TV networks shield the Democrats. Republicans rely on conservative media, talk-radio, Trump’s bully pulpit, and podcasts/social media.
But the biggest, most influential conservative media outlet in America, by a yuuuge margin, is still Fox News.
If FNC doesn’t have a free hand to fight back, Republicans have lost an important PR asset. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case: For legal and business reasons, Fox News cannot rally public opinion on this issue; apparently, it’s been censored and defanged.
Which means we’ll have to win the election fraud argument without FNC’s help.
And it means CNN’s “chief media analyst” is either stunningly — and embarrassingly — ignorant of the media, or he’s lying to viewers for political reasons.
One Last Thing: 2026 will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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