Trump Was Almost Banned from Fox News Ahead of 2020 Election for Claiming It Featured ‘Anti-Trump People’: Report

Fox Once Considered Banning Trump From Its Airwaves, Court Filings Show

Donald Trump has been a regular presence on Fox News for years, but newly unsealed court documents suggest there was a moment in 2020 when the network nearly stopped putting him on air altogether.

During his reelection campaign that year, Trump frequently complained about Fox’s coverage, at one point in May 2020 threatening to “find a new network” and accusing Fox of having “more anti-Trump people, by far, than ever before” on its programs. According to documents obtained by The Guardian from Fox’s legal battle with voting technology company Smartmatic, those attacks did not sit well with the network’s top leadership.

The filings describe an October 1, 2020 exchange between Fox chief executive Lachlan Murdoch and host Sean Hannity that also included Lachlan’s father, Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. In a message, Lachlan warned that Trump would no longer be welcome on the network if he kept using his appearances to lash out at Fox.

“Sean, sorry, but the president is not coming back on air if he uses it to attack us,” he wrote, adding, “It is the same rule we have with the other side. This is a golden rule.”

That same day, Trump criticized Fox during an interview with Hannity, saying the network was “a much different place than it used to be.” Hannity’s reply to Lachlan’s warning is redacted in the court record, but Fox continued to feature Trump heavily in the run-up to the 2020 election and in the months that followed, as he began insisting the election was “rigged” in Joe Biden’s favor.

The newly released documents arise from Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, which accuses the network of damaging the company through its coverage of the 2020 election and Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud. Among the material, The Guardian reports, is internal correspondence suggesting Hannity expected Trump to eventually concede.

Despite a lack of evidence that the election was stolen, Trump persisted in claiming victory. The tensions culminated on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Hannity has previously testified that he did not believe the election results were fraudulent. In a deposition related to a separate defamation case brought by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, he acknowledged his doubts about Trump’s claims. Fox ultimately agreed to pay Dominion $787 million to settle that lawsuit in April 2023, according to the Associated Press.

The Smartmatic documents also point to friction among Fox’s own stars. Hannity reportedly objected to an episode of Tucker Carlson’s show in which Carlson sharply criticized one of Trump’s lawyers, noting in internal messages that “Trump people are pissed.”

On November 9, 2020, Carlson allegedly described Trump as a “total piece of s—,” saying the then-president should concede the race but that Fox could not “control him obviously.” Carlson added, “Got to do the responsible thing regardless of how he behaves.”

Rupert Murdoch, who at the time still held an executive role at Fox, weighed in on the network’s handling of the election in a January 8, 2021 email. He said he was “very proud of our coverage” and “especially” proud of the network’s reporting “since the election, when we have repeatedly urged Trump to accept the result. His denunciations only confirm the work of all our journalists to find and report the truth.”

“We have never supported Trump personally but enthusiastically endorsed many of his and the administration’s policies, which delivered such a healthy and prosperous country until hit by the pandemic last year,” he wrote.

Fox responded to the latest release of Smartmatic-related documents in a statement shared with Mediaite, arguing that the company’s problems predated Fox’s coverage and that its damages claims are exaggerated.

“The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on FOX News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech,” the statement said.

“Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic being criminally charged with bribery in the Philippines and the Government’s motion to include evidence of Smartmatic’s business dealings in Venezuela and Los Angeles County, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”

Despite Lachlan Murdoch’s 2020 warning that Trump could be kept off the network, the former president has continued to appear on Fox News, including a town hall with Hannity and a White House tour he recently granted to Fox host Laura Ingraham.