President Joe Biden on Friday took a swipe at Fox News during his first campaign speech of 2024, mocking the conservative cable giant for paying out nearly $1 billion to settle a voting software firm’s defamation lawsuit. He also went hard after “loser” Donald Trump, lambasting him as a “threat to democracy.”
Just a day before the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the president delivered his address near the location of the historic Revolutionary War site Valley Forge, seeking to frame his campaign as being “about preserving and strengthening our American democracy.”
Throughout his speech, Biden repeatedly referenced Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, claiming that the former president would veer more authoritarian if he were to return to the White House.
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“The choice is clear, Donald Trump’s campaign is about him—not America, not you,” the president declared. “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He is willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”
Turning back to Trump’s refusal to accept his electoral loss in 2020, Biden pointed out that “in desperation and weakness Trump and his MAGA followers went after” election officials and public servants in an effort to somehow overturn the results. In the end, the president noted, many of Trump’s allies suffered debilitating legal consequences due to their actions—including Fox.
“In Atlanta, Georgia, a brave Black mother and her daughter—Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss—were doing their jobs as election workers until Donald Trump and his MAGA followers targeted and threatened them, forcing them from their homes and unleashing racist vitriol on them,” Biden declared. “Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani was hit with a $148 million judgment for cruelty and defamation that he inflicted against them.”
He continued: “Other state and local elected officials across the country faced similar personal attacks. In addition, Fox News agreed to pay a record $787 million for the lies that they told about voter fraud.” Indeed, the right-wing network settled with Dominion Voting Systems this past April just as the defamation trial had gotten underway. Dominion accused Fox News of willfully airing baseless “stolen” election conspiracy theories, all in an effort to boost sagging ratings after disgruntled MAGA viewers ditched the network over its Arizona call for Biden.
“Let’s be clear about the 2020 election, Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election. Every one,” Biden proclaimed. “The legal path just took Trump back to the truth. I won the election, and he was the loser.”
Following Biden’s address, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum was none too pleased about his swipe at the channel and, of course, made her displeasure known.
“He took a couple of potshots at this network, which more people in America watch than any other network in the country,” MacCallum exclaimed. “So I don’t know if they feel like that represents someone who is president to all of America!”
