President Donald Trump has long been a critic of the mainstream media, frequently labeling news websites and channels that he doesn’t agree with as “fake news.” However, Fox News has generally been able to avoid criticism from the president by seeming to offer views that Trump agrees with. Fox News has been labeled by others as a right-wing propaganda machine, and now President Trump is claiming they’re also pushing “fake news.”
So what fueled the backlash from President Trump? A Fox News anchor, Bret Baier, cited Fox’s own polling data that found that the president has fallen behind Joe Biden in several key swing states. As a result of the claims, Trump took to Twitter:
.@FoxNews Polls are always bad for me. They were against Crooked Hillary also. Something weird going on at Fox. Our polls show us leading in all 17 Swing States. For the record, I didn’t spend 30 hours with @abcnews, but rather a tiny fraction of that. More Fake News @BretBaier
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2019
So is Fox News pedaling fake news? Data leaked from President Trump’s own campaign, suggesting that the president has fallen behind. However, Trump has refuted this claim, stating that the data is old and since it was collected, conditions have swung in his favor.
While the debate is far from settled, Pundifact reviewed a large number of statements from Fox News and found that over half of the statements were false. Pundifact did a similar review for CNN and found that less than a third of the station’s claims were false.
