California Gov. Gavin Newsom says Fox News is lying about him to the American people and he wants it to stop.
Newsom issued a statement on the X platform announcing he was filing a $787 million defamation lawsuit against the network and demanded “no more lies.”
The Democratic governor filed the complaint on Friday, June 27, in Delaware where Fox News is incorporated, according to Politico, which first reported the lawsuit.
In the complaint, Newsom accuses Fox News host Jesse Watters of spreading lies about the date the governor spoke by phone with President Trump during a dispute between the two politicians over deploying troops to Los Angeles amid protests over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
Trump sent over 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to L.A., which Newsom opposed.
During a briefing on June 10, Trump told a reporter he spoke to Newsom “a day ago” when he “called him up to tell him, got to do a better job.”
Newsom immediately reposted the video of Trump’s comments on X and included the caption: “There was no call. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”
Newsom’s attorneys claim Watters’ production team edited the video before airing it, to support Trump’s claims about when he spoke with Newsom.
According to published reports, Watters ran the edited clip on his show that night and said: “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?”
The lawsuit says that equates to defamation. The complaint claims Fox “operates as a propaganda machine for President Trump’s radical right-wing agenda.”
Newsom cites the $787.5 million settlement Fox reached with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 over its coverage that falsely claimed the company’s equipment switched votes from Trump to Biden in the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the lawsuit states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”
Fox News responded by calling the complaint “frivolous.”
“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” the network said.
Newsom’s camp says the governor is willing to drop the lawsuit if he gets an on-air apology.
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About Anita Bennett
Anita Bennett is the editor and founder of Urban Hollywood 411. She can be reached on Twitter @tvanita.
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