California Gov. Gavin Newsom is suing Fox News for defamation, alleging that the news outlet intentionally manipulated its coverage to give the appearance that the governor lied about a phone call with President Trump.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s demand for $787 million in punitive damages escalates his aggressive effort to challenge misinformation. The lawsuit, announced Friday, places Newsom at the forefront of the political proxy war between Democrats and Republicans over the press by calling out an outlet that many in his party despise. <\/p>\n
\u201cBy 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,\u201d the suit states. \u201cSetting the record straight and confronting Fox\u2019s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said he decided to sue in part because Fox News failed to change after settling a different lawsuit accusing the outlet of spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. <\/a> <\/p>\n In response to Newsom\u2019s lawsuit, Fox criticized the California governor, accusing him of undercutting the 1st Amendment.<\/p>\n \u201cGov. Newsom\u2019s 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,\u201d Fox News said in a statement Friday morning.<\/p>\n The case stems from comments Trump made about a phone call with Newsom as tensions heated up between the two leaders over immigration raids<\/a> and the president\u2019s decision to deploy the National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Trump told reporters on June 10 that he spoke with Newsom \u201ca day ago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCalled him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he\u2019s doing a bad job,\u201d Trump said. \u201cCausing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom immediately refuted Trump\u2019s timeline on social media.<\/p>\n The governor had already spoken publicly about talking to Trump on the phone late in the night on June 6 in California, which was early June 7 for Trump on the East Coast. Newsom said the National Guard was never discussed during that call. They didn\u2019t talk again, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no call,\u201d Newsom posted on X<\/a>. \u201cNot even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn\u2019t even know who he\u2019s talking to.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom\u2019s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles<\/a>, which they had not. <\/p>\n Trump attempted to fire back at Newsom through Fox and shared a screenshot of his call log with anchor John Roberts. The log showed that a phone call occurred on June 7 and provided no evidence of a call on June 9 as Trump claimed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is impossible to know for certain whether President Trump\u2019s distortion was intentionally deceptive or merely a result of his poor cognitive state, but Fox\u2019s decision to cover up for the President\u2019s false statement cannot be so easily dismissed,\u201d the complaint states. <\/p>\n Newsom\u2019s legal team said Roberts initially misrepresented the situation to viewers \u201cto obscure President Trump\u2019s false statement of fact.\u201d <\/p>\n Then during an evening broadcast on June 10, Fox News host Jesse Watters showed a video of Trump\u2019s comments about the phone call but omitted the president saying that it happened \u201ca day ago.\u201d The edit made it appear that Newsom alleged the two never spoke at all.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?\u201d Watters then asked. <\/p>\n A banner at the bottom of the screen during the segment claimed \u201cGavin lied about Trump\u2019s call.\u201d <\/p>\n Newsom\u2019s lawyers said Fox \u201cwillfully distorted the facts\u201d and defamed Newsom to tens of millions of people. <\/p>\n \u201cFox advanced this lie about Governor Newsom out of a desire to harm him politically,\u201d the complaint states. <\/p>\n Newsom is particularly atuned to his critics on Fox, a conservative-leaning television network that he describes as the epicenter of a right-wing media ecosystem that misleads the public to benefit Trump and his allies. Similar to reports of Trump watching CNN, the governor regularly follows Fox political coverage. He pays close attention to the outlet\u2019s assessment of his leadership. <\/p>\n Fox commentators and opinion hosts, such as Watters, are given a wide berth to express their views, even when they contradict the reporting of its nonpartisan correspondents. They aggressively defend President Trump and his policies, while often casting California as a failed state with incompetent leadership. <\/p>\n But Newsom has also benefited from Fox and used his appearances on the network to brandish his image as a brawler for Democrats<\/a> and his standing as a future presidential candidate. <\/p>\n Fox hosted a much talked about debate between Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> in 2023. The California governor also participated in a sit-down interview with Sean Hannity, which drew praise from within and outside of his party. <\/p>\n