Brian Kilmeade Implores Fox & Friends Viewers to Accept Election Results: Trump Denialism ‘Doesn’t Help the Country’
By Colby HallJan 7th, 2022
Good for Brian Kilmeade.
On the day after the nation memorialized an attack on the Capitol building by Trump supporters convinced by his baseless claims of voter fraud, the Fox & Friends host implored the nation to accept election results.
The events of January 6 have largely been ignored on Fox News, at least relative to their competitors. Fox News hosts, meanwhile, accuse the competition of going overboard or politicizing the events of a year ago
How one exactly politicizes the coverage of a violent political attack is a logical fallacy to explore in another column (that will likely never be written) but missing from Fox News coverage for most of the past 14 months are clear statements that former President Donald Trump lost a free and fair election in 2020.
Enter Kilmeade, on January 7, 2022, and it’s as close as we’ve come in some time. Yes, he framed the statement by also noting that Democrats questioned the 2016 election, which is not entirely unfair, but perhaps a false equivalency seeing as they didn’t, you know, storm the Capitol.
What’s more, the extent of 2020 denialism is serious: A vast majority of Republicans now believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Just 20% of Republicans in a recent poll said they thought President Joe Biden was legitimately elected.
“We have to get past questioning election results,” Kilmeade implored Fox News viewers, before later adding “we have to, as a country, accept election results.”
He then explained why this is a fundamental pillar of democracy, saying “Because to continue to cause — tell men and women in office — that they are illegitimate does no one any good.” He then cited civil rights hero John Lewis, who said that President Trump was illegitimate, adding “now they want to name election reform after him,” before mocking Hillary Clinton having to be convinced by Barack Obama to call up Trump.
But he finished by saying something rarely heard on Fox News: “And then Donald Trump saying to this day he didn’t lose the election. That doesn’t help the country.”
No, it doesn’t. Well done Brian.
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