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Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on air that Donald Trump’s claim that he won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election was an “outright lie,” and that the former president was wasting supporters’ time with bogus election-fraud claims.
On his Fox News Radio show on Monday, Kilmeade took a call from a Trump voter concerned about the former president’s fixation on his groundless claim that the election in 2020 was stolen from him as a result of a vast plot by his political foes.
The voter, called Logan, said he was concerned that Trump’s obsession with the conspiracy theory could cost Republicans in the midterms in November, and Kilmeade agreed.
There is so much to talk about that matters to you and I, Logan, right now about what’s happening in the Ukraine, how China is just forgetting about phase one, how they’re beginning to militarize everything around them, about to take Taiwan back,” Kilmeade said.
“That’s what people wanna talk about. It’s not hard stuff,” he continued.
The host addressed Trump’s claim that he was the real winner in the swing state of Arizona — a claim that was further discredited last year when a GOP-backed audit found that Joe Biden’s win in Maricopa County had in fact been larger than initial vote counts found.
Earlier audits commissioned by state Republican lawmakers had also found no evidence to substantiate the claim.
“Nobody cares about 2020. Nobody. And everything that he said and the challenges that he made should have been done before the election. And they did a recount in Arizona, and the recount showed no difference almost, and he came out and said it showed that they won Arizona,” Kilmeade said.
“That’s an outright lie, and please stop wasting our time with that, because he’s capable of doing so much more,” he continued.
Fox News hosts have long been among the former president’s closest media allies. During his presidency, they rarely pushed back against his claims.
But the network is embroiled in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit with election-machine companies after hosting Trump allies in 2020 who said the machines had been used in a plot to fix the election. (Fox News has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit from one company, Smartmatic.) Some hosts are now pushing back against the election-fraud claims.
During Trump’s time in office, Kilmeade frequently took part in softball interviews with the president as a host of “Fox & Friends,” Trump’s favorite breakfast show. But in recent weeks he’s criticized Trump’s election-fraud claims and said Republicans need to learn to lose.
Kilmeade’s comments echo the concerns of some Republicans that the former president is denting their chances of electoral success going forward with his fixation on his defeat in the 2020 election.
They believe that Trump’s claims that the voting system is rigged may dissuade supporters from casting their ballot, and that Trump is ignoring core issues that are more prominent in voters’ minds.
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