A single screenshot could cost Fox News hundreds of millions of dollars — unless primetime host Jesse Watters retracts his false reporting and apologizes on-air to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
While Trump took a victory lap following the final day of this year’s Supreme Court session, which ended Friday with a favorable ruling for the president that limits the power of judges to block elements of his controversial agenda, the biggest booster of Trump’s message, Fox News, found itself at the center of a major federal lawsuit. On Friday, Newsom filed a lawsuit in Delaware, where Fox is incorporated, seeking $787 million in damages and a court order barring the cable news network from broadcasting segments that falsely claim Newsom lied about speaking to the president before Trump’s controversial decision to deploy California National Guard troops to protests in Los Angeles opposing Trump’s mass deportation policies.
The lawsuit alleged that Fox “operates as a propaganda machine for President Trump’s radical right-wing agenda” and “has continued to launder the stream of false information flowing out of the White House.”
“I have a high threshold for the bullshit on Fox,” Newsom told Terry Moran, a longtime ABC News reporter recently fired following a social media post critical of Trump. This situation “crossed a red line,” Newsom said.
With California at the center of Trump’s deportation crackdown, the Golden State’s governor has recently returned to a resistance role months after flirting with MAGA extremists like Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and Michael Savage on his podcast. Newsom, who has long touted his friendly relationship with Fox News star Sean Hannity, now says the network manipulated video footage to falsely portray him as lying about a phone call with the president. “I have a high threshold for the bullshit on Fox,” Newsom told Terry Moran, a longtime ABC News reporter recently fired following a social media post critical of Trump. This situation “crossed a red line,” Newsom said.
At issue is a June 6 phone call in which Newsom and Trump spoke about the deportation raids. The next day, the president announced plans to deploy troops in response to protests. On June 10, while defending his controversial move, Trump claimed he spoke to Newsom by phone “a day ago.” After Newsom swiftly denied Trump’s claim, pointing out on X that it had, in fact, been days since he last spoke to the president, Fox News hosts John Roberts and Jesse Watters went to work to label Newsom a liar.
“Trump brings receipts he called Newsom amid LA riots as California gov claims there wasn’t ‘even a voicemail,’” the headline from Fox News’ John Roberts read. Roberts’ misleading report was then amplified by Trump influencer Charlie Kirk. As an on-screen banner read “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call” on his June 10 primetime show, Watters asked, “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” Newsom’s press office responded on X: “This call is from three days ago.”
Turning Trump’s tactics against him, Newsom’s lawsuit takes a swipe at the president’s age and mental acuity to argue Fox News should be held to a higher standard: “It is impossible to know for certain whether President Trump’s distortion was intentionally deceptive or merely a result of his poor cognitive state. It is perhaps unsurprising that a near-octogenarian with a history of delusionary public statements and unhinged late-night social media screeds might confuse the dates. But Fox’s decision to cover up for President Trump’s error cannot be so easily dismissed.”
In a statement, Newsom explained further. “If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case.”
Newsom’s mention of the infamous Dominion Voting Systems defamation case was not coincidental. In 2023, the network paid $787.5 million to the voting machine company to settle the case, which centered on false election conspiracies repeated on the network that alleged Dominion somehow rigged the 2020 election against Trump. In his lawsuit, Newsom argued “the past two years have shown that the Dominion settlement did not serve as the deterrent many had predicted.” By suing the network for $787 million — just shy of the number Fox paid — and explicitly referencing the case, the governor is apparently trolling the network.
In response, Fox News dismissed Newsom’s lawsuit as a “transparent publicity stunt” that is “frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him.”
Newsom explained in a Friday interview with the left-leaning MediasTouch how the network’s behavior went beyond the high standard for defamation of a public figure:
Fox could have easily just dismissed yet another lie from the Trump administration. Instead, they decided to knowingly cover it up and lie about this conversation. And they did it in a way that not only directly impacts the notion of truth and trust, but I was starting to get calls from folks—supporters of mine, friends of mine—saying, “Why are you, Gavin, lying about the call with Trump?”
They claimed they had receipts. There were no receipts. It was edited, redacted. They knowingly and maliciously defamed, and they should be held to a higher level of ethical and journalistic standards.
To win a defamation case as a public figure, Newsom must show that Fox News’ reporting was not just false, but was made knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth. That’s precisely why Newsom can’t allow the off-ramp his lawyers offered the network: To issue a formal retraction and on-air apology. “It’s simple, just apologize, and give it as much air time as you did when you weaponized the lie,” Newsom said Friday.
Rather than accept an apology from Watters, which will undoubtedly be disingenuous and slimy, Newsom should drag out this lawsuit for months until Fox News settles. Such a move carries the risk of benefiting the network and its pro-MAGA brand; fighting Newsom instead of caving, as in the Dominion case, could turn into a crusade on the right. But flipping Trump’s litigious playbook on its head is nevertheless worthwhile. Taking up the fight will require Fox News to make an argument that politicians shouldn’t sue the media over dishonest and deceptive journalism, which would put them into conflict with Trump himself.
Newsom is uniquely positioned to battle both right-win media and the administration, as Trump and his allies have taken to using the courts as a cudgel against reputable media outlets. Just this week, Trump’s lawyer threatened to sue the New York Times and CNN, claiming that the newspaper and the cable news network damaged the president’s reputation by running reports questioning the effectiveness of the recent Iranian nuclear sites, which the president considers “false” and “unpatriotic.” Then there is the $20 billion suit against CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which recent reports indicate the network is close to settling.
Newsom’s suit is one of the only hopes of curbing Fox News’ blatant lying. As he said of Trump’s assault on Los Angeles, “This is a moral moment.”
Debates about deplatforming purveyors of misinformation, like Fox News, are missing the mark. Gatekeeping is nearly impossible in the modern media landscape. Fox News reaches a larger audience in short social media clips than any hour of on-air programming. Newsom understands this. It’s why he has long engaged with Fox News and attempted to host legitimate discussions with some of the network’s — and the right’s — worst offenders. But as the backlash to Newsom’s cringe conversations with Kirk and the like revealed, the right-wing media ecosystem is far too closed off to counter with simple facts. They must be made to pay for their lies.
“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,” Newsom’s lawsuit correctly states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”
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Coincidentally, as Newsom’s attorneys were filing the lawsuit on Friday, Fox News spent much of the day correcting another false report on California and mass deportation efforts — this one causing real harm to real people.
Three weeks after its initial false reporting, parrotting untrue stories from the New York Post and other right-wing media that wrongly identified a small Los Angeles-based nonprofit as openly helping to fuel anti-ICE riots, Fox News issued a retraction. The original incorrect reports coincided with the Trump administration’s ramped up efforts to police and prosecute protestors. The misidentified organization, Operation Healthy Hearts, actually works to provide essential goods and services to unhoused community members.
In response to Fox News’ correction, founder Jacqueline Villalta noted that the network’s reporting was “not only false but also caused great harm to our members and their families. The deception led to threats (some insinuating death of our lead organizers or calling for disolvement [sic] of our group + efforts). All of which will have lasting impact on us and our work.”
After the network’s retraction, Operation Healthy Hearts may no longer have grounds to file suit for damages. And the rest of America certainly can’t sue Fox News. It is the largest news organization, including Fox Business, in the United States. “You can’t lay claim to being a news organization anymore,” Newsom said of Fox, “that is what this lawsuit is about.”
For that fact alone, Newsom’s trollish fight is hardly frivolous.
