Trump remains silent on Fox’s Dominion lawsuit settlement

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The former American president who was once a fixture on Fox News before turning against the network after losing the 2020 election has remained silent on the right-wing channel’s decision to settle a defamation lawsuit with the voting machine maker he had falsely accused of rigging the election.

Former president Donald Trump’s social media output in the hours since Fox News reached a $787m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems has included numerous posts promoting a series of digital trading cards he is selling, attacks on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and bizarre complaints about Elon Musk and alleged censorship on Twitter (where Mr Trump’s account has gone unused since it was restored earlier this year).

But Mr Trump has not weighed in on Fox’s decision to offer more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion rather than allow a Delaware jury to determine how much the right-wing network should pay for broadcasting repeated lies about the company’s products rather than report the truth because it was upsetting their audience.

The twice-impeached ex-president’s most recent comment on the lawsuit came on Monday, the day jury selection was initially set to begin in the billion-dollar lawsuit.

Writing on Truth Social, Mr Trump issued an all-caps missive calling on Fox to double down on the lies that led to the lawsuit in the first place.

“If Fox would finally admit that there was large scale cheating & irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, which would be a good thing for them, & for America, the case against them, which should not have existed at all, would be greatly weakened,” he said.

He added: “Back up those patriots at Fox instead of throwing them under the bus - & they are right! There is sooo much proof, like mass ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, FBI colluding with Twitter & Facebook, state legislatures not used, etc.”