Fox News has been forced to retract an anti-Trump piece thanks to a fake quote attributed to a former Trump Cabinet member.
The story, published on Friday, was based on some nasty comments former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price supposedly made about Trump.
The headline drove that home: “Former Trump Cabinet member tells him to ‘kiss’ his ‘butt.'”
Fox opened its now-retracted story with the following:
“EXCLUSIVE: Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told Fox News Digital there’s ‘no way’ he will support former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
When asked whether he will endorse Trump, Price said, ‘After he fired me? No way.’
‘The only thing that guy has more of than fake tan is narcissism,’ Price said in an emailed statement to Fox New Digital. ‘He can kiss my big medical butt.'”
The potential for bad blood between Trump and Price is obvious.
[firefly_poll]
Price resigned from Trump’s Cabinet in 2017 after it was reported that he had taken multiple taxpayer-funded private jet trips for seemingly personal reasons.
But did he just tell Trump to “kiss my butt”?
Dan Diamond, who reported on Price’s flights back in 2017, said on Friday that a source close to the former HHS secretary not only denied that he had made the comment, but also said he had never heard from Fox on the issue at all.
!
A source close to Price said he:
(1) never heard from Fox News on this matter
(2) did not write an email to Fox News on this matter
(3) this is not Price’s quote.
Screenshot of Fox News story below. pic.twitter.com/TLfOQSNg4L
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) July 7, 2023
Fox has now completely nixed the story and replaced it with a “correction,” which reads, “This article inaccurately attributed a quote to former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and has been retracted.”
Fox has retracted the story.
(Deleted the original tweet here.) pic.twitter.com/vRHsrws94f
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) July 7, 2023
The big question is, how did this even happen?
Did Fox News get fooled by a fake email claiming to be from Tom Price? Did the writer of the story, Elizabeth Troutman, just make it all up? That seems highly unlikely.
Certainly, it’s hard to blame Miss Troutman — who is listed on LinkedIn as a college intern at Fox News Digital — when it is Fox’s editors who are supposed to be fact-checking her work before it is published.
It’s also possible that Troutman was simply handed the story (and the phony quote) and tasked with writing it up. She may have been merely the scribe, not the “reporter,” on this misfire.
Still, a mistake of this magnitude makes one wonder if getting Trump was more important than getting the facts.
Has Fox News gone from publishing news to publishing anything that might undermine Donald Trump, whether it is true or not? And if so, what makes Fox any different from the rest of the left-wing legacy media?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.