US: Fact-checked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a close ally of Donald Trump
US: A longtime friend of Donald Trump, Fox News personality Laura Ingraham fact-checked him when he sought to disparage Vice President Kamala Harris for her reaction to Hurricane Helene.
Ahead of his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump sought to accuse his Democratic opponent of attending fundraisers rather than spending time in North Carolina, which was ravaged last week, during a Saturday appearance on The Ingraham Angle.
She shouldn’t attend fundraising events. Trump stated, “She’s at fundraisers; her teleprompter went off; she didn’t do well with the teleprompter off.”
He said, “It happens to me a lot. You have to be able to handle the teleprompter turning off. She struggled to get through it. She shouldn’t be there anyway however. She should be—I would say North Carolina is horrible, is so bad.”
Ingraham then interrupted, “She was there today for three hours, I believe,” then went on to ask if Trump was politicizing the storm, which he refuted.
Unlike the previous president’s assertion, Harris was in North Carolina that day as part of a federal government disaster management action. Previously visiting a Georgia flood-damaged region, Trump is a private individual with no formal involvement in the government disaster response.
After making misleading remarks regarding the federal reaction to Hurricane Helene, Trump has come under strong criticism in North Carolina. Critics of him have accused him of undercutting the efforts of local officials, the Biden government, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to serve himself politically.
Strong Trump supporter Ingraham is an unusual person to fact-check. Trump, his campaign, and the larger MAGA movement have pushed against live fact-checking during interviews.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesman, said on X, previously Twitter earlier this month that the campaign turned down a 60 Minutes interview in part due the program’s emphasis on live fact-checking.
Leading Republicans, including Trump, were also rather critical of the ABC News reporters covering the September 10 presidential debate between Trump and Harris. When Trump reiterated his untrue claim that he won the 2020 election and falsely accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of “eating the pets of the people that live there,” the moderators fact-checked him. However, their win was stolen by extensive voting fraud.
During the vice presidential debate between Harris’s running partner, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, Vance misrepresented the Haitians in Springfield as “illegal immigrants.
” Vance said, “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” when the moderator said that Springfield has “a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status,” in the United States.
