California Governor Gavin Newsom is suing the parent company of the Fox News Channel over a statement made on one of its prime-time commentary programs that related to recent civil unrest in Los Angeles.
The lawsuit, filed in Delaware, where Fox is incorporated, is seeking at least $787 million in damages — an amount nearly identical to how much Fox paid to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by a voting machine manufacturer two years ago.
In a complaint, Newsom contends that Fox misrepresented a statement he wrote on social media in response to one made by President Donald Trump earlier this month. The statement concerned phone calls and coordination around deployment of U.S. Marines to Los Angeles during unrest over immigration raids that were instigated by the Trump administration.
President Trump claimed he called Newsom before deploying Marines from a nearby military installation to Los Angeles, which Newsom denied in a social media post.
“There was no call. Not even a voicemail,” Newsom wrote. “Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”
Newsom says the post was written to correct a statement made by Trump during a news conference that the two had spoken a “day ago.” Trump provided Fox News call records that showed the two leaders had phone calls dating over a two-day period, but two days earlier.
On a technicality, Trump was wrong and Newsom was right. But Newsom’s social media statement gave the appearance that the two leaders had not spoken about the deployment of Marines at all, when it was quite possible that Newsom and Trump had discussed the matter during one of their two calls over two earlier days.
Jesse Watters, a conservative commentator with a popular weeknight Fox News program, questioned why Newsom would challenge Trump’s assertion of a warning, given the phone records.
“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” Watters asked while speaking over a graphic that said: “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”
Newsom claims Fox News deliberately misled its viewers about the nature of the calls and the social media post. The lawsuit claims the statements have the potential to damage Newsom’s chances of being elected to public office in the future. He is unable to seek a third consecutive term as California’s governor due to limits in the state, but has not ruled out a run for president or another office once his term expires in early 2027.
Public officials generally have a higher burden of proof to meet in defamation cases, and statements from Newsom’s office makes it appear that the governor is misusing the court to generate positive headlines for himself. To that end, a statement from Newsom’s office said the governor was willing to drop the complaint against Fox News if the network retracted Watters’ statement and apologized on air — something that Fox seems unlikely to do.
“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him,” a spokesperson for Fox News Media said in a statement emailed to The Desk on Friday. “We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.”
To some degree, the lawsuit is out of character for Newsom, who has spent the past few years attempting to build bridges between the progressives who voted for him and the Republicans who didn’t. He has accepted numerous invitations to appear on Fox News, including sit-down interviews with Sean Hannity, one of the network’s biggest conservative commentators.
Now, Newsom appears willing to take controversial plays out of Trump’s playbook — suing news outlets for unfavorable coverage, and demanding they apologize over remarks that are peppered with elements of truth and opinion.
For Trump, similar defamation lawsuits have proven beneficial to his political career. He successfully ran two campaigns that were based in part on demonizing the news media in a way that irreparably damaged the reputation of the industry, and squeezed settlements, apologies and money out of at least two TV networks (and, likely, a third very soon) over news coverage he found to be unflattering.
