Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) warned on Monday's edition of MSNBC's "The Weeknight" that Fox News put itself in a position where it could be sued on exactly the same grounds as President Donald Trump's legal complaint against CBS — a case experts widely considered frivolous, but which CBS' parent company nonetheless settled, allegedly to avoid regulatory action against their merger.
"That Fox News interview where he was asked about this," said anchor Alicia Menendez. "You are concerned that they edited the files. He was asked if he would declassify the files. He says, yeah, yeah, I would, or at least that's how it appears in their edit. In the raw footage, Trump clearly refuses to unequivocally endorse full declassification. Why is that important to you?"
"I mean, the hypocrisy," said Garcia. "I mean, well, first, clearly him and his campaign focused on the edited version. They put it out, they put it on social media. You know, he basically said, 'Oh, yeah, I clearly want to release the files.' The full version, which they didn't release during that interview, was much longer, a nuance. Why this is important is Donald Trump just got $16 million from CBS for his freakout about the Kamala Harris '60 Minutes' interview that he said, of course, 'Oh, they edited the interview,' which we know, of course, is done oftentimes for clarity or for different shows. So he can get $60 million for taking on his version of editing that he didn't like. Yet he's now going to — the same thing is happening clearly by Fox News?"
"So we want to know, did the Trump campaign and Fox News coordinate that?" Garcia continued. "What did Donald Trump tell Fox News to do? And was there actual communication and coordination around that incident, which is exactly the same thing that Donald Trump is now getting $60 million for by CBS and Paramount?"
"Are you — is anybody going to find a way to have standing to sue someone anywhere around this?" asked anchor Symone Sanders Townsend.
"Well, we're making the case that Donald Trump settlement that he got and that he forced CBS, essentially, the exact same thing happened in this Fox interview," replied Garcia. "So we're laying that out."
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