Fox & Friends Spar Over Trump’s Lies About 2020 Election: ‘You Can’t Get Inside His Head!’

The third indictment of former President Donald Trump was a subject of much discussion on cable news, and Fox News hosts have been debating the merits of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s 45-page indictment as it relates to free speech—specifically, Trump’s freedom to believe that he won the 2020 election.

The indictment clearly states that Trump knew he lost the election. Despite that, and despite there being no evidence of widespread election fraud, he’s been charged with an alleged conspiracy to take illegal actions to remain in power. But the hosts of Fox & Friends maintain that there’s no way of knowing what Trump was really thinking, meaning that the charges constitute an attack on Trump’s First Amendment right to believe he won the election. (He did not believe he won the election.) Host Steve Doocy makes clear what this indictment is really about:

Jack Smith presented this evidence in this 45-page indictment yesterday, there’s nothing that ties Donald Trump to what happened on January 6. Nothing that ties him to the people, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, stuff like that. He was not charged with insurrection. This is all about him trying to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, which he lost. And ultimately it comes down to… He knew that he had lost because he was told by a bunch of people, “You’ve lost, Mr. President.” But he kept repeating the lie, and these conspiracy charges were about, are about how the people around him, six co-conspirators, figured ways to keep that lie going.

Then host Ainsley Earhardt added that Trump’s inner circle swears that he believes he won:

[O]n the very front page, at the bottom paragraph. It says the defendant knew that they were false, false claims. He said, “I won the election.” And this says that Donald Trump knew it was false. But if you ask most people, if you ask really anyone in his circle, they’ll say he he really believes he won the election. I don’t know if they have something on him. I don’t know if they have a conversation that he had with his staffers.

Trump’s staffers and supporters testified before Congress and the January 6 Committee that they had this conversation with him; some also testified before the grand jury.

The debate continued:

Doocy: It sounds like they’ve got people according to the indictment, they’ve got people at the Department of Justice who said, “You lost.” Got people at the White House…

Earhardt: They said it or he said it?

Brian Kilmeade: You can’t get inside his head!

Doocy: They told him, “Mr. President, you’ve lost.” The Department of Justice.

Earhardt: But he didn’t believe it.

Doocy: The people at the campaign–

Earhardt: But they have to prove that he actually believed that he lost, because you’re allowed to question an election. We’ve seen Hillary Clinton do that. Nancy Pelosi did that.

Kilmeade: Stacey Abrams still thinks she’s the governor of Georgia!

On the second page of Smith’s indictment, it states:

The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means…

Watch the video above via Fox News.