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Brit Hume denies claim Fox News was banned from mentioning Tucker-Trump interview on air, social media

August 25, 2023 | | Print Article

The interview between Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump that was dropped on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter,  just as eight Republican presidential hopefuls took the Fox News stage to duke it out in the first GOP primary debate was clearly a mammoth middle-finger to the flailing network.

But claims that Fox was banned from even mentioning it on air or on X appear to be false — at least as far as Fox News commentator Brit Hume is concerned.

On Wednesday, ahead of both the debate and the Trump interview, which has so far garnered over 250 million views, podcaster Benny Johnson was joined by Tucker Carlson’s outspoken biographer, Chadwick Moore, who dropped a bombshell allegation from what he called “a source inside Fox.”

“So, a source inside Fox — I’m telling you this for the first time — just told me, he still works there, that they are totally banned from even — all shows are banned from even acknowledging Trump will even appear on this show,” Moore told Johnson.

“Whatever happens on this show, if Trump breaks news, they can’t mention it,” he stated. “There has been a policy since Tucker was taken off the air that we can’t say his name on air. You know, he’s, like, Voldemort: ‘He who shall not be named.’ And, explicitly, everyone at Fox is told they cannot mention this or what happens on it.”

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Hume hit back with a characteristically droll response.

“Funny,” he said, quote-tweeting Johnson’s interview, “I have heard nothing of the sort.”

Indeed, five minutes before the start of the debate on Fox News, Hume did bring up the Trump interview on air.

Part of a pre-debate show panel that included Harold Ford Jr. and Trey Gowdy, Hume wondered if “any real news” would come out of Carlson’s sit down with the former President.

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“I guess [Trump] did this pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson for presentation on Twitter,” he said. “I’m interested to see how that goes and whether there’s any real news made out of that.”

He called Trump’s decision to pass on the debate “risky.”

“My thought is that it’s risky to skip a debate,” he continued. “We saw what happened to Ronald Reagan when he skipped the Iowa debate in 1980. He lost the state and propelled George H.W. Bush to the into the lead, at least for a time.”

“Reagan eventually overtook him and won the nomination, but, you know, I don’t think George H.W. Bush would have been president if he wouldn’t have won Iowa in 1980,” he explained. “He wouldn’t have gotten the vice presidential nomination, wouldn’t have been able to stay in the race. But he had a foothold in the race, stayed in the race, and ended up being president of the United States. It can be consequential skipping debates.”

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Melissa Fine
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