Donald Trump tore into his former favorite news channel for calling the Virginia governor’s race for Glenn Youngkin after CNN and MSNBC, accusing the network of wanting a Democrat to win.
Asked by John Fredericks on The John Fredericks show why Fox was the last of the big three networks to project Youngkin winning, Trump replied: ‘That’s probably because maybe they wanted the Democrat to win. Who knows?’
CNN and MSNBC called the race for Youngkin around 12:30 am, Fox made the same projection 10-12 minutes later.
While Youngkin had a clear lead all night, news networks held off on calling the race in his favor until late into the night, as votes from Fairfax, Virginia’s biggest and heavily Democratic county, were delayed in pouring in.
‘The problem is Paul Ryan is basically running Fox now,’ Trump claimed. ‘That’s why Fox is no longer a great primer for us.’
Trump claimed that Ryan, former House GOP leader, and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ‘ganged up’ on him when he was in office. ‘How would you like to work with those two?’
Trump continued his attacks of the Republican leader: ‘Mitch McConnell is terrible as a leader, just terrible, the old crow … He just doesn’t get it. He never has gotten it, frankly.’
McConnell, 79, is four years senior to Trump, 75.
Fox News was the last of the major news networks to call the race for Glenn Youngkin
CNN projected Youngkin to win around 12:30am
MSNBC projected Youngkin to win around 12:30am
Trump said of Fox News: ‘All they do is they put on commercials from the Lincoln Project.’ The Lincoln Project, which Trump described as a group of ‘perverts,’ is an anti-Trump conservative group that has as of late worked to elect Democrats.
‘It’s terrible. Roger Ailes would never air a bad commercial.’
Fox News has more hesitantly covered the former president in recent days, mentioning him by name far less than its network counterparts.
Mediaite reports that Trump’s name was mentioned 1,761 times during the month of October, while CNN mentioned him 2,275 times and on MSNBC, 3,088. Some of those mentions of the Trump name could have referred to his children and the Trump organization as well.
Trump then displayed a hint of jealousy at Youngkin’s newfound star status. ‘I’ve heard Virginia is blue but I’ve never believed it was blue,’ the former president said. ‘Without MAGA he would have lost by 15 points, more.’
‘Instead of giving us credit they say oh he’s more popular than [Trump],’ he added.
Asked by John Fredericks on The John Fredericks show why Fox was the last of the big three networks to project Youngkin winning, Trump replied: ‘That’s probably because maybe they wanted the Democrat to win. Who knows?’
The former president could be miffed that Youngkin did not make any mention of him in his victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
McAuliffe consistently invoked Trump throughout the campaign, which the former president claimed helped Youngkin win.
He said before the race was called in a statement: ‘It is looking like Terry McAuliffe’s campaign against a certain person named “Trump” has very much helped Glenn Youngkin. All McAuliffe did was talk Trump, Trump, Trump and he lost! What does that tell you, Fake News?
‘I guess people running for office as Democrats won’t be doing that too much longer. I didn’t even have to go rally for Youngkin, because McAuliffe did it for me. Thank you to the MAGA voters for turning out big!’
The former president held a campaign tele-rally Monday night urging his base to vote for Youngkin, despite the Republican candidate’s efforts to distance himself from Trump.
Youngkin kept Trump at arm’s length throughout the race as he courted Virginia’s Independent voters. Trump fared poorly in the commonwealth in 2020, losing to Joe Biden by 10 points.
Youngkin was declared the next governor of Virginia around 1am on Wednesday. The Associated Press called his victory with 95 percent of precincts reporting, and Youngkin lead McAuliffe by about 2 percent, 51.1 percent to 48.2 percent.
Trump also claimed on The John Fredericks show that Democrats cheat on elections ‘more than anybody’ in the world.
‘They’re radical,’ he said. ‘They cheat on elections, more than anybody maybe in the world. I don’t believe they’re a 50% party. I believe they’re great at cheating on elections and they have horrible policy. If they didn’t cheat, they wouldn’t win elections.’