Fox News host Tucker Carlson came to the defense of President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Thursday after he and members of Trump's legal team held an afternoon press conference detailing allegations of widespread election fraud. Hours before Carlson's program, Fox News White House correspondent Kristin Fisher had criticized Giuliani for not providing enough evidence to back up his claims.
Giuliani said that he was in possession of hundreds of affidavits that would prove voting fraud, but claimed that he could not present them to the press in order to preserve "national security." Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell claimed that some voting machines were programmed with software developed in Venezuela that allowed votes to be reversed. Giuliani also alleged that foreign entities had counted the ballots in collaboration with "a company controlled by friends of an enemy of the United States."
"This is real," Giuliani said. "It is not made up."
Fisher disagreed with Giuliani's interpretation of the information disseminated during the press conference.
"So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court," Fisher said. "He opened by making this really bold and baseless claim that a lot of this alleged inside voter fraud he is referring to all came from one centralized place. He called it a nationwide conspiracy, and yet he failed to provide any hard evidence to back up that one specific claim, especially when it cuts to the core of the democratic process."
On his evening program, Carlson said that Giuliani "did raise legitimate questions and, in some cases, he pointed to what appeared to be real wrongdoing."
"How you viewed it depended largely on who you voted for," Carlson said. "Trump voters seemed hopeful that it might change the election results. The left and virtually every single person in all of the news media immediately dismissed it as an embarrassing clown show, as well as a threat to the Republic. The very same people who swore that Vladimir Putin's agents controlled the U.S. government called it a conspiracy theory."
Many observers said that Giuliani's press conference was filled with misinformation and noted Giuliani's lack of evidence to prove his allegations. Former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Christopher Krebs, who was fired by Trump on Wednesday, said the event was "dangerous."
"That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history," Krebs tweeted Thursday. "And possibly the craziest. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're lucky."
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky.
— Tom Rorow (@C_C_Krebs) November 19, 2020
Trump has declined to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden, citing improprieties with ballot counting and poll watching processes in some states. In a post-election address, Trump said that "if you count the legal votes, I easily win." Many observers have referred to Trump's allegations as unsubstantiated and lacking evidence.
Newsweek reached out to the Biden transition team for comment.
Correction 11/20/2020 4:01 p.m. EST: This story originally spelled Fisher's first name as "Kristen." Her name is actually spelled "Kristin." Newsweek regrets the error.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
