An on-air glitch somewhat undermined a Fox News segment about Donald Trump’s presidential accomplishments when the graphics for the list literally drew a blank.
The awkward moment came during conservative host Laura Ingraham’s Monday night broadcast, as she complained that the press was harder on then-president Trump in 2019 than it is now on President Joe Biden.
“Think about how miserable – miserable! – the White House press corps was, let’s say in, I don’t know, kind of the end of 2019,” Ms Ingraham said. “What was happening then? Well, that’s when we had energy independence. That’s when we had low inflation.”
As she said this, two white cards appeared on the screen, but their text didn’t match Ms Ingraham’s words. Instead, they listed “tougher trade policies” and “no wars.”
Meanwhile, Ms Ingraham continued.
“Rising wages, even for blue collar workers,” the pundit said. “We also had record low unemployment.”
At this point, the list graphic broke down. With each new item Ms Ingraham mentioned, a completely blank card appeared on the screen. After two of these, the camera suddenly turned away from the list.
On Twitter, the mistake did not go unnoticed.
“Graphic listing good things under Trump malfunctions and starts showing blank empty spaces,” one user pointed out.
“Don’t think it was a malfunction,” another commented. “For once Fox was correct.”
“This, as @IngrahamAngle knows, is not accurate at all,” another argued. “All the spaces should have been blank.”
Others complained that Ms Ingraham’s list was misleading. Though her graphic claimed “no wars,” in 2019 the US military was still heavily involved in Afghanistan. And while Ms Ingraham praised Mr Trump for his low unemployment numbers, she conveniently limited her timeframe to “the end of 2019,” just before the coronavirus exploded across the US. From February to April 2020, the country lost a historic 22.4 million jobs.
The Independent has reached out to Fox News for comment.
