Judge Says Hell Yes Gavin Newsom Can Sue Fox News For Being Lying Liars
'Like, did anyone not know they're liars, or what?'
Gavin Newsom got a small win in his $787 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News last week when a judge in Delaware ruled that the case can go forward. Fox had filed for a dismissal, claiming that its anchors were merely expressing an opinion last summer when they said that Newsom lied about a phone conversation he’d had with Donald Trump. But Delaware Superior Court Judge Sean P. Lugg said in his decision that it was “reasonably conceivable” Fox knew its on-air statements were false when they were made.
Also, we just want to note that “Sean P. Lugg” would be great name for an action-comedy movie hero who’s a bit of a meathead but always prevails because he has a good heart. We’re already working on a treatment for “You Big Lugg” and other films in the franchise.
As Newsom twote after the ruling, “Discovery will be fun!!!”
Newsom noted the ruling’s finding that the case can continue because it’s “reasonably conceivable” Fox knew it was lying, and added that yeah, the distorted Fox coverage has had real-world consequences for him:
“I got phone calls about this, people saying, ‘Boy, why are you lying about this?’ And so I filed this. I didn't do it for petulant reasons; I did it because enough. […]
“We thought they would learn their lesson from Dominion. So now we're in discovery phase. They don't want to be in discovery phase.”
As Gary noted when Newsom filed the suit, he’s seeking damages of $787 million — the same amount Fox was ordered to pay Dominion Voting Systems for lying that Dominion’s voting machines magically stole the 2020 elelction for Joe Biden.
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Just to briefly review what the lawsuit is about, Newsom is suing Fox for falsely reporting that he “lied” about a phone call from Donald Trump during Trump’s ICE invasion of Los Angeles last summer. The facts are pretty simple: Newsom and Trump spoke briefly on the phone on Friday, June 6, 2025, just after 10 p.m. Pacific time for Newsom, or just after 1 a.m. Saturday for Trump.
Several days later, on Tuesday, June 10, Trump was asked by a reporter at an Oval Office presser when he last spoke with Newsom. Trump fudged the answer, claiming they’d spoken “A day ago. Called him to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job. Causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.” Needless to say, Trump wasn’t simply wrong about when they’d spoken, but also lied about the severity of the protests, in which no one died at all.
Newsom, who definitely hadn’t spoken to Trump since the previous Friday night, took to the Twitters to say nuh-uh: “There was no call. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”
Trump then provided Fox News host John Roberts a screenshot of White House call logs showing the record of the Friday/Saturday call, and Roberts went on Twitter himself to say that Great Leader
just contacted me from Air Force 1 to say this: “First call was not picked up. Second call, Gavin picked up, we spoke for 16 minutes. I told him to, essentially, ‘get his ass in gear,’ and stop the Riots, which were out of control. More than anything else, this shows what a liar he is – Said I never called. Here is the evidence.
Roberts didn’t include the screenshot showing when the call took place.
On his own show, Jesse Watters showed a clip of the Oval Office presser, with the “a day ago” part edited out, and demanded to know why Newsom went and lied about never having spoken to Trump, which of course Newsom hadn’t done.
“Newsom responded, and he said there wasn’t a phone call. He said Trump never called him. Not even a voicemail, he said. But John Roberts got Trump’s call logs, and it shows Trump called him late Friday night and they talked for 16 minutes. Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?”
Hilariously, Fox News insisted in its court filings that Watters “did not make a definitive assertion, but instead asked questions in an openly skeptical tone,” so he wasn’t really saying Newsom lied.
Judge Lugg, that nut, was not persuaded that Watters’s framing — just a rhetorical question! — didn’t make it okay and not a claim of fact, especially since the chyron under Watters’s smug face read “Fox News Alert: Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”
After Newsom sued and demanded a full retraction of Watters’s statement, Watters showed the full clip of Trump’s answer, including the “a day ago” bit, on his July 17, 2025, show. Watters kinda-sorta clarified that he hadn’t included the “a day ago” portion of the video because “it didn’t seem relevant,” and said he understood Newsom’s tweet to mean there was never any call, not that Trump was wrong about when they’d spoken.
Watters smarmed in conclusion that Newsom “didn’t deceive anybody on purpose, so I’m sorry, he wasn’t lying. He was just confusing and unclear. Next time, Governor, why don’t you just say what you mean.” Just to make clear that Fox News hadn’t defamed Newsom at all, the chyron read “Gavin Didn’t Lie, He Was Just Sloppy.”
Watters also snarked — though this isn’t in the lawsuit — that “Fox News invited [Newsom] on the show to talk it out man to man, but he said no,” implying the governor was a little chicken girly-man.
All of that, Lugg found, was sufficient for the case to go forward, which is a hella big finding. For a public official to sue for defamation, they have to show not only that a statement was untrue, but also that there was “actual malice,” meaning that the defendant knew the statement was false, or that they said it with “reckless disregard” for whether it was false or not. While that will still have to be determined at any eventual trial, Lugg’s ruling means that so far, Newsom has at least a “conceivable” chance of proving Fox defamed him.
And yeah, discovery should be fun!
[Decision in Newsom v. Fox / SFGate / LAT / LAT]
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"Actual malice" is kinda the Fox brand, innit...?
You would think that Fox would have learned from the Dominion suit....
Here's the funny bit.... When O'Reilly's dingle-dong got too expensive, they gave him the axe... but they CAN'T learn a lesson from the expense of blatant lies, because THAT IS THEIR ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL!!!!
that would be like asking why R. J. Reynolds didn't stop selling cigarettes...