Trump’s election lies cost Fox $787m – will they also cost him the White House in 2024?

The truth-averse right-wing network has been punished for its greed and fear. But the ex-president could be set to pay an even higher price

After nearly two years and one $787m settlement payment later, Dominion Voting Systems’ landmark defamation lawsuit against Fox News is no more.

The right-wing talk network, which for years has topped the cable television ratings with its incendiary and often fact-averse opinion programming, agreed to make the massive payout to the voting machine maker just before opening statements were set to begin in what would’ve been an exceedingly embarrassing spectacle of a trial.

Dominion, which bore the brunt of outlandish accusations from former president Donald Trump and his allies in the wake of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, was poised to put the top brass and top talent at Fox on the witness stand, where their attorneys were certain to have elicited humiliating explanations of why they knowingly aired ridiculously false claims about the voting machines made by the company.

Indeed, documents made public during the lawsuit’s discovery phase made clear that Fox’s most prominent personalities had no qualms about embracing ridiculous allegations from Mr Trump and others in his orbit even though they knew them to be false.

The reason? Fear and greed.

Greed, because the Trump-loving viewers of that network had been convinced long ago that any loss by Mr Trump would be illegitimate. And fear, because on the rare occasions when Fox’s people dared tell the truth — including their correct prediction of his loss to Joe Biden in Arizona — their audience responded by changing the channel to even more truth-averse competitors.

For a good portion of the network’s quarter-century on the air, Fox News went by the mantra of “we report, you decide”.

But after the network wholeheartedly embraced Donald Trump in 2016, the reporting became optional because their viewers had already decided.

They decided to believe whatever Trump told them. And when they heard something that contradicted that, they looked elsewhere for more comforting lies.

Two years later, Fox’s audience has remained loyal to Trump, but the twice-impeached ex-president’s lies are still exacting a cost.

Some of that cost may yet to be extracted from Fox’s bottom line.

Another voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, still has a multi-billion dollar lawsuit pending against Fox for many of the same lies that pushed Rupert Murdoch and his organisation to offer more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to get Dominion to drop their case.

But it may be Mr Trump who ultimately pays the highest price.

Not only is he under federal investigation for his role in the January 6 riot his lies incited, but his refusal to tell the truth about his loss has become electoral poison for the GOP.

When Republicans ran on his stolen election lies in 2022, for the most part they lost. Easily.

Mr Trump, who is now a candidate for 2024’s presidential election, is still lying about the one he lost nearly three years ago.

And just as Fox will think twice before airing his outlandish claims with credulity again, American voters will almost certainly do the same before even considering letting him return to the Oval Office.