Gov. Gavin Newsom has filed a lawsuit against Fox News, claiming he was defamed by host Jesse Waters. Politico notes that elements of the lawsuit seem to have been chosen for symbolic rather than practical reasons.
The California governor accused Fox News of defamation in a lawsuit Friday morning, alleging the network should fork over $787 million after host Jesse Watters claimed Newsom lied about his phone calls with Trump, who ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles this month. Newsom’s lawyers argue Watters’ program misleadingly edited a video of Trump to support the claim.
The Democratic likely presidential hopeful’s request for damages is nearly identical to the $787.5 million sum Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 to settle another defamation case over election falsehoods. And it comes amid a spate of lawsuits from Trump against major media and other companies that resulted in multi-million dollar settlements.
“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,” Newsom told POLITICO in a statement. “Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”
As we’ve seen many times before, defamation is very hard to prove where a public figure is involved. Newsom will have to prove that Fox News had actual malice, i.e. knew they were lying and made the claim anyway, in order to win here. Fox News called it a publicity stunt:
Fox News, in a statement, said, “Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.”
Newsom on the other hand isn’t determined to go to court. He promised to dismiss the lawsuit in exchange for an apology.
Mr. Newsom’s lawyers also sent Fox News a letter demanding a formal retraction and an on-air apology from Jesse Watters, a host who said on his show that Mr. Newsom had lied about the call with the president. If those conditions are met, the letter states, Mr. Newsom will dismiss the lawsuit.
So does Newsom have any sort of case here? Let’s dive into the underlying details.
About three weeks ago, President Trump called Gov. Newsom about the riots in Los Angeles. The call was placed on July 7 at 1:23 am (early Saturday morning) from the White House. However, because of the three hour time difference to California, Newsom was taking the call late Friday night at 10:23 pm. The call lasted about 16 minutes. President Trump activated the National Guard on July 7, i.e. later the same day.
A few days later on July 10 (Tuesday around noon) a reporter asked Trump in the Oval Office when he had last spoke to Gov. Newsom. Trump hesitated and then replied “A day ago.” He added, “Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job.”
Reporter: When is last time you spoke with Governor Newsom?
President Trump: A day ago. Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job. Causing a lot of death and potential death pic.twitter.com/BXa7PUUZCk
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2025
Gov. Newsom responded on X, essentially calling Trump a liar. But notice the language he’s using.
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. https://t.co/y7TJUhUZGI
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 10, 2025
“There was no call. Not even a voicemail,” makes it sound like Newsom is denying he and Trump spoke at all. So does Newsom’s insinuation that Trump is too out of it to know who he’s spoken to. Trump himself called in to Fox News to dispute Newsom’s claim and the White House released a call log backing up the fact that a call had taken place on July 7.
Newsom busted in yet another lie 🤣 pic.twitter.com/CAwJT2WiuI
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) June 10, 2025
So what’s going on here? Well, according to Newsom, he wasn’t denying that he and Trump had spoken at all, only that they had spoken “a day ago” which would have been Monday the 9th. Here’s how the NY Times frames Newsom’s legal complaint:
The post, according to the governor’s lawsuit, was written to correct Mr. Trump’s claim that they spoke “a day ago.”
In response, Mr. Trump gave Fox News screenshots of his phone log showing the original call with Mr. Newsom that took place late on June 6 Pacific Daylight Time and early on June 7 Eastern Daylight Time.
In covering the sequence of events, Mr. Newsom alleges, Fox News made deceptive video edits and false statements that concealed that Mr. Trump said the leaders had spoken “a day ago.” Instead, he alleges, the network framed Mr. Trump’s call log as proof that Mr. Newsom had been dishonest when it showed that Mr. Trump was incorrect about when the call took place.
“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” Mr. Watters said on his show, according to the lawsuit, which includes an image of a chyron stating, “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”
And here’s a bit of what Newsom’s lawyers said in the complaint:
“It is perhaps unsurprising that a near-octogenarian with a history of delusionary public statements and unhinged late-night social media screeds might confuse the dates,” the lawyers wrote. “But Fox’s decision to cover up for President Trump’s error cannot be so easily dismissed.”
So his argument is that Trump got the date of the call wrong (which is true) and that’s all Newsom was saying.
I really think a jury is going to have a hard time finding malice here for a few reasons. First, Newsom’s language is very sloppy and broad. When you respond to Trump saying we spoke “about a day ago” with “There was no call” most readers are going to infer that you mean…there was no call, i.e. no call ever took place. If what you really meant was ‘we spoke Friday night not Monday afternoon‘ you haven’t expressed your meaning very clearly.
Second, we know how Trump interpreted what Newsom said because he called Fox News and told host John Roberts, “This shows what a liar [Newsom] is— said I never called.” So if there was a misunderstanding here it didn’t arise from Fox News, it arose with the other party to the dispute, the President of the United States, who took Newsom’s tweet as a claim they hadn’t spoken at all.
Third, as you can see in the clip above, Fox News acknowledged that Trump had gotten the time of the call wrong. According to Newsom, this is all his tweet was intended to convey. So here’s Fox News’s John Roberts saying as much. “Here’s the call log that the president sent me from his phone. This was June the 7th. Now, granted this was on Saturday, but look 1:22 o’clock in the morning…” Roberts said. This was on Saturday not “a day earlier” as Trump claimed. He’s stipulating that point in the initial report. It’s not hidden or contested in any way.
Finally, here’s the segment from Jesse Watters that is the core of the lawsuit. If you watch this, you’ll notice that Trump’s statement has been clipped so we don’t see him say he called Newsom “a day ago.” That seems to be the whole source of Newsom’s legal claim.
JUST IN: California Governor Gavin Newsom sues Fox News for $800M, accusing the network of lying about his call with President Trump during the LA riots.
Newsom is specifically demanding an on-air apology from Jesse Watters.
“Mr. Newsom’s lawyers also sent Fox News a letter… pic.twitter.com/PskmgEjGnZ
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 27, 2025
Again, the problem here is that even if Watters had left in the president’s statement that the call was “a day ago,” Newsom’s tweet didn’t focus on that. It read like a flat denial they had spoken at all. That’s how the president took it and I think a reasonable jury would find that others, including Fox News’ hosts, honestly saw it that way too.
