Gavin Newsom is taking a page right out of Donald Trump’s media playbook.
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.”
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.”
Public officials must clear an extremely high legal standard to prevail in defamation cases, as the U.S. Supreme Court established six decades ago in New York Times v. Sullivan. But the lawsuit’s filing marks a pointed escalation in Newsom’s feud with the Republican president and his allies in media. Newsom is suing in his personal capacity and has agreed to pay any possible fines or penalties from his campaign account, aides said. Any proceeds from the case to Newsom would be disseminated to anti-Trump causes.
Newsom’s suit echoes Trump’s own lawsuits against major news networks like ABC, which agreed in December to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation case over George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate claim that Trump was found civilly liable for rape. (Trump was actually found civilly liable for sexual abuse, though the judge in the case later ruled that it was accurate in “common modern parlance” to say Trump had been found liable for rape.)
Trump in another suit accused CBS’ “60 Minutes” last fall of misleadingly editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential race. At least two executives from the company have since left their posts and the unresolved CBS suit has become a central drama in the pending sale of a controlling stake in Paramount.
Newsom’s lawyers said he is prepared to drop the lawsuit if Fox retracts its claims and Watters apologizes to him on air.
A copy of Newsom’s complaint filed in the Delaware Superior Court — in the same state where Fox News is incorporated — claims he last spoke with Trump for approximately 16 minutes by phone on June 7, one day before the president deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops over Newsom’s objections to quell protests in Los Angeles.
Trump, however, told reporters on June 10 he had spoken with Newsom “a day ago,” implying a conversation took place the same day 700 U.S. Marines were deployed to Los Angeles. Newsom refuted Trump’s claim in a post on X minutes later.
That evening, Watters played an edited clip of Trump’s remarks on air before asking, “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” He simultaneously showed a screenshot of the president’s call history, obtained by Fox host John Roberts, showing Trump’s last call with Newsom was on June 7, as the governor had claimed.
Newsom’s lawyers argue the incident meets the legal standard for defamation and potentially harmed the governor’s standing with voters in future elections. Additionally, they claimed it violated California’s Unfair Competition Law, which outlaws “deceptive and unfair business practices.”
Mark Bankston and another private lawyer representing Newsom, Michael Teter, summarized their case in a five-page letter to Fox on Friday littered with biting insults of the network’s credibility and sarcastic jabs at Trump’s mental acuity.
“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.”
Newsom’s suit adds further drama to his love-hate relationship with Fox. He’s an avid viewer who’s enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the network at times over the last three decades, reveling in the ability to go toe-to-toe with firebrand hosts like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly in front of millions of conservatives. Yet he’s often decried Fox’s rightward tilt while smiling for its cameras, as he did in 2023 when heaccused Hannity of helping Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, cheat in a primetime debate.
His relationship with Trump is more complex but follows a similar rhythm of a tense rivalry punctuated by moments of collaboration. This year alone, Newsom hugged Trump as the president deplaned to tour wildfire damage in Los Angeles, only to sue him over tariffs months later before savagely attacking the president in a June primetime address that catapulted him back to the forefront of Democratic resistance against the president’s agenda.
Newsom’s tense face-off with Trump put him squarely in conservative media’s bullseye. Just last week, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post mocked Newsom on its front page with a photo of him sipping wine in Napa on the same weekend Trump called in Guard troops. Newsom’s press office has since said he was at a cancer fundraiser honoring his late mother, who died of breast cancer.
The governor’s legal team is no stranger to high-profile defamation cases. Bankston represented the parents of an elementary school student killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in a defamation suit against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Bankston’s team secured a verdict in 2022 ordering Jones to pay $49.3 million in total damages.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Mark Bankston’s last name.
