Lou Dobbs, perhaps the Fox News empire’s most avid supporter of former President Donald Trump and his false accusations that the result of the 2020 Presidential election was bogus, is getting cancelled by Fox.
Friday night’s episode of Dobbs' highly rated 5 p.m. Fox Business show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, will be the last one, as first reported by The Los Angeles Times.
And Dobbs wasn't there for the last episode of his show, either. Starting next week, the show will be rebranded Fox Business Tonight. Jackie DeAngelis and David Asman, who filled in for Dobbs on Friday, will be the permanent rotating hosts.
Dobbs remains under contract with the network but he likely won't return to any of its shows.
“As we said in October, Fox News Media regularly considers programming changes and plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate post-election, including on FOX Business--this is part of those planned changes. A new 5 p.m. program will be announced in the near future," the network said in a statement.
Dobbs, 75, has emerged as perhaps Fox's most sycophantic supporter of the former president. And his show, which re-aired each weeknight at 7 p.m., was by far the highest rated in the Fox Business lineup.
But the specter of expensive legal settlements with several voting technology companies, implicated in Fox's coverage of Trump's bogus-election claims, looms large.
On Thursday, Fox was hit with a $2.7 billion defamation suit from voting technology company Smartmatic, which claims that Dobbs and other Fox hosts defamed the company while supporting Trump's theories that the election was rigged.
“Fox News engaged in a conspiracy to spread disinformation about Smartmatic. They lied, and they did so knowingly and intentionally. Smartmatic seeks to hold them accountable for those lies,” said Smartmatic’s attorney J. Erik Connolly of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP, in announcing the suit.
The suit claims that Fox made over 100 false statements and implications to the effect that Smartmatic had stolen the 2020 election, when that was false. Smartmatic also said that it had only provided election services and technology to Los Angeles county (a state Trump lost by over 5 million votes).
In addition to Dobbs and Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, other Fox personalities, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, are also named in the lawsuit.
