Fox News has come under fire after the media house broadcast archival footage of Donald Trump. The blunder happened during a tribute for the soldiers who were martyred during the ongoing US-Israel assault on Iran. The error was noticed when Trump, who was wearing a baseball hat during the ceremony, appeared in certain clips where he did not have it on. The footage was from December 2025. Fox News has since issued an apology, both written and on air. The latter was delivered by Griff Jenkins, as reported by Deadline.
The issue with the airing of the archival footage was that critics believed it was a subtle but bumbling attempt by Fox to manage Trump’s image. During the tribute, where the bodies of the six service personnel killed in action were received by the president, Donald Trump was seen wearing his white USA hat. Critics allege the older footage was aired to make Trump look less irreverent. Fox News faces allegations of deliberately trying to shield Trump from honest criticism about his chosen attire.
Oh my god! Fox News is blatantly covering up Trump’s “Dignified Transfer” because they’re too humiliated to show the actual footage of the orange shitstain wearing his campaign hat and looking down his suit to make sure his piss bag was in place. pic.twitter.com/vDChq9sKzy
— Canada Hates Trump (@AntiTrumpCanada) March 8, 2026
Dialing the clock back to 2021, Fox News had taken it upon itself to run the footage of Joe Biden checking his watch. It was also during the same ceremony for soldiers martyred in Afghanistan. Joe Biden, who had beaten Trump in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections, was put on blast and called grossly irreverent. Critics of Fox News have taken to comparing these two incidents. They have accused Fox News of lacking objectivity and calling out their double standards.
While these might appear to be minor details that people ought not to focus on, politics often coincides with theatre, a lot more than people are willing to admit. Be it wearing a gas mask into Congress when COVID-19 mandates were being put in place, or wearing a white hat with USA written on it while receiving martyred soldiers, image matters.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz wears a gas mask on the House floor during vote on coronavirus response package https://t.co/sDjDTsSz9l pic.twitter.com/Mo37vG81a2
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 5, 2020
It becomes an especially dangerous game when media houses start covering for their preferred candidate, while finding bogus and sensationalised meaning in the gestures of the people they prefer not to see in power.
Don’t let Fox get away with it this time. Spread the word.
Fox & Friends Weekend replaced footage of Trump attending yesterday’s Dover AFB dignified transfer with a clip from December 17, 2025.
They clearly didn’t want their Trump-supporting audience to see Trump disrespecting… pic.twitter.com/cQzsEiY0Fm
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) March 8, 2026
Misinformation and the ontological nature of facts have been brought into question multiple times in the past decade, partly due to advances made in data management and the manner in which AI has revolutionised the online space. It remains to be seen if Trump’s critics are able to make this moment as big a deal as Fox did with the watch incident, or if they are able to bury it into irrelevance.
