Fox News apologizes for showing old video of a hatless Donald Trump at a dignified transfer ceremony

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/baseball-cap-fox-news-trump-dover-dignified-transfer-29a8f2c1a4a6b2218d18daa2eb5109d9

Fox News apologizes for showing old video of a hatless Donald Trump at a dignified transfer ceremony
By DAVID BAUDER
Updated 6:12 PM CDT, March 8, 2026

Fox News apologized for airing old video of a hatless President Donald Trump during coverage Sunday of his attendance at the dignified transfer ceremony for U.S. soldiers killed in the Middle East war, insisting it was an honest mistake.

In a polarized time, some online critics suggested without evidence that it wasn’t an error — that the network was trying to make Trump look better by not showing him wearing a baseball cap during what is considered one of the most solemn duties of a commander in chief. The return of the bodies of six soldiers took place Saturday at Dover Air Force Base.

But Fox News said archival footage of Trump at an earlier ceremony was inadvertently pulled up by a staff member and used on two Sunday morning telecasts. A spokeswoman noted the correct footage was used at other times, including on Saturday.

Fox News anchor Griff Jenkins issued an on-the-air correction Sunday, saying “we extend our respect and condolences” to the families of the service members killed.

The apology didn’t sit well with some critics. “If any other network did this it would be a huge scandal, Fox would lead the chorus of criticisms and faux-outrage, and people would lose their jobs,” said Mehdi Hasan, founder of the online site Zeteo.

...

[RockRaven]

1. Nope. They long ago forfeited any benefit of the doubt. They EARNED that people

believe any misleading content from them to be intentionally deceptive.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

2. Trump wore a baseball cap to a dignified transfer...

... but Obama wearing a tan suit in the Oval Office tarnished the presidency.

[raccoon]

3. If that was an "honest mistake", there ain't a cow in Texas.

[LilElf70]

4. Honest mistake?

This is how it went down.

Someone made the decision to either grab a recently dated clip, or an old clip. The difference in sources can clearly be separated as I am sure everything is dated. That, in itself a deliberate move.

This was no honest mistake. They knew POS had f'ed up and did not want the embarrassing moment shown to their brainwashed audience.

[pwb]

5. Well here we are Fox News,

just where you wanted us to be. Apology not accepted.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

6. State-Run TV: "We sorry, wink, wink..."

[Aristus]

7. "We apologize" "We didn't think we'd get caught."

[dalton99a]

8. +1

[City Lights]

9. There is nothing honest about Fox Nooze.

Everything they do is calculated.

And while mistakes can be made, mixing up footage like that is not something done by accident.

Fox has been feeding its viewers a steady diet of baloney for decades.

[Ping Tung]

10. Thanks to his efforts to be a conqueror he'll have more chances to enhance his fake mourning.

[kentuck]

11. I see this as a conspiracy between Trump and FOX...

I think they have discussed it already.

That Trump anticipates more bodies coming home from the war and he doesn't want to go to meet them every time so he wants FOX to run a canned response to try and make it look live. He wants to run a film of him doing his job.

[Botany]

12. So a Fox employee inadvertently pulled the wrong file which was older footage than the current footage?

Stupid I.T. question. Fox no doubt has a digital file system for its videos and stuff wouldn’t you need
to use the right computer type of address to call something up? Now the old capless video of Trump
should have had a totally different address than the current cap on Donny feed. Now how can you inadvertently input the wrong address and that mistake brings up an image that looks a lot the ball
capped “no class” Donny? What are the odds? Just one of those inadvertent random chances?

And did they just use some kind of A.I. to get a Donny head shot into the tarmac transfer ceremony?

Maybe I am a conspiracy whack job but I think more than a few Fox employees worked on getting
out the lie that Trump didn’t have a ball cap on during the transfer ceremonies. And this isn’t just
a one and done thing for Fox because Roger Ailes designed Fox to be a “sell the lie factory.”

Ailes is behind the long term lie on the right that it was really Dan Rather’s fault that Nixon got
run from the White House. He always thought Nixon could have stayed in power if he just gotten
the right kind of press and that is exactly what Fox is doing right now.

Inadvertently calling up the wrong file?