- On Monday night, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham said it was highly unlikely that President Donald Trump would win his legal challenges to the 2020 election results and secure a second term.
- "Unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic, and frankly, an unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20," Ingraham said on her show.
- She added: "If I told you there was an excellent, phenomenal chance that the Supreme Court was going to step in and deliver a victory to President Trump, I would be lying to you."
- Ingraham appears to be the first top Fox News pundit to speak so directly about Biden's win, which Fox News itself called on November 7.
- Trump has refused to concede the race. On Monday, however, he tweeted support for the General Services Administration's move to start the transition process to Biden's team.
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The Fox News host Laura Ingraham has accepted President-elect Joe Biden's electoral victory in her strongest terms yet, telling viewers on Monday night that President Donald Trump's legal challenges to the election result were likely to fail and that Biden would in all likelihood become the next president.
"As unpleasant and disappointing as these past three weeks have been to so many of us, as much as we wish things were different, this is where things stand tonight," she said.
"Now, legal challenges continue in a number of states. Serious questions about vote counting, poll-watcher access, are outstanding. But unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic, and frankly an unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20."
The remarks came more than two weeks after Fox News joined other major TV networks in calling the election for Biden on November 7.
Ingraham made sure to condition her comments, saying that she still supported the president's right to challenge the election results in the courts but that the challenges are unlikely to change the results.
"Now, to say this does not mean I don't think that this election was rife with problems and potential fraud," she said. "And to say this does not constitute being a sellout to the conservative populist movement I've been fighting for here for — I don't know — 25 years. And it does not mean that I disagree at all with the president's right and obligation to pursue all legitimate legal challenges to this outcome."
"To say this constitutes living in reality," she added. "And if I offered you a false reality, if I told you there was an excellent, phenomenal chance that the Supreme Court was going to step in and deliver a victory to President Trump, I would be lying to you."
Ingraham first signaled her acceptance of a Trump loss on November 6 — before most news networks had projected Biden to win — when she said on her show that there could be an "unfavorable outcome" in the 2020 election and that Trump should accept his defeat with "grace and composure" if he lost.
Ingraham has also consistently backed Trump's allegations of voter fraud, however. She was recently criticized and mocked for her interview with an unnamed Nevada poll worker who claimed to see ballots being filled out by the Biden campaign, without providing photographic evidence, according to The Independent.
Ingraham appears to be the first of the major Fox News pundits to speak so directly about Biden's win.
On his show Monday night, Tucker Carlson did not mention Biden's electoral victory and instead railed against mail-in voting and alleged that the election had been "rigged towards one candidate," according to The Washington Post.
Carlson did, however, question Trump's then-lawyer Sidney Powell for failing to provide evidence for her voter-fraud claims, prompting attacks from the president's loyalists.
Sean Hannity didn't appear to have a new show Monday, but his broadcasts after the election have included pushing a conspiracy theory that a "media mob" conspired to paint Biden in the best light and a rant arguing that socialist Democrats were plotting to push Biden as far left as possible.
Trump has also repeatedly refused to concede. On Monday, however, he did tweet support for the General Services Administration's move to start the transition process to Biden's team.
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