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← All fact checksAfternoon run · November 4, 2026 · #2 by reach
PoliticsStatistic

Did Trump claim on Fox News that he won Minnesota three times?

Did Donald Trump win Minnesota three times, as he said live on Fox News on election night?

True

Trump really did say it on air — and he really did lose Minnesota all three times.

True. The clip is genuine Fox News election-night footage from 3 November 2026: anchor Bret Baier called Minnesota's Senate race for Democrat Peggy Flanagan while President Trump was live on the phone, and Trump did say 'I won it three times.' That claim is false — he lost Minnesota in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

+4Sources ↓Original post ↗
Genuine
The post as it circulated, labelled by our media check.Video · 0:58 · 1280×720

Claims

✓ 2 true · ✕ 2 false

Fox News called the Minnesota Senate race for Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan while President Trump was on the phone with the network's election-night anchors.135

✓ TrueCentral claimHigh confidence

Several independent outlets that covered the broadcast — HuffPost, CNN, The Guardian and the Mirror — describe anchor Bret Baier calling Minnesota for Flanagan in the middle of Trump's live phone interview. The keyframes inside the clip show the correct Fox News election-night set, the rotating results ticker and the 'On the Phone' card, and the same on-air dialogue is quoted in coverage. The decisive point is not any single outlet but that all of them match: the race call, the candidate names and the timing line up without contradiction. Where a fabricated clip would normally fail is exactly here — in the link between what is said on screen and what independent reporters heard at the same moment. Here that link holds.

Trump responded to the Minnesota call by complaining that he had won the state three times.15

✓ TrueCentral claimHigh confidence

The clip's audio captures the phrase 'it's a joke, because I won it three times,' and two independent outlets — HuffPost and the Mirror — transcribe the same sentence in their write-ups of the broadcast. Transcripts made by different newsrooms from the same audio are an important check: if the clip had been edited or reconstructed, the wording would typically drift between versions. It does not. The on-screen visuals and the audio also stay in sync, with no jump cuts or mismatched lip movement. We are confident Trump said it; the clip is not the only witness to the words.

Donald Trump won Minnesota three times.16

“I won it three times.”

✕ FalseCentral claimHigh confidence

Trump has contested three presidential elections, and he lost Minnesota in all of them: by 1.5 points in 2016, by 7.1 points in 2020 and by 4.2 points in 2024. The result is not a matter of dispute: statewide vote totals are public and have been reported by major outlets including the New York Times. The New York Times also records that Trump has repeatedly claimed he won the state, and that no Republican has carried it since Nixon in 1972 — the same fact-checking point HuffPost makes about this broadcast. The claim fits a pattern rather than a one-off slip: a false statement Trump repeats even though the underlying numbers are easy to find. It is exactly the kind of claim that looks arresting but collapses the moment you look up the actual vote margins.

Richard Nixon was the last Republican to win Minnesota, in 1952.1

“Richard Nixon was the last to win it, and it's a joke, because I won it three times.”

✕ FalseHigh confidence

Nixon was indeed the last Republican presidential nominee to carry Minnesota, but the year was 1972, not 1952. HuffPost notes that Trump appeared to mean 1972. The wrong date is a small factual error inside a larger false claim, and it matters because it shows how a broadcast moment can carry a real historical fact in a mangled form: the broad point is correct, the specific detail is not. Readers should treat it as a separate factual failure and not as proof that the whole exchange is inauthentic.

'The people that count the votes are much more important than the candidates.'1

~ MisleadingModerate confidence

Trump offers no evidence of counting irregularities in Minnesota or anywhere else, and the framing — that vote-counters matter more than voters — recycles his long-standing stolen-election rhetoric. Minnesota's elections are administered locally, and officials have said there is no evidence backing his claims. The phrase is not a verifiable factual statement; it is an insinuation, which is why it sits at MISLEADING rather than FALSE. A reader should notice that the sentence implies fraud without naming a single case, a county or a number. That structure — a broad accusation with no specifics — is one of the most common ways misinformation avoids being pinned to a checkable claim.

Still open: Trump did not name any county, official or case, so there is no single specific allegation to test.

Flanagan won as lieutenant governor while claiming not to know about billions of dollars of theft and fraud in Minnesota.1

~ Partly trueModerate confidence

Minnesota has faced a large, federally investigated fraud scandal that unfolded during the Walz–Flanagan administration, with prosecutors citing figures up to roughly $9 billion. That part of the claim has a real basis. What is not established is Flanagan's personal knowledge: the clip and the coverage we have do not show her claiming ignorance, and her awareness is contested and unproven. Trump's wording also turns a contested question into an attack line, mixing a real scandal with an unestablished conclusion about one person. PARTLY_TRUE reflects that split: real events, but an unproven gloss.

Still open: The record does not show whether Flanagan personally knew about the fraud, and the clip does not include her own statements.

What was posted

X

A 90-second clip of Fox News coverage on US midterm election night, posted to X by journalist Aaron Rupar. It shows anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum on air with a chyron reading 'Donald Trump — 47th President of the United States — On the Phone.' Baier calls Minnesota's open Senate race for Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan over Republican Michele Tafoya while Trump is on the line, and Trump immediately protests that he won the state three times. The caption asks readers to believe that Trump made a false election claim live on air — and that the clip proves it.

“Fox News calls Minnesota for Flanagan while Trump is on the phone. Trump responds by ranting about how he won the state 3 times. (He didn't win once!)”

Posted to X by journalist Aaron Rupar, who regularly clips and shares US political broadcast footage, within hours of the 3 November 2026 broadcast. The post has no detectable synthetic-media markers and matches mainstream coverage of the same on-air exchange.

Who posted it

X
@atrupar

1.1M followers · Account 15.5 years old

View the account on X ↗

Account check

Looks like a genuine account62%
Likelihood of automation4%

Estimates from public signals — account age, posting pattern, audience — not a judgement of the person behind the account, and separate from whether this post is true.

What stood out

  • Handle @atrupar belongs to Aaron Rupar, a well-documented independent US politics journalist and publisher of the Public Notice newsletter (formerly Vox).
  • Account is long-established (opened April 2011) with ~1.1 million followers; widely cited by mainstream outlets (Mediaite, Newsweek, Fox News, Hindustan Times, C-SPAN) in 2026 coverage.
  • Identity authenticity is high: same handle is consistently referenced across platforms (Bluesky atrupar.com, journa.host, Public Notice site) and by press, so identity spoofing is unlikely.
  • Posting pattern is human-driven and extremely high-volume (NYT profile: spends ~80 hours/week monitoring and clipping Trump); no evidence of automation or coordinated inauthentic networks.
  • Sourcing is generally primary (C-SPAN and live video embeds), but framing is openly partisan and has repeatedly drawn context criticism — e.g. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale in Oct 2026 said a Rupar clip 'more obviously takes him out of context'; 2021 Jay Baker/Atlanta spa clip was widely criticized as misleading.
  • Documented platform-history events are political rather than authenticity-related: a 7-day X suspension in Dec 2022 over linking to an ElonJet Facebook page, later reversed.
  • Missing bio/follower/verification fields in the supplied metadata appear to be data-collection gaps rather than signs of a fake account; the live profile is self-described 'journalist' with a newsletter link.
Signals (9)+
Account created
2011-04
Follower ratio
High (approx 5.6k following vs 1.13M followers)
Identity confirmed by
Public Notice about page; C-SPAN person page; Mediaite; Newsweek; Fox News; New York Times profile (Apr 2026); Bluesky/journa.host cross-links
Posting cadence
Very high, human-driven clip-and-commentary workflow
Notable news coverage
Recurring 2026 coverage of feud with White House Rapid Response 47 account
Fact check history
Criticised for decontextualised clips (Daniel Dale, Oct 2026; Jay Baker clip, Mar 2021; 2020 flu/grandfather 'gotcha')
Platform sanctions
7-day X suspension Dec 2022 (ElonJet link), reinstated after public backlash
Partisanship
Self-described lifelong liberal Democrat; opinionated framing but disclosed
Coordinated inauthentic behavior
None found

Account checked November 4, 2026, 02:48 UTC

The media

Video
GenuinePresented as real footage· The claim depends on it

✓ What is genuine

The footage is real Fox News election-night coverage from 3 November 2026. The network's race call for Peggy Flanagan and Trump's on-air response are not reconstructions — they were broadcast live and reported independently by multiple outlets.

The tells

  • ●●● Strong signal The race call and Trump's 'I won it three times' response are quoted word-for-word in two independent outlets' write-ups of the broadcast.HuffPost and the Mirror (source ids 1 and 5)
  • ●●○ Supporting signal The graphics — anchors, the rotating results ticker and the 'On the Phone' card — are internally consistent across frames with no garbled text or morphing.our visual review
  • ●●○ Supporting signal Mainstream newsrooms including The Guardian and CNN covered the same on-air exchange on the same night, matching the moment the clip shows.The Guardian (source id 3) and CNN (source id 2)

Synthetic-media detector

Detector not consulted

Sources settled the claim on their own; the detector was not needed.

How we checked the media

  • Reviewed the video's keyframes and on-screen graphics for consistency with a Fox News election-night broadcast.
  • Compared the on-air exchange with independent transcripts from HuffPost, the Mirror and CNN, looking for matching wording.
  • Searched for the event across major outlets, including a targeted search for existing fact-checks of this clip.

Sources

7 sources reviewed

Further reading

  • 1HuffPost The clearest single account of the exchange, with the 'I won it three times' quote and the 1972 correction.
  • 6The New York Times Documents the pattern behind the Minnesota falsehood and the state's historical voting record.
  • 3The Guardian Places Trump's phone interview in the wider context of midterm election-night coverage.

The full story

The clip is genuine, and so is the on-air embarrassment it captures. On midterm election night, 3 November 2026, Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum had President Donald Trump live on the phone. Mid-interview, Baier called Minnesota's open Senate seat for Democrat Peggy Flanagan over Republican Michele Tafoya. Trump's reaction was immediate: he complained that Minnesota was 'a joke' and that he had won it three times.

That part of the claim is easy to check and easy to get wrong. Trump lost Minnesota in 2016, 2020 and 2024, by margins that are public and were widely reported. No Republican has carried the state since Richard Nixon — in 1972, not the 1952 date Trump gave on air, as HuffPost noted. The New York Times has documented the same pattern: Trump repeatedly says he won Minnesota, and the record says he did not.

The clip also carries a second layer. Trump's line that 'the people that count the votes are much more important than the candidates' is an insinuation without a named case, county or figure behind it, and Minnesota officials have said there is no evidence supporting his fraud claims. The fraud scandal he invoked has a real, federally investigated basis, with prosecutors citing figures up to roughly $9 billion — but Flanagan's personal knowledge is contested and unproven.

That mix is why the post feels true and is mostly true: the footage is real, the quote is real, and the false claim belongs to the person caught on camera, not to the person who posted it.

Kernel of truth

Fox News really did call Minnesota for Flanagan while Trump was on the phone, and Trump really did say he had won the state three times — the false part is Trump's claim, not the clip.

Timeline

  1. November 3, 2026

    On US midterm election night, Fox News calls Minnesota's open Senate race for Peggy Flanagan over Michele Tafoya while President Trump is live on the phone; Trump responds that he won the state three times. 1HuffPost

  2. November 3, 2026

    Trump's live phone interview on Fox News election coverage is reported by CNN and The Guardian, including his on-air reaction to Democratic gains. 3The Guardian

  3. November 3, 2026

    Aaron Rupar posts the clip to X with the caption claiming Trump ranted that he won Minnesota three times. 7X

How it was framed

AccurateFalse connection

The headline claim — that Fox News called Minnesota for Flanagan while Trump was on the phone and that he claimed three wins — is accurate, and the video is genuine. The secondary type reflects the error inside the quoted material: Trump's own false claim that he won Minnesota three times is embedded in an otherwise accurate post.

  • “Visual proof”. The post leads with the broadcast clip and its on-screen 'On the Phone' card, inviting viewers to treat the footage as the proof.
  • Emotional language. The caption calls Trump's answer a 'rant' and ends with '(He didn't win once!)' — the exclamation and phrasing signal incredulity.

Posted to X by journalist Aaron Rupar, who frequently clips US political broadcasts. The video is presented as authentic network footage and matches independent coverage of the same broadcast.

Bias

NoneSlightModerateStrong

Leans anti-Trump. The account's framing — 'Trump responds by ranting' and the parenthetical '(He didn't win once!)' — is openly mocking and dismissive of Trump, though the underlying quotes and race call are accurately reported.

Bias describes how the post frames its message — the slant of the language, selection and emphasis — and is judged separately from whether the claim is true. A true claim can still be framed with a strong slant.

How we checked

59 s
  1. 1

    Ran targeted searches for the race call, the Fox News phone interview and the 'won it three times' quote.

  2. 2

    Searched for any existing fact-check of the specific clip.

  3. 3

    Reviewed the clip's keyframes and on-screen graphics for signs of editing or manipulation.

  4. 4

    Compared the clip's audio with independent transcripts published by HuffPost, the Mirror, CNN and The Guardian.

  5. 5

    Checked the underlying Minnesota election results against reporting, including the New York Times.

✓ Claim checked✓ Media checked✓ Sources checked

Why 90% confidence

High

The headline is TRUE at HIGH confidence because the same on-air exchange was reported and transcribed by several independent outlets and the clip's audio and visuals are consistent. The claim inside it — that Trump won Minnesota three times — is FALSE at HIGH confidence because the vote margins are public and were reported by multiple outlets, and the New York Times documents the same pattern. A lower-confidence finding on the fraud-scandal remark reflects that its factual basis is partly real but its conclusion about Flanagan is unproven.

Limits. No broadcast-quality original recording or official Fox News transcript was obtained; we relied on newsroom transcripts and published coverage. No independent fact-check of this specific clip had been published at the time of writing, and the fraud-scandal claim about Flanagan's knowledge is contested and was not resolved by the available record.

What we don’t know

  • Whether Fox News or the White House issued any correction or clarification after the broadcast.
  • Whether Trump's 1952 date was a misstatement of 1972 or something else — HuffPost notes he appeared to mean 1972, but that is an inference.
  • What Flanagan herself said about the fraud scandal, since the clip does not include her statements.

Spot it yourself

Spot the fake

Looks suspicious, isn’t proof

  • The post comes from a politically engaged account that regularly clips cable news — partisan sourcing is a reason to check, not evidence of fakery.
  • The caption's phrasing ('ranting', the exclamation mark) is loaded and pushes an interpretation, but an emotional caption does not make the underlying video fake.
  • The clip is short and edited down to one exchange — short clips omit context, but that alone proves nothing about authenticity.

The actual evidence

  • Independent newsrooms (HuffPost, CNN, The Guardian, the Mirror) all reported the same on-air exchange with matching quotes, which is what genuine broadcast footage produces.
  • The on-screen graphics — anchors, results ticker, 'On the Phone' card — are internally consistent across frames and free of the garbled text and morphing typical of manipulated video.
  • The underlying numbers settle the claim: Trump lost Minnesota in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and Nixon's last win there was 1972.
  • The post's central factual accusation is that Trump made a false claim on air, and that is confirmed by the same coverage that confirms the clip is real.
  1. 1

    Check whether mainstream outlets reported the same moment.

    Search the key quote ('won it three times') plus 'Minnesota' and the date. If the exchange was broadcast live, several newsrooms should have transcribed it — and if only partisan clips carry it, that is a warning sign.

  2. 2

    Inspect the on-screen furniture, not just the sound.

    Pause on the chyrons, ticker and anchor shots. Real broadcasts have consistent fonts, layout and logos; fake or edited ones show mismatched graphics, garbled words or frames that jump.

  3. 3

    Verify the substantive claim separately from the clip.

    Here, look up the Minnesota vote margins for 2016, 2020 and 2024 and the year of the last Republican win. A genuine clip can still carry a false statement — check both.

  4. 4

    Notice insinuations that name no specifics.

    When a speaker says 'the people who count the votes matter more' without naming a county, official or case, treat it as an allegation to be evidenced, not a fact.

Takeaway

A real video can contain a false claim — and a false-sounding caption can sit on top of a real one. Check the footage and the statement separately, and let multiple independent transcripts of the same broadcast carry the weight.

Questions people ask

Did Trump really say he won Minnesota three times on Fox News?+

Yes. On 3 November 2026, during a live phone interview while Fox News was calling Minnesota's Senate race, Trump said 'it's a joke, because I won it three times.' HuffPost and the Mirror transcribe the same line, and the footage is genuine network coverage.

How many times has Trump actually won Minnesota?+

Zero. Trump lost Minnesota in 2016 by 1.5 points, in 2020 by 7.1 points and in 2024 by 4.2 points. The New York Times reports that he has repeatedly claimed otherwise, and no Republican has carried the state since Nixon.

Who was the last Republican to win Minnesota?+

Richard Nixon — but in 1972, not 1952 as Trump said on air. Trump's broader point that Nixon was the last Republican to carry the state is correct; the year he gave is wrong. HuffPost notes he appeared to mean 1972.

Who won the Minnesota Senate race in 2026?+

Democrat Peggy Flanagan, the state's lieutenant governor, was projected to defeat Republican Michele Tafoya, per Fox News' race call and reporting by HuffPost and the Mirror. Flanagan told supporters the result was a repudiation of the Trump administration, according to CNN.

Is the Fox News clip doctored?+

No. The video is authentic Fox News election-night coverage. The graphics are consistent across frames, and multiple independent outlets reported the same exchange with matching quotes. The false part is Trump's statement, not the footage.

Go deeper

Authentic media
Footage or audio that is what it claims to be — real broadcast material, not edited or generated.
False context
Genuine content presented with a misleading caption or framing so it means something different.
Corroboration
Independent sources confirming the same fact without copying one another, which makes the fact stronger.
Chyron
The on-screen text graphic on a TV news broadcast, such as a name strap, ticker or 'On the Phone' card.

People also search for

Trump won Minnesota three times Fox News callTrump Flanagan Minnesota race call Fox News phone callNixon 1952 last Republican win MinnesotaAaron Rupar Fox News calls Minnesota for Flanagan
For educators+
Authenticity versus accuracy: a real video can contain a false statement, so each has to be checked separately.Corroboration through independent transcripts: several newsrooms transcribing the same audio is strong evidence a broadcast is genuine.Political framing in captions: loaded words like 'rant' shape interpretation without changing the underlying facts.Insinuation without specifics: broad fraud rhetoric that names no case or number is not the same as a checkable allegation.
  • Why is it possible for a post to be marked TRUE while the statement it reports is FALSE? What does that tell you about how fact-checking works?
  • If a clip shows a real broadcast but the speaker makes a false claim, where should responsibility sit — with the speaker, the platform or the person sharing the clip?
  • How would you check a 90-second clip of a live broadcast using only publicly available sources, without specialist tools?

About this check

Platform
X
Posted by
@atrupar
Posted
November 4, 2026
Age when checked
Under 24 hours old when checked
Where it spread
United States
Audience
US audience
Language
EN
Status
● Post is live
Verified
November 4, 2026, 14:50 UTC
Published
November 4, 2026, 14:50 UTC

Reach. 10.8K likes on X (syndication, 4 Nov); HuffPost coverage of Trump reacting on air as Fox called Minnesota for Flanagan

This verdict was generated with AI from the sources shown. AI can make mistakes — check the sources before relying on it.

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