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NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News Channel on Friday denied Donald Trump’s assertion that any of its employees wrote jokes for him to deliver this week at a New York appearance.

The former president and current candidate said on “Fox & Friends” that “a couple of people from Fox” helped him prepare jokes for Thursday’s Al Smith dinner, a traditional event in the last weeks of a presidential campaigns where candidates usually appear.

“I shouldn’t say that,” Trump said. “But they wrote some jokes. For the most part, I didn’t like any of them.”

Candidates often turn to professional comedians for material when needed for such appearances; it would be eye-opening and ethically suspect if a news organization contributed.

But Fox, in a statement, said none of its employees or freelancers did so. Instead, Trump is believed to have received material from a comic who occasionally tries to sell jokes to the Fox show “Gutfeld.”

Trump was at the dinner, while opponent Kamala Harris sent in a taped routine.

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Fox News anchor Bret Baier says he “made a mistake” during his interview with Kamala Harris in not airing video of a Donald Trump comment, something Harris pointed out to him in real time.

Baier made that admission on Thursday roughly 24 hours after his interview with the Democratic presidential candidate was aired. Just under 8 million people watched the session, Harris’ first sit-down with a Fox News Channel journalist during the campaign.

It wasn’t immediately clear, however, what Baier meant by saying he made a mistake.

Their exchange over the Trump video, one of the most contentious of the interview, came after Harris criticized her Republican opponent for saying that he might have to call out the National Guard or military to deal with “the enemy within,” whom he defined as “radical left lunatics.”

Baier then said his colleague, Harris Faulkner, had asked Trump about his “enemy within” comment earlier in the day, “and this is how he responded.” The clip showed Trump saying he wasn’t threatening anybody, and criticized “phony investigations” of him, cracking a joke his audience laughed at.

“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within … that’s not what you just showed,” Harris said.

Speaking a day later, Baier said that when he asked his staff for video to play during the interview, he was expecting to get two clips — one that showed Trump making the “enemy within” comment to Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, and the one from Faulkner’s town hall that was played during the Harris interview.

“Take a listen to what I meant to roll,” Baier said on Thursday. He then aired both clips back to back.

Yet during the interview, Baier had given no indication that he meant to air the “enemy within” comment at all, even after Harris had pointed it out. For that reason, his explanation of a mistake met with some skepticism online.

“Newsflash: When wrong clips run (which happens) hosts can easily say `Sorry that was the wrong clip,'” former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson wrote on “X.” “He or his producers would have know it was the wrong one right then.”

There was no immediate comment from a Fox representative on Friday to clarify what Baier meant.

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.

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VANCOUVER – A Vancouver lawyer representing families of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton says he and his clients want to read a copy of a “tell all book” seized from Pickton’s cell after he died following an attack in a Quebec prison.

Jason Gratl said Friday that he and his clients, who have pending lawsuits against Pickton and his brother David in B.C. Supreme Court, were “surprised” when an RCMP search warrant revealed the existence of a 200-page manuscript handwritten by Pickton.

“We had been led to believe that the investigation had concluded and the RCMP had no further leads,” Gratl said. “Now the RCMP says there’s nothing of interest in the 200-page manuscript, but we prefer to read it for ourselves.”

A search warrant filed in New Westminster, B.C., this summer said prison officials found “numerous writings and notes authored by Pickton” after going through his things in search of a will following his death in May.

The “information to obtain” document said Quebec prison officials had a “cursory read” of Pickton’s manuscript, which was titled “Telling My Story.”

Cpl. Craig Mitchell, who applied for the warrant, said in the application that he believed Pickton wanted to give a “full account” of the murders in court, having interviewed him after he was convicted.

The search warrant document said investigators with the Missing Women Task Force had met with Pickton on “numerous occasions,” trying to coax him to identify an unknown victim, still known to this day as “Jane Doe.”

“I believe that Pickton wanted to tell his story of the murders he committed,” Mitchell wrote. “I believe he would have written down his account of the murders and his account in the book titled ‘Telling My Story’ and any related written documents or notes he made when writing that book.”

Mitchell said Pickton’s writings could help investigators link Pickton, and potentially others, to murders committed on the serial killer’s Port Coquitlam property, and though he was charged with killing 27 women, he later admitted to 49 murders.

“I believe Pickton committed 49 murders and the book and related documents and notes may identify the other victims not yet known.”

Gratl said he’ll seek a copy of the manuscript for its “potential relevance” to his clients’ civil lawsuits against the Pickton brothers, as they work to consolidate the cases and set a trial.

Sgt. Vanessa Munn, a media relations officer with the RCMP, said the writings seized were “thoroughly examined” but didn’t refer to any missing women or his crimes and investigators have “unfortunately” no new information to share with the victims’ families.

“We recognize that there are families with questions about their loved one’s disappearances, however the content of writings did not provide any answers,” Munn said in a written statement.

Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder for the killings of Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Georgina Papin, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe and Andrea Joesbury in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison.

The remaining charges against him were stayed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

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