One America News Network’s (OANN) host Dan Ball has revealed that Democrats launched a campaign to destroy and shut down the network after the 2020 election.
Ball detailed the effects during a Wednesday interview with Tucker Carlson.
He said that Democrats “came after us” over OANN’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the pandemic, and Covid vaccines and the side effects.
Ball appeared on Carlson’s show on Twitter to discuss his claims that Democrats sought to shut down the network during 2021 and 2022.
Carlson began by asking Ball how the issue started.
The OANN host described the network’s reporting on the infamous Hunter Biden laptop, which was first reported on by the New York Post.
“So that’s when it really started, okay?” Ball stated.
“They looked at us and went ‘Oh, my God, these guys are going to interfere with the election’ because we’re spitting truth to power.
“We’re telling you this laptop is real.
“The big guy is Joe Biden. He’s taking 10% he’s used his family and his influence to make millions to enrich himself.
“Well, they didn’t like that very much.”
“And then, of course, Covid,” Ball continued.
“We’re in the middle of Covid.
“We busted through the narrative of the masks aren’t working.
“When Joe took over and he told everybody to get the vaccine, he was talking about that ‘winter of death’ and everything.
“We were talking about the irregularities rather you’d see with the vaccine when it comes to side effects and deaths.
“They didn’t like that.”
“So it was kind of cascading downward from the Hunter Biden laptop story to Covid coverage, and then we had the 2020 election, okay?
“And we had people on, of course, discussing irregularities in the election.
“They didn’t like any of that. So it started in several ways:
“YouTube demonetized us — I mean every time we’d put a story about Covid, masks, distancing, the laptop, boom, take it down 30-day suspension, 60 days, or just try to kill the whole account.
“Then all of a sudden, letters came out. I think about 21′ or 22′,” Ball recalled.
Ball Democrats in both the Senate and Congress wrote a letter that sort to destroy OANN.
He said the letter advised carriers to drop Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN over their coverage.
Following the 2020 election, a report from Politico showed two House Democrats and members of the Energy and Commerce Committee vocalized their concern to lawmakers about networks.
The Democrats claimed the networks were spreading “misinformation” regarding the election following the Jan. 6 protests.
Letters from Democrat Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jerry McNerney (D-CA) were sent to AT&T, Verizon, Roku, Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Charter, DISH, Cox, Altice, Hulu, and Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
According to Politico, the letters asked what “moral or ethical principles” are applied when “deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel.”
They also asked if they would be continuing their partnership with Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN.
“There was a letter from four Democrat senators and two California Congress folks, Democrats, who sent letters to not only all of the satellite and cable carriers but also to advertisers,” Ball continued.
“They told them to get rid of — and your old network was named — Fox, NewsMax, and OAN.
“Now who’s the smallest on that totem pole?
“We are. So they came after us,” Ball said.
“They scared away advertisers, they got us kicked off multiple carriers — Frontier, Verizon, DirectTV, everything because the Democrats sent these letters.”
“What do you mean?” Carlson responded.
“So sitting members of Congress tried to get a news channel kicked off the air and bankrupted but isn’t that, I mean, call me naive.
“In the country I grew up in that was just absolutely not allowed.
“You weren’t allowed to do that.”
“We’re not state-run TV, right?” Ball stated.
“We’re not supposed to be. I mean, when I got into —”
“Well it’s against the law to do that,” Carlson jumped in.
“Well, but does this regime care?” Ball asked.
“Look what the Biden regime has been doing to this country.
“Look at the border.”
WATCH:
Ep. 100 Democrats in Congress are working to shut down a TV network that criticized them. That’s illegal but it’s happening. pic.twitter.com/QgEC8TllgJ
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 1, 2024
YouTube suspended the network from its platform in 202o.
The Google-owned platform cited that the outlet had shared “COVID-19 misinformation” which went against its policies, according to CBS News.
Due to the strike against OANN, the network was forced to reapply to the YouTube Partner Program to make money off of their videos again, the outlet reported.
OANN was also eventually dropped from carriers in 2022 including major ones such as Verizon and AT&T.
The move cost the network millions of viewers as their reach was significantly downsized, according to The New York Times.
Voting machine company Smartmatic sued OANN for defamation over the network’s reports on election interference.
The lawsuit was settled in April, according to NBC News.
While the details of the settlement were not disclosed to the public, both OANN parent company Herring Networks and Smartmatic agreed to pay their own attorney fees and expenses, the outlet reported.
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