Fox News Denies That An Employee Supplied Jokes To Donald Trump For His Al Smith Dinner Performance Despite Former President’s Claim

Fox News denied that any of its staffers supplied material for Donald Trump at the Al Smith Dinner on Thursday night, despite the former president’s claim on the network that “a couple people from Fox” provided jokes for his performance.

Trump made the claim during an appearance on Fox & Friends, where co-host Steve Doocy told him that his “material was really funny. Who wrote it?”

“Well, I have had a lot of people helping me. A couple people from Fox,” Trump said in the interview. “I shouldn’t say that, but they wrote some jokes and for the most part, I didn’t like any of them.”

Trump’s comments quickly generated social media chatter, with Kamala Harris‘ presidential campaign taking note of it.

A Fox News spokesperson, though, said that “no employee or freelancer wrote the jokes.”

Instead, the material was written by Nick DiPaulo, a vendor who has supplied material to Gutfeld but is not an employee at the network, according to a source familiar with his role.

Fox News and CNN ran Trump’s performance at the dinner live, in which he skewered Kamala Harris and Democrats, and turned out one-liners that reflected his campaign’s attacks on undocumented immigrants and transgender rights. The dinner, which raised money for the Alfred E. Smith Foundation and is chaired by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, has traditionally drawn both parties presidential candidates to take a break from campaigning and roast each other, while offering some praise of their rivals. Harris did not attend, but sent a video that featured Molly Shannon reprising her role as Mary Katherine Gallagher.