Donald Trump has once again defended sympathetic right-wing outlet One America News (OAN), calling on his fans to cancel their subscriptions to DirecTV if the US’s largest satellite provider drops the channel.

       “If AT&T/DirecTV cancels OAN, I hope that everyone will boycott and cancel DirecTV,” he wrote in a statement to his mailing list of supporters.

       “It is a very popular channel, far more popular than most would understand, and they are being treated horribly by the Radical Left lunatics running the networks. Instead of being allowed to grow, their voice is being shuttered. Don’t let it happen, cancel DirecTV. If you feel infringed by what this Communist movement is doing, cancel DirecTV!”

       It was last month that DirecTV announced that it would not be renewing its contract with OAN, a decision that immediately drew outrage from the channel’s pro-Trump audience and on-air talent. Anchor Dan Ball told viewers that OAN was “at war” with DirecTV majority owner AT&T and imploring them to help find “dirt” on the company’s chair, William Kennard.

       “If you’ve got any dirt … I’d love to see it and put it on this programme,” Mr Ball said. “You bring me concrete evidence of whatever it may be – cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wife, saying racial slurs towards white people, folks do that – whatever it may be, find it for me, bring it, and we’ll air it.”

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       OAN has been roundly criticised for many things since it launched, not least its repeated platforming of far-right figures including Jack Posobiec, a commentator with well-established ties to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

       The famously TV-obsessed Mr Trump has been a fan of OAN ever since it began to pick up viewers, though it has never remotely approached the ratings success of Fox News – a network that the former president remains close to even after the events of November 2020, when it called Arizona for Joe Biden before any of its mainstream competitors.