Fox Business has canceled “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” the weekday show hosted by one of former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal media supporters that became a frequent clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential race, according to a person familiar with the decision.
Mr. Dobbs, 75, who rose to fame as a CNN anchor, began hosting his Fox program in 2011 and gained an influential fan: Mr. Trump, who shared his hard-line views against immigration and later came to view Mr. Dobbs’s program as required viewing, even patching in the television host during policy discussions with his White House staff.
Mr. Dobbs was named in a lawsuit filed this week by the election technology company Smartmatic against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, the Fox News channel, and two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.
The suit cited a false claim, made on a November episode of Mr. Dobbs’s show on Fox Business, that Hugo Chávez, the deceased president of Venezuela, had a hand in the creation of Smartmatic technology, designing it so that the votes it processed could be changed undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, did not have anything to do with Smartmatic.)
Mr. Dobbs was also cited in the suit for using the phrase “cyber Pearl Harbor” to describe a supposed vote-fraud conspiracy, borrowing language used by Sidney Powell, a lawyer who spread baseless theories about voter fraud on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
Fox News did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The cancellation of Mr. Dobbs’s Fox Business program was reported earlier by The Los Angeles Times.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
John Koblin contributed reporting.