“Fox & Friends” offered an on-air apology on Tuesday after accidentally running footage of California Sen. Kamala Harris during a segment about murder on a college campus.
The incident happened during a brief news update offered by Fox News host Jillian Mele, which ran stock images of Harris, just as Mele named the murder suspect, Melvin Rowland.
“Now, in an earlier version of this story we showed you the wrong video. We showed you pictures of Senator Kamala Harris instead of Melvin Rowland’s mugshot. We apologize for that error,” she said after a corrected segment ran later in the show.
Police say Rowland shot and killed a University of Utah student and forced the school into lockdown before taking his own life at a church off campus. He was a registered sex offended and not affiliated with the university, Mele reported.
Once considered a sleepier part of the Fox News lineup, “Fox & Friends” has taken on outsize importance during the Trump era. Before becoming president, the real estate billionaire regularly called into the program to float conspiracies like his famous “birther” contention that President Obama was actually born in Kenya.
Trump still watches the program from the White House, often tweeting out show highlights and talking points to his more than 50 million followers. He also still calls into the program to riff on news of the day and his last appearance earlier this month stretched nearly an hour.