The shocking revelations about what was truly happening at Fox News during the 2020 election crisis keep on coming.
After having learned that the staunchest Trump supporters on the Fox network, Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham, who shamelessly peddled his lies, never believed a word of them, we’re now told that Tucker Carlson wrote about Trump in an email: “I hate him passionately. … I can’t handle much more of this.”
What’s more, he rejoiced that, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
Just yesterday we wrote about how Rupert Murdoch cynically allowed Mike Lindell the PillowGuy, to advertise on Fox without putting any curbs on the outrageousness of his lies, for the simple fact that he liked the color of his money: “It is not red or blue, it is green” he said.
How could an ostensibly reputable media source go down the dark path of deliberate deception, even when they could see that the hatred and lies they stoked were tearing the nation apart?
The private comments expressing hatred and disgust for Trump were a far cry from what Carlson’s viewers were used hearing from him in public every night.
“We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest,” he wrote in another text message, referring to the “last four years.” “But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
The revelations are in hundreds of pages of testimony, private text messages and emails from top Fox News journalists and executives that were made public Tuesday, adding to the trove of documents that show a network in crisis after it alienated core viewers by reporting accurately on the results of the 2020 presidential election.
A judge unsealed the documents, along with parts of some employee depositions, as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
The messages are crystal clear and, at times, profane, as hosts and top executives panicked about how to boost their ratings as Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat. The depositions, meanwhile, offer the broadest picture yet of how executives including Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch allowed baseless conspiracy theories to flourish on air.
In response to the new discoveries, Fox News accused Dominion of dishonestly portraying key figures’ internal communications.
It is clear that Fox will not mend its ways. It will do anything to keep its ratings. Despite the unambiguous content of the private communication that the Dominion lawsuit is uncovering, Fox is claiming it’s all a distortion of reality. “Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught red handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” the statement said. “We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”
In some of the latest revelations, Murdoch himself admitted that he knew Fox hosts were spreading lies, and he admitted he could have stopped them but did not do so for fear of losing his followers.
Dominion’s briefs previously revealed that top figures at Fox News privately blasted election fraud claims as “crazy” and “insane,” even as the network aired them on television, and that top boss Murdoch considered some of Trump’s voter fraud claims to be “bulls— and damaging” yet acknowledged in a deposition that he did nothing to rein in hosts who were promoting the bogus claims in the days after the 2020 election.
“The emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place — Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company,” a Dominion spokesman told NBC News.
It is incomprehensible to a sane and rational person that viewers, no matter how loyal to Fox and Trump, learning more about these insider revelations, could still maintain their loyalty. It is truly an indication of just how low the bar has fallen for media honesty and integrity and how American voters have abandoned any pretense that truth matters.
