A series of text messages released by Dominion Voting Systems as part of their defamation suit against Fox News reveal that the network’s star on-air personality, Tucker Carlson, has a deep disdain for Donald Trump.
“I hate him passionately,” reads one text sent by Carlson to a colleague. “What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote in a message just two days before the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. “I truly can’t wait.”
On another occasion, Carlson, one of American cable’s leading news broadcasters, wrote: “That’s the last four years. 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. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
Carlson spent much of the Trump years defending the president from what he viewed as unfair attacks by Democrats and the media, calling attention to the exaggerations and false allegations associated with the investigation into Trump’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. He frequently praised Trump for adhering to his campaign platform on issues such as immigration, but would criticize the president when he felt he had caved to establishment figures in the Republican party.
Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company, is suing Fox News citing that the network’s promoting of conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that Dominion played an active role in undermining Trump’s reelection efforts. Meanwhile, the election firm alleges that Fox stoked controversy around the veracity of the 2020 election results to generate news coverage, knowing that the claims they were promoting were false.
Internal communications at Fox publicized earlier revealed that Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s co-founder, questioned the post-election coverage amongst the senior leadership.
“Maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] went too far,” Murdoch noted in an email to the company’s CEO. “All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump…but what did he tell his viewers?”
However, Fox News has sought to downplay Carlson’s messages, dismissing the latest disclosures as a defeat for Dominion’s lawsuit. “Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught red-handed again using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” the news outlet told CBS News on Tuesday.
The release of Carlsons’s text messages comes on the heels of the Fox anchor’s earlier statements on Monday downplaying the events of January 6 alongside. The segments are based on never-before-seen footage, which Carlson claims proves the riots were “mostly peaceful.”
The comments drew criticism from prominent Senate Republicans, including Mitt Romney of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who called Carlson’s interpretation of events “bullsh**.”
It is “really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that,” Romney told reporters, adding that he’s joined “a range of shock jocks that are disappointing America and feeding falsehoods.”
“The American people saw what happened on Jan. 6,” he continued. “They’ve seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building. You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed the Capitol Police chief’s statement arguing that Carlson “cherry picked” footage of the rare calm moments during the riot to downplay the event.
A jury trial to settle the lawsuit is expected to be held in Delaware next month.