Tucker Carlson (left) and President Donald Trump.Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty; Doug MIlls-Pool/Getty
As Fox News hostTucker Carlsonembraced Donald Trump publicly on his primetime opinion show, he privately texted a colleague that he hates the former president “passionately,” according to communications released Tuesday in a legal filing.
The company has argued that some of the people spreading the lies about election fraud — including, it argues, Fox News personalities — privately acknowledged they did not believe the conspiracy theories, but still amplified them on-air, allegedly in order to get ratings.
In one of the exchanges made public Tuesday, Carlson texts a colleague: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson added, perThe Washington Post.
Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, 2021.Spencer Platt/Getty
In another exchange made public this week, Carlson wrote: “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 really isn’t an upside to Trump.”
Carlson’s text messages are among a large tranche of private conversations and under-oath testimony from executives and hosts at Fox News, which Dominion has argued in its complaint “sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process.”
Fox has argued, in a counterclaim, that Dominion “mischaracterized the record” and “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context.”
In a statement sent to PEOPLE, a spokesperson for Fox accused Dominion of using “distortions and misinformation” in what it called a “PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press.”
Tucker Carlson.Richard Drew/AP/Shutterstock
But in private messages sent just hours after the riots began, Carlson was criticizing Trump, texting a colleague that the then-president was “a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us.”
Despite privately doubting the fraud claims, Fox News personalities worked to ensure the network didn’t publicly shoot them down, with other messages showing that Carlson texted bothSean HannityandLaura Ingraham, “Please get her fired,” in reference to a reporter who fact-checked a Trump tweet about Dominion, noting there was no evidence that any votes had been destroyed.
“Please get her fired. Seriously… What the f—? It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke,” Carlson wrote at the time.
ABC Newspoints to another private text sent from Carlson, in which he said that claiming Dominion had rigged the election would be “shockingly reckless … If there’s no one inside the company willing to talk, or internal Dominion documents or copies of the software showing that they did it … as you know there isn’t.”
But on air just two nights later, Carlson openly flirted with the idea that electronic voting machines might not be secure, saying: “You’ve heard a lot over the past few days about the security of our electronic voting machines. This is a real issue, no matter who raises it or who tries to dismiss it out of hand as a conspiracy theory. Electronic voting is not as secure as traditional hand counting. Period. It never will be as secure.”
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It seemed many at the network were scared to lose viewers — which, Dominion argues, led the network to court the conspiracies on-air, even as it distanced itself from the lies in private.
In another message referenced in Dominion’s filing, former Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt worried that the network was “losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.”
source: people.com
