A stunning new court filing shows Fox anchors and executives privately ridiculed former President Trump’s lies about the election, even while promoting them on air. The revelations are part of Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox. And CNN’s Brian Todd is digging into the damning testimony and messages. So tell us more, Brian. Pamela, these messages reflect real angst and conflicts within the top echelons of Fox News right after the 2020 election as well. As a hefty dose of hypocrisy. Immediately after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Fox News hosts were unabashed in promoting the false declarations that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. Electronic voting machines didn’t allow people to vote, apparently, and that whatever you think of it, the cause of it it shakes people’s faith in the system that is an actual threat to democracy. It will be impossible to ever know the true fair accurate election results. But tonight, a new court filing shows that in private, Fox host Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity were brutally ridiculing the claims of election fraud and the people who were making them their private messages in a legal filing. That’s part of Dominion Voting Systems. $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News one person they insulted. Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, a vociferous election line promoter. What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money in one text revealed in the court filing. Tucker Carlson texted Laura Ingraham saying quote, Sidney Powell is lying. I caught her. It’s insane. Ingraham responded, quote, Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy. A reference to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his post-election claims there was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud. In other messages, Sean Hannity said Giuliani was, quote, acting like an insane person. Ingram described Giuliani as an idiot. Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch We still have freedom of speech. Said it was, quote, really bad that Giuliani was advising Trump. They have one version of the world that they keep to themselves. And another version of the world that they broadcast to the viewers. The two are entirely incompatible. But Fox kept promoting election denialism. Why the filings in the Dominion suit illustrate that Fox executives were worried about losing viewers to Newsmax, a smaller conservative channel that was constantly pushing election denial. Trump himself furious that Fox had called Arizona for Biden, Arizona. 11 electoral votes had encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax since 2002. Fox News has basically been the preeminent ratings champion in cable news. And you see here the moment that they see any sign that might be slipping away it’s panic. But the Dominion filings also say that when then-President Trump tried to call in to Fox on January 6th, the day his supporters attacked the Capitol Fox executives refused to put Trump on the air. Fox News has denied Dominion’s claims in the lawsuit says its proud of its 2020 election coverage and says these court filings contained Cherry-picked quotes lacking context. In a statement, Fox accused Dominion of generating, quote, noise and confusion and said The core of this case remains to be about freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Pamela. All right, Brian Todd, thanks so much. I want to bring in CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy, along with Maggie Haberman of The New York Times. She is also a CNN political analyst. So, Maggie, these court documents, they reveal a stunning level of hypocrisy on the part of FOX. What does this reveal about just how strong of a grip the former president had on the network? It’s it’s quite striking. And you saw this evolution over time. Rupert Murdoch had always wanted to be close to a U.S. president. He got that when Donald Trump was elected, even though they really did not have much of a relationship to speak of Rupert Murdoch and never thought very highly of him. But by the time he was in office, there was a synergy. And Fox clearly saw a benefit in terms of viewers and ratings in staying close to Trump. What I was very struck by, Pamela, was this claim in the suit that Trump had tried to get on Lou Dobbs after the riot had had taken place but was not totally done yet. This was new information that hadn’t been uncovered at any point the last couple of years. I do think it’s also striking how the opinion hosts had such sway over what was being broadcast news wise. And it’s just it’s really jarring noticing how Donald Trump is not on Fox right now. I wonder what that will look like in the future as he remains a candidate. Yeah, it is really jarring on so many fronts here. What do you think, Oliver? I mean, how much do you think this was motivated by a desire to appease viewers and preserve television ratings? These texts and communications are very telling. I think it was entirely motivated by the business decision, which was that they did not want to alienate their audience. And their audience was listening to Trump, was listening to Rudy Giuliani, was listening to Sidney Powell. And they wanted to believe that the election was stolen from him. They wanted to believe that Joe Biden was not the rightful president elect at the time and that this election could be overturned to Donald Trump. And so the Fox News hosts and executives, they couldn’t have people on air, you know, going contrary to this narrative that was being pushed by the former president. And so what you see here is that they are they are, you know, desperate to appease the audience. You see in text messages behind the scenes where they talk about not offending the audience, respecting the audience, and in their eyes, I guess respecting the audience is not telling them inconvenient truths. I would argue that respecting the audience is being upfront with them about what they knew. And these text messages show that they knew the election was not stolen, but they were happy to prop this narrative up anyway. Yeah. I mean, the job of just telling the truth, that seems to be the best way to respect your audience. It is pretty, pretty stunning when you look at it that way. And we knew at the time I remember seeing that, that more and more when you look at the ratings of Newsmax at the time, more and more people were turning there. That, of course, as we see we see now inside the panic at Fox. And that was happening and Maggie, you just mentioned that that new information, I think all of us who covered the Trump White House and especially you who covered Trump so closely over the years, the fact that Fox executives refused to put Trump on the air when he called in after the January six attack. I want to talk to you more about that. What do you think that reveals about Trump’s state of mind? Well, I think a couple of things. I think that it reveals the Trump state of mind was about just being heard and speaking despite the fact that this violence had taken place. I don’t know what he was going to say, but I think that we can guess, given the themes of that day and that he didn’t seem willing to relent in everything that we have learned since then. Even though he finally issued a statement publicly. In terms of the minds of the Fox executives, I think that they were you know, I have to surmise that they were aware that Trump had been tweeting about Mike Pence, that he had been talking about Mike Pence at the rally at the Ellipse before this this pro-Trump mob overtook the Capitol. And they were concerned about being seen as adding to that. And that speaks to, again, the concerns that that Trump really was, you know, gasoline on a fire in that moment. Yeah. And yet Oliver, when a reporter at FOX tried a fact check that communications show, the Fox executives and host weren’t too happy. No, not happy at all. And it’s not just any host it’s the top rated host on this network. You have Tucker Carlson reaching out to Sean Hannity saying, can we get her fired? You have Sean Hannity saying he’s in contact with the Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. And apparently the message did get down to the reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, who ultimately deleted her tweet and then reposted another version of the fact check. But it’s really striking to see that the people who are running this network and the people who are Fox executives are in line with are not the news that the news anchor like Rap Bear, it’s the it’s the propagandists like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. Very disturbing. Oliver Darcy. Maggie Haberman, thank you.
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