Donald Trump is creating a lot of problems for Fox News these days: A new court filing indicates that Fox News Hosts and producers discussed personal misgivings about former President Donald Trump’s debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election – even as the Fox network promoted Trump’s claims.
The messages, which are newly disclosed, come from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox.
Naturally, Dominion is seeking damages from Fox because Fox News promoted conspiracy theories about Dominion’s voting machine and related fraud.
In the messages, prominent Fox personalities, like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, expressed skepticism on Trump’s claims that Dominion’s machines had been rigged in Joe Biden’s favor. “From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff was ‘total BS,’” the filing states.
To back up the claim, the Dominion relies on text messages, internal emails, and depositions that were gathered from Fox during discovery.
Donald Trump: The World Champion of Destroying Things
When Fox became the first cable news network to project Biden’s win in Arizona, it caused a backlash.
Trump’s camp issued a storm of angry messages; Fox viewers defected to more conservative outlets like Newsmax and OAN. Tucker Carlson was concerned.
Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, two days after the 2020 election to say that Fox’s projection of Biden winning in Arizona would cause enduring problems for the network.
“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Carlson texted. “Those f****** are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” (Assumingly, “those f******” are Trump’s camp.)
Pfeiffer texted back that “many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now.”
“Of course they are,” Carlson responded. “We’re not going to follow them.” Carlson said that Donald Trump was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Carlson texted Pfeiffer again, on November 13th, to say that Trump should concede “that there wasn’t enough fraud to change outcome [of the election]” and that Trump was “lying” about having evidence of election fraud.
Carlson then wrote fellow Fox host, Ingraham saying that Trump acolyte “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham responded, saying that “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Guiliani].” Carlson responded that “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
Carlson then went on the air, on November 19th, following a press conference where Powell and Guliani claimed the election had been rigged, to say that Powell had described “the single greatest crime in American history.” So, Carlson isn’t exactly innocent in all of this either, despite admitting that Powell “never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests” and imploring Powell to “come forward soon with details on exactly how this happened, and precisely who did it.”
On January 6th, Carlson again messaged Pfeiffer to criticize Trump. Carlson called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer.”
Fox Responds
Fox wrote, in a statement to ABC News, that “there will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”
The takeaway: even Fox News knows Donald Trump is full of it. But clearly, so is Fox News.
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Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
