A few days ago, Peter Baker of the New York Times authored a piece called “Inside the Panic at Fox News After the 2020 Election,” leading with the following quote from Fox News Chief Executive Suzanne Scott: “If we hadn’t called Arizona, our ratings would have been bigger.”
“What if lying was your job?” is the story about how telling the truth—just this one albeit pretty important time—triggered an avalanche of lies that almost completely crippled an innocent company and might cost the Fox empire … well I wonder how many pretty pennies make a billion.
Sadly, I majored at City College in American Literature, not pre-Law, and never had a cousin Vinny, so I’ve been catching up by reading the many hundreds of pages of the Dominion voting machine company’s lawsuit that was filed against Fox News on March 26, 2021 in Delaware Superior Court. After reading their brief, it is no surprise to me that Dominion turned to the court to demand justice for all the pain they experienced as a result of Fox’s willingness to broadcast and, by extension, to amplify the disingenuous and deceitful claims of people like Rudy Guiliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, and Donald Trump himself.
I envy the exhaustive nature of the research Dominion did and the compelling way they organized the material. They reveal exactly what Fox’s guests said on these broadcasts, and quite importantly show how Fox hosts so often conducted their interviews more as sympathizers than independent fact-finders and journalists. They remained silent, even supportive, when they were repeatedly confronted by claims that were often outrageous and almost totally impossible to believe. And so, Dominion, referring to an extensive variety of previous case law, offers what I found to be convincing evidence of willful defamation.
Now, because I’m a very big fan of irony, I’m going to take you back to February 16, 2021, when using the tagline “Corrupt mainstream media takes lying to Olympic levels,” one of Fox News’ most successful primetime news hosts, Tucker Carlson, told his many millions of viewers: “not all of our institutions are the same. Some of them are bad, some of them are awful. But looming above the rest is our most corrupt institution: The mainstream news media. How corrupt is the mainstream media? Imagine a drunken border guard at the crossing between Togo and Burkina Faso shaking you down at midnight as you pass through. The New York Times is much more corrupt than that.” (Emphasis added.)
I personally have never been to the border between Togo and Burkina Faso, but clearly Tucker Carlson has and is still pissed about his treatment there:
“Yes, the news media are profoundly dishonest. All of us lie from time to time, that’s the human condition. Imagine, though, if lying was your job. Imagine forcing yourself to tell lies all day about every subject in ways that were so transparent and so outlandish that there is no way the people listening to you could possibly believe anything you said. Then imagine doing that again and again and again every day of your professional life for your entire life. Could you do that? If you could, CNN has an opening on the media analysis desk.
“If you’re a normal, non-sociopathic person, the answer obviously is no. So you’ve got to kind of respect the people who can. They’re like Olympians in reverse. They achieve feats so dishonorable that you gasp in horror as you watch them, but at the same time, you’ve got to respect those skills.” (Emphasis added.)
Sean Hannity, Fox’s most famous primetime news host, waited a few months to take his turn. In a June 10, 2021 segment advertised as “The Dishonest Press,” Hannity claimed: “Unfortunately though, the vast majority of people in the media are not upfront and they are not honest … They pretend to be fair and balanced and they pretend to bring you the truth with no opinion. They pretend that their opinions are actually facts and they’re not … almost all so-called journalists on other networks and cable news shows, they’re liberal socialist Democrats—they’re an extension of all things the new Green New Deal radical socialists. They are biased, partisan, political operatives … Every day you have these hacks trying to shape public opinion, but under the guise of journalism.” (Emphasis added.)
I’m guessing they never imagined what was to come their way. Enter Dominion Voting Systems’ extensive legal briefs—now in possession of the internal emails and communications that Fox News had to turn over, and with what Fox folks said, not on TV but under oath in their required depositions.
Buddhists might refer you to the laws of karma. Christians to Galatians 6:3: “If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.” For the non-religious, there’s some good old-fashioned American hypocrisy: “The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.”
It wasn’t all that long ago when Trump and Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell and Mr. Pillow were all over Fox News going on and on about the stolen election. Here are excerpts from Dominion’s original complaint:
- “Fox, one of the most powerful media companies in the United States, gave life to a manufactured storyline about election fraud that cast a then-little-known voting machine company called Dominion as the villain. After the November 3, 2020, Presidential Election, viewers began fleeing Fox in favor of media outlets endorsing the lie that massive fraud caused President Trump to lose the election. They saw Fox as insufficiently supportive of President Trump, including because Fox was the first network to declare that President Trump lost Arizona. So Fox set out to lure viewers back—including President Trump himself—by intentionally and falsely blaming Dominion for President Trump’s loss by rigging the election.
- “Fox endorsed, repeated, and broadcast a series of verifiably false yet devastating lies about Dominion. These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included Fox falsely claiming that: (1) Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election; (2) Dominion’s software and algorithms manipulated vote counts in the 2020 Presidential Election; (3) Dominion is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chávez; and (4) Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials who used its machines in the 2020 Presidential Election.
- “Fox recklessly disregarded the truth. Indeed, Fox knew these statements about Dominion were lies. Specifically, Fox knew the vote tallies from Dominion machines could easily be confirmed by independent audits and hand recounts of paper ballots, as has been done repeatedly since the election. Fox also knew that these lies were being rebutted by an increasingly long list of bipartisan election officials, election security experts, judges, then-Attorney General Bill Barr, then-United States Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs, Election Assistance Commissioner Ben Hovland, Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Republican former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, to name a few—not to mention some within Fox itself.” (Emphasis added.)
I must admit I didn’t quite appreciate the effect these lies had had on Dominion, on its reputation and ability to do business, and on the incredible abuse Dominion’s employees endured because so many had been convinced that the company had stolen the election from Donald Trump. And I had underestimated the enormous extent of Fox’s influence: “FOX News Digital closed out February of 2021 with 1.6 billion multiplatform views, 3.4 billion multiplatform minutes and over 89 million multiplatform unique visitors, according to Comscore. The digital network surpassed the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today in every category, as well as CBSNews.com and ABCNews.com. The FOX News Mobile App totaled over 7.5 million unique visitors … Currently the number one network in all of cable, FNC has also been the most watched television news channel for 19 consecutive years, while FBN currently ranks among the top business channels on cable. Owned by FOX Corporation, FOX News Media reaches 200 million people each month.”
Then Dominion makes a persuasive case that Fox’s actions were not examples of the critically important exercise of our Constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and of the press precisely because Fox was well aware that “these statements about Dominion were lies … Fox repeatedly published defamatory falsehoods about Dominion, including by broadcasting and rebroadcasting the defamatory falsehoods of its on-air personalities Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and their chosen guests … In December 2020, for instance, Fox noted that, as a result of its election coverage, it had reached more than 100 million unique visitors through its digital platforms, including 51 million Facebook users and 23 million Instagram users.”
In an effort to correct the record, Dominion began a continuing campaign to alert Fox News and its executives, producers, and on-air hosts with evidence that what was being reported was false: “on November 12, 2020, Dominion began circulating a regular email titled “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS & RUMORS.” The emails were complete with links to independent sources disproving the false claims being made about the company, including:
- CISA’s November 12 statement that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised”;
- a link to the Michigan Secretary of State’s website “which debunks false or erroneous claims about voting in Detroit, as well as a user-error incident in Antrim County”;
- a link to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website with the statement from Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that “every legal vote was cast and accurately counted” in Georgia; and
- links to the EAC and CISA websites noting that all U.S. voting systems, including Dominion’s, “must provide assurance that they work accurately and reliably” under EAC “and state certification and testing requirements.”
Nevertheless, Fox “stuck to the inherently improbable and demonstrably false preconceived narrative and continued broadcasting the lies of facially unreliable sources—which were embraced by Fox’s own on-air personalities—because the lies were good for Fox’s business.”
The Dominion complaint lays out a convincing timeline. Fox’s correct call of Arizona was followed by a coordinated response from Donald Trump and his supporters: “President Trump began ‘fuming’ when he learned that Fox had called Arizona, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner called Fox founder and Chairman Rupert Murdoch to complain. Less than thirty minutes after Fox had called Arizona, President Trump’s political advisor Jason Miller likewise attacked Fox on Twitter, writing: ‘@FoxNews is a complete outlier in calling Arizona, and other media outlets should not follow suit. There are still 1M+ Election Day votes out there waiting to be counted – we pushed our people to vote on Election Day, but now Fox News is trying to invalidate their vote.’ … Three days after the election, on November 6, 2020, President Trump went on the attack, complaining that his ‘big lead’ had disappeared ‘miraculously.’”
On November 12, President Trump sent a flurry of tweets vilifying Fox and encouraging viewers to switch to other networks:
With its viewers fleeing to networks like Newsmax and OANN, more than willing to propagate the Big Lie and provide a home to Trump acolytes like Rudy Guiliani, Sidney Powell, and others, Fox had yet to make “Dominion the focus of conversation. Nevertheless, the tone and tenor was clear: supporters of President Trump—and President Trump himself—were looking for a scapegoat. And as the days and weeks that followed made clear, Fox was happy to oblige.”
Dominion provides details: “President Trump’s attacks on Fox had a swift impact. By the end of the day on November 12, 2020, Fox Corporation’s stock had tumbled 6 percent, with financial analysts attributing the decline to President Trump’s support for [Fox’s] rival right-leaning news networks Newsmax and OANN. Just a few days later, by November 15, 2020, Fox’s average daytime audience had plummeted from 2.439 million in the days before the election, to just above 1.6 million in the days following the election, a 34 percent decrease. Fox’s prime time audience fell by 37 percent, from 5.346 million to 3.463 million.” (Emphasis added.)
Meanwhile, Newsmax’s audience increased from 57,000 to 329,000 during the daytime, while its night time audience tripled from 129,000 to 412,000.
Dominion suggests that, as they lost viewers, “Fox understood that it needed to embrace and amplify the lies that had begun to circulate about Dominion,” even though these claims “were inherently implausible and verifiably false.” (Emphasis added.) Dominion goes on to explain, “To fan the flames, Fox turned to Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, neither of whom were official White House spokespeople and both of whom were promoting a baseless defamatory campaign against Dominion, claiming that the election had been stolen by vote-flipping algorithms in Dominion machines that had been created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chavez.”
Dominion shows how there developed a symbiotic, back-and-forth dynamic between spokespeople like Guiliani, Powell, and Mike Lindell and the Fox hosts who offered them airtime: “Fox published the following false and defamatory statements of fact about Dominion, including by and through Fox’s own agents making the statements themselves; by intentionally providing a platform for guests to appear on Fox programming who Fox and its hosts knew would make such statements on the air and by affirming, endorsing, repeating, and agreeing with the statements of guests on their shows; and by republishing the statements on the air, Fox’s websites, Fox’s social media accounts, and Fox’s other digital platforms and subscription services after the live broadcasts had aired.” (Emphasis added.)
Dominion offers a prime example. “Specifically, Fox and Maria Bartiromo invited Sidney Powell on the Sunday Morning Futures show. Powell declared that there was ‘a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from We the People of the United States of America, to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump, to manufacture votes for Joe Biden.” And, according to this Fox News broadcast Dominion was responsible:
BARTIROMO: “Sidney, I want to ask you about these algorithms and the Dominion software … Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software. I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.”
POWELL: “That’s putting it mildly. The computer glitches could not and should not have happened at all. That is where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist. We need an audit of all of the computer systems that played any role in this fraud whatsoever … They had the algorithms … That’s when they had to stop the vote count and go in and replace votes for Biden and take away Trump votes.”
BARTIROMO: “I’ve never seen voting machines stop in the middle of an election, stop down and assess the situation.”
(Emphasis added.)
Crucially, Dominion argues: “Bartiromo knew at the time these claims were false, or recklessly disregarded the truth. Indeed, Bartiromo had previously reported in October that President Trump’s lead would fade not because of fraud but because mail-in and absentee ballots would be counted later than in-person ballots. Yet, her November 8 interview gave Fox’s stamp of approval to the message that it was acceptable to falsely accuse Dominion of election fraud. The interview also illustrated starkly that, if given the opportunity to do so, Powell would make provably false statements about Dominion. And yet, despite Fox’s knowledge that Powell would state malicious lies about Dominion, Fox continued to invite her as a guest.”
Since I missed out on law school, it’s easier to imagine myself as a member of a jury than an attorney. But the tweet that follows seems to me a very good example of how Fox’s continuing defamation of Dominion worked.
Dominion offers excerpts from the November 30, 2020 broadcast of Lou Dobbs Tonight:
DOBBS: “Now, do we know—you know, I just can’t—I think most Americans right now cannot believe what we are witnessing in this election. We have, across almost every state, whether it’s Dominion, whatever the company—voting machine company is, no one knows their ownership, has no idea what’s going on in those servers, has no understanding of the software, because it’s proprietary. It is the most ludicrous, irresponsible and rancid system imaginable in the world’s only superpower …”
POWELL: “Dominion and its minions and other state officials everywhere are apparently out there trying to destroy everything they can get to before we can seize it …”
DOBBS: “And as I said at the outset of the broadcast, Sidney, this is no longer about just voter fraud or electoral fraud, this is something much bigger and this president has to take, I believe, drastic action, dramatic action, to make certain that the integrity of this election is understood, or lack of it, the crimes that have been committed against him and the American people.”
(Emphasis added.)
Dominion points out, “Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire. As the dominant media company among those viewers dissatisfied with the election results, Fox gave these fictions a prominence they otherwise would never have achieved …
“These lies transformed Dominion into a household name. As a result of Fox’s orchestrated defamatory campaign, Dominion’s employees, from its software engineers to its founder and Chief Executive Officer, have been repeatedly harassed. Some have even received death threats. And of course, Dominion’s business has suffered enormous and irreparable economic harm.” (Emphasis added.)
Dominion notes: “Dominion continues to be inextricably connected to fraud on the most important platform of all: the internet. For example, in January 2021, Google searches for ‘dominion voting fraud’ yielded over 8.4 million results; 1.9 million results for ‘dominion manipulate vote’; and over 18.9 million results for ‘who manufactures dominion voting machines.’ And even in late March 2021—almost six months after the November 2020 election—a Google search for ‘boycott dominion fraud’ yields over 3.2 million results.”
Dominion offers concrete examples of the consequences of Fox’s decision to continue to broadcast these inaccurate claims: “One Dominion employee received text messages stating ‘we are already watching you. Come clean and you will live’. One person left the following message on Dominion’s customer support line: ‘You ’re all fucking dead, You ’re all fucking dead. We ’re bringing back the firing squad and you fuckers are all dead, everybody involved up against the wall you motherfuckers. We’re gonna have a fucking lottery to fucking give people a chance to shoot you …’
“Another person sent a Dominion employee an email with the subject line, ‘Time is up’ and with the message, ‘You have 24 hours…’ And another person left the following message on Dominion’s main office line: ‘We’re gonna blow your fucking building up. Piece of fucking shit.’”
Dominion calculates some of the costs its paid as a result of this disinformation campaign: “Dominion has spent more than $600,000 on private security for the protection of its people.” Not only that but “the disinformation campaign unfairly subjected Dominion to the hatred, contempt, and distrust of tens of millions of American voters. The elected officials who are Dominion’s actual and potential customers have received emails, letters, and calls from their constituents demanding that they cease and avoid contracting with Dominion or using Dominion machines … state legislators in various states in which Dominion has contracts—including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania—have stated their intent to review and reassess those contracts. They have done so because of pressure from constituents and donors as a direct result of the lies peddled by Fox.
“Louisiana recently cancelled its reassessment and bid process, essentially prohibiting Dominion from securing a new $100-million-plus contract with the state … On March 10, 2021, as a result of the disinformation campaign, Dominion lost a $10 million contract in Stark County, Ohio. The contract had already been awarded to Dominion, had been fully negotiated, and was awaiting signing pending approval of the Board of Commissioners, which is perfunctory. However, as a result of the lies about Dominion peddled, published, and republished by Fox, the Board delayed its vote and then reversed course and has attempted to award the contract to Dominion’s competitor, ES&S … [And] updated current projections show lost profits of over $600 million over the next eight years. In addition, the viral disinformation campaign has irreparably damaged Dominion and destroyed the enterprise value of a business that was worth potentially more than $1 billion …”
Dominion writes: “The truth matters. Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does. Dominion brings this lawsuit to set the record straight, to vindicate its rights, and to recover damages for the devastating economic harm done to its business.” (Emphasis added.)
I don’t want to neglect the part Tucker Carlson played. Dominion notes the following statements that Fox “made endorsed, and adopted” on the January 26, 2021 broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight:
CARLSON: “Well, of course you will likely recognize our next guest. His name is Mike Lindell. He runs My Pillow. He advertises every night on this show and across Fox News. He’s one of our biggest sponsors, and we are grateful for that.”
LINDELL: “Someone put up on—on the internet, actual machine—new machine election fraud, I—I retweeted it … Dominion … said they were going to go after Mike Lindell. Well they did. They hired hit groups, bots and trolls went after all my vendors, all these box stores to cancel me out. … I’m not backing down. We cannot back down out of fear this time.”
CARLSON: “I totally agree.”
LINDELL: “I’ve been all in trying to find the machine fraud, and I – we found it. We have all the evidence. … I have the evidence. … I dare Dominion to sue me because then it will get out faster. So this is – it – you know, they don’t – they don’t want to talk about it.”
CARLSON: “No they don’t.”
Fox responded on May 18, 2021 by filing a Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim, arguing its First Amendment right to report on former President Trump’s and his legal team’s challenge of the election results “without fear of liability.” It argues, “Plaintiffs’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News threatens to stifle the media’s free-speech right to inform the public about newsworthy allegations of paramount public concern.” Fox argued its hosts did not “create allegations against Dominion” and that “Hosts reminded viewers of Dominion’s denials.” And while admitting that some of their on-air hosts “shared opinions about the allegations,” they argued it “is natural under the First Amendment, which protects news reporting essential for ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate.”
On September 27, 2021, Judge Eric M. Davis ruled that while Dominion had not made its case against the Fox Broadcasting company, when it came to their allegations against Fox News, they had “adequately pleaded facts supporting its claim that Fox Corporation is directly liable for Fox News’s statements under New York law … [That] Dominion has adequately pleaded facts supporting a reasonable inference that Fox Corporation proximately caused Dominion’s alleged injury … [And] support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion. Thus, Dominion has successfully brought home actual malice to the individuals at Fox Corporation who it claims to be responsible for the broadcasts.”
Which brings us to Dominion’s Consolidated Brief in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment refiled on February 16, 2023. Dominion makes the case that Fox really has no convincing response to its charges, and that its evidence is so persuasive the Judge should dispense with a trial and rule for Dominion. Dominion marshals an impressive amount of material it has gathered from Fox during discovery, including internal emails, communications, and its depositions of key Fox personnel, including those at the very top of the Fox pyramid, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. They begin with excerpts from several of these very revelatory internal statements, expressing severe doubts about the very inflammatory opinions they routinely aired without rebuttal. Some material has been redacted at the request of Fox:
Dominion puts it this way: “[W]hy did Fox peddle this false narrative to its viewers? … Fox went on “war footing,” caring more about protecting its own falling viewership than about the truth … In the words of Fox News’ SVP and Managing Editor of the Washington, D.C. Bureau Bill Sammon, ‘It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.’” (Emphasis added.)
The brief continues:
“This case differs from nearly any defamation case before it. Normally plaintiffs prove defendants’ actual malice—whether they knew it was false or ‘in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of the statement’—‘by inference, as it would be rare for a defendant to admit such doubts.’ Solano v. Playgirl, Inc., … Here, however, overwhelming direct evidence establishes Fox’s knowledge of falsity, not just ‘doubts.’ Normally defamation cases involve a single defamatory statement. Here, Fox defamed Dominion not once. Not twice. Not three times. But continually. Over a months-long timeframe. And while defamation cases often involve matters of public concern, the false statements here—in the words of Fox host Tucker Carlson—‘would amount to the single greatest crime in American history. Millions of votes stolen in a day. Democracy destroyed. The end of our centuries’ old system of self-government.’
“Normally defamation cases involve the state of mind of one person, or sometimes a handful, as the law only requires that one person with editorial responsibility have the requisite actual malice. Here, however, literally dozens of people with editorial responsibility—from the top of the organization to the producers of specific shows to the hosts themselves—acted with actual malice. Normally multiple public sources, credible third parties, and governmental agencies at all levels do not debunk the lies in real time. Here, however, they all did so—and Fox knew about them.
“Fox had no applicable privilege or legal authorization to make these false and defamatory statements, or if it did, it abused it … Dominion is entitled to punitive damages because Fox’s defamatory statements were accompanied with malice, wantonness, and a conscious desire to cause injury. Fox purposefully made the defamatory statements heedlessly and with reckless and willful indifference to Dominion’s rights. Dominion is entitled to punitive damages because Fox published its defamatory statements about Dominion with actual malice.
“Fox ’s statements are defamatory per se, as they impute serious criminal conduct to Dominion and also malign Dominion in the conduct of its business or trade. Fox’s statements have exposed Dominion to the most extreme hatred and contempt. Fox, both directly and through the facially unreliable guests Fox repeatedly hosted on its shows, has accused Dominion of fraud, election-rigging, conspiracy, and bribery, which are serious crimes. For Dominion—whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections—there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity …”
Fox has claimed that its hosts were acting as responsible journalist presenting their audiences with important—if controversial—news. Yet Fox Chairman Murdoch and other executives reveal under oath that not only did they realize, but several influential Fox hosts as well knew that, without any on-air objection, they were providing a platform for lies about Dominion:
The Dominion brief goes on to note: “There you have it. FC Chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath, as he had to once he finally faced the evidence, that the hosts of the accused Fox shows did far more than just ‘host these guests and give them a platform’—though that would be enough for Fox to be liable … (publisher liable for republishing false and defamatory statement while knowing or recklessly disregarding the truth). He admitted that each of the Fox hosts (other than Tucker Carlson) ‘endorsed’ the stolen election lies. As for Carlson, Rupert admitted that it was ‘wrong’ to host Mike Lindell on January 26, 2021 ‘to repeat those allegations against Dominion’ if Carlson ‘didn’t contest it.’ …”
Both sides have asked the Judge to summarily decide in their favor. There’s a scheduled hearing for March 21, 2023, but those with law degrees and Cousins Vinny know far better than I, predicting a jury trial beginning already scheduled for April 17, 2023.
Meanwhile, I find it quite fitting that Tucker Carlson made it to the top of the list of Forbes’ top quotes from inside the Fox News citadel:
Carlson said he “had to make” the Trump Administration disavow Powell, whom he called “nut,” and texted: “‘Sidney Powell is lying,;’ saying she’s a ‘f–king b-tch.’ Of our ex-President, who you might have imagined he adored, he called ‘a demonic force, a destroyer’. Carlson noted, ‘What he’s good at is destroying things … He’s the undisputed world champion of that.’ Then in a January 2021 text: ‘I hate him passionately … We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights … I truly can’t wait.'” Of course, he never said any of this to his millions of viewers.
Which leads me to wonder. What if lying was Tucker’s job. Can you imagine forcing yourself to tell lies all day about every subject in ways that were so transparent and so outlandish that there is no way the people listening to you could possibly believe anything you said? Then imagine doing that again and again and again every day of your professional life for your entire life. Could Tucker do that?
