Late yesterday, new text messages within Fox "News" were released from the ongoing defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. As the texts released last week indicate, there was incredible fear among their hyper-partisan evening hosts about telling their delusional viewers the truth about the 2020 election. The New York Times reports on their difficulty in just telling the truth:
"It had been more than a week since the news networks projected that Joseph R. Biden Jr. would become the next president. And Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were at a loss about what to say on the air.'
'What are we all going to do tmrw night?' Ms. Ingraham, the host of the 10 p.m. show on Fox News, asked her colleagues in a text message chain on Nov. 16, 2020.
Mr. Carlson responded that he planned to devote a significant chunk of his program to a little-known voting technology company that had become a target of Trump supporters who suspected the election had been rigged: Dominion Voting Systems.
'Haven’t said a word about it so far,' Mr. Carlson said, acknowledging that the conspiracy theories about Dominion’s purported role in a fictitious plot to siphon away votes from President Donald J. Trump were making him uneasy.
'The whole thing seems insane to me,' he wrote. 'And Sidney Powell won’t release the evidence. Which I hate.' Ms. Powell, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, was 'making everyone paranoid and crazy, including me,' Mr. Carlson added." (our emphasis)
The newly-released texts also underline just how much the hosts, Putin-friendly Tucker "Tovarich" Carlson in particular, despised the Malignant Loser in private and, by extension, his cult members that made up their audience:
"Some of Mr. Carlson’s private remarks about Mr. Trump are difficult to square with the praise he has lavished on the former president publicly. At times, the host and his producers were gleeful about what a news cycle without Mr. Trump would look like. And they cheerfully predicted his waning power as a political force.
'We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,' Mr. Carlson wrote to members of his staff on Jan. 4, 2021. 'I truly can’t wait.'
One producer replied, 'I want nothing more.'
Then Mr. Carlson responded, 'I hate him passionately.'” (our emphasis)
Just one day after the Trumpist insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Carlson and his team anticipated the Malignant Loser's rapid decline in power, and attendant chaos and anger. Only when it became clear that he still held sway over his cult / their viewers, did they revert to their support for him:
"When Mr. Carlson again predicts that Mr. Trump’s clout will fade as he 'becomes incalculably less powerful' out of office, one of his producers frets that the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency could bring even more chaos and danger.
'The Trump anger spiral is vicious,' the producer tells his boss.
'That’s for sure,' Mr. Carlson responds.
'Deadly,' the host adds. We’ve got two weeks left. We can do this.'” (our emphasis)
Following Carlson's disgraceful and dishonest whitewashing of the January 6 insurrection in the past two nights on his program, these releases help to paint him as a hollow, hating propagandist, willing to say anything even if he doesn't believe it.
BONUS: The Guardian has more, including a text by Carlson commenting on the Malignant Loser's legacy:
"In another text, Carlson said of 'the last four years' under Trump, '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.'” (our emphasis)
(photo: Justin Lane / EPA)
