Fox News and its biggest primetime stars went all in on Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But according to newly released court filings, they knew that those claims were, in their own words, ludicrous and totally off the rails. And they even mocked Trump’s adviser and attorney Sidney Powell, who was pushing the false claims shortly after the 2020 election. Tucker Carlson texts Laura Ingram and says Sidney Powell is lying. By the way, I caught her. It’s insane. Ingram then responded to him. Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy. And in the deposition, Sean Hannity testified that the whole narrative that Sidney was pushing. I did not believe it for one second. Those texts and testimony are part of a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation. My panel is back with me to discuss this. If you were paying attention at the time, it’s not entirely surprising because you could see when the shift happened for Fox. There was some skepticism at first, and then they started to worry that their viewers were going away. I want to bring up one other part of that. The messages from this lawsuit. This is this is a message from Tucker Carlson about one of Fox’s White House correspondents, Jackie Heinrich, who had basically factually, accurately fact-checked President Trump. And here’s what Tucker says. He says, Please get her fired Seriously, what the F? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke. The stock price, the stock price is down. It’s a. Seems to be that these indicate it was all about profit. Yes, it was about the show. It wasn’t about the truth and the fact that this reporter was put in the crosshairs because of this is it just just shows how the commitment was never it was never about the facts. And they were worried that their viewers weren’t being told what they wanted to hear anymore and they were going away. I mean, that is just it is so such the antithesis of what journalism should be. It’s not it’s not surprising, but it’s shocking. I guess. It’s not. Not certainly not the way it’s supposed to work, but these these it’s not just a programing decision or a monetary decision. These have real consequences in how people how voters view what’s happening in society. There’s a significant segment in the population that falsely believes that the 20, 20 election was rigged and stolen. Why? Because they were consuming news that we now know from these tags very clearly that the people who are purveying that knew it was false news was bogus, but believe they were pushed to it and wanted to push that because they wanted to feed into this audience. So you’re supposed to tell the audience the truth of what’s going on, but by presenting not mistruths, that affects voters. Perception has an impact on with further evidence. I mean, as the January six committee hearings illustrated, people closest to Trump were also the ones who knew that this was this stuff was false. And that actually includes some of these Fox hosts, people like Tucker and Hannity, who are very close to Trump, knew at the time that it was false. But in this moment, also, we have the Kerry leaks of the world, Kerry Lake, who lost the Arizona gubernatorial election, now says, buckle up, we’re going to take this all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court because she wants to have a redo of her race in which she lost the election. Lies just won’t go away. Yeah, she’s lost challenge after challenge because there’s no there there. Look, we know from study after study that viewers or audiences of programs are deeply cued by the programing. Right, that your belief system is not only reinforced, but but actually shaped by the news that you’re consuming. What this suggests is that elements inside the network were so afraid that the audience would walk away from them, that it created an incentive structure to continue misleading people. And if that all if those facts all bear out and a lot of this is still redacted, I think there’s more to come. It it is deeply, deeply disturbing. Gallup and the Pew organization, Gallup and the Knight Foundation this week came out with the report. I check it out on Google. It’s too much to get into. But basically about Americans distrust in news. And one of the things that showed is that people now believe that news organizations are literally out to mislead them and don’t care about the repercussions to politics, to the impact on society. And the idea that’s revealed here that that these fictions jumped from the entertainment side to the news side and indirectly put pressure on news coverage. Is is deeply problematic. Yeah. I mean, and look, that’s a real issue that you’re talking about. But there’s responsibility on the part of our elected leaders and people who claim to be in the news media to tell the truth. It’s pretty simple. Let’s discuss it all with CNN legal analyst and former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen and CNN political commentator and the host of the You Decide Podcast, Errol Louis. Norm, let me start with you. It is one thing to disagree with something that your network airs, but do you think examples in this court filings show that something beyond that was going on? I mean, legally, do they show a disregard for the truth in a way that people could be held accountable for in court? Casey, I think they do. In order for dominion to recover damages and they’re potentially looking at billions of dollars of them, they’re going to have to show actual malice that people were going on air and on Fox News and knowingly telling lies or acting with reckless disregard for the truth. And when you see these behind the scenes communications from Tucker Carlson, Sidney Powell is lying. From Laura Ingraham to Tucker and to Sean Hannity. Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Rupert Murdoch, really crazy stuff. But saying the opposite on air, that’s legally actionable and it’s also just plain wrong. I think it will anger a jury. Large potential damages here. So what does this mean in the the sphere of public opinion, especially with Fox viewers? Will they care about it? Well, I think they will. The most damaging things that I thought came out in this latest filing is that you have these executives and even some of the hosts talking over and over again about, quote, respecting our audience and what that meant. According to this filing, is what that really meant was telling people the story they wanted to hear, even knowing that the story that they wanted to hear was false, telling people over and over again and giving their very powerful platform over to conspiracy theorists who wanted to spin the most insane ideas which the producers and the anchors and everybody knew was completely out to lunch. But doing it allegedly in the name of, quote, respecting the audience, it’s a terrible practice. It’s really almost a case study in how not to run a news organization. There’s a place to be concerned about the size of your audience and whether they’re going off to an even more far right wing rival platform. But that place is not in the NEWSROOM. That’s not where you’re supposed to be crafting your coverage of one of the most important stories of in American history. And that’s exactly what they’re being alleged to have done. And there’s no reason to think that it’s not true. So, Norm, Tucker Carlson is still sowing doubt about the 2020 election results to this day, as, of course, is former President Donald Trump. I mean, we cover it when he says those things is what is said today. Well, can that become relevant to the lawsuit? It can be because it shows the continuing pattern of disregard and Casey, this filing is going to take its place historically in exposing what what has gone on and the continuing danger, I think, next to other landmark documents like the January 6th committee report. And the way to stop this ongoing pattern of lies is to have a trial and to force Fox News to pay damages, potentially billions of dollars in damages that could make that company sit up and take notice. I know these lawyers at Susman Godfrey are going to try the case. I’ve worked with them. They are the ones who can really impose the lesson here. Great co-counsel, Claire Locke. So what? That’s going to be the best remedy for the ongoing mystery presentations by Tucker Carlson and by Fox News. Interesting. And Errol, we do see I mean, obviously, the Murdoch empire extends beyond just Fox. And occasionally we will see signs or reports that there is a split between the Murdochs and Donald Trump, that they’re looking for somebody else. There’ll be a headline in The New York Post, for example. Is there any reason to believe that the Trump Fox Alliance is actually in a different place? Is it weaker? And what, a $1.6 billion verdict affect it regardless of the verdict? I think the trouble that they bear in the enormous costs, the reputational cost and the financial cost of just defending themselves in this lawsuit, I think has really sort of sobered up the Murdoch organization. Rupert Murdoch himself comes across in the filings, almost like Dr. Frankenstein. They’ve created this monster and it is now spun out of their control. There’s a very interesting New York Post editorial from November seven, 2020 cited in the documents where he he pleads with President Trump, then President Trump, to to accept the results and simply move on and not tarnish his own legacy. That didn’t it was unheeded. It was unheeded by his audience. It was unheeded by his organization. Ultimately, it led to this disastrous point where that they’ve arrived at. I think Rupert Murdoch himself understands very well that they need to go in another direction. The question is whether or not this financial beast that he has created this organization that is so dependent on catering to a select audience, whether or not they’re willing to change and go back to basic newsgathering, if they can do that, they may be able to survive this.
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