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.