according to a phenomenal new report from Lever News, it turns out that Fox News isn't
really sweating the 787 million settlement that they reached this week with Dominion,
because they're not really going to be the ones paying it. Nope. The ones who are technically
footing that bill will be the taxpayers of the United States, because as the lever points
out, and as the people they spoke to at Fox confirmed they can just write off this settlement
in their taxes. Now, let me read this again. This is from Lever News. Absolutely one of
the best outlets out there right now, thanks to an arcane line in the tax code, Fox can
deduct that settlement payment from its income taxes according to a company spokesperson
and tax experts consulted by the lever. That's because federal law allows taxpayers to write
off many legal costs, providing that they're ordinary and necessary business expenses.
The i r S has repeatedly affirmed that for major corporations, paying out settlements
is just part of the cost of doing business. Now, loyal viewers here at Ringa Fire have
probably heard myself and Mike Papantonio talk about this ad nauseum for many, many
years. Whether it's Fox News with their defamation settlement, or whether it's a major corporation
that ran afoul of federal law and had to pay a huge settlement to the doj, most of them
don't actually end up paying the real amount of any fine that you see. A, again, especially
leveled by the fda, the epa, or the doj, they end up getting reduced before they even make
a single payment. Typically, it's reduced to about 25% of the total. So 75% in a federal
settlement usually immediately just gets wiped away. On paper, they pay the 25%, then they
write off the entire thing on their taxes.
So it gets deducted from what they owe the federal government. We, the average taxpayer,
make up the difference. It's no different here with Fox, except they're not gonna be
able to reduce it by 75%. Actually, they might, because as the lever also points out, and
this is something I know from, you know, almost 20 years in the media, media companies have
liability insurance, uh, basically to protect them from slander, libel, and defamation lawsuits,
kinda like car insurance. So when you get into an accident, you don't have to pay out
of pocket. The insurance pays and they address your rates accordingly. It's the same thing
with slander, libel, and defamation. Typically, it's not the entity that pays most of it.
It's their insurance company that pays it just like a car accident. So, Fox News will
not be able to write off whatever the insurance covers of that 787 million, but then whatever's
left, whatever the network actually has to pay,
They then get to write off that amount. So, if I could put this another way, none of this
matters, and I hate to say it that way. I, I, I hate to be gloom and doom, but none of
this matters. Fox News isn't actually being penalized. They're not going to learn a lesson
because there's no real punishment here. The only punishment they've had is the embarrassment
that they've suffered from having their information released and showing how incompetent and corrupt
they are. But the viewers of Fox News, the people already watching the network don't
care. So it didn't have any real impact on the network. It's six months from now, everybody's
gonna forget that any of this even happened in the first place. So that's where we're
at. Fox News got hit with a massive settlement, but you're the one that's gonna be paying
the price.