Fox News executives recently got a hold of some text messages inhuman monster
Tucker Carlson had sent that had been part of the Dominion case against Fox.
And according to sources at the network, the offensive contents of those
messages informed their decision to axe Tucker earlier in the week,
marking the only thing Fox News has ever done that made me happy.
Here's what we know.
The day before Dominion Voting Systems' defamation trial against Fox News was set
to begin in a Delaware courthouse.
The Fox board of directors and top executives made a startling discovery that
helped lead to the breaking point between the network and Tucker Carlson,
one of its top stars.
Private messages sent by Mr Carlson, that had been redacted in legal filings
showed him making highly offensive and crude remarks.
Surprising no one that went beyond the inflammatory, often racist comments
of his prime-time show and anything disclosed in the lead up to the trial.
And going far beyond his show is a high bar to go far beyond and
he somehow did it.
The messages were part of tons of emails and texts from Fox executives and
hosts that were made public thanks to Dominion's defamation lawsuit.
Despite the fact that Fox's trial lawyers had these messages for months,
the board and some senior executives were now learning about their details for
the first time.
Setting off a crisis at the highest level of the company,
according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.
Two days after the board saw the offensive text,
Fox settled that case for just $787.5 million.
And the Wall Street Journal reports that the private messages
in which Carlson showed disregard for management and
colleagues were a major factor in the decision to part ways with him,
according to other people familiar with the matter.
Although many portions of the Dominion court documents are redacted,
there is concern among Fox Corp executives that if the redacted material were to
become public, it would lead to further embarrassment for the network and
parent company.
They're worried about being embarrassed.
Hard to believe, but seems to be the case.
In one text revealed through the lawsuit, he called a senior Fox News
executive the C word, which he allegedly wanted the world to know about.
According to one former Fox on-air personality, the anchor and
some of the channel's top executives are parting ways on, quote, the worst and
messiest possible terms.
Indeed, in private communications released last month,
the now fired Fox host gossip that one such exec hates us,
claiming she was covertly working against him and other hosts.
That is the update.
Cenk, I'm curious your thoughts on this.
Very interesting story.
>> Yeah, so I don't know that this was actually one of the reasons that
they fired Tucker Carlson.
That is certainly possible.
I'm gonna tell you why it's possible and why it might not be the case.
It's possible because of people like Dianne Feinstein.
Wait, what does that have to do with this story?
I'll explain.
So the CIA, during Bush's reign of terror,
did warrantless wiretapping on all Americans.
So Bush lied about it and said, no, we're not doing the warrantless wiretapping.
Then it was exposed.
And then instead of punishing anyone that did the wiretapping,
they tried to punish the person who revealed the wiretapping.
So Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning,
all greatly punished for letting us know what happened.
So what does this have to do with Dianne Feinstein side of this story?
Well, Feinstein was not bothered by the Democratic party,
not bothered by Barack Obama.
Legendarily said, we look forward, not backwards.
So we're not gonna punish any crimes that happened in the past,
including spying on all Americans.
But the minute the CIA spied in on the Senate, then the Senate caught feelings,
and then all of a sudden, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most conservative
members of the Democratic party in my lifetime, she was like, the CIA did this?
This is an outrage, it affects me, okay?
And by the way, in all these stories about how legendary Feinstein is these days,
they say one of her two accomplishments is holding the CIA accountable.
No, she didn't do that for any of the rest of us.
She only did it when it affected her.
And this is the same potential story at Fox News.
Tucker Carlson says the worst things.
Imagine about immigrants, black people, women, you name it.
Trans people, gay people, etcetera.
Just the most disgusting person says it about all those and
then says it about his own employees.
We had all the texts earlier, right, of like, hey, that person at Fox News or
reporter that actually reported facts should be fired for reporting facts.
It cost us money, the stock is down, etcetera.
They didn't mind any of that.
But the minute he said bad things about the executives,
they're like, that's a bridge too far.
Well, that's about me and I'm in power.
The powerless, we crush them daily.
And so it's entirely possible that yeah, that's what I mean.
Apparently, he called on the executives the C word, and
she did not take kindly that I don't know if they're talking about Suzanne Scott,
who runs the network or not, right.
>> And apparently that word was used a ton in meetings in the culture that he
promoted at his show meetings.
>> Yeah, now, the other possibility is, no,
they're not actually telling you the secret terrible texts by Tucker,
which are much worse than the already terrible texts we've seen in public,
because this is a threat to Tucker cross.
And there's a shot across the bow saying, you better not say anything bad about us.
Otherwise we are going to unleash all those secret texts that we have.
We don't actually care about them, but we'll use them as ammo against you and
all the dirty things that you did at Fox that we covered up for,
they're sitting in a file.
The stories do all but threaten Tucker Carlson.
>> True, and let's expand upon that for a moment,
because sources at Fox News Corp also claim that the communications department
had been keeping a secret file of opposition research against Carlson in
the event that Tucker left the company or was fired, as was the case.
One source with knowledge calls it an oppo file.
Two sources add that Fox is prepared to disclose some of its contents if execs
suspect that Carlson is coming after the network.
The file includes internal complaints regarding workplace conduct, disparaging
comments about management and colleagues, and allegations that the now former
prime-time host created a toxic work environment, three of the sources say.
A network spokesperson denied the existence of the file, but
internal sources disagreed, claiming that communications department head
Irena Briganti used these files as a tactic.
Four, former Fox News personalities confirmed Briganti
likes to keep dirt files on Fox News talent sounds like a great place to work,
including one on Carlson.
An ex Fox News anchor laments, quote, Irena tries to keep a file on everybody.
Any talent like Tucker would have a lot of things.
Other people complaining, they encourage it and then just keep it on file.
It's just a classic dirty trick.
Whatever tactics Fox is using against Tucker seem to be working.
On Wednesday night, he spoke publicly for the first time since getting pushed out,
but didn't actually address his firing from Fox or even mention Fox by name.
Instead, he did his usual populist, vaguely racist shtick.
Here's a look at that.
>> The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how
unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are.
They're completely irrelevant.
They mean nothing.
In five years, we won't even remember that we had them.
Trust me, as someone who's participated.
And yet at the same time and this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics,
the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all.
War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change,
corporate power, natural resources.
When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those
issues?
It's been a long time.
Debates like that are not permitted in American media.
Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits
them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it.
Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one party state.
Our current orthodoxies won't last, they're brain dead.
Nobody actually believes them.
Hardly anyone's life is improved by them.
This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue.
>> I love how one day off the air, tucker Carlson is now broadcasting from a sweat
lodge and is instantly telling us about how corporate media is no good, and
they don't let you talk about what really matters,
the things that actually affect today.
You mean like you've been doing on air constantly and
had to throw in the demographic change as one of the big bogey men that we need to
confront in our life or we could just embrace other people.
That's another way to go about it.
>> Yeah, so first of all, he's like, once you take some time off, dude,
it's been like, two days and you didn't take time off, you were fired.
So, okay, so why is he not directly attacking Fox News?
One, because apparently Briganti has a giant fat file on him of dirt,
which I'm gonna come back to cuz there's something incredibly nefarious that
Fox News does, and they're paying him $20 million a year.
They're paying him out, paying out the contract.
So Tucker is thinking, hey, I'm gonna take as much of that money as possible,
and once I've taken enough from Fox News,
do you think he's going to turn on Fox News at that point?
Yeah, of course he is.
And how about that file of dirt that they have on him?
Doesn't matter.
He'll just tell his right wing audience, it isn't true.
It's actually true about them.
And they'll be like, okay.
Yeah, right away, they'll believe anything he says.
So dirt is irrelevant in a post Trump world if they've already got a figure that
they trust completely, and Trump is one of them and Tucker is the other one.
And so, guys, when you think about it, look at the sleight of hand he does,
even in that tiny little video, and it gives you a sense of
exactly what I'm talking about, that nothing will stick on him, right.
He says, I mean, when you look at the debates on TV, they're just so silly.
What's the point of them?
And I've participated about in them in the past.
What do you mean in the past?
Or what do you mean participated?
No, you create them on a daily basis.
You're literally the guy who came up with the M&Ms aren't sexy enough.
So if white ring men can't masturbate to the M&M mascot, well, we're aggrieved.
We're aggrieved, right?
That's the silliest debate I've ever heard.
You also did Mr Potato Head.
You're also the guy who claimed that Joe Biden was gonna make you drink
Starbucks every day.
You're a factory of insane nonsense debates that
distract us from the actual issue.
So when he says, for example, the two parties are the same and
they're run by their donors no, the problem with that is it's true.
And he takes that thing that's true that almost all Americans agree with and
then wraps it in racism and bigotry.
And so when he wraps it in racism and bigotry,
corporate media is gonna get to say no.
Anyone challenging power, anyone doing populism,
anyone talking about corruption are all racist and bigots like Tucker Carlson.
Man, if they did a false flag operation,
they would design someone just like Tucker Carlson to smear the name of all
populists who care about civil liberties, anti war movement, etcetera.
I'm not saying he is.
I'm saying you'd create a guy just like that so he does great damage to
populism by putting the toxic sludge of racism, bigotry all over it.
It's the corporate rule.
Couldn't be happier with Tucker.
They're like, yes, take something that's totally true,
that is out, the country would hate us and make it so
ugly that we could smear everyone who says it.
He's disgusting.
Now back to the secret file.
You know what Fox does with HR complaints?
They have innocent people that work there.
Go there and tell them, my God, Tucker did this to me, Bill O'Reilly did that to me,
etcetera.
And then they don't actually help those people.
They put them in a file to use against a host later.
They're just the worst people on Earth.
They're like, you came to us for help.
We're not gonna help you at all, and we're gonna crush your career.
But thank you for the goodies, cuz I could use that to crush people later.
These are the sick people who run Fox News.
There are no winners here.
Tucker Carlson's, terrible human being, and Fox News is everyone there,.
And all the executives are disgusting pigs.
By the way, I know this with absolute certainty cuz when I was a host on MSNBC,
I criticized Tucker Carlson.
I'm sorry, I criticized Fox News, and it became public, and
I did an interview about it.
I got called into the PR office at MSNBC, and they said, what are you doing?
Don't do that.
They'll come after you because they have secret files,
not just on their own hosts, but on MSNBC hosts, CNN hosts, etcetera.
And I said, I don't give a damn.
There's nothing in my secret file.
And I actually wanna fight these guys.
They're like, don't.
Don't, that was not Fox News.
That was MSNBC telling me that Fox News is so
dirty that they're deathly afraid of them, and that I should be afraid of them too.
And that they were also worried by the way that they were going to go after MSNBC
executives if I said anything mean about Fox News.
So, that PR department at Fox News is like the most disgusting people in media.
>> And just a quick tip to wrap this story up.
If you ever are making an HR complaint, how you know they might be making a secret
file instead of listening to your complaints is when they say, I'm so
sorry to hear that, but could you repeat that a little closer to the plant?
That's one way.
But at least Tucker finally now has some time to himself where he can
just make love at will to bowls of green M&M, so congrats.
>> Yeah, and I'd like to say one last personal thing.
A friend of mine now, like, nearly 25 years ago, comes in he's a very smart guy.
And he says to all of us who were not even yet working, he started working.
And he said, guys, when you start working,
your companies all have secret files on you and we laugh.
We're like, Suj, you're crazy, man.
They don't have secret files on you.
My bad Suj, you were right.
After all these years, hashtag, Sujay was right.
Okay, they have secret files, apparently.
And it's nasty.