Steve Bannon attacking the
head of Fox News,
reacting to court filings
that show that Rupert Murdoch,
along with Tucker Carlson,
Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others
knew that Trump's election lies were lies
Okay, Murdoch, here's
a way it's going to be brother.
You've disrespected Donald J.
Trump long enough, okay?
They don't respect you.
Read the depositions, the deposition.
They have a fear
and loathing and contempt for you.
The Murdochs immediately have to start
covering President Trump.
Bannon calling Fox shareholders
to take action,
which is telling
because as we know
from Tucker Carlson's own text
messages, his motivation
at least he said at that time
for pushing what he made
very clear
he knew were lies about the last
election was because
he was upset about the company's
stock price going down.
He thought that that would
you know, protect it.
Tom Foreman is OUTFRONT with more on
how Tucker Carlson went all
in on the lies
when Donald Trump lost the presidency.
Many Americans will never again
accept the results
of a presidential election
when Republicans
fell short of their midterm goals.
It certainly looks like it's rigged.
And even
now, Tucker Carlson keeps pushing
unproven claims
that Democrats are somehow cheating.
It is galling to be lectured
about democracy
by a man who took power in an election
so sketchy
that many Americans don't
believe it was even real.
At Fox,
election denialism
has been broadly
promoted by its many stars.
But even there, Carlson's fervor
has stood out from the start.
If you're a Trump voter
and you suspect that this election was
stolen, was rigged.
You're on to something.
He has savaged the security of elections
and the credibility of election
officials.
The people in charge rigged the game.
He's repeatedly pushed
while conspiracies about machine
switching votes,
and only occasionally he said
that's not been proven.
We're not really
very serious about democracy
if we're using
electronic voting machines.
Never mind
that such claims
helped spur a massive lawsuit
against Fox by the Dominion
voting Systems Company,
which denies any wrongdoing.
Never mind the Dominion filing in
that case shows Carlson
privately called
accusations of election fraud
with no evidence. Ludicrous.
Totally off the rails.
And shockingly reckless
on air and online.
Carlson has howled about
how unfairly
he and other conservatives
are allegedly treated.
They are tying
white nationalist terrorism
to Trump voters,
claiming
Washington inside
hours are using
the 2021 attack on the Capitol
to smear patriotic, peaceful Americans.
It was not even close to an insurrection.
Court records even, say,
when a Fox reporter dared
to fact
check a false claim
by the former president.
Carlson quickly wrote,
Please get her fired.
It's measurably hurting the company
The stock price is down.
Not surprisingly,
Democrats were enraged
when the new Republican speaker,
Kevin McCarthy,
released all the security footage
of the January 6th attack
to Carlson exclusively.
One of the people who has done
more to destroy
faith in this democracy
than just about anyone else,
the man who is still not saying clearly
and openly Joe Biden won and Donald
Trump lost fair and square.
Was the 2020 election a miracle
Honestly, we don't know.
We don't expect to
get an answer to it tonight.
We asked
Fox for any further comment on this.
They sent us this long release
that they have
where they basically argue
in the Dominion case
that this was a great big story
and that everyone, including Tucker
Carlson was doing what journalists do,
just asking questions.
What's not clear here, though, Erin, is
these questions were asked
in the wake of the election.
That's a long time ago now.
And they were all answered.
There was nothing wrong
with the election,
nothing that would have made
a difference.
And yet Tucker Carlson and some others
just will not let it go.
All right.
All right, Tom, thank you very much.
It is incredible to hide behind that.
Just asking questions
when you know
that you're asking a question
about something that is untrue.
So by asking you, you're having people
believe it's untrue.
That's what's at the heart of the case.
And the whole malice issue.
But it kind of defies
belief that they think anybody
would fall for that.
OUTFRONT now, Bill Kristol,
who founded the conservative magazine,
The Weekly Standard, where he was Tucker
Carlson's boss,
Bill was also a Fox News contributor
for a decade.
So, Bill,
this is what it comes down to, right?
This whole.
Well, as we were
just asking questions, right.
That's that's that
appears to be the defense
You've known Tucker for many years.
Do you think that he
really believed in the election lies?
I mean, his talk show that he didn't.
Or are you surprised about how he says
said one thing on the air
and was saying the opposite off air
I mean, I hadn't talked to him
for quite a while.
So maybe he's changed some.
But no, he doesn't believe the lies.
He's lying.
I mean, people are unwilling to just say
the obvious fact.
It's not that he's asking questions.
It's not that he's
a little bit
disingenuous
and says different things on air.
That off fair, though.
That is the case.
Of course,
he is consciously lying
for the sake of power,
for the sake of money,
for the sake of celebrity,
for the sake of his own.
Know what
he sees as his own stature in the Trump
and Trump America Trump administration.
Certainly.
And and there you are.
And that's true of others at Fox as well
and Fox sections.
It Let's just be honest.
This is not like a confusion
or a misunderstanding
or a little bit of lax.
You know, rules administration by Fox
Yeah.
And, you know,
one interesting thing to,
you know,
when you think about it is Bannon today.
Right. Bannon coming out.
Now, I know Bannon is, as,
you know,
kind of tried to say he's more of the
the real right wing or a right
the real voice of the people
as opposed to Fox News.
Okay. That's true.
But what's interesting is it seems that
Fox is hope
has been that their base viewer
will not pay
any attention to any of this.
They're not talking about it
on their network.
No one's going to hear about it.
But Steve
Bannon just went out
at the top conservative event and said,
Fox News disrespects,
you don't have anything to do with them.
Does that matter? He doesn't go to.
And that's, of course,
because Steve Bannon
remains a Trump supporter.
Trump pardoned him for the crimes
for which he was convicted.
And Fox has turned
to, to be fair to sentence,
I guess, at Murdoch's direction.
So there's a little fight here
among the different kinds of liars and
and fraudsters, frankly.
And, you know, they're
they're sniping at each other,
but no Fox and Fox.
Well, what's most interesting,
I think, from
what I've read at the deposition,
is that Fox is most concerned
not about the truth,
not about doing something
specifically responsible
to stop whipping people up,
which ultimately led
to January 6th,
among many other things, in our country.
Fox was the opposite.
Fox was worried
that someone would get more extreme
than they
and and take viewers away from them.
That began to happen
after they called the election correctly,
forever, called Arizona correctly
on election night
and declared Biden the winner as they.
Which is true.
And so they got worried that they weren't
extreme enough.
And that remains
I think
I see no evidence
that Fox is changing its ways.
I mean, is there
a single piece of evidence
that anyone at Fox is more responsible
now than they were a year or two ago
with the insurrection on January six?
Everything else that's happened
seems to have made no difference to them.
All right.
Well, they've given their most powerful
and important slots
as they see them to people
who put that forth.
Obviously, there are
some, you know, fantastic
a journalist there,
but that is not
what we're talking about right now.
All right. Thank you very much, Bill.