NEW YORK — A defamation lawsuit revealed scornful behind-the-scenes opinions by Fox News figures about Donald Trump, including a Tucker Carlson text message declaring, “I hate him passionately.”
Carlson’s private text comments were revealed in court papers at virtually the same time the former president hailed the Fox News host on social media. Trump said he was doing a “great job” in presenting excerpts of U.S. Capitol security video of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — though Carlson used the video to produce a false narrative of the attack.
The documents came to light at a time of increased tension between Trump and Fox, the dominant media force appealing to conservatives, as he campaigns to regain the presidency.
Voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, claiming the network broadcast false claims that the company was responsible for fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
The case is scheduled to go to trial this spring and a trove of documents related to Fox’s actions after the election are being publicly released in advance.
A common theme emerging from the internal documents and depositions is that Fox executives and hosts doubted the election claims being peddled by Trump and his allies, but aired and emphasized them anyway. Fox was growing concerned about a decline in viewership as Trump supporters turned away from the network after it correctly called Joe Biden the presidential winner in Arizona on election night.
The exchanges include Carlson’s text conversation on Jan. 4, 2021, with an unknown person, in which the prime-time host expressed anger toward Trump.
Carlson said that “we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights” and that “I truly can’t wait.”
Former President Donald Trump, right, talks with Donald Trump Jr., center, and Tucker Carlson on July 31, 2022, at the 16th tee during the final round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J.
Carlson said he had no doubt there was fraud in the 2020 election, but that Trump and his lawyers had so discredited their case — and media figures like himself — “that it’s infuriating. Absolutely enrages me.”
Federal and state officials, courts, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, though Trump continues to falsely state that the presidency was stolen.
Addressing Trump’s four years as president, Carlson said, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”
In another text exchange more than a month earlier, Carlson denigrated Trump’s business abilities: Trump’s talent, he said, is to “destroy things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Publicly, Fox viewers heard very different views, such as a 2017 exchange with colleague Greg Gutfeld in which Carlson agreed that Trump was “the greatest president that ever will be.” On his show in 2019, Carlson said Trump fought as hard as he could to make sure everyone in America was treated equally under the law.
“You can say what you really believe in public,” Carlson said then. “You’re an American citizen. That is your right.” Trump could lose in 2020, he added, “but he’ll be a genuinely great president.”
Carlson has continued rolling out security video from the Capitol attack, footage handed to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. For that, Trump said on his social media platform, “congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in U.S. history.”
The selective release of the footage to sway the historical account drew criticism, including from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday called on Fox to stop spreading election lies, which he said was eroding trust in American democracy.
Fox’s founder, Rupert Murdoch, has a complex relationship with Trump: “I was not close to him,” Murdoch said in a deposition in the libel lawsuit.
Indeed, though Murdoch acknowledged talking to Trump occasionally, he said he also sought inside information from Sean Hannity, one of his network’s prime-time hosts, because Hannity was the closest person at Fox to Trump.
Following Trump’s loss in November 2020, Murdoch despaired of the president’s behavior.
“The real danger is what he might do as president,” Murdoch wrote in an email to a friend that month. “Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls! Don’t know about Melania, but kids no help.”
But Murdoch told his network’s officials that he also didn’t want to “antagonize” Trump: “He had a very large following, and they were probably mostly viewers of Fox, so it would have been stupid,” Murdoch said in a deposition in the Dominion case.
In separate questioning in the case, Murdoch acknowledged that he believed the 2020 presidential election “was not stolen.”
On social media recently, Trump was critical of Fox when other court papers released in the Dominion case made clear that a number of the network’s executives and personalities privately believed the election fraud claims were bunk.
5 takeaways from the Jan. 6 report
1. Eight chapters
Updated
From the "Big Lie" of Trump's November 2020 election night claims of a stolen election to the bloody Jan. 6, 2021, siege, the report spells out the start and finish of the mob attack that played out for the world to see.
It details how Trump and his allies engaged in a "multi-part" scheme to overturn Joe Biden's presidential election victory — first through court challenges, then, when those failed, by compiling slates of electors to challenge Joe Biden's victory.
As Congress prepared to convene Jan. 6 to certify the election, Trump summoned a mob to Washington for his "Stop the Steal" rally at the White House.
"When Donald Trump pointed them toward the Capitol and told them to 'fight like hell,' that's exactly what they did," Thompson wrote. "Donald Trump lit that fire. But in the weeks beforehand, the kindling he ultimately ignited was amassed in plain sight."
2. New details, pressures
Updated
After blockbuster public hearings, the report and its accompanying materials are providing more detailed accounts of key aspects of the Trump team's plan to overturn the election, join the mob at the Capitol and, once the committee began investigating, pressure those who would testify against him.
Among dozens of new witness transcripts was Thursday's release of a previously unseen account from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson (pictured) detailing a stunning campaign by Trump's allies encouraging her to stay "loyal" as she testified before the panel.
The report said the committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the Jan. 6 attack, "Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results."
3. Behind the scenes
Updated
The report also details Trump's inaction as his loyalists were violently storming the building.
One Secret Service employee testified to the committee that Trump's determination to go to the Capitol put agents on high alert.
"(We) all knew ... that this was going to move to something else if he physically walked to the Capitol," a unidentified employee said. "I don't know if you want to use the word 'insurrection,' 'coup,' whatever. We all knew that this would move from a normal democratic ... public event into something else."
Once the president arrived back at the White House after delivering a speech to his supporters, he asked an employee if they had seen his remarks on television.
"Sir, they cut it off because they're rioting down at the Capitol," the staffer said, according to the report.
Trump asked what that meant, and was given the same answer. "Oh really?" Trump then asked. "All right, let's go see."
4. Safeguarding democracy
Updated
The report makes 11 recommendations for Congress and others to safeguard American democracy and its tradition of the peaceful transfer of presidential power from one leader to the next.
The first, an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, is on its way to becoming law in the year-end spending bill heading toward final passage this week in Congress.
The committee also made recommendations to the Justice Department to prosecute Trump and others for conspiracy to commit fraud on the public, and other potential charges. It also referred the former president for prosecution for "assisting and providing aid and comfort to an insurrection."
Other changes may be within reach or prove more elusive. Among them, the report recommends beefing up security around key congressional events, overhauling oversight of the Capitol Police and enhancing federal penalties for certain types of threats against election workers.
One recommendation is for Congress to create a formal mechanism to consider barring individuals from public office if they engage in insurrection or rebellion under the Fourteenth Amendment. It holds that those who have taken an oath to support the Constitution can be disqualified from holding future federal or state office if they back an insurrection.
5. Record for history
Updated
The Jan. 6 committee was created after Congress rebuked an effort to form an independent 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack. Republicans blocked the idea.
Instead, Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the House to form the committee. In her foreword to the report, she said it "must be a clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy."
Led by Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel's work is intended to stand as a record for history of what happened during the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
Five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot and killed by police, and Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died the day after battling the mob.
Cheney noted the committee decided most of its witnesses needed to be Republicans — the president's own team and allies. In the report's foreword, she wrote that history will remember the "bravery of a handful of Americans" and those who withstood Trump's "corrupt pressure."
For all of them, the committee and report held personal weight.
Thompson, a Black leader in Congress, noted that the iconic U.S. Capitol, built with enslaved labor, "itself is a fixture in our country's history, of both good and bad ... a symbol of our journey toward a more perfect union."
