With Fox News headed to trial in a few short weeks to face the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, the machine manufacturer has released new evidence in the case, revealing that folks at the top knew the election was fair, and criticized the former president for his lies.
One of the most significant revelations in the newest information release is that Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch referred to Trump’s post-loss lies as “pretty much a crime.”
He also gave orders to stop allowing the former president to make appearances on the network.
The evidence released also included memoranda and messaging from the network’s research department, which affirmed that there was no evidence of widespread voting fraud, and specifically that there was no evidence for allegations made about machines being used to alter votes.
It’s not just the research teams and network head who knew the claims were false, either — the newly-released evidence slides also show that host Tucker Carlson mocked the claims of election fraud, and even said at one point that it was a “shame we have to pretend the case has any shot at all.”
He also made fun of both attorney Sidney Powell and pillow mogul Mike Lindell, calling them “crazy,” but expressing appreciation that Lindell “bailed us out” by purchasing ad space when other advertisers fled the network.
Fox employees aren’t the only ones getting caught admitting that the election fraud claims were the highest order of rotting cow patty — there are also messages to host Maria Bartiromo from Representative Kevin McCarthy, now the Speaker of the House, in which he informed her of that fact, saying plainly, “I don’t believe there is a mass cheat.”
Meanwhile, network bigwigs were focused on what the viewers wanted, evidence seems to suggest.
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott is seen in emails complaining that fact-checking of false election claims was turning away viewers. Via Rolling Stone:
In the newly released portion of the email, Scott indicated that Fox’s proprietary streaming service Fox Nation had lost 25,000 subscribers. “The audience feels like we crapped on and we have damaged their trust and belief in us,” she wrote, “We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”
Trump, however, isn’t reacting (so far) to the revelations that Fox hosts and even Murdoch considered his claims compost-heap-ready.
Instead, he’s reveling in his recent re-welcome to the network, as his candidacy returns his ratings-magnet status.
On Wednesday evening, he was happily posting their latest poll data.
"Raw notes" from a November 7, 2020, pre-interview with Kevin McCarthy for Bartiromo's show have him saying there was no "mass cheat" in the 2020 election pic.twitter.com/JzCfobFfkp
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) March 29, 2023
Here's a November 20, 2020 email from Jeanine Pirro's executive producer to Fox executives saying that a pre-taped Pirro monologue "is rife w conspiracy theories and bs and is yet another example why this woman should never be on live television." pic.twitter.com/DxlK6jhmkz
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) March 29, 2023