‘I hate him passionately’: How Tucker Carlson really feels about Donald Trump

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A defamation lawsuit reveals Fox News figures’ behind-the-scenes taunts about Donald Trump, including a text message by Tucker Carlson declaring that he hates him so much.

Carlson’s private text conversation was revealed in court papers around the same time the former president praised the Fox News host on social media. Trump said he was doing a good job of showing excerpts of the US Capitol security video of Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection even though Carlson used the video to create a false narrative of the attack.

The documents also come amid heightened tensions between Trump and the dominant media force that appeals to conservatives as he campaigns to regain the presidency.

Voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, alleging the network falsely claimed the company was responsible for fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The case will go to trial this spring, and a trove of documents related to Foxs post-election actions are being released to the public ahead of time.

A common theme emerging from 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 is growing concerned about declining viewership that Trump supporters have turned away from the network after it correctly called Joe Biden the presidential winner in Arizona on election night.

The exchanges included Carlson’s text conversation on Jan. 4, 2021, with an unknown person, during which the prime-time host expressed anger at Trump.

Carlson said we are so close to being able to ignore Trump almost every night and I really can’t wait.

Carlson said he has no doubt there was fraud in the 2020 election, but Trump and his lawyers have overblown their case and media figures like him are outraged. Totally mad at me.

Federal and state officials, courts, comprehensive reviews of the conflict states and Trump’s attorney general have found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, although Trump continues to state that the presidency was stolen from him.

Addressing Trump’s four years as president, Carlson said, Is everyone pretending we have a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it has been is so hard to digest. But okay. Trump really has no opposite.

In another text exchange more than a month ago, Carlson blasted the Trumps’ business abilities: Trump’s talent, he said, is to break things. He can easily destroy us if we play wrong.

Fox, in response to these and other court exhibits released late Tuesday, said Dominion was caught red-handed using more distortions and misinformation in its PR campaign to discredit the Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press. We already know they will say and do everything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes at the highest levels of our company is beyond the pale.

Foxs founder, Rupert Murdoch, has a complicated relationship with Trump: I am not close to him, Murdoch said in a deposition in the libel case.

In fact, although Murdoch acknowledged talking to Trump from time to time, he said he also sought inside information from Sean Hannity, one of his network primetime hosts, because Hannity was the closest person to him. on Fox to Trump.

Following Trump’s loss in November of 2020, Murdoch lost hope in the behavior of presidents.

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 the wall! Don’t know about Melania, but the kids are helpless.

But Murdoch told his network officials he didn’t want to fight Trump either: He has a huge following, and probably mostly Fox viewers, so it would be stupid, Murdoch said in a deposition in the Dominion case. .

In a separate inquiry into the case, Murdoch admitted that he believed the 2020 presidential election was not stolen.

On social media recently, Trump has been critical of Fox as other court papers released in the Dominion case make clear that some network executives and personalities privately believe the election fraud claims are false.

Trump and his team also accused Fox of giving his latest presidential campaign scant attention and favoring a potential challenger for the GOP nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In a fiery speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee last week, Trump ally Steve Bannon complained that Fox disrespected the former president.

You assumed Trump would never be president, Bannon said. Well, we think you won’t have a network.

On Saturday afternoon. Fox News aired Trump’s CPAC speech in its entirety.

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Riccardi reports from Denver. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Gary Fields in Washington and Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.

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