“This is exactly why people believe in conspiracies.” Amazingly, that’s a quote from the latest document dump of Fox communications in the Dominion $1.6 billion defamation suit alleging Fox executives and personalities knew they were broadcasting lies about the company. The speaker of the quote? None other than the host proclaims that his is “the program that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity smugness and group think,” Tucker Carlson.
“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” Murdoch emailed a network executive. Murdoch’s communications continued to demonstrate that he doubted the election fraud claims his hosts were making, asking if the network “unarguabl[y]” had to support the election fraud claim.
The Washington Post is sifting through the documents and posting some juicy bits, which National Zero will update here as they’re posted on various media.
Update 1: “I hate our Decision Desk people! And pollsters! Some of the same people I think,” Murdoch told the New York Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan, who never reported on his boss’s hatred of journalistic accuracy. Murdoch said he was “still praying for Az to prove them wrong,” hoping for a Trump victory in the state would undermine his accurate election forecasting team.
Update 2: “Know you are spending less on tv than Biden,” Murdoch wrote to Trump son-in-law and misprisioner of murderers of journalists Jared Kushner. “However my people tell me his [advertisements] are a lot better creatively than yours.” After Kushner responded that the Trump campaign would be submitting new ads, Murdoch made sure he reviewed them personally before airing. “Your [advertisement] at 1 p.m. this Sunday an improvement,” he wrote to Kushner.
Update 3: Murdoch told Suzanne Scott, Fox CEO, that he believed Trump would eventually concede and encouraged Scott to refocus coverage away from Trump to the January 2021 Georgia runoffs. The hosts, Murdoch urged, “should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can.”
The statement raises a number of legal red flags, the least of which is not if Fox coverage of the GOP during elections–like Hannity and other hosts literally hosted on-air political rallies around the country for the GOP during the 2020 election and 2022 midterms–should be considered political contributions to the Republican Party.
Update 4 (7:29 p.m. ET): Murdoch proclaimed Trump would fade into history. On November 23rd, 2020 Murdoch wrote to a Fox executive, “In another month Trump will be becoming irrelevant and we’ll have lots to say about Biden, Dems, and appointments.” When Murdoch says “a lot to say,” he means a lot of bitching and moaning by Fox hosts about inconsequential things to enrage the network’s viewers in the hopes of recapturing the audience that abandoned Fox after it reported reality.
Update 5 (8:59 p.m. ET): Even Tucker Carlson’s producers knew what they were touting was a farce. “Dominion was used in Ohio and Florida,” Fox producer Alex Pfeiffer messaged an unidentified person. “Trump won them. Did they forget to rig those or all part of the plan?”