‘I hate Trump passionately,’ texts Fox anchor
Network disputes court filing that Tucker Carlson sent text revealing his loathing for ex-president
TUCKER CARLSON, the Fox News host, sent a private text message saying he “passionately hates” Donald Trump, according to a court filing.
The message was disclosed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6billion (£1.3billion) defamation case against the network.
In a text to another Fox employee on Jan 4 2021, according to the court filing, Carlson wrote: “We are very very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.
“I hate him passionately, I blew up at Peter Navarro [an economic adviser to Mr Trump] today in frustration.
“I actually like Peter. But I can’t handle much more of this.”
In a public statement issued in response, Fox News strongly disputed the filing. It said: “Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught redhanded using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free
‘We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights – I truly can not wait’
speech and freedom of the press. We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”
Dominion has accused the network of knowingly airing false claims about the election.
Fox News has called for the case to be dismissed as protected by the First Amendment, which covers freedom of speech.
It has also accused Dominion of cherry-picking and taking out-of-context messages sent by its senior figures.
The latest filing by the voting technology company also included messages from Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon whose empire includes Fox.
In an email dated Jan 21 2021, Mr Murdoch wrote to Suzanne Scott, the Fox News Media chief executive, that Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, two of the network’s hosts, maybe “went too far” backing Mr Trump’s claims about the election.
He wrote: “Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?”
The latest disclosure came amid a separate controversy over Carlson being handed 41,000 hours of security footage from the US Capitol riot on Jan 6 2021.
The footage was given to him by Kevin Mccarthy, the recently appointed Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
It was part of an attempt to counter the narrative set by the Democrat-led January 6 Committee that investigated the riot.
Mr Trump said Carlson’s presentation of the footage this week was “irrefutable” evidence that rioters had been wrongly accused of crimes. And he thanked Carlson and Mr Mccarthy for having “rectified” the official record.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, Mr Trump called Carlson “brave”.
Presenting the footage, Carlson said only a small number of those who wen to the Capitol illegally were “hooligans” and most were no “insurrectionists” but “sightseers”.
Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader in the Senate, condemned the broadcast and urged the network to cancel any follow-up segment. He accused Carlson of an “unforgivable attempt to destabilise our democracy and rewrite the history of the worst attack on our Constitution since the Civil War”.
He added that Mr Mccarthy was “every bit as culpable as Mr Carlson”.
Mr Schumer later said he had been invited on to Carlson’s show.
He said he would agree to appear “after Tucker Carlson admits to his viewers live on air that he has been lying to them”.