Lawsuit shows Trump spurred ‘existential crisis’ at Fox News
Private messages from cable network hosts show anger at former president as they spread his election fraud lies
For years, Fox News executives and hosts cultivated a close relationship with Donald Trump. But after he lost the 2020 presidential election and turned his back on the network — inspiring many once-loyal viewers to do the same — the relationship curdled.
And the ensuing pressure caused tension, second-guessing and infighting within Fox on the scale of an “existential crisis,” as one senior executive called it, a cache of internal communications released Tuesday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit indicates.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” prime-time host Tucker Carlson texted a colleague on Jan. 4, 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”
Carlson, who had shared private meetings with the president and defended him on-air, added in a text: “I hate him passionately . ... What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Carlson’s private thoughts are especially striking in light of a new round of criticism this week that he misrepresented exclusive security-camera footage from the U.S. Capitol through a lens of Trumpian misinformation to downplay the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Dominion Voting Systems, an election-technology company, has sued Fox, arguing the cable-news giant gravely hurt its economic future by allowing allies of Trump to claim falsely on Fox programs that it rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden.
The materials unveiled Tuesday included a large selection of exhibits mentioned in past legal motions that have generated headlines and controversy for the network. Internal communications and sworn testimony suggest that top executives and hosts privately doubted the veracity of election fraud claims even as Fox continued to air them — which Dominion argues was motivated by fear of losing Trump-supporting viewers.
“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” Fox’s billionaire co-founder Rupert Murdoch emailed the company CEO, referring to prime-time stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who had entertained the baseless election conspiracy theories on-air.
“All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump,” Murdoch continued, “but what did he tell his viewers?” What emerges from the emails is an organization riven by internal conflicts as they grappled with the burgeoning crisis spawned by the loss of favor from Trump — which threatened to send some of his most ardent supporters to rival cable news channels.
Not long after Murdoch agonized over whether his hosts had “gone too far,” one of the most high-ranking news editors, Bill Sammon, texted a colleague: “In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis — at least journalistically.” The “crisis” was the network’s continued focus on what Sammon called “supposed election fraud.”