Fox News host Tucker Carlson allegedly called former president Donald Trump a “demonic force” who could “destroy” him if he missteps.
“He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong,” Carlson said in a text to Fox News producers, according to court filings in the Dominion defamation case. He called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer,” adding, “But he’s not going to destroy us.”
Fox News has slammed the massive $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against them by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential elections as an assault on the First Amendment by the attorneys for the channel.
Dominion fired back, writing: “From the top down, Fox knew ‘the dominion stuff’ was ‘total bs’. Yet despite knowing the truth – or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth – Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy’, ‘absurd’, and ‘shockingly reckless’”.
Attorneys for Fox, however, argued that Dominion’s lawsuit is aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner Staple Street Capital Partners and its investors, The Independent reports.
“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day – allegations by the sitting president of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” stated the Fox News counterclaim. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”
A five-week trial is scheduled to begin on April 17.
See a screengrab of Carlson’s text below.
Tucker Carlson repeatedly frets in text messages to his producer that Trump is a "demonic force" who could "destroy" him if Carlson missteps: "He's the
undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong." pic.twitter.com/b3W6wXK8Pr
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) February 17, 2023