According to a recent report from The Guardian, the hosts at Fox News privately made fun of Donald Trump’s incessant claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Simultaneously, however, these same hosts were telling these “stolen election” lies on air.
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What 'Fox News' Hosts Really Thought Of Donald Trump
Rightwing personalities and Fox News hosts, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were named in the $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. This company is a seller of electronic voting hardware and software. They're suing Fox News, and its parent company Fox Corporation, for slander after lying about their involvement in "stealing" the 2020 election for President Biden. The court findings from this defamation case revealed that the hosts actually did not believe what they were peddling on the news network.
"He's acting like an insane person," Hannity allegedly wrote of Trump in the weeks following the election. Meanwhile, the host was still pushing the "big lie" during his prime-time show, The Sean Hannity Show. He even had election deniers on as guests to spout their beliefs for his show
Even Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox Corporation, was confused and critical of the former president's false allegations. In the court filings, Murdoch reportedly called these claims "really crazy stuff" in one memo to a Fox News executive. He wrote that it was "very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere," referencing Trump pursuing lawsuits in various states to try to overturn his defeat. Murdoch even said that Trump's attempt to prove fraud was "terrible stuff damaging everybody."
Carlson, on the other hand, was disdainful of Sidney Powell, a senior Trump attorney who repeatedly claimed Dominion's machines flipped votes cast for Trump to Joe Biden. "Sidney Powell is lying," he wrote to a producer, the Dominion lawsuit alleges. He referred to Powell in a text as an "unguided missile" and "dangerous as hell." Trump, Carlson said, was a "demonic force" who was good at "destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong."
Fellow host Ingraham also commented to Carlson that Powell was "a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy," referring to the former New York mayor, lawyer, and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.
Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition "that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second." Internal communications at Fox News revealed that executives, hosts, and researchers used phrases like "mind-blowingly nuts," "totally off the rails," and "completely BS" to describe the false election theories they were publicly promoting.
Not only were the hosts dismissive of Trump's false election claims, but they were also critical of the network for how it reported and supported them. The filing shows how Hannity and others were judgemental of their own network for its early call of Arizona for Biden on election night, which enraged Trump. Hannity reportedly messaged Carlson and Ingraham that the election call "destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable," while Carlson added that it was an "act of vandalism." All of these revelations were included in a 192-page redacted summary brief filed on Thursday, Jan. 16, at the Delaware superior court by Dominion's attorneys. A trial is scheduled to begin in April.
