Contrary to popular belief, being a bigoted, pathological liar has never stopped anyone from being ultra successful. For example, Coco Chanel is probably the most iconic fashionista of all time (and rightfully so, considering everything she contributed to the fashion world, including the concept of the Little Black Dress), but she was also an antisemitic Nazi sympathizer who would often lie differently about the same thing multiple times in one interview. While it’s right to be abhored by this behavior, at least Chanel was a genuine genius and revolutionary who contributed something useful to the world, unlike the globe’s current most famous liar and Nazi sympathizer, Donald Trump.
While Trump’s lies are numerous and vary between just plain stupid and outright harmful, the worst mistruth he’s helped to perpetuate is that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged against him. This, in turn, led directly to the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the swell of seditious right-wing behavior that’s grown in size and extremity since. Trump is used to bullying and threatening people as a tactic to turn reality into something that he agrees with, as seen by his failed attempt at intimidating Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into manipulating votes, and now he seems to be back on the warpath, but this time with a new foe: Fox News.
In a Hollywood-style betrayal twist, Trump recently sent out an incendiary post on Truth Social about his formerly favorite news network, stating the following (in his now signature, old-man-shouts-at-cloud, caps lock):
“FOX NEWS IS IN BIG TROUBLE IF THEY DO NOT EXPOSE THE TRUTH ON CHEATING IN THE 2020 ELECTION. THEY SHOULD DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR AMERICA. WHEN RUPERT MURDOCH SAYS THAT THERE WAS NO CHEATING IN LIGHT OF THE MASSIVE PROOF THAT WAS THERE, IT IS RIDICULOUS AND VERY HARMFUL TO THE FOX CASE. PERHAPS HE SHOULD SAY THAT “HE JUST DIDN’T KNOW,” BUT THAT IS HARD TO BELIEVE. RUPERT, JUST TELL THE TRUTH AND GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. THE ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLLEN…YOU KNOW IT, & SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE!”
The fact he’s still bleating on about the election being stolen — despite countless commissions and investigations finding no fraud on the scale he’s implied — is likely just to distract from his ongoing legal troubles. And, for all his faults, the former president and spray-tan enthusiast is skilled at manipulating the American media ecosystem, so this isn’t the worst tactic he’s ever tried – especially as his lawyers often have to tell him to shut up because his rants are making it impossible for them to defend him.
While Fox News was happy to run with the election fraud myth for quite some time (remember, their lawyers have admitted you shouldn’t believe much of what is said on the channel), a recent lawsuit by the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems has the multi-billion dollar corporation on the defensive. The channel is arguing that Fox deliberately aired false claims about the role of Dominion in the 2020 election, and continued to do so as it was profitabe, despite receiving lots of evidence (often directly from Dominion) to the contrary. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Trump actually won in several states that Dominion machines were used in.
Fox has argued they were simply reporting claims made by relevant people, even though some of those supposedly relevant folks — like Sidney Powell — are genuinely unhinged. That’s not too subjective a judgement, either: Powell’s legal team have stated that no reasonable person would believe her statements about the election. It’s also transpired recently that Powell received the so-called tip off about Dominion from an anonymous email written by somebody who claimed to be “internally decapitated” and can talk to the wind. Not exactly the best sources being used by Fox, then.
While the actual case is set to start tomorrow, the discovery phase (in which lawyers from either side gather and trade evidence) has already produced some truly hilarious information about the Fox company, its main presenters, and how the media conglomerate was generally feeling about Trump. To put it bluntly, it’s not looking good for all around terrible human being Rupert Murdoch and his favored tool for poisoning the minds of the American public.
There are around 10,000 pages of court documents that have been made public, which include private texts, emails, and deposition transcripts. One of the funniest things we learned from all of this information was that alumnus of prestigious boarding schools and colleges and archetypal rich kid Tucker Carlson claimed that he hated trump “passionately,” and that the Apprentice star’s behavior after the election was “disgusting.”
In the same text thread, which took place two days before the Capitol attack, Carlson said:
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
While it’s no surprise that Carlson is a slimy, backstabbing creep, it is funny to think what the most recent chats between Trump and the Fox host have been like (although, there is a lot of speculation that Trump can’t read, so maybe Tucker will get away with it).
While the Carlson news is funny, a more worrying revelation for Fox was the release of Murdoch’s private emails and messages, where he admitted Trump’s views on the election were “bullshit” and “damaging.” He even went on to disparage his network hosts in an email to Fox News chief Suzanne Scott, writing that “…maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] went too far.” Given the hundreds of arrests after Jan. 6, that may be a bit of an understatement from the Australian media mogul.
Perhaps the most damning bit of evidence we now have access to came from a deposition the supervillain-esque head of Fox was involved in. Lawyers for Dominion repeatedly asked him if he believed the company was involved in “an effort to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump,” to which Murdoch replied: “I’m open to persuasion; but, no, I’ve never seen it.”
There are countless other quotes that could be pulled from the released legal documents to showcase that Fox knew they were spreading lies, but one the most inciminating ones that directly implicated Fox News is from then DC Managing Editor Bill Sammon, who messaged a colleague that: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do bad things.” This is effectively an admission that his staff are lying on air to keep the viewers happy. The radicalized, overly online tail was truly wagging the money-hungry dog, it seems.
The worst thing about all of this is that the Dominion fraud theory was clearly deluded from the second it came out. On Fox, Rudy Giuliani said the following:
“It’s way beyond what people think, including a very, very dangerous foreign company that did the votes in 27 states, a company that’s not American, a company that’s foreign, a company that has close, close ties with Venezuela and, therefore, China and uses a Venezuelan company software that’s been used to steal elections in other countries. One of the people there is a big supporter of antifa and has written horrible things about the president for the last three or four years. And, the software that they use is done by a company called Smartmatic, a company that was founded by [Hugo] Chávez and by Chávez’s two allies, who still own it. And it’s been used to cheat in elections in South America.”
A quick google will prove most of this wrong (and also point out that Smartmatic themselves have stated their machines were manipulated by local election officials in Venezuela to help Chávez win re-election). The only Conservative Bingo item missing from Giuliani’s statement is a mention of the Clintons, although we’re sure someone, somewhere has dragged them into this.
All of this points to the fact that Donald Trump might lose his stranglehold on Fox. The company, even with all its fancy lawyers, have a mountain to climb – one that’s even more daunting than Trump’s increasingly diminishing threats. With that said, the ex-president’s every word is still treated like gospel by many of Fox’s most ardent viewers, so he still holds some sway. What Fox have to figure out is whether keeping him on their side is worth potentially losing $1.6 billion.