Damning messages reveal Fox News' executives mocking Trump's lies
There are newly revealed text messages that show how some of the biggest names at Fox News actually felt about the bogus election fraud claims that they were pushing at the same time on Fox's air. So these messages were revealed as in court filings. This is part of a Dominion's billion dollar lawsuit against the right-wing media channel. CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy joining us with more. So these documents perhaps in some ways what they're revealing is not surprising to folks who work in the media, maybe people in Washington, but maybe revealing for a lot of dedicated viewers. Yeah, I think this this court filing the messages contained in it really exposed Fox News as frankly a propaganda machine in search of profit. You see that the top executives people like Rupert Murdoch as well as the top hosts people like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, they knew they privately knew and acknowledged behind the scenes that the election fraud claims being pushed by President Donald Trump's campaign were bogus.
They were not true. And yet the network allowed these claims to make its way onto their air and they were shy about fact-checking. In fact, in one case, one of the Fox News correspondents, Jackie Heinrich, the White House correspondent, fact-checked a tweet from Trump pushing election denialism and behind the scenes, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity talked about how they could get her fired simply for fact-checking for doing her job as a reporter when you're supposed to report the truth and put only the facts out there. That's precisely right. And she wasn't fired. She's still at the network. But that tweet that she did post fact-checking the president did eventually come down.
I think this shows how void of any journalistic ethics the people at the top of Fox News were. They were not caring about, you know, what the right thing to do as a reporter is. They were caring about not alienating their audience. They were afraid of the audience and afraid of Donald Trump. And these messages, they're really quite damning and they reveal it. Oliver, as these messages were revealed, has Fox News been covering those revelations in the last 24 hours? Fox News is surprisingly not covering the revelations exposing their own network. And I would also note that the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, has also not covered this as well.
Fox News, I should say, is accusing this of dominion of cherry-picking quotes in this court filing. But I went through it. I mean, it's hundreds of pages and they lay out a mountain of evidence that is really an indictment of the network. So in part of that, too, we've been pointing out in some of this, Tucker Carlson pointing out, Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her. It's insane. Laura Ingram says Sidney is a complete nut.
No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy. Carlson actually says it's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it. That one really sticks with me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it. And we're going to keep spoon feeding what we know our lies to them.
It's so, I mean, Tucker Carlson, despite saying these things, went on air last night after this court filing had come out. He went on air last night and cast out on the 2020 election at the top of his program. This is what these people do. They don't care about the facts. They know behind the scenes that the election was not rigged, that it was not stolen. And yet in search of profits in search of power, they go on air and feed the audience this nonsense. And they know it's nonsense and they still do it.
And I don't know what there is to say about it, but it does expose this network as not interested in the facts, not interested in the truth, but interested in telling the audience what they want to hear. So they don't lose it. And above all else, holding on to that audience, right? They don't want to lose those numbers. They don't want to lose the eyeballs, the advertising revenue, the numbers. Oliver, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
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