Exposed: Tucker Carlson’s Secret Text Messages To Laura Ingraham During Which He ADMITTED Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Fraud Claims Were ‘Insane’
Feb. 17 2023, Published 8:10 a.m. ET
Tucker Carlson and other Fox News hosts and senior executives privately expressed disbelief over then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims while still “promoting” those lies on air, RadarOnline.com has learned.
In the latest development to come during Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, it has been revealed network hosts like Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham privately mocked Trump advisors Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani over the pair’s claims the 2020 presidential election was rigged in then-candidate Joe Biden’s favor.
But while the conservative news network is accused of pushing Trump’s election fraud claims on air and defaming Dominion Voting Systems, Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham were simultaneously messaging each other in private expressing doubt that the election was rigged, according to the New York Times.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on November 18, 2020 – two weeks after the 2020 presidential election. “It’s insane.”
“Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her,” Ingraham quickly responded. “Ditto with Rudy.”
“Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” Carlson added before indicating he did not believe the election fraud claims being pushed by Trump and his advisors at the time.
Also shocking is the fact that Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch also privately expressed disbelief over Trump’s election fraud claims.
In newly disclosed messages and testimony, Murdoch called the voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”
“Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear,” Murdoch also reportedly told Chief Executive of Fox News Media Suzanne Scott while watching Powell and Giuliani push the election fraud claims on live television.
Meanwhile, the New York Post – another media property owned by Murdoch – published an editorial denying Trump had been cheated in the 2020 election and urging the then-president to stop touting such baseless, unfounded, and damaging claims.
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According to Fox News’ defense which was filed in court on Thursday, the network argued it did not endorse Trump’s claims the election was stolen but rather reported on a subject of “undeniable newsworthiness.”
“In its coverage, Fox News fulfilled its commitment to inform fully and comment fairly,” the network’s defense read. “Some hosts viewed the president’s claims skeptically; others viewed them hopefully; all recognized them as profoundly newsworthy.”
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," a Fox News spokesperson added in a statement on Friday.
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“Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law,” the network's statement continued. "Dominion’s motion for summary judgment takes an extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record."
"Unfortunately, Dominion refused to agree to allow FOX to make its response to that motion public," they added. "The reason for Dominion’s refusal will be clear when the public response is finally released on February 27."
"Dominion’s private equity owner Staple Street Capital bought the company in 2018 at an enterprise value of approximately $80 million and now seeks a $1.6 billion recovery for alleged damages to that $80 million asset."
