The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.
Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.
The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”
On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”
Those are their own words, in writing. They believed what they were saying was not just wrong, but crazy, and that it was hurting the people of this country, cranking us up emotionally, and they did it anyway.
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86 comments:
I can't stand the model of "news" that happens at CNN and Fox and MSNBC. In any other period of humanity, these people would be considered mob spokespeople.
"The most secure election ever" or some such drivel. It was so secure the Commie-Pinkos will lay down in front of a freight rather than let voter ID be the law of the land. Gee, why is that?
The news cranks you up emotionally, that's the business model. Have you noticed it on the left? It's why you don't want women voting.
Dominion will lose because it's a fact that you can't audit electronic voting, even if they're as honest as the driven snow and even if they try to produce audits as part of the product.
Ref. Ken Thompson's Turing Lecture "On Trusting Trust." Fox attorneys take note.
Dominion isn't suing over general coverage of the election (whether or not FOX anchors believed Trump's claims isn't really germane to their reporting on it anyway), Dominion is suing over specific claims about Dominion voting machines. This has the feel of misdirection about it.
"Dominion will lose because it's a fact that you can't audit electronic voting, even if they're as honest as the driven snow and even if they try to produce audits as part of the product."
This to me is the most damning thing. We have places like Visa and Mastercard handling hundreds of millions of transactions (billions?) a day with pretty much perfect auditability.
You can't come close to that in the way we vote. Nor can you instantly tabulate votes.
It's probably the single most obscure government function performed today in our nation, and that's saying something.
Trump has bad judgment. No way should Rudy have been in charge of the post-election effort. The election was lost well before Election Day with all the cheating cooked up by Mark Zuckerberg as outlined in Molly Ball’s Time mag story.
Biden got something like 15m more votes than Obama. That’s not possible in a fair election.
And what about the mail-in ballots? And the “Mules” film be Dinesh Desouza?
The PA Supreme Court decision approving the election law change was one of the worst legal opinions I have ever read. Dred Scott worthy.
The Dems cheated. The GOP didn’t stop them in advance. And it is too hard to win a lawsuit to prove the cheating.
MI, WI, PA, NV and Atlanta are the key places where the cheating goes on and will continue to go on.
So they are now confirmed liars and you all got played for ratings.
Powell and Giuliani quite effectively destroyed their own credibility and the Fox internal reaction was no different than the horror of many watching their press conferences. She spouted off swing-for-the-fences conspiracy stuff, while Rudy's sweat and dripping hair dye was all it took to make people stop listening. Nutcases yes, malicious probably not.
There was an important finding or lesson at the root of those claims but not what they turned it into. When the Supreme Court allows corporations to spend freely in elections then you get all sorts of dark money and ulterior motives in politics. Thank the Republicans on the Supreme Court for this outcome per their corporate election donation decision in 2015:
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/939/corporate-speech
This post isn't about whether Dominion will or should win its defamation lawsuit.
This post is about the material that became available, the texts among various Fox News personages.
That material is useful and important for other purposes, and that is my interest here.
Murdoch’s comments need context. 81 million people voting for Biden - 18 million more than Obama - is crazy stuff, too.
Trump voters didn’t rely on Powell and Giuliani to recognize that that election was an outlier wrt expected results, given the fact that Biden was chosen by Obama and Clyburn (not the democrat voters), that Biden was cognitively impaired, that unprecedented early morning massive shifts in vote totals in large swing state cities, etc. The election fraud is at the heart of the cranking up - not Fox’s guests.
They are talking about one specific aspect of the many, many questionable goings-on relating to the election--the "Kraken" claims which Sydney Powell was supposedly going to reveal.
Note that those same Fox personalities were also convinced that the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation. At least convinced enough to give it a good leaving alone.
Perhaps the lawsuit by Dominion will force the defendants to present some statistical analysis of the probabilities of things going the way we are supposed to believe they went during the late night and early morning hours of the election.
Where do we see that the people who didn't believe it, said things they didn't believe? Is all they did was provide a platform for the nutcases?
I'll tell you what was unbelievable: that Joe Biden got 81.2 million votes. And every day in 2023, we see why it was and is so hard to accept. On Biden's best day in a 50 year career, he was exceptionally stupid, empty, and dishonest. He said Mitt Romney wanted to put black Americans back in chains! Biden should have been asked by the press, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Who would vote for such a creep?
I must say that I didn't watch any 2020 post election coverage on any network, including Fox News. Were they really all-in with Rudy and Sydney? I knew Sydney was bad news when she went to Georgia and suggested that Trump voters stay home in the Senate run-offs because Georgia's election system was corrupt. I stopped paying attention to Hannity and Ingraham years ago. Tucker Carlson is consistently interesting because he asks challenging questions--questions that deserve to be answered but are usually dismissed without answers by their targets. If you think of Tucker as being the Fox News counterpart of MSNBC's Maddow, you are probably in the right ballpark. And Tucker's ratings are higher. No wonder they hate him.
Brit Hume and his colleagues on the news side at Fox News play it straighter than their counterparts at CNN and MSNBC.
By the way, Althouse, these quotes from NYT sadly lack context. I feel like I am being spun. What was Carlson saying on the air when he sent those messages?
Hannity and Ingraham--well, we know where they stand. They stand relative to the GOP right where their counterparts at MSNBC and CNN stand with respect to the Demmies.
When I watch Fox News, I am interested in the questions they are asking, because the rest of the news media are letting the Demmies lie doggo.
They deserve as much trust as CNN, MSNBC, and the networks.
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you wanna be with me
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you wanna be with me
"Biden got something like 15m more votes than Obama. That’s not possible in a fair election.
"
Trump got more than 74 million votes, 11 million more than Bush got in 2004, when he won handily. I'm not sure I see the logic of your statement. People in both parties were moved to vote because of their strong feelings.
The biggest error the GOP made was to gripe about mail in voting instead of encouraging it. Trump now realizes that.
And yet they stole this country to wreck it
No its like the saudis silence those who pointed out the financiers behind 9/11 the baathist moneyman behind obama
Dominion was the backup for the mail fraud that james baker pretended to ignore
They want to make non leftist advocacy illegal
Of course the georgia system was corrupt as for the turtle pshaw
The left says stuff they don't believe. All the time. Lying to get votes is their strategy.
I stopped watching all news but Fox in 2012. Joined Twitter to follow people I trusted. When Fox called Arizona before voting stopped, they were no different that the alphabet media calling the 2000 election before the polls closed in the Panhandle of Florida. I shut them off then.
Dave Begley said, "Trump has bad judgment. No way should Rudy have been in charge of the post-election effort. The election was lost well before Election Day with all the cheating cooked up by Mark Zuckerberg as outlined in Molly Ball’s Time mag story.
Biden got something like 15m more votes than Obama. That’s not possible in a fair election."
Trump was a decent president in many respects in regards to his actual positions and actions as President. Yes, he was a blowhard and he said stupid stuff all the time. But his actions were solid, by Presidential action standards.
The way he comported himself in the face of a national tragedy of an election, the way he handled his Administration's COVID-19 response....those things made me lose all respect for him as an executive. January 6th didn't help either - not that he supported it, but that he very obviously watched it on the sidelines play out to see if it could benefit him.
...
In regards to electoral results
2012: ~129million total votes
2016: ~130 million total votes
2020: ~158 million total votes
Let's look at D/R split:
2016 - super close election - Clinton gets ~65 million votes, Trump gets ~63 million
2020 - Trump gets ~74 million votes, Biden gets 81 million, turnout represents 27 million more voters in aggregate
Now if we doubt Biden's 16 million extra votes we also have to cast doubt on Trump's 11 million additional votes.
Further, we have to believe that literal 10s of millions of votes were manufactuered/faked.
Are we really at that point as a nation? That that volume of votes can be faked and not be caught?
If so, we are no longer a nation.
Biden did not have 81.2 people vote,for him. A significant number of people were voting against Trump.
A useful way to quantify the impact of the anybody but Trump independents would be to calculate the difference between Brian Kemp’s and Herschel Walker’s 2022 vote totals.
"Trump got more than 74 million votes, 11 million more than Bush got in 2004, when he won handily. I'm not sure I see the logic of your statement. People in both parties were moved to vote because of their strong feelings."
The difference is, Obama was beloved by the women of both parties. He was sainted. People voted for him because he was the "first half black" president. You can't say that about Bush.
People voted for Trump because they liked the policies and the way the country was turning. Fraudulent Joe put a stop to that, and is destroying America as we know it. It's Obamas fundamental changing of America into the 3rd world slum it is today.
I would think that Fox and the three anchors will need to address this at some point.
Tucker has always been a bit of a chameleon. He has spent 20 years working on a formula and found it with his Independent School League/Ivy League meets Bill O’Reilly schtick.
Laura Ingraham has always seemed to be a twin of Ann Coulter.
Sean Hannity is stupid but makes up for it with hard work.
Mail in votes are not secret ballots. For a lot of people (mostly racists!), it's going to be a difficult adjustment to a new system where voter intimidation and vote buying (or "harvesting") will decide elections.
Those are their own words, in writing.
I’m reading what Ann posted from NYT and I see a combination of small snippets in quotations and paraphrasing by the New York Times…
"Maybe we should" see what was "actually" written “in these” (tweets)?
"Are we really at that point as a nation? That that volume of votes can be faked and not be caught?
If so, we are no longer a nation."
We haven't been for a long time. Trump brought that to light. That's why he must be prevented from running at all costs.
You're analogy is flawed. The machine that gathers the votes is democrat in nature. Why in only democrat precincts in democrat cities or counties where there are 90-100% voter turn out? Why is it that only in heavy republican districts are problems with voting machines? Why, in Wisconsin for example, was the turnout in nursing homes 100%?
Of course there was vote fraud. You just choose to turn a blind eye when the party you like is doing it.
On addition to calling Arizona Fox also told Newt he could not disclose on television that George Soros funded Democrat candidates. Those Fox ladies who lunch cut him off right quick. If you thought Fox doesn’t have an agendas, too..
Bonus: Have you ever met your local news anchor or the weather lady? On-air personalities tend to be on the bad part of the narcissist/asshole spectrum…
Private emails are always interesting. My evaluation of my companies direction and personnel would never be written or others memorialized. That these people used company email, drops their low IQ, another 10 points.
No Tree Joe, they weren't fake votes, but they might as well have been. Every homeless person in California, every person in Nevada who had two or three ballots mailed to previous addresses had their ballot harvested.
I'd like to know what Tucker was saying on air while texting. Because remember, Fox stood by their decision desk after 2020 when it was obvious they were wrong in Biden's favor. The voting issues are real, even if you believe that Sydney Powell believed a ludicrous story.
This is just Dominion giving red meat to the NYT.
TreeJoe:
With mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting, that may well be the case.
For myself, I certainly hope Trump gets indicted because there is no way he can win a national election.
Trump has bad judgment.
If the purpose of the post is about what Fox's personalities are saying when the cameras are off; I'm simply not surprised at all. It's like remarking that the sun rose in the east this morning. It's part of the reason I quit watching it and other news a decade ago. If nothing else more sinister, news media personalities are at least manipulating their audience to continue watching for the ads, and that's not a good thing.
I also agree with Amadeus that the texts lack content. That might go over fine with a jury without rebuttal, but stuff like this is contrived:
"Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not."
Where is the clarity of "he did not." He did not what? "Believe his viewers are good people", "Believe his viewers actually believed in Dominion's corruption", or "Believe in Dominion's corruption himself"? Perhaps I need to see from what he was continuing, but lacking that context, the comment from Carlson only suggests a positive view of his viewers and a sense they believe something. If Carlson's reporting was "many Americans believe Dominion voting system is corrupt", then I'm missing the defamation.
Amadeus 48 said...
...
Brit Hume and his colleagues on the news side at Fox News play it straighter than their counterparts at CNN and MSNBC.
That was another rich bit of Fox News Channel journalistic depravity contained in Dominion's
revelation of some of their discovery. At one point when Fox "news side" reporter Jacqui Heirich put out a Tweet in which she fact-checked some of the many election fraud claims being advanced by guests on the FNC prime time shows, Tucker Carlson directly texted Sean Hannity and demanded that Jacqui Heinrich be fired. Not because Heinrich's fact-check tweet was in error; it wasn't. Rather, Tucker wanted her fired because she was off-brand for Fox, and Tucker thought that Fox's stock price was falling.
And let us all remember that in an earlier revelation from Peter Baker's and Susan Glasser's book "The Divider," Fox "news side" guy Bret Baier was exposed demanding that the FNC call of Arizona for Biden be put back in Trump's column.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/21/fox-news-brett-baier-arizona-trump-book-baker-glasser-divider
Amadeus 48 said...
...
By the way, Althouse, these quotes from NYT sadly lack context. I feel like I am being spun. What was Carlson saying on the air when he sent those messages?
You needn't ask Althouse to do that work for you. Here's a link to the full Motion and Brief:
Holy fucking shit what a court filing! LOL!
I'm with whoever it was upthread about "snippets" and "paraphrasing." It possible to think some particular claims regarding vote fraud are incorrect and yet still believe that vote fraud occurred.
As for Fox's influence on the public, I don't have an opinion on that because I stopped watching all cable news networks over a decade ago. None of them are in the business of informing their viewers.
Here is a link to a youtube video that explains why electronic voting and tabulating are bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
Oh, and I second rhardin regarding _Reflections on Trusting Trust_
I suppose people will agree that Dominion machines are flawed and (relatively) easily hacked if they spit out tallies that give 100% of the votes to Donald Trump, and not before.
Especially if he isn’t on the ballot.
Goes to show you that these Fox stars went on air and spewed what they KNEW was conspiracy theory. How can Fox viewers continue to watch the network after this? But I bet they will and I bet the Fox stars will continue to count on gullible “good” people to believe anything.
"It's probably the single most obscure government function performed today in our nation, and that's saying something.
It's not an obscure function, its importance is fundamental, front and center in good governance. Its workings however are almost completely obscured from public scrutiny, effectively opaque where they should be the hallmark of 'transparent'.
We'll start to believe that elections are 'fair & squre' when the election hierarchy starts acting like they want it to be - like with audits on request, and with strict adherence to existing election security laws, and with annual scrubbing of voter rolls, and voter rolls that are wide open to public scrutiny, instead of secretly encoded (to prevent data analysis) and available at astronomical cost - as many of them are, now.
As for the Fox News drama, ohmygod, the network boyz are biased. Ohmyfreakingod. That means Dominion must be without blame or flaw.
The NYT writes the article as if doubts about the accuracy of public claims made by public figures somehow bars reportage of the claims.
A few years ago I was in the job market and came across a job posting from a major company involved in manufacturing ATMs and voting machines. Among the qualifications sought were installing software over a geographically dispersed environment and expertise in WindowsXP. WindowsXP was already EOL though I suppose there may have been a contract with MS to continue to provide patches. Would have been expensive though. That was a few years ago, so I would assume all those machines have moved on to some flavor of Linux by now, most likely RedHat for the support.
Banks are audited regularly, with no implications for fraud. Ditto businesses. Ditto elections for company Board of Directors. Elector qualifications are pre-checked. Ballot validity and date/time of ballot return are confirmed, chain of possession of ballots is verified, etc. Every valid stockholder has standing regarding results challenges. All routine stuff.
So why the big deal about an audit of national election results affecting trillions of dollars and millions of lives? And particularly when (ask any CPA/auditor) the national elections are purposely pre-designed to make them ripe for fraud, as in:
- suppressed checking for valid electors
- NO control of how many times a given voter may vote (such as in multiple precincts/states)
- limited or no controls on ballot validity
- multiple extensions for ballot return
- limited or no controls on chain of possession of returned ballots
- suppression of standing and conditions for challenge of results
- raising ANY of these issues makes you racist/fascist/anti-democracy
It appears that Fox was trying to not alienate viewers, but should have reigned things in. The article, as well as the one in WaPo, shows an interesting divide between what even hardcore Trump supporters like Hannity and Ingraham were saying and what they actually believed. Newscorp has deep pockets, but Murdoch has to be wondering if it's worth the cost and hassle to have done all this to hang on to an aging, shrinking demographic.
That material is useful and important for other purposes
…but you choose not to articulate those uses and purposes?
Ditto on rehajm's comment.
OT: Why not issue a chip-embedded credit/debit card type for voting where only the owner can see or release their history? Perhaps that would end the "my vote wasn't counted" or "I voted for X and it showed Y on the screen (or afterwards for whatever reason)". A better paper trail I would hope. Thoughts?
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
The biggest error the GOP made was to gripe about mail in voting instead of encouraging it. Trump now realizes that.
The time to deal with vote fraud was before the election. Trump, at the instigation of Kushner, hired a campaign manager with a long history with the GOPe. Then he replaced him with another long time GOPe guy.
Stepien went on to work for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004 and worked for both former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Sen. John McCain during the 2008 election season.
The move came days after an article in The Washington Post portrayed Parscale as self-promoting and aloof, noting that he featured prominently in an early Trump campaign ad -- and that staffers complained he often took calls by his swimming pool at home. New polls also show Trump lagging behind rival Joe Biden in the 2020 race.
The two managers spent all the money by September and did nothing to defend against mail ballot fraud. Kellanne Conway, who helped Trump win in 2016, was nowhere near the campaign.
Trump, because of the hostility of most political actors, was supported only by his family and made the mistake of relying too much on Kushner. It was the "kids" who fired Lewandowski and hired Manafort in 2016.
Also, I don't watch Fox News or any TV news. I do watch Tucker for his monologues and some of his interviews on Fox Nation. Hannity and Ingraham are unwatchable for me. Inga takes a moment away from CNN to comment on "lying" on TV.
One negative for watching only Fox News is that many viewers do not realize they are the only ones seeing stories, like the border, that are ignored by the corporate media.
What do the Dominion texts say, before and after the election?
I don't know if there was enough cheating to throw the election, and neither does anyone else. That's the problem.
My longstanding theory is that hostility by both parties towards election reforms and audits is due to the fact that both sides mismanage elections at the local level and engage in widespread grift and laziness. That was basically the lesson from the Kari Lake's lawsuit against Maricopa County: it wasn't that they were deliberately trying to screw her over, but Lake's attorney's did a good job in court of showing that Maricopa county was a complete shitshow that didn't follow it's own procedures. Voter rolls aren't being cleaned regularly, as required, nor are signatures being checked, as required, nor are local officials following the proper procedures for printing ballots or calibrating equipment. Of course, I have no doubt that they were receiving money to do all of those things.
This behind-the-scenes stuff goes both ways...
DEFENDANT FOX NEWS NETWORK, LLC’S BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF ITS RULE 56 MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Discovery in this case has revealed that Dominion’s own employees expressed serious concerns about the security of its machines. Mark Beckstrand, a Dominion Sales Manager, confirmed that other parties “have gotten ahold of [Dominion’s] equipment illicitly” in the past.
Beckstrand identified specific instances in Georgia and North Carolina and testified that a Dominion machine was “hacked” in Michigan. Beckstrand confirmed that these security failures were “reported about in the news.” And just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Dominion’s Director of Product Strategy and Security, Eric Coomer, acknowledged in private that “our shit is just riddled with bugs.” Indeed, Coomer had been castigating Dominion’s failures for years. In 2019, Coomer noted that “our products suck.” He lamented that “[a]lmost all” of Dominion’s technological failings were “due to our complete f--- up in installation.”
... And in another instance, he identified a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.” He went on to note: “It does not get much worse than that.” And while many companies might have resolved their errors, Coomer lamented that “we don’t address our weaknesses effectively!” Internal Dominion documents likewise confirm that Dominion machines suffered several potential glitches in the November 2020 election. After a security expert told the media that Dominion “software should be designed to detect and prevent th[e] kind of glitch” experienced in Antrim County, Michigan during the 2020 presidential election, Coomer told Dominion Vice President Kay Stimson: “He’s not entirely wrong.” Likewise, in the immediate aftermath of the election, Dominion received complaints from jurisdictions in Georgia noting “irregularities with machine counts” that required Dominion’s employees “to reprogram the machines.” [citations omitted]
Timeline is important. Lots of evidence emerged about fraud and rigging the election that supported the claims and may have changed some Fox minds.
"Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network."
Wishful thinking about the "reputational" part. The NYT has retained a large following despite lying its ass off on a daily basis and the availabilty of its bullshit on many MSM sources. Fox viewers are at least as loyal and have few other sources for "Fox news."
I would guess the stakes are higher for Dominion.
"Why not issue a chip-embedded credit/debit card type for voting where only the owner can see or release their history?"
1) How can I know that the issuer is trustworthy
2) Even if the issuer is trustworthy, is everyone in the supply chain trustworthy
3) How can I be sure that someone won't force people to release their history and therefore be able to control how someone votes
4) Someone figures out a way to hack the card
That's for why not's off the top of my head
"For myself, I certainly hope Trump gets indicted because there is no way he can win a national election."
Wow. I'll just say that you and I have very different opinions about what is right and what is wrong.
Also: What do the Fox commentators believe now?
Red Chinese bamboo ballots and voting software infected with the Ghost of Hugo Chavez: Any conspiracy vast and foul enough to cast 81 million votes for Joe Biden surely had covert support from Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.
This may be interesting if the same forensic actions were taken and results were posted from Dominion employees and the other news organizations.
It would be interesting to see private NYT and WaPo comments about all of the coverage of Trump's "Russia Collusion" accusations and reports. Names of "anonymous sources" would be quite interesting to have shared out.
Seeing as the quotes are selective and aired by a competitor (NYT) I really don't find them all that interesting.
Wince said...
What do the Dominion texts say, before and after the election?
Now that's an interesting and provocative question. Let's work our way through it, a la first-year Civil Procedure.
Does Defendant Fox have any damning/self-incriminating Dominion texts? If they do, we aren't seeing them. Fox would have EVERY reason to include them, if they were relevant to anything (or even if not so relevant to anything), in its own Motion for Summary Judgment. Has Fox done that? Not as far as I know. I think it is safe to presume that none exist. Fox would include them in its own brief in support of summary judgment if there were any.
It isn't like Fox couldn't get them, if they were probative of anything. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure favor open, forthcoming discovery in the district courts. Just look at what Dominion got from Fox.
But probative of what, exactly? Fox is a defendant. Does Fox have any claim against Dominion? Does it matter to any actionable claim, what Dominion emails may have said? They don't much matter to Dominion's defamation (and related) claims against Fox.
So then we get to the area where I think you were heading, Wince. What about any emails among Dominion executives that suggested that Dominion machines were corrupted, and that Dominion was working as an operative of Venezuela, or China, and/or they were otherwise in the tank for the Biden campaign? Well, then THAT would sure be big.
But that's not even an issue in the case! Fox is NOT claiming that their hosts' accusations were in fact true, and that they should be allowed to get discovery needed to prove that case! Fox, and its hosts, aren't saying that the election was stolen by corrupt Dominion machines!
So your question, "What do the Dominion texts say, before and after the election?", has an answer. In technical legal terminology (as well as Fox-host lingo, as we've now learned), the answer is, "Nobody fucking cares what the Dominion texts say!"
Trump doesn’t believe it either.
It’s just Trump’s revenge for the Russia Collusion Hoax and Fox News ratings maintenance.
Our leaders are liars and their Media Handmaidens know it.
"How can Fox viewers continue to watch the network after this? "
Because they are stupid and uneducated. And Tucker laughs all the way to the bank.
From Dominion's Summary Judgment Brief:
The afternoon of January 6, after the Capitol came under attack, then
President Trump dialed into Lou Dobbs show attempting to get on air. But Fox
executives vetoed that decision. Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness.
January 6 was an important event by any measure. President Trump not only was
the sitting President, he was the key figure that day. But Fox refused to allow
President Trump on air that evening because it would be irresponsible to put him
on the air and could impact a lot of people in a negative way.
Media Censorship! Elon Musk should buy Fox News Network and save us!
"For myself, I certainly hope Trump gets indicted because there is no way he can win a national election."
If Trump gets indicted, that's proof that elections are a complete joke. I don't want any president that the "powers that be" don't want to throw in jail for threatening their plans.
"The time to deal with vote fraud was before the election."
"First you win, then you fight" - Sun Tzu
If he didn't say it, he should have.
So the Georgia Grand Jury, which heard no opposing evidence to what was presented by the prosecutors, has opined that there was no "widespread fraud" in the Georgia election, and that they think that some people lied, but don't seem to have presented any evidence of it.
Hamilton Burger strikes again.
The counterclaim filed by Fox asking for a jury (of 12) trial is available online. Despite this BS piece from NYT, I'd say Fox is fine and Dominion has some problems.
The counterclaim blows up the $1.6 billion damage claim and asserts a strong First Amendment argument.
If it is still possible to get an honest judge or jury in a Democrat cesspool like New York, Fox is in good shape.
The Con Inc guys are wetting themselves because they hate Tucker so much. Dumb. The walls are closing in redux.
Case going to trial in Delaware.
Very soon, unless summary judgment granted
.
Everything a conservative says is a lie he tells to comfort himself in the face of a world too complex and dynamic for his feeble mind to comprehend and his insecure pride to accept.
His ideology began in rejecting reason. It has now graduated beyond denying facts, to browbeating his proposed arbiter of reality - his FOX foreign-owned “news” media - to cater to his own political theater of make-believe. And he triumphs in this perversion of reality.
His favored pundit, Tucker McNear “Frozen Dinner” Swanson Carlson, has called his leader a “demonic force.” His followers are therefore minions of the devil.
The “Democrat cesspool” that a commenter would call New York nevertheless succeeds in foregoing the perverse bounty hunting against obstetricians and their patients that the Evangelical Theocracy of Texas imposes on women who refuse to stand for forced pregnancy.
If you tell the truth its crimethink
The frontline (a month before) and the hbo special (some 6 months before) on dominions flaws
Blogger Chuck said...
"It is a bit unusual for counterclaims to be filed this late in civil proceedings."
I think they amended a prior counterclaim.
Hey! hombre! You're right! As of about 22 hours ago; you're right.
So thanks for the update!
Defendant Fox filed, yesterday (when?!?) filed a counterclaim. As pointed out just above, actually, "amended a prior counterclaim." My own earlier comment is now sort of weirdly prescient of that filing. Or unsealing, as they are calling it. The various state rules on civil procedure are way too varied, variable, and complicated to go through here, on when counterclaims may be allowed. Sometimes they must be filed, if at all, in a party's first responsive pleading. But there's a world of room, and differing circumstances on when a counterclaim can be filed.
This case, Dominion v. Fox, et al, is pending in Delaware's Superior Court.
But anyway this is quite interesting, at least from the standpoint of reading the pleadings as a fan with a rooting interest. It raises the question; what exactly is the nature of the counterclaim and how might any intra-Dominion statements relate? If the counterclaim is simply that the First Amendment protects Fox, that seems like more of an Affirmative Defense than a Counterclaim. I gather that Fox is saying, "Sure, the stolen election story may have been complete bullshit, and we know that many of our people thought so, but the story was 'out there' and was being talked about, so we took it upon ourselves to talk about it as well because the mere existence of the story was news..."
I don't think it is going to work for Fox, but we'll see everybody in court.
Thanks again hombre.
The fact that Chuck seems so excited by it instantly makes me sure it’s a non story.
The Amended Counterclaim is for legal fees.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23684830-public-version-fnns-first-amended-counterclaim-accepted
Carlson expressed the same doubts on TV.
Cernivich has the receipts on Twitter re: Carlson.
Never ending BS every day.
"I'll tell you what was unbelievable: that Joe Biden got 81.2 million votes...Who would vote for such a creep?"
Quite obviously and understandably, people who would vote for anyone other than Trump. They weren't voting for Biden, but against Trump. (I didn't vote for Biden. I voted for the Green Party candidate, whoever he was.)
By the way, regarding your phrasing as to "who would vote for such a creep?" On the candidates' own "merits" (sic), who would vote for either of them? They're both creeps.
"'Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not."'
"Where is the clarity of 'he did not.' He did not what? 'Believe his viewers are good people,' 'Believe his viewers actually believed in Dominion's corruption,' or 'Believe in Dominion's corruption himself?'"
That the vote was rigged.
Althouse wrote: "Those are their own words, in writing. They believed what they were saying was not just wrong, but crazy, and that it was hurting the people of this country, cranking us up emotionally, and they did it anyway."
I don't think that is a fair characterization for Tucker Carlson. For the others, I don't have evidence one way or another. However, the following is a 4:24 clip from Tucker Carlson Tonight on 11/19/2020, the day after these texts.
https://news.grabien.com/story-tucker-sidney-powells-voter-fraud-allegations-she-still-hasn
Among his comments:
"So that’s a long way of saying we took Sidney Powell seriously, we have no intention of fighting with her, we always respected her work — we simply wanted to see the details. How could you not want to see them? So we invited Sidney Powell on this show, we would’ve given her the whole hour, we would’ve given her the entire week actually and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention — that's a big story. But she never sent us any evidence despite a lot of requests, polite requests, not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her. When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they told us Powell has never given them any evidence either, nor did she provide any today at the press conference."
"Powell did say that electronic voting is dangerous. And she's right, we're with her there. But she never demonstrated that a single, actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one."
"Why are we telling you this? We're telling you this because it's true. And in the end, that's all that matters -- the truth. It's our only hope. It's our best defense. And it's how we're different from them. We care what's true, and we know you care too. That's why we told you. Maybe Sydney Powell will come forward soon with details on exactly how this happened and precisely who did it. Maybe she will, we are certainly hopeful that she will."
"What happened with the vote counting this month and at the polling places in Detroit and the polling places in Philadelphia and so much else actually matters. It matters no matter who you voted for. It matters whether or not you think this election is already over. Until we know the answers to those questions conclusively and we can agree on them, this country will not be united. "
"..."What happened with the vote counting this month and at the polling places in Detroit ..."
There weren't any voting irregularities or counting mistakes or violations of election law in Detroit.
As usual, Tucker is lying through his teeth in trying to get his listeners to believe that. There were some "problems" at the Detroit absentee ballot counting center (The TCF Center) in downtown Detroit, which is not a polling place. The problems were largely caused by riotous Trump supporters from outside of the City of Detroit.
Now I don't expect any of you TrumpWing fanatics to take my word for this fact. I do expect some of you will read and understand the comprehensively factchecked official 2020 election report authored by a committee led by Michigan Republican Senator Ed McBroom.
Here is a link to Senator McBroom's page where you can find a full copy of that report:
https://www.senatoredmcbroom.com/senate-oversight-committee-releases-report-on-november-2020-general-election/
And as always, I fully understand that there is no evidence, or lack of evidence, and no source, no matter how "Republican," that will convince some of you. That's fine. I know you exist; I have no need to convince you, or even engage with you. I just want to minimize you in every way possible, and to beat you electorally whenever you cannot otherwise be minimized.
Way too many comments about election fraud, totally missing the point. We are talking about lying by Fox hosts.
@Inga "Goes to show you that these Fox stars went on air and spewed what they KNEW was conspiracy theory." Does it? The article I saw didn't mention any of them spewing conspiracy theory, just letting people do it who they thought were nuts.
There's been too much of this, especially since Jan 6: A doesn't believe in election fraud, so B who does believe in it is lying.
MikeR said...
Way too many comments about election fraud, totally missing the point. We are talking about lying by Fox hosts.
@Inga "Goes to show you that these Fox stars went on air and spewed what they KNEW was conspiracy theory." Does it? The article I saw didn't mention any of them spewing conspiracy theory, just letting people do it who they thought were nuts.
There's been too much of this, especially since Jan 6: A doesn't believe in election fraud, so B who does believe in it is lying.
The recent release of discovery materials including internal Fox emails shows how knowingly the Fox hosts lied, and how they allowed and/or encouraged regular program guests to lie without correction.
If you want to know what the broadcast/published lies were, go to the Dominion complaint versus Fox, et al.
Here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20527880-dominion-v-fox-news-complaint
I'm not sure all the Hoopla? These Fox viewers have been duped for years and the spinners (Hannity, Tucker, the lady what's her name to name a few) all spin the lies they don't believe and allow the lies to go unchallenged, the duped one's chime in, yes trump won, it was rigged, supposedly intelligent people? Cmon man, Rupert will pay couple billion and the show will go on the duped will remain duped and lost in delusion and so on it goes. Nothing the serfs down here can do, so grin and bear it it's a lawless and corrupt organization welcome to the Machine! Whats all the hoopla? Sometimes you do get what you deserve :)
Seems to me that the excerpts gsgodfrey supplied pretty much blow away the whole premise of this story at least when it comes to Tucker C. (In spite of Chuck's fevered take on those excerpts, which is a remarkable example of a swing-and‐a-m8ss on something called "the point.") I mean there it is - Tucker telling his audience that this crazy lady's theories shouldn't be taken seriously.
I don't know if the lefties here are aware, but millions of Republicans were tearing their hair out at the time, wondering why the Trump "organization" was chasing these arcane theories and ignoring what seemed and still seem the heart of the matter - like the undeniable looseness of the whole mailed-ballot infrastructure in so many places.
So what I see is that same frustration playing out at Fox.
By the way Chuck, and Inga, and hpudding and others - every time you lose control of yourselves and bleat out some crude global putdown of "all conservatives," it reminds me once again why I left the left some years ago and why people like you need to be opposed. You seem to exist only to hate half the population. That makes you the problem.
Paul From Minneapolis:
Never, EVER have I put down "all conservatives."
That is pretty much the opposite of what I have been saying, constantly, for the last six years. I feel like I am a conservative. I have spent years commenting on this blog's comments pages, praising Bill Buckley, Justice Scalia, Bill Kristol, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg... and now Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
ALL of my putdowns are aimed at Trump. At Trumpism. At "MAGA, and "America First." That's it. And that's not half the population. It might not even be a quarter of the population. But whatever percentage they are, I am against them.
They aren't "conservatives."
Rush Limbaugh: "Can somebody point to me the conservative on the ballot?...'What do you mean, Rush? Are you admitting Trump is not a conservative?' Damn right I am! ...Folks, when did I ever say that he was? Look, I don't know how to tell you this. Conservatism lost, in the primary, if that's how you want to look at it. We had [Ted] Cruz; we had [Marco] Rubio."
“The conservative movement, which I don’t use, I call it the American movement, ’cause that’s all it is, we are no longer conservatives, we are Americans who love our founding,” Matt Schlapp told Steve Bannon on the War Room show/podcast on Real America’s Voice. This wasn’t a gotcha interview. This was Schlapp on friendly terrain, trying to advertise CPAC to Bannon’s followers.
So let's be clear that we are not talking about my criticizing "conservatism."
And really; let's go a step further. With Trumpism, we've seen a more or less concerted effort to disrupt if not destroy the Republican Party. The Trumpists HATE John McCain, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell. The Trumpists hate the Bushes, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney. What the Trumpists hate more than anything is any Republican who isn't completely loyal to Trump. The definition of a cult of personality. The Trumpists are at WAR with almost every great conservative writer of the past 25 years. There are a few exceptions of course, but the exceptions do nothing so much as to prove the general rule.
Today's GOP is in the midst of its own private civil war. And it looks like a death match, frankly. The House GOP could barely elect a Speaker. Rick Scott tried to unseat Mitch McConnell as Minority Leader, and now McConnell is systematically de-personing Scott. The nascent GOP Presidential Primary looks like a name-calling street fight. State and local GOP organizational memberships are at war with each other. (The Michigan GOP, with an extreme Trumpist base, has just elected a fanatical Trumpist Chairwoman, has lost all of its major donors, and is completely out of money.) Regular, competent GOP election professionals all across the country are under attack because they properly and legally certified the Biden election. The war stories are endless. I could go on for another 2000 words.
Trump was right about just one thing; we don't just hate Trump; we hate his most fanatical followers. But really, who cares about that? We see our job as preventing any more Trumpist general-electoral wins. And on that, we are doing a pretty good job. Oh, the Trumpists are going to continue to win primaries. They can do that, within the twisted, delusional Trumpublican base. In some cases, as with John Gibbs in the MI-3 congressional district, or with Don Bolduc in NH, Democrats will help those TrumpWing maniacs win their primaries. In order to slaughter the GOP in general elections.
So there you have it. I adore conservatism and thoughtful conservatives. I loathe Trump and Trumpism.
Paul From Minneapolis said...
" but millions of Republicans were tearing their hair out at the time, wondering why the Trump "organization" was chasing these arcane theories and ignoring what seemed and still seem the heart of the matter - like the undeniable looseness of the whole mailed-ballot infrastructure in so many places. "
Not in the Althouse comments they weren't (still are not). It was "daaa I went to bed and Trump was ahead and then I woke up and he was behind. It was clearly rigged I tell you. Daaaa"
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