Two-faced Tucker Carlson and the ugly underbelly of Rupert Murdoch’s FNC

The $1.6 bil­lion defama­tion suit filed by Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems against Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC has pro­duced a doc­u­ment dump of rev­e­la­tions into uneth­i­cal con­duct not seen since the Nixon White House tapes revealed the office talk of our thir­ty-sev­enth pres­i­dent in the 1970s, a long-bygone decade.

The high/low point came Tues­day night. Using footage sup­plied by House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy, FNC host Tuck­er Carl­son sought to depict the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021, U.S. Capi­tol insur­rec­tion­ists as peace­ful tourists, escort­ed through hal­lowed cor­ri­dors by Capi­tol police. Kudos from Don­ald Trump: “Con­grat­u­la­tions to Tuck­er Carl­son on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in U.S. history.”

On the same day, Domin­ion dropped its lat­est depo­si­tions, reveal­ing what Carl­son real­ly thought of our forty-fifth pres­i­dent. “I hate him pas­sion­ate­ly,” Tuck­er said in an email two days before the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion, adding that “we are very very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I tru­ly can’t wait.”

The net­work had lion­ized Trump for four years, but of his pres­i­den­cy Carl­son said: “We’re all pre­tend­ing we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admit­ting what a dis­as­ter it’s been is too hard to digest. But come on, there real­ly isn’t an upside to Trump.”

In the pri­vate sec­tor, Carl­son said of Trump, Trump was a failure.

“What he’s good at is destroy­ing things. He’s the undis­put­ed world cham­pi­on of that,” and was to add: “He’s a demon­ic force, a destroy­er. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been think­ing about this every day for four years.”

The words came from one who had gushed that Trump “the great­est pres­i­dent that every will be” in con­ver­sa­tion with fel­low Fox host Greg Gut­feld,” and lat­er a “gen­uine­ly great president.”

The “upside” to Trump, of course, was that Fox News reaped access, rat­ings and income dur­ing Donald’s four years in office.

Trump true believ­ers sought sus­te­nance from the net­work. Sean Han­ni­ty was trans­formed from a pub­lic bore into a pun­dit with reg­u­lar access and an advis­er to the pres­i­dent. Carl­son car­ried on the president’s cul­ture wars for white people.

In the wake of the 2020 elec­tion, how­ev­er, Carl­son and oth­er Fox hosts saw the destroy­er side of Trump. The net­work of pro­pa­gan­dists had field­ed an hon­est vote tab­u­la­tion effort. Late on elec­tion night, Fox pre­dict­ed that Joe Biden would car­ry Ari­zona, the first Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date since Bill Clin­ton in 1996.

Trump was infu­ri­at­ed, seek­ing to con­tact net­work own­er Rupert Mur­doch. Fox view­ers began to decamp to news orga­ni­za­tions fur­ther on the right.

Trump cried fraud and field­ed a bizarre team of advo­cates, who man­aged to lose more than six­ty caus­es in court and were rebuffed, in many cas­es by Trump-appoint­ed judges, and gave Amer­i­cans the unfor­get­table image of hair dye run­ning down Rudy Giuliani’s cheeks plus Four Sea­sons Land­scap­ing jokes.

With rat­ings imper­iled, Fox brass found a new tar­get, the hon­est jour­nal­ists who accu­rate­ly mapped Biden’s path to victory.

Writ­ing to for­mer New York Post edi­tor Col Allen, Rupert Mur­doch railed: “I hate our Deci­sion Desk peo­ple! And poll­sters! Some of the same peo­ple, I think. Just for the hell of it still pray­ing for Az to prove them wrong.”

Han­ni­ty and Steve Doocy piled on the “straight news” side of the network.

“News’ destroyed us,” said Han­ni­ty. “Every day,” Doocy replied., to which Han­ni­ty added: “You don’t piss off the base.” The prob­lem on the news side, Han­ni­ty argued, a refusal to pan­der: “They don’t care. They are jour­nal­ists.”

The result, to hold view­ers – Carl­son reg­u­lar­ly tops three mil­lion – was that Fox fanned con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, put Trump advo­cates onto the air, while pri­vate­ly dis­play­ing con­tempt for Trump’s elec­tion chal­lenge. One exec­u­tive, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., man­ag­ing edi­tor Bill Sam­mon, did warn pri­vate­ly of consequences.

“It’s remark­able how weak rat­ings make good jour­nal­ists do bad things,” he wrote to polit­i­cal edi­tor Chris Stire­wait, who answered: “It’s a real mess.”

Rupert Mur­doch pri­vate­ly mocked Trump-gen­er­at­ed conspiracies.

The CEO’s depo­si­tion makes for dev­as­tat­ing reading.

“You’ve nev­er believed that Domin­ion was involved in an effort to dele­git­imize and destroy votes for Don­ald Trump, cor­rect?” he was asked.

Replied Mur­doch, “I’m open to per­sua­sion, but, no, I’ve nev­er seen it.”

Top rat­ed Fox News hosts began ques­tion­ing the election.

The network’s rat­ings were restored. Mur­doch did not believe a word of it, but took no action to curb the air­ing of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. He would con­cede in his depo­si­tion, “Maybe Sean (Han­ni­ty) and Lau­ra (Ingra­ham) went too far.”

Pri­vate­ly, Carl­son and Ingra­ham mocked high-pro­file elec­tion fraud lawyer Sid­ney Pow­ell, along with Giu­lianai the most promi­nent of Trump’s pub­lic advocates.

“I had to try to make the WH (White House) dis­avow her, which they obvi­ous­ly should have done long before,” he texted Ingra­ham. Ingra­ham, while fan­ning rumors, replied, “No seri­ous lawyer could believe what they were saying.”

The back­stage rev­e­la­tions from Fox have caused a firestorm on main­stream media, and copi­ous cov­er­age on rival net­works CNN and MSNBC. The air­brush­ing by Carl­son of the U.S. Capi­tol insur­rec­tion has brought down con­fir­ma­tion from Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate, although not House Speak­er McCarthy.

“It was a mis­take, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s com­plete­ly at vari­ance with what our chief law enforce­ment here at the Capi­tol thinks,” said top Sen­ate Repub­li­can Mitch McConnell.

As for Carlson’s claim that 01/06/2021 was “peace­ful chaos,” Sen­a­tor Thom Tillis, R‑North Car­oli­na, said: “I think it’s (exple­tive).”

Sen. Mitt Rom­ney, R‑Utah, was even more blunt, say­ing he’s “real­ly sad to see Tuck­er Carl­son go off the rails like that,” and “join­ing a range of shock jocks that are dis­ap­point­ing Amer­i­ca and feed­ing false­hoods. The Amer­i­can peo­ple saw what hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 6th. They’ve seen the peo­ple that got injured. You can’t hide the truth by selec­tive­ly pick­ing a few min­utes out of tapes and say­ing this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense.”

But hid­ing the truth is exact­ly what Carl­son is up to. Fox view­ers are see­ing or hear­ing almost noth­ing about back­stage con­ver­sa­tions, or the con­tro­ver­sy set off by Carlson’s effort to recast the insur­rec­tion. Right wing media has large­ly cut off cov­er­age of duplic­i­ty and dis­hon­esty by top propagandists.

I’m remind­ed of jour­nal­ist William L. Shirer’s “Berlin Diary” account of the lead­off to World War II. As CBS’ man in Berlin, Shir­er ducked off to Switzer­land for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion in the sum­mer of 1939. He saw the world’s press report­ing on Germany’s immi­nent inva­sion of Poland. Return­ing to the Third Reich, how­ev­er, he found news­pa­per kiosks filled with Nazi news­pa­pers breath­less­ly report­ing that Poland was about to mount an attack on Germany.

The com­par­i­son is apt.

The right wing’s fab­ri­cat­ing suc­ceeds if no com­pet­ing infor­ma­tion is let in. Sad­ly, in Amer­i­ca, right-wing media is will­ful­ly manip­u­lat­ing true believ­ers. Tuck­er Carl­son is ply­ing his view­ers with mis­in­for­ma­tion and tak­ing them for a ride.

How long can it work? Fox is now try­ing to slide away from Trump and anoint Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis as America’s next pres­i­dent. The Trump cult won’t have it. A blunt threat, at last weekend’s CPAC con­fer­ence, from for­mer Trump “chief strate­gist” Steve Ban­non: “You’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be pres­i­dent. Well, we’ve deemed you’re not going to have a network.”