On the subject of the 2020 election, Fox Information host Tucker Carlson has each a public place and a personal place, to borrow a line from Hillary Clinton. The host’s private emotions about Trumpworld’s “stolen election” claims have been revealed lately within the defamation swimsuit filed by Dominion Voting Programs in opposition to Fox Information; he dismissed them as “loopy,” “merciless and reckless,” and “damaging.” In public, he known as the 2020 election “rigged for Joe Biden,” and insisted that digital voting machines undermine “confidence in democracy.”
Greater than two years have handed since these opposing feedback, however Carlson continues to be sticking to the script. “January sixth, I feel, might be second solely to the 2020 election as the most important rip-off in my lifetime,” he said on Tuesday in an interview with a January 6 participant. “And we all know it’s as a result of they,” he continued—“they” being the media and the Democratic Get together—“change into fully hysterical when confronted with any info that deviate from their lies.”
Carlson has spent days airing selectively edited footage of the Capitol riot—surveillance footage granted to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy—to spin the tried coup as much more peaceable and benign than reported. Maybe greater than another pundit, Carlson has sought to reframe the rioters as “meek and obedient” sightseers.
But the Carlson textual content messages which have come out within the Dominion lawsuit recommend the alternative. Within the texts, he was adamant that the election claims promoted by Trump and his attorneys have been false. He after all aired them anyway—a call he privately handled as a method of placating Fox’s pro-Trump viewers. Whereas expressing worries that their viewers would abandon them, the host even lobbied for the firing of Fox Information correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who had fact-checked Trump’s election claims on Twitter. On the similar time, Carlson himself was privately condemning Trump as a “demonic pressure” who may take down Fox Information together with his false theories concerning the election. “I hate him passionately,” he stated of Trump on the time in one other textual content message.
Trump, for his half, is conscious of Carlson’s two faces. “He doesn’t hate me,” the previous president wrote in a Sunday publish, commenting on Carlson’s current January 6 protection, “or not less than, not anymore!” The host, although, has change into considerably extra vital of Trump in public. Throughout an look on the Full Ship Podcast final week, Carlson known as Trump “a little bit bit autistic,” and stated, “he couldn’t construct a border wall in 4 years. So, you realize, there’s a hole between guarantees and supply with all politicians, very a lot together with him.”
