Tucker Carlson is the most-watched cable news host in the country. He is a primary source of pro-Trump political punditry and has advanced the false notion that the Jan. 6, 2021, attempt to violently overtake the Capitol was a peaceful protest.
But Carlson’s on-air rhetoric was in dramatic opposition to private sentiments he shared with colleagues, in which he professed to “passionately” hate Trump and yearn for the end of his presidency. Those private communications, which were released as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, show how Carlson struggled to publicly support the president’s false voter-fraud theories that he privately scoffed at.
Fox has said that Dominion used “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.” The cable news juggernaut has accused the voting technology company of trying “to silence the press” through its lawsuit. Carlson has not responded to inquiries about his internal communications. But the vast distance between what he said privately and what he said on-air deepens questions about what Fox’s biggest star really believes.
(Portions of the text exchanges are redacted in the court records)
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