CNN's John King: “Lying is a big piece of the Fox formula”
CNN correspondent: “It's astonishing” that Fox let the Dominion filings come out
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From the March 8, 2023, edition of CNN's Inside Politics with John King
JOHN KING (ANCHOR): As House Republican debate this, just how to revisit the events of January 6th, they have a realtime propaganda example to consider. As I noted, Tucker Carlson of Fox is using the special access Speaker McCarthy gave him to January 6th footage to present his take on what happened that day. It is so dishonest that a good number of Republicans were quick, very quick, to condemn it as false and unhelpful. But lying is a big piece of the Fox formula and we have glaring new proof of that today. Key players at Fox, in their own words, admitting they knew Donald Trump and his allies were lying about 2020 election fraud. Yet, Fox repeatedly promoted Trump lies anyway because it was good for ratings. We know this because of newly released court filings that include Fox emails and text messages. Let's consider at the moment, Tucker Carlson, as Exhibit A. Quote disgusting, destructive, trying to look away, I passionately hate him. Those are Tucker Carlson's words aimed at Donald Trump, then the president of the United States, and his election lies. Yet, the Fox fraud continues even to this day. This is Monday night.
[BEGIN CLIP]
TUCKER CARLSON (FOX HOST): It is clear the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy. Given the facts that have since emerged about that election, no honest person can deny it.
[END CLIP]
KING: I don't know what he knows about honesty. But how can he do that? Does he not know that his own words are coming out in this lawsuit where he says it's bogus? He says Trump is a disgrace. He says he hates him and then he peddles him.
PAULA REID (CNN CORRESPONDENT): Clearly he knows this is coming out and clearly he doesn't care. And it's not just him, right? He's a micro-example of the macro-problem at Fox. They knew everything that was in discovery. All of this that's coming out. So one of the big questions I have is why they were not more interested in making this case go away? Because last night when we got hundreds of pages of previously undisclosed documents you see again and again, Fox News executives, Fox News personalities saying we know this is false but amid these concerns of declining ratings they go on air and say something different. So it's really a pretty strong case. Defamation is difficult to prove, but here Dominion has a pretty strong case. But in terms of the court of public opinion, it's astonishing that Fox News is okay with this coming out.