Brian Stelter: Fox News “seeded the big lie for Trump”
Stelter: “The big lie didn’t just happen in November of 2020. It was made to happen”
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From the November 9, 2023, edition of MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tonight
ALEX WAGNER (HOST): First of all, you know, people say a lot of things about how Fox is poisoning democracy. But you have sort of a granular assessment and deep reporting of how literally Fox is feeding Trump the lies that then in turn lead to the coup attempt. Can you talk about that?
BRIAN STELTER (GUEST): And they knew. They knew what they were doing. And that's why these emails and texts are so important and so explicit. Some were published last spring. But I had to write this book because there were so many other messages in this document dump in Wilmington, Delaware, that needed to see the light of day.
WAGNER: Just for people -- to be clear, that is the discovery from the Dominion lawsuit.
STELTER: That's right. Because Dominion's lawyers were able to get inside and read all of the emails with Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and read what they were really saying at the time. I have never seen any major media company in the United States exposed the way that Fox was exposed.
And we can talk later about the other companies being sued, these cases are still going on. But when it comes to Fox, it is remarkable to see how they seeded the big lie for Trump. You know, the big lie didn't just happen in November of 2020. It was made to happen. Maria Bartiromo went on the air, told a tale about Dominion, with the help of Sidney Powell, the Trump-aligned lawyer. And then four days later, Trump started saying it. He thanked Sean Hannity on his Twitter for telling him all about Dominion.
So it was Fox that seeded the story that gets us down the path toward January 6.