MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace: Tucker Carlson’s text messages reveal his hatred of Donald Trump “exceeds some of the vitriol you hear from Democratic elected officials”
Wallace: “They hate the man that has jailed them”
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From the March 8, 2023, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Tucker Carlson thinks Trump is a demonic force. Laura and Tucker talk about Sidney Powell as an idiot. I think Tucker calls her an f-word, b-word. The hatred that they have for Trump is -- literally exceeds some of the vitriol you hear from Democratic elected officials. And it is the hatred of their hostage taker, right? They hate the man that has jailed them. And they hate him more than those of us who are free to say the truth and see the truth and speak the truth. How has this impacted morale? What is it like inside Fox News right now today?
JEREMY PETERS (GUEST): Just imagine that you work there and you were a mid-level producer or something, and all of a sudden you have to hand over your private cell phone. That's where a lot of these messages came from, and that's why, you know, I think that the revelations we've seen have been so extraordinary. These weren't company phones, by and large. This is Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch's personal phone. And Dominion scored a major legal victory over the summer that allowed them -- that the judge allowed them to do that.
WALLACE: Why didn't they settle before that?
PETERS: Well, that's when Fox fired its last legal team and hired this new one. I don't -- I think they haven't settled because Dominion -- A, Dominion wants a billion dollars and an apology, effectively. And Fox probably could do the billion dollars, but it's not going to apologize. I think the people at Dominion see this as something bigger than just a numerical figure. If you read their brief, when they initially filed this case, it's very clear they see democracy itself on the line, and if you can get away with spreading the kinds of lies that people on Fox did, then, you know, what good is the First Amendment?
So it's interesting that they've definitely taken a -- well, Fox especially, that Rupert has settled, as you point out, for much lower stakes, right? But they haven't here. I think they think because they can get in front of a jury and maybe persuade one or two people that, you know, defamation cases are really hard to win, and there's reasonable doubt here of some kind. If I were Fox's lawyers, that's probably what I would be saying.
WALLACE: You think they can win? You don't sense that they can --
PETERS: I mean, you know, Ronnell would know better than I. You know, every time Ronnell and I have talked about this, she's always pointed out, you know, it's not enough to disseminate the lie, it has to be a knowing lie. Getting inside the heads of people to prove that it was a knowing lie is really hard to do.
There's a lot of evidence in this case that points in that direction. The one that you and I haven't talked about yet, but that I know really stuck with you, is Tucker Carlson saying that the anger that Trump has whipped up in his followers is quote, unquote, "deadly." He says that in an email or text chain to his producers after January 6. Contrast that with the Tucker Carlson we heard this week say that the Capitol riots were nothing but, you know, this pleasant, peaceful, meek sightseeing tour.