During Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which resulted in a $787 million legal settlement paid by the network, publicly released evidence showed that Carlson repeatedly denounced Trump for spreading baseless conspiracy theories that Carlson knew to be false, and that Carlson was eager to see Trump finally removed from office after his election defeat in 2020.
- In a text message sent on November 9, 2020, Carlson declared, “The software shit is absurd.” Carlson made clear that he did not believe Trump’s central claim that voting machines had switched votes from himself to Joe Biden.
- Carlson described Trump's refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat as “destructive” and “disgusting.” In a text on November 11, 2020, following news that Trump would not attend Biden’s inauguration, Carlson slammed Trump’s behavior on November 11, 2020, as “so destructive” and “disgusting,” adding, “I’m trying to look away.”
- “He’s only good at destroying.” Responding to a text on November 13, 2020, from an unknown person bemoaning the damage Trump was doing to the Republican Party by not conceding, Carlson added, “He’s only good at destroying.”
- “He doesn’t care. I care.” In a text message sent November 23, 2020, Carlson lambasted Trump for undermining Republican prospects in U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia: “And now Trump, I learned this morning, is sitting back and letting them lose the senate. He doesn’t care. I care. I've got four kids and plan to live here.”
- “I hate him passionately”: Carlson was eager to see Donald Trump ushered off the political stage following his 2020 election defeat. In a text on January 4, 2021, Carlson declared, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
- Trump and his allies “have so discredited their own case, and the rest of us to some extent.” In the same January 4, 2021, text exchange, Carlson expressed one source of his frustration, saying that Trump and those surrounding him failed to demonstrate that there was mass election fraud, which on some level Carlson continued to believe: “I have no doubt there was fraud. But at this point, Trump and Lin [Wood] and [Sidney] Powell have so discredited their own case, and the rest of us to some extent, that it's infuriating. Absolutely enrages me.”
- Carlson called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer.” In a text the night of January 6, 2021, Carlson told a Fox News producer that Trump was a “demonic force, a destroyer.”
During this same period, Carlson also privately tried to get a Fox reporter fired for actually debunking Trump’s election claims, which Carlson knew were false. Over the next two and half years, Carlson would continue pushing election lies, along with veiled threats of political violence and lies about January 6.
