Fox News host Tucker Carlson privately torched then-President Donald Trump in text messages made public on Tuesday night, saying he “passionately” hated Trump and calling Sidney Powell, Trump’s conspiracy theory-spewing election attorney, a “fucking bitch.”
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Tucker Carlson said in a text on Jan. 4, 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”
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“I hate him passionately,” Carlson continued. “What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
The texts, released as part of a massive tranche of documents from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News, are the latest to show how privately skeptical many Fox News hosts were of Trump’s increasingly wild claims that the election was stolen from him—even as some of them parroted his claims on-air. The $1.6 billion defamation case is set to go to trial in April.
According to exhibits released by Dominion, Carlson also made clear that he thought Trump’s attorney was full of it.
“Sidney Powell is lying. Fucking bitch,” Carlson said in a mid-November text, a little over a weekafter the election.
Carlson told Powell directly that he thought she was being reckless.
“You keep telling your viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you prove that very soon,” he texted her the same day. “You’ve convinced them that Trump will win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.”
Two days later, Carlson used his show to grill her on-air about her claims about widespread election fraud. Trump’s team cut ties with Powell a few days later, but by late December she was back in Trump’s inner circle, pushing to have him declare martial law and seize Dominion Voting machines. She was in key White House meetings in mid-December pushing her unhinged claims, and Trump considered appointing her special counsel to investigate the supposed fraud.
Carlson wasn’t the only senior Fox official who privately seethed at Trump. Fox owner Rupert Murdoch warned in mid-November that Trump seemed to be going “increasingly mad,” with his attorney Rudy Giuliani “encouraging” and “misleading him.”
“Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls!” Murdoch continued. “Don’t know about Melania, but kids no help.”
He also warned that Trump’s plot to have GOP-controlled state legislatures block Biden’s victories in key swing states was “ridiculous,” saying it could cause “riots like never before.”
Fox host Laura Ingraham also called Powell “a bit nuts” in a mid-November text to Carlson.
But even as they privately signaled that they knew Trump’s claims were baseless, key Fox players expressed frustration that the news side of their organization had boxed them in and hurt their ratings. They were particularly irate that Fox News’ decision desk had called Arizona for Biden before the other networks.
In a mid-November text chain with Ingraham and Sean Hannity, Carlson complained that ratings had plunged in the week after the election. “Friday numbers aren’t that surprising with Trump impending loss—but how much of that is due to anger at the news channel,” he texted.
“My anger at the news channel is pronounced,” Ingraham responded.
“It should be. We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and Leland fucking Vittert wreck it. Too much,” Carlson responded, torching two of Fox News’ daytime news reporters.
