Newly Revealed Docs In Lawsuit Against Fox News Show Tucker Called Trump a ‘Total Piece of Sh*t’
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
As Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News advanced on Monday, with a judge refusing a request for a pause, tens of thousands of pages of exhibits were released. Smartmatic, a voting technology company, is suing Fox Corp for $2.7 billion dollars for defamation over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
The tranche of documents includes text messages and emails between Fox talent and executives, including major figures in the company like Sean Hannity, Rupert Murdoch, Maria Bartiromo, and Tucker Carlson. Carlson was fired from the network in April 2023, months after it settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million.
Fox News released a statement as the documents were released on Sunday, saying, “The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on FOX News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech. Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic being criminally charged with bribery in the Philippines and the Government’s motion to include evidence of Smartmatic’s business dealings in Venezuela and Los Angeles County, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”
Among the many bombshell revelations in the newly released materials was Tucker Carlson calling then-President Donald Trump a “total piece of shit.’ The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr dug through the materials and highlighted some of the more eye-popping moments, including:
An unidentified individual told Tucker Carlson on 9 November 2020 that Trump should concede the election. Carlson replied: “Oh I’m fully aware,” and referred to Trump as a “total piece of shit.” But, he added, “We can’t control him obviously. Got to do the responsible thing regardless of how he behaves.”
Text messages revealed by Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News also showed Carlson insulting Trump, calling him a “demonic force.”
Barr also highlighted Sean Hannity, whose show aired after Carlson at the time, blasting Carlson for his willingness to challenge Sidney Powell – one of the key figures pushing Trump’s widely debunked claims of election fraud in 2020. Barr wrote:
Sean Hannity criticized Tucker Carlson for using the 19 November 2020 edition of his show to call out Trump-associated attorney Sidney Powell for not being able to back up her claims of election fraud, likening it to something former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly would have done. “His problem,” Hannity wrote. “Classic oreilly move. May be too clever by half. Trump people are pissed.”
Among some of the other revelations in the documents was the fact that Steve Bannon had urged Maria Bartiromo to run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 in the state of New York. Bartiromo was also revealed to have made some $70 million in salary from Fox up until the time of her deposition in the case. The documents also showed Fox host Lou Dobbs complaining that the network had “black-balled’ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) from coming on air.
