‘Tucker’s Still Lying’ After ‘Getting Busted with Receipts’: Jason Johnson Flames Fox News Host Who Treats Viewers Like ‘Idiots’
MSNBC’s Jason Johnson minced no words in reacting to texts showing several Fox News hosts privately doubting the false claims of fraud in the 2020 election even as they told viewers the contest wasn’t on the level.
Private communications of Fox News hosts and other employees were included in a filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. The company is suing the network for $1.6 billion in damages after the network’s talent touted conspiracy theories about Dominion rigging its voting machines against then-President Donald Trump.
Mere hours after the filing was released, Tucker Carlson suggested President Joe Biden was not elected legitimately, though he said nothing about Dominion, which has become all but verboten on the network.
“[M]ajor Fox News hosts are essentially calling their viewers idiots,” Johnson said while guest-hosting Friday’s The Beat, adding that they don’t believe “many of the lies that they promoted” about Covid-19 and the 2020 election.”
He then played a clip of Carlson on Fox News from the previous night:
You may be wondering what the hell is going on in our country. There are so many unanswered questions, some of them lingering. How, for example, did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his former boss, rockstar crowd-surfer Barack Obama?
Results like that would seem to defy the laws of known physics and qualify instead as a miracle. Was the 2020 election a miracle? Honestly, we don’t know and we don’t expect to get an answer to it tonight.
“So Tucker’s still lying,” Johnson said. “What does it say about the current state of the Republican Party or the viewers or the party itself that Carlson is still lying despite the fact that he got busted with receipts yet again, being exposed as a charlatan and a fraud and abject coward?”
Michael Steele replied that Fox News host is allowed to get away with it.
“He said that because what’s the price? There’s no penalty to him,” Steele said. “But that’s the problem. They create this little narrative and say this crap and they push it out there with this level of haughty authenticity and then they try to get you to believe the dumbest thing that could be possibly said about an election.”
Fox News says Dominion’s suit has no merit.
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” the network said in a statement.
Watch above via MSNBC.
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