Jake Tapper Confronts Dominion CEO on Why Fox News Isn’t Apologizing: ‘You Could Have Forced Them To Do It!’

Try as he might, CNN’s Jake Tapper couldn’t get John Poulos, the CEO of Dominion Voting Systems, to say exactly why Fox News personalities weren’t required to apologize on air as part of the record $787.5 million defamation settlement.

“Why not force them to tell all those people, all those misled Americans — which polls indicate millions of them still believe this nonsense — why not force them to say, ‘We shouldn’t have done that. That was false. You have been misled, Joe Biden actually won, Dominion and Smartmatic and all that was operating just fine’? Why not force them to do that?” an exasperated Tapper asked.

Tapper suggested that Fox might have offered more money to save their big names like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity embarrassment. “Something like, we’ll give you $200 million more if you don’t force us to do it, because you could have forced them to do it!”

“The defamation part of the law is really not built around apologies,” Poulos answered. “It is built to compensate for damage. And I can tell you, we had a company-wide call yesterday, and the unanimous consent in our company is if we could all go back in time and have our company reputation back, we would do so every single time.”

“Exactly!” Tapper exclaimed. “That’s my point.”

Tapper asked how Poulos planned to move forward with the company when there are still naysayers out there.

“There are still these people out there, elections officials, who are refusing to use certain software,” Tapper said. “There are still individuals who are associated with Donald Trump still out there, like saying that these electronic machines Dominion, Smartmatic, etc. cannot be trusted. I mean, this lie persists.”

Poulos said Dominion has six more suits pending, “and we intend to take it right to the end and to hold them accountable.”

The extent of a Fox “apology” came via a statement after Tuesday’s settlement, that read, in part, “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

Tapper read the statement out loud Tuesday and could barely stifle a giggle when he got to the part about Fox’s “commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Clearly frustrated that he did not get an answer from Poulos, Tapper ended with, “You guys got done dirty by Fox and the MAGA ecosphere, media ecosphere, and it sucks that it happened to you.”