Good Fucking Riddance

Shit-canning the Fairness Doctrine, and turning the news into a profit center are big reasons we're where we are.

Bye Bye Tucker

You have to be aware by now that Tucker Carlson has been canned by DumFux News.

Here's Carlson's "Farewell and thanks, but don't worry, I'll be back" video.

Note the not-so-subtle projection, making sure the criticism is in passive and generic language that sounds "reasonable', but is intended as one long dog whistle.

"... step outside the noise..."

Like Carlson had nothing to do with creating the noise.

"... people who care about what's true..." 

This is the usual gaslighting/ass-kissing about his audience being the real Americans - the only ones who are good and decent.

"... how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are."

This is the cool kids argument - "they're all fucked up over there, but we're all good, you and me - we know the score".

 "... the big topics - the ones that define our future - get virtually no discussion at all."

In praise of exclusion and paranoia. ie: replacement theory, scary black people, rampant crime, etc.

The pretense that the big issues aren't being addressed is, of course, a lie. What he's doing is making sure his audience remains in one silo or another, and at his discretion to put them where he wants them.

It goes on and on - here's Brian Tyler Cohen's rundown.

For The Record

New York Magazine's Intelligencer listed some of the damning text messages that made it impossible for DumFux News to defend itself against the defamation suit brought against it by Dominion.

Here's a nice little sampling.

Tucker Carlson

On Fox News’ Arizona call:
“We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and Leland fucking Vittert wreck it,” Carlson texted in a group conversation with Ingraham and Sean Hannity roughly two weeks after the election. Vittert was a Fox News reporter who was frequently criticized by Trump, and he left the network in April 2021 for NewsNation.

On hating Trump:
“I hate him passionately … 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,” Carlson texted a colleague on January 4, days prior to the riot at the U.S. Capitol. He added, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”

On the antics of Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood:
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson texted Ingraham on November 18.

In a message from November 4, Carlson texted a colleague that there was “no doubt there was fraud” in the election. “But at this point, Trump and Lin and Powell have so discredited their own case, and the rest of us to some extent, that it’s infuriating. Absolutely enrages me.”

In a text on November 9, Carlson referenced Powell’s Dominion claims, commenting, “The software shit is absurd.” (Carlson then said on television that night, “We don’t know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don’t know. We ought to find out.”)

In a text on November 22, Carlson also called Powell a “cunt.”

On Trump skipping Biden’s inauguration:
“Hard to believe. So destructive,” he texted a staffer on November 10. “It’s disgusting. I’m trying to look away.”

On the prospect of ditching Trump coverage on Fox:
Two days before the Capitol riot, Carlson wrote to a colleague that “we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.” The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, he texted his producer that “Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters. He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.”

Rupert Murdoch, Fox Corporation chairman

On Hannity’s and Ingraham’s on-air claims of election fraud:
“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” Murdoch wrote the day after Biden’s inauguration in an email to Fox CEO Suzanne Scott. “All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump … but what did he tell his viewers?”

On the infamous Rudy Giuliani press conference with the hair dye:
“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch wrote to a friend on November 19, the day of Giuliani’s meltdown. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad.” Murdoch said he had heard that Trump was “apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls” and that he worried about “what he might do as president.”

On calling the election for Biden:
“I hate our Decision Desk people!” Murdoch emailed former New York Post editor Col Allan on the day the election was called. “And pollsters! Some of the same people I think. Just for the hell of it still praying for Az to prove them wrong!” Later that day, he emailed his son Lachlan, writing that Fox News “should and could” have called the election for Biden before any other network. “But at least being second saves us a Trump explosion!”

On how to handle Trump postelection:
“The more I think about McConnell’s remarks or complaint, the more I agree,” Murdoch wrote in an email on Biden’s Inauguration Day. “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25 percent of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up Jan. 6th. Best we don’t mention his name unless essential and certainly don’t support him. We have to respect people of principle and if it comes to the Senate, don’t take sides. I know he is being over-demonized, but he brought it on himself.”

Laura Ingraham, Fox News host

On pressure from Fox News executives:
“We are officially working for an organization that hates us,” Ingraham texted Carlson and Hannity on November 16.

“Why would anyone defend that call?” Hannity asked in response, referring to the early decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden.

“I’m disgusted at this point,” replied Carlson.

“I think the three of us have enormous power,” Ingraham wrote. “We have more power than we know or exercise.”

Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO

On the Arizona call on Election Night:
“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger,” Scott said in a Zoom meeting on November 16. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”

“Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief,” Scott texted Fox co-chair Lachlan Murdoch two days after the election. “It’s a question of trust — the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”

On how the network should proceed postelection:
“Audiences don’t want to see too much of the Mayor Pete’s and Coons etc in the news hours,” Scott wrote to Fox News president Jay Wallace. “Need to be careful about bookings next 2 months - especially in news hours.” Scott had forwarded Wallace an email from Rupert Murdoch, in which he observed that Fox News was losing to CNN in the ratings.

On how fact checking Trump is “bad for business”:
“This has to stop now,” Scott wrote in an email to a network vice-president in early December, referring to anchor Eric Shawn’s fact-checking of Trump. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”

Bill Sammon, former Fox News managing editor

On the mess inside Fox News:
Sammon oversaw the Fox News Decision Desk on Election Night. He retired in January 2021 amid heated Republican criticism over the call that Biden would win Arizona.

“More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud — a month after the election,” Sammon texted editor Chris Stirewalt. “It’s remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do bad things.” Sammon added, “In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis — at least journalistically.”

Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News politics editor

On the fallout from election coverage:
“What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff,” Stirewalt responded to Sammon’s texts. Stirewalt, who made the decision that Fox News would call Arizona for Biden on Election Night, was removed from his job in January 2021 for the controversial (but correct) choice.

Bret Baier, Fox News host

On the difficulty of defending the Arizona call:
“I know You guys are feeling the pressure,” Baier wrote to Fox News executives two days after the election. “But this situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable … I keep on having to defend this on air. And ask questions about it. And it seems we are holding on for pride (I know the confidence you say you had and the numbers — but it’s at least within the realm of possible that he closes the gap now). And It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it — even if it gives us major egg. And we put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”


Raj Shah, Fox Corporation senior vice-president

On Rudy Giuliani:
During Giuliani’s infamous press conference during which hair dye ran down his face, Shah texted to an unnamed respondent or respondents: “This sounds SO FUCKING CRAZY btw.” When a deputy wrote back that Giuliani “looks awful,” Shah remarked, “he objectively looks like he was a dead person voting 2 weeks ago.”

After the press conference, a Fox News reporter appeared on the network and cast doubt on some of Giuliani’s claims. Shah then texted the deputy, “This is the kinda shit that will kill us. We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism.”

On Fox News’ favorability rating dropping dramatically after the election:
In an internal message, Shah shared a survey with colleagues showing that the network’s brand was “under heavy fire from our customer base.” In a different email, he wrote, “We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network … I’d like to get honest/deeper feedback from Fox viewers on the brand, the handling of the election, if they feel like they have been somehow betrayed by the network.”

In a memo from Shah to Lachlan Murdoch on November 13, Shah wrote that “Fox News is facing a brand crisis” and “open revolt.” He added that the “precipitous decline in Fox’s favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”

On Sidney Powell:
In another message to senior colleagues, Shah called Powell’s election-fraud claims “totally insane” and “just MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS.” Shah also told his bosses in a November 23, 2020 email that, “We encouraged several sources within the administration to tell reporters that Powell offered no evidence for her claims and didn’t speak for the president.”

Maria Bartiromo, Fox News and Fox Business Network host

On not wanting to acknowledge Biden’s win:
“I want to see massive fraud exposed,” Bartiromo texted Steve Bannon a week after the election, adding that she instructed her team to hold off on referring to Biden as “president-elect” — “not in scripts or in banners on air. Until this moves through the courts.”

Abby Grossberg, Maria Bartiromo’s producer

On how to cater to audiences postelection:
“Our audience doesn’t want to hear about a peaceful transition,” Grossberg texted Bartiromo, who had asked whether she should have covered the topic on a recent show. Grossberg later added that Fox viewers “still have hope.”

On March 20, Grossberg filed a lawsuit against Fox News, alleging the network had pushed her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case in an attempt to set her and Bartiromo up as patsies.

Gary Schreier, Fox Business Network SVP

On Mario Bartiromo’s false allegations of election fraud:
After Bartiromo tweeted a baseless allegation on November 5 about Democrats adding “vote dumps” overnight, she left Twitter for the conservative platform Parler. “How about get off social all together,” Fox Business News President Lauren Petterson wrote to Schreier. He responded: “I mean if you say crazy wrong shit on Parler is that better just because Parler won’t flag you?”

$787,500,000.00

She's just gettin' warmed up 

DumFux News took one in the shorts yesterday. They settled, probably thinking they needed to cut their losses and try to move past the problem. But there's more shit rolling their way - they ain't done yet.

4 takeaways from the Dominion v. Fox settlement

The long-anticipated defamation trial in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News ended before it truly began Tuesday, with a judge announcing the two sides had agreed to a settlement. Dominion says Fox has agreed to pay $787.5 million — nearly half of the $1.6 billion Dominion sought.

At issue in the case were false claims that Fox aired about Dominion related to former president Donald Trump’s false accusations about the 2020 election being stolen. Dominion had to prove not only that the claims weren’t true — which it did — but that Fox’s actions met the legal standard of “actual malice,” meaning that it knew better or that it showed a reckless disregard for the truth.

The settlement, the full terms of which weren’t immediately clear and could remain shrouded, will spare Fox a lengthy spectacle delving into those issues. But it came after ugly disclosures about the cable news leader.

Below are some takeaways:

1. The damage done

The name of the game for Fox and its owners in such situations — be it the British phone-hacking scandal, sexual misconduct, gender discrimination cases or others — is almost always to settle. Often, and evidently by design, that deprives us of a true hearing on the merits of the allegations.

But in this case Fox didn’t reach a settlement until after thoroughly damaging revelations via the legal discovery process and early court maneuvers. The documentation in the case showed that many at Fox indeed knew better about the conspiracy theories the network aired, that it chose to air them anyway in the name of appealing to an audience that believed these claims and wanted to believe Trump had won, and that even Fox’s news product toed the company’s political line.

The judge also ruled that it was “CRYSTAL clear” that the claims Fox aired were false.

What will continue to linger over the network are the lessons of all that evidence. Given what we’ve learned about Fox’s focus on its business model, other outlets will view its news product — its journalism — accordingly. It reinforced the idea that the shows put on by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are just that: shows tailored to an audience, and they might not reflect what the hosts or the people behind the scenes actually know or believe.

Perhaps as much as anything, the case reflected the control Trump has over the conservative movement, given the fear Fox demonstrated of what Trump could do to it — a fear that echoes the broader Republican Party’s posture toward Trump.

Of course, whether Fox viewers will ever consume any of that is another matter. Fox covered the trial sparingly after initially barring even its media reporter from weighing in. The conservative media ecosystem is exceedingly insular. Just as Fox capitalized on its audience’s false beliefs about voter fraud — even as such claims had been routinely debunked elsewhere — it will probably benefit from their disinterest in learning what just happened at their favored cable news outlet.

What’s clear is that Dominion, while having understandable motives to settle, struck perhaps the most significant blow to date against Fox well before it agreed to the deal.

2. The scale of the settlement

There remain questions about the settlement beyond the dollar figure. But a big one was answered shortly after it was announced. The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr reports that Fox says it will not be required to issue an on-air apology. (Dominion’s lawyers did not address this.)

It is notable that Fox News said in its post-settlement press statement that “we acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” But that acknowledgment is pretty thin gruel if it’s the only mention Fox gives about its conduct. It’s merely stating something that the court said without necessarily endorsing it. (Fox media reporter Howard Kurtz did say on-air after the settlement that the allegations were “obviously false. Those were conspiracy theories.”)

Dominion sought to cast Fox’s statement as more significant, with chief executive John Poulos saying that “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion.”

But even if you recognize that Fox was admitting the statements were false, the network did not address whether those statements were lies. “Lies have consequences,” Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said, adding: “Today represents a ringing endorsement for truth and for democracy.”

As for the dollar figure, it’s surely one of the largest in history for a defamation suit (the totals in such suits often remain confidential). It also compares to some estimates of the total cost of the phone-hacking scandal last decade that cost Rupert Murdoch’s media empire as much as $1 billion.

Fox, which owns the nation’s leading cable news outlet, had $4 billion in cash in its last financial filing, meaning it would seem to be able to cover such a large payout. But it’s a huge blow to the bottom line.

3. What’s next?

And it might not be the end of it. While the news of the settlement is hugely significant, there’s more to come — even on this specific issue.

Fox still has to contend with a similar lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic. The company was often lumped in with Dominion while the false claims were made on Fox, and in some cases the claims against Smartmatic arguably went further.

A New York judge last month allowed Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit to move forward. The size of the payout in the Dominion case will only make the stakes of this next case even larger.

Another major issue looming over Fox is what its shareholders might do. Shareholders can sue the network over how its decisions damaged their assets. One of them filed suit this month. Others have demanded company records.

While the Dominion payout might not severely hamper Fox, the combination of all of these things could exact a growing and much larger toll. And as far as Fox is concerned, the issue as a whole isn’t completely settled. What just happened suggests it’s not exactly fighting from a position of strength.

Dominion says it’s not done, either, with lawyer Stephen Shackelford saying: “We’ve got some other people who have some accountability coming toward them. And we’ll move right on to the next one.”

Dominion is also suing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who promoted the false election claims on Fox and elsewhere. (Lindell’s fate would also seem to matter greatly to Fox, given that documents in the Dominion case show Fox referring to him as the network’s top advertiser.)

4. Late missteps from Fox

Before the two sides were able to reach an agreement, Fox repeatedly earned the ire of the judge, including on Tuesday.

Judge Eric M. Davis removed Fox communications executive and spokeswoman Caley Cronin from the courtroom after she was caught taking pictures. Cameras and tweeting from the courtroom are forbidden during the trial, which is being held behind closed doors.

Davis said that when admonished, Cronin “turned on everybody else” and said others were “actively tweeting in the courtroom.” So Davis took the opportunity to remind everyone of the rules and assure those in the courtroom that they would be enforced.

Davis last week sharply rebuked Fox’s lawyers and ordered an investigation after Dominion said Fox obscured Murdoch’s status as an officer at Fox News and the Fox Corp. Dominion said Murdoch’s actual status would have entitled it to more evidence in the case. Davis said Fox had a “credibility problem” and that the issue might have influenced his own previous decisions.

Fox later apologized to the judge while attributing the omission to a “misunderstanding.” Davis earlier Tuesday had appointed a special master to look into whether Fox abided by its obligations to produce the documents and communications it was required to.

The situations reinforced that the proceedings were a growing headache for Fox — and one Fox had all kinds of reasons to try to get rid of.

Less Than Nothing

Ex-Fox Producer: There Are Secret Rudy Giuliani Recordings About Dominion

In an amended legal complaint, Abby Grossberg said that Fox News failed to provide Dominion with several audio recordings she made featuring Giuliani and other Trump allies.

Abby Grossberg, the former Tucker Carlson producer accusing Fox News of pressuring her to give false testimony in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, filed amended legal complaints on Tuesday claiming there are secret Fox audio recordings of Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies.

Grossberg, who is suing the conservative network for harassment and a toxic work environment, claims that the behind-the-scenes conversations with Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump campaign officials featured them admitting they had no evidence to support their Dominion election fraud lies.

Additionally, she says an adviser of former President Donald Trump pointed out the importance of January 6 weeks before the Capitol attacks, noting that the adviser said there were “no issues” with voting machines and January 6 was now the “backstop” for determining the election.

Once a senior booking producer for pro-Trump Fox News host Maria Bartiromo before moving to Carlson’s show, Grossberg filed two lawsuits against Fox News last month alleging that the network’s lawyers tried to coerce her into falsely testifying in Dominion’s defamation case. She claims that the network sought to make her and Bartiromo scapegoats in the bombshell lawsuit, all while deflecting blame from Fox executives.

Dominion has accused Fox News of knowingly airing lies about widespread election fraud in an attempt to boost sagging ratings after MAGA viewers bolted following the 2020 election, allegations the network vehemently denies. The case is scheduled to go to trial next week, and Grossberg has suggested she would testify on the voting software firm’s behalf. She was recently subpoenaed in Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against Fox.

After Smartmatic subpoenaed Grossberg earlier this month, her lawyers claimed that Grossberg had previously surrendered access to certain evidence to Fox News. However, according to the attorneys, it didn’t appear that the evidence was ever provided to the Delaware court overseeing the Dominion case.

In her motions to amend her complaints against Fox News on Tuesday, Grossberg claimed that in preparation for their appearances on Bartiromo’s weekend Fox News show, she had recorded multiple conversations with Giuliani and Powell following the 2020 election. Those discussions, which were heard by the network’s control room, were recorded by Grossberg using Otter—a transcription device popular with journalists.

During a recording in mid-November 2020, according to Grossberg, Giuliani admitted to Bartiromo that the Trump campaign couldn’t prove some of its Dominion allegations. Asked by Bartiromo what evidence he had implicating Dominion in rigging the election, Giuliani allegedly said “that’s a little harder.” He also conceded that he had no evidence to back up the conspiracy theory that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had an interest in Dominion. “I’ve read that. I can’t prove that,” he said.

On that same recording, Grossberg says that Powell claimed that a “registered agent for Smartmatic” was on President Joe Biden’s “transition team.” However, when pressed by Bartiromo on her most compelling evidence that voting software flipped votes for Biden, Powell merely said the Trump campaign had “a witness who’s given a foreign declaration about how [the voting software] was created, why it was created, and watched it work.”

Perhaps most damning, however, is a December recording between Grossberg, Bartiromo, and someone described as a “high-ranking advisor to and spokesperson for President Trump and the Trump 2020 presidential campaign.” The campaign official, according to the amended complaint, admitted “there were in fact no issues” with any purportedly fraudulent voting machines in Georgia.

“More broadly, however, the Trump advisor stated that the purpose of the call was to highlight the importance of the impending January 6th date as the true ‘backstop’ for determining the validity of the election, as this was ultimately the date when the House and Senate would count the electoral votes,” Grossberg’s complaint reads. “The Trump advisor voiced their concern to Ms. Bartiromo that there had been ‘virtually no pick up of the January 6th date’ in the media.”

Grossberg’s legal team claims that despite having access to her devices multiple times, Fox News “deliberately or recklessly failed to produce highly relevant recordings of behind-the-scenes conversations” to Dominion in the course of its lawsuit.

“We hope that by laying bare the egregiously unlawful conduct of Fox News with respect to its treatment of Ms. Grossberg as a fact witness in the Dominion case (including coercing incomplete and shaded testimony from her and covering up key documents that both inculpate Fox News as a malicious actor and exculpate Ms. Grossberg from unjust allegations of journalistic malfeasance) in our proposed Second Amended Complaint, all of the facts and issues necessary for justice to be served will be timely put before the Delaware Superior Court,” said Grossberg’s attorney Tanvir Rahman.

In a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that Dominion could not mention the Jan. 6 Capitol attack during this month’s trial. “We’re not putting the January 6th attack on [trial]. That may be for another court at another time. It’s not for this one,” Davis said.

“Fox has complied with its discovery obligations in the Dominion case,” a Fox News spokesperson told The Daily Beast in a statement.

A Bad Day Made Worse

At about 3:20, when Jessica Tarlov points out the stochastic terrorism aspects of the George Soros fantasy, Greg Gutfeld trots out the shitbird "argument" that "everything puts lives in danger", and goes on to voice the giant shrug coming from "conservatives" - like:

"Well gee, we'll never acknowledge our part in fomenting violence, so we can't do anything but go on pretending it's a big mystery and blah blah blah".

He's normalizing and excusing the violence. He's broadcasting to the entire DumFux News audience that political violence is just the way of things.

But he's doing some important cherry picking too. He knows the same stochastic bullshit that motivates a nutball to mail pipe bombs to Democrats, can just as surely motivate a trans kids to shoot people at a Christian school, but he'll never allow the dots to be connected.

The non-suggesting suggestion that leads to some horrific act will always be followed by the non-condemning condemnation, unless the attack is directed at a "conservative" target. Then the condemnation is quick and specific, and the similarities are denied, even as the pundit tries to gaslight the shit out of us with, "it happens all the time" or "the extremists on both sides" or "it's god's will' or whatever else they can yank out of their ass at the time.

The Turning Worm

Six in 10 Americans don't want Trump to be president again: 2024 poll

The poll found 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Trump

Kellyanne Conway:

We are seeing a competition for the Republican nomination in 2024.

The majority of Americans do not want former President Donald Trump to be elected in 2024, while voters remain split on whether he participated in any illegal activity regarding his hush money scandal.

A new NPR/Marist poll found that only 38% of national adults want Trump to be president again, while the majority of 61% do not want the Republican to serve another term in office.

According to the survey, 76% of Republicans, 34% of independents and 11% of Democrats want Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

On the flip side, 89% of Democrats, a whopping 64% of independents, and 21% of Republicans do not want Trump to return to the White House next cycle.

About 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Trump, down 3 percentage points from a November poll that found his favorable opinion at 42%, but up from 38% in the summer.

As Trump makes another bid for the White House, 81% of Republicans and 37% of independents have a favorable opinion of the former president.

Trump is currently under investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for reportedly reimbursing his then-attorney for hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. After a years-long investigation, Trump claimed on March 18 that he would be arrested within days

When asked about the criminal probe, 46% said they think Trump has done something illegal. About 29% of Americans believe it was unethical, but not illegal, while 23% don't think he did anything wrong.

About 56% of Americans say the investigation is fair, while 41% consider it a "witch hunt" as he makes another run for office.

"Amid multiple allegations of wrongdoing against former President Trump, what's striking is that, although Republicans still largely back him, White evangelical Christians are not as strongly behind him," Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said alongside the poll results. "There is a consensus among Republicans that, although everything may not have been above board, Trump has done nothing illegal."

The survey was conducted from March 20 to 23 with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Another Shoe

It's raining shoes. Again. Or Still. Or something.

It's going to take years to sort thru all of the shit that we haven't dealt with over the last several decades. Some of which we've just kinda needed to ignore because it made us feel a little paranoid. Some of which we've been manipulated into feeling weird about. Some of which just seemed too "political thriller" -ish - and dammit, maybe I've been watching too many old movies about intrigue at the palace.

We get lulled into a belief that democracy is something we get to have, instead of something we have to do. And suddenly, our little experiment in self-government is looking pretty shaky.

ie: "Suddenly" over the last 40 years or so

If we learn nothing else, let's hope we're learning how toxic fake news is - how toxic the politics of faking news can be - and which outfits are putting out all that fake news, and which politicians are lying to us about which news is the fake news.

It makes my head hurt, and I've been into the politics thing for a good long time - so I have some sympathy for people who just wanna live their lives without having to worry a whole lot about it. I don't have a lot of patience with them, but I do understand the desire to go about your business and trust that things will work out.

Anyway, the worse it gets on one side, the better it can be on the other - if we can figure out which side it's best to be on.

Fox News producer alleges sexism, coached testimony, in new lawsuit

Abby Grossberg, who alleges discrimination and a hostile workplace, says she was ‘coerced, intimidated, and misinformed’ while preparing for her deposition in the $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case.

On the eve of a key hearing in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, an employee who was deposed in the case sued the company, alleging that its lawyers coached her to shift blame for decisions to air Trump allies’ false claims of election fraud.

The lawsuit from producer Abby Grossberg came late Monday, hours after Fox sought a restraining order to keep her from disclosing in-house legal discussions.

Grossberg’s suit could create an opening for Dominion Voting Systems — which is also suing Fox, for airing unfounded claims that it rigged the 2020 election — to question the credibility of her testimony and that of other Fox employees deposed in the matter.

In a federal civil suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg alleges that she was “isolated, overworked, undervalued, denied opportunities for promotion, and generally treated significantly worse than her male counterparts, even when those men were less qualified than her,” and that she was retaliated against after she complained.

Her suit also details claims that she was subjected to “vile sexist stereotypes.” It describes a male senior producer scolding her for sharing too much information with Maria Bartiromo, the popular opinion host for whom they both worked at the time. The senior producer and another male executive described the host in terms such as “menopausal,” “hysterical” and “a diva,” Grossberg alleged.

A spokesperson for Fox called Grossberg’s suit “baseless,” saying, “We will vigorously defend these claims.”

Grossberg’s account of a sexist environment at Fox News echoes stories shared by several female employees in 2016 and 2017, when powerful network co-founder Roger Ailes and prime-time star Bill O’Reilly were forced out by allegations of sexual harassment.

But it is the producer’s allegations that Fox lawyers “coerced, intimidated, and misinformed” her as they prepped her to testify in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit that are poised to further complicate that roiling legal battle.

A little-known staffer at Fox News for the past four years, Grossberg this month emerged as a key behind-the-scenes player at the center of the blockbuster case. Dominion argues Fox knowingly aired spurious claims that it rigged its voting machines in favor of Joe Biden; Fox argues that it was simply reporting on newsworthy claims made by a sitting president.

Both sides are appearing in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday to argue for the judge to rule in their favor — probably the last major hearing before the case is expected to go to trial next month.

Grossberg was subpoenaed by Dominion last year to discuss her work on televised segments in which Bartiromo and guests discussed far-fetched and unproven claims of election fraud. But in her deposition prep sessions, the producer claims, Fox lawyers “were displeased with her being too candid” and took extra time “to make sure she got her story straight and in line with [Fox’s] position.”

She said she was urged to give generic answers such as “I do not recall” and discouraged from offering explanations of how Bartiromo’s understaffed team was unable to keep up with warnings from Dominion about false statements they had aired.

By giving what she calls “false/misleading and evasive answers” that she said were encouraged by Fox’s legal team, Grossberg says she put herself at risk of committing perjury, while “subtly shifting all responsibility for the alleged defamation against Dominion onto her shoulders, and by implication, those of her trusted female colleague, Ms. Bartiromo, rather than the mostly male higher ups at Fox News.”

Fox lawyers, in their request for a restraining order, said Grossberg’s plan to share details from her conversations with lawyers was “a transparent attempt to gain leverage over Fox News.” They also wrote that Grossberg “proved unable to perform adequately” after a recent promotion and that she had been issued a written warning.

Late Monday, a company spokesperson said that Fox “engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review.”

In an interview with The Washington Post late Monday, Grossberg’s attorney, Parisis G. Filippatos, called Fox’s restraining order an “attempt to chill her,” adding that “her suit will reveal the truth, not the selected version of sanitized events that Fox is famous for.”

Fox placed her on leave Monday from her current job as a booker for Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show, he said.

Grossberg also filed a defamation suit against Fox in Delaware Superior Court that claims the company induced her to make statements in her deposition that made her look “inept” and harmed her reputation.

Details of Grossberg’s suits were first reported late Monday by the New York Times.

In Grossberg’s September deposition, Dominion lawyers asked her about the circumstances surrounding a Nov. 8, 2020, appearance by Trump-affiliated attorney Sidney Powell, who told Bartiromo on air that there had been “computer glitches” during the election and “fraud … where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.”

Grossberg defended the decision to air claims like those that Powell was promoting, according to segments of her deposition made public this month. “We bring on people and they give their opinions,” she said. “Maria asked questions. The guests responded and gave their points of view, and it was up to the audience to decide.”

She told Dominion’s lawyers that the fraud claims were aired because her production team “thought the public deserved to hear what the current administration was saying.”

Grossberg first gained public notice in February, when Dominion filed a widely publicized brief that described one of its lawyers asking Grossberg if it’s important to correct falsehoods uttered on the show — and Grossberg replying, simply, “No.”

This, Dominion argued, was more evidence that Fox staff knew Trump election-fraud claims were false but did not convey that to viewers.

In fact, Grossberg said in her suit, she did not want to give that answer, but “she had been conditioned and felt coerced to give this response that simultaneously painted her in a negative light as a professional.”

After “writers at prominent media outlets called Ms. Grossberg’s ethics as a journalist and her professional judgment into question,” she alleges, she suffered anxiety and stress.

While Grossberg’s testimony and internal emails were cited prominently in briefs that Dominion has filed in its defamation suit, Fox’s lawyers made only a single, fleeting reference to her in their own defense filings, in which they cited an email of Grossberg’s to demonstrate that Bartiromo “reached out to sources and conducted research into the President’s claims.”

But Fox representatives have cited Grossberg’s testimony in communications with journalists to dispute some of Dominion’s legal claims.

Earlier this month, exhibits were unsealed showing that Powell had forwarded Bartiromo an email from a Minnesota artist that spun theories about an elaborate vote-flipping scheme and supposed connections between Dominion and top Democrats, as well as bizarre claims about murder and time-travel. Dominion lawyers have sought to draw a connection between this email — which its own author deemed “wackadoodle” — and the election-fraud claims that Bartiromo and Powell discussed on the air.

Fox spokespeople, though, countered this argument in an email to reporters by pointing to Grossberg’s explanation, drawn from her testimony: “We never used [the email.] So this is just all hypothetical really. … This isn’t something that I would use right now as reportable for air.”

According to Fox’s complaint, first reported by the Daily Beast, the network’s lawyers advised Grossberg in meetings before her deposition that “they represented Fox News and not her in her individual capacity” and that their discussions with her “were subject to the attorney-client privilege” and must be kept confidential.

The complaint stated that Fox first realized Grossberg intended to share details of those conversations when the company received a draft of Grossberg’s potential legal filing against the company last month.

Grossberg, the complaint stated, told the network that she was not subject to the company’s attorney-client privilege.

DumFux News

Veterans, active military, guard and reserve comprise a significant segment of voters who typically go with the GOP - almost 2-to-1.

15% of the Jan6 defendants have experience in the US military.

DumFux News has been used to propagandize people in uniform.

Recent revelations should have the effect of stripping off some of that GOP support.

We'll see.

About That Hunter Biden Thing

I'll start by saying there's nothing that will "defang Republican criticism", as Ms Cox puts it.

Given what we know so far about the behavior of DumFux News in the Dominion v Fox lawsuit, "conservatives" don't give one empty fuck about the truth - it's been an open secret for decades that finding the demarcation point between Republicans and Rupert's Gang Of Merry Pranksters is nigh-on to impossible.

Second - and this has come to be one of the big ones in my mind - there's still an awful lot of housecleaning to do before the Justice Department can be said to be relatively free of the kind of inside rot that makes it all but sure that every investigation is wired to some degree against whoever the GOP has decided needs to be tagged a "dangerously liberal".

And there's the rub - it's always pretty clear that the point of the exercise is not to prove anything, but only to plant the seeds of doubt, no matter how ridiculous. In fact - for some of the rubes - the more ridiculous the better.

Ana Marie Cox, trying to play PR Consultant. She makes some valid points reminding us that politics is a shitty game, but as always, NYT pays people to keep us on the knife's edge.

Whatever else happens we can't lean too far one way or the other because asshole conservatives buy dick pills and panty liners too.

So maybe Cynical Mike would like to know how the New York Times is so much different than DumFux News?

Nah - I'll think about that some other time.

Hunter Biden Has Some Explaining to Do

Name a recurring Fox News segment, and there is a Republican congressional investigation for it: the origin of the coronavirus, the threat to our capital markets, supposed collaboration between social media companies and the Democratic Party. Some representatives have launched an investigation into whether the Department of Justice targeted parents who protested vaccine and mask mandates at school board meetings. No bit of pique is too tangential to escape their notice; Lauren Boebert recently demanded during one of these investigations that former Twitter representatives answer for her perceived shortage of likes: “Did either of you approve the shadow banning of my account @LaurenBoebert? Yes or no?”

Nothing feeds the perpetual outrage machine like a sprawling investigation into a vague but titillating scandal. And no pursuit is more vague and more titillating than the so-far-fruitless obsession with Hunter Biden.

For two years now, conservatives have accused President Biden’s wayward son of influence peddling, money laundering, bribery and illegal foreign lobbying — and they have sought to turn his misadventures into a tawdry, sprawling hydra powerful enough to entangle and distract the whole administration. With control over House investigations, they may finally get what they want: a chance to turn Hunter Biden’s life inside out.

It may counter every instinct a loving parent (or a political consultant) could ever have, but the president should want a version of that, too. During Hunter Biden’s active addiction, Joe Biden made it clear to his son and the world that his paternal love was not contingent on his son’s behavior. Now is the time to make it clear that his behavior does have consequences. Joe Biden should clearly call for his son to cooperate — not with the Republican circus on the Hill but with the Justice Department. That would let Hunter Biden stand on his own and allow the administration to focus on issues that matter most to the American people.

Up until this point, the Biden family has — publicly, at least — brushed off Republican threats: “Lots of luck!” Joe Biden told them last fall. Jill Biden simply asserts that “Hunter is innocent.”

But even the most optimistic Democrats know Hunter Biden has some explaining to do. The Justice Department has been investigating him since 2018. Last fall, The Washington Post quoted sources close to the inquiry saying the department had enough evidence to charge him with criminal violations regarding tax crimes and lying on a federal form.

Of course, cheating on your taxes and lying on a form are nothing compared with the operatic tale of corruption at the highest levels spun out by Tucker Carlson et al. But the president’s Hunter Biden problem goes beyond the strict letter of the law. All Republicans want to do is conjure the clingy atmosphere of deviousness that Hillary Clinton never escaped.

Last month, Hunter Biden introduced a daring tactic in his defense: His legal team requested that the Delaware attorney general, the Justice Department and the I.R.S. investigate the key figures responsible for perpetuating the laptop story and disseminating his personal information without his permission.

As wild as the accusations against him are, the one nugget of irreducible truth is Hunter Biden’s privilege. It has served him as a just-about-literal get-out-of-jail-free pass. The same is true for countless other politicians’ kids — certainly including Donald Trump’s. But pointing out the double standard won’t be enough to defang Republican criticism. And neither will just waiting for it all to blow over.

Democrats have tried ignoring Republican fishing expeditions before, hoping that the accusations would evaporate or that voters wouldn’t really care. Sometimes that works. (R.I.P., Operation Fast and Furious.) But with enough prolonged effort, they really can do damage. They succeeded in tarnishing the Clinton brand forever.

Whatever Hunter Biden did or didn’t do, if his father endorses the Justice Department investigation — and promises to stay out of it entirely — that would elevate law enforcement’s slow and steady conventional machinery over the thirsty ravings of far-right Congress members. (As a bonus, the Justice Department will be far less likely than Congress to delve into the most salacious elements of this story.)

And then there’s the fact that Joe Biden built a national profile as an eager participant in the war on drugs, which sent hundreds of thousands of people — primarily Black men — to prison. His son wound up a working artist in Malibu, Calif. Joe Biden’s honesty about that could dampen the nefarious background noise of “rules for thee but not for me” that followed the Clintons wherever they went. His reputation as an essentially honest politician (and a kind, loving father) is the mortar that has glued his career together; not admitting that his family has benefited from his position in this one case gives every other accusation a toehold.

Hunter Biden has endured considerable scrutiny, but he has advantages that most people don’t: No matter what happens, he is unlikely to find himself destitute or without opportunities. Even more of a privilege, perhaps, is that his family has such clear, unconditional love for him. As a person in recovery, I’ve been moved every time Joe Biden has come to his son’s defense. I know that his testimony to Hunter Biden’s value as a person has helped destigmatize the disease of addiction on a significant scale.

Being willing to fight for his son against all comers has been one way for Joe Biden to show love. Letting his son stand on his own two feet and loving him all the same is another.

Today's Perfect Example

Brian Tyler Cohen explains

And Down They Go

Every time I think the Republicans can't possibly get any lower, they find a way - it's hard to get below whale shit, but these clowns manage.

Actually, this one could swing either way. You know there's going to be some selective editing going on because, fuck yeah there will be. But maybe - just maybe - DumFux News is so battered and bruised that they'll do it in a way that pins it all on Trump and works to let themselves and various congress critters off the hook.

In Sharing Video With Fox Host, McCarthy Hits Rewind on Jan. 6

In granting exclusive access to Jan. 6 Capitol surveillance footage to a cable news host bent on rewriting the history of the attack, the speaker effectively outsourced a politically toxic re-litigation of the riot.

WASHINGTON — Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to grant the Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to thousands of hours of security footage from inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack was his latest move to appease the right wing of his party, this time by effectively outsourcing a bid to reinvestigate the riot to its favorite cable news commentator, who has circulated conspiracy theories about the assault.

The most conservative Republican members of Congress — many of whom have worked to downplay or deny the reality of the Jan. 6 attack — have been pushing Mr. McCarthy for weeks to release the video after he promised to do so during his campaign for speaker.

Mr. McCarthy has shown little appetite for the kind of aggressive public re-litigation of what happened that day that some of his colleagues have called for, but he is sensitive to the dangers of angering his hard-core base by seeming to drop or disregard the matter.

That is where Mr. Carlson comes in.

“I promised,” Mr. McCarthy said on Wednesday in a brief phone interview in which he defended his decision to grant Mr. Carlson exclusive access to the more than 40,000 hours of security footage. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”

Still, the sunshine Mr. McCarthy referred to will, for now, be filtered through a very specific prism — that of Mr. Carlson, a hero of the hard right who has insinuated without evidence that the Jan. 6 attack was a “false flag” operation carried out by the government.

After Mr. Carlson has had his way with the video, Mr. McCarthy said he planned to make the footage more widely available. His team has had internal conversations about providing the footage to other media outlets after Mr. Carlson has had his “exclusive” first airing, according to a source familiar with the deliberations who insisted on anonymity to speak about them.

For now, however, Mr. McCarthy has given a large head start to a purveyor of conspiracy theories about the attack.

Mr. Carlson declined on Wednesday to comment on his review of the tapes, except to say that he and a large team of staff members looking at the footage were “taking it very seriously.”

Democrats have revolted at Mr. McCarthy’s decision, arguing that it is a politically driven move that risks the security of the Capitol.

In a letter to fellow Democrats on Wednesday, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the speaker was “needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11.”

“By handpicking Tucker Carlson, Speaker McCarthy laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers, not the truth,” Mr. Schumer wrote. “Tucker Carlson has no fidelity to the truth or facts and has used his platform to promote the Big Lie, distort reality and espouse bogus conspiracy theories about Jan. 6.”

Some Republicans, too, said Mr. McCarthy was taking a political risk with his decision. Should Mr. Carlson use the video — through selective editing — to further false narratives, it could supercharge the appetite in the right-wing base for the continued re-litigation of Jan. 6. That could force the issue onto the agenda of more House Republicans, a move that is likely to turn off swing voters.

“It helps McCarthy solidify his speakership among the right, especially those who held their vote out,” said Ron Bonjean, a veteran Republican strategist. “It shows to conservatives that he’s providing complete transparency, and that’s what Republicans have wanted for a long time. That said, if the footage is misused in some way, this could end up generating another black hole for Republicans on Jan. 6. It could cause Republicans to be wrapped around that issue, and to look backward, not forward, toward getting things done.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, has portrayed the treatment of Jan. 6 prisoners as a civil rights atrocity and demanded the release of security footage that could exonerate them. But Mr. McCarthy has not shown the same passion as his right flank for re-examining Jan. 6 — an issue that some of his advisers view as a political loser — and, thus far, he has had little interest in dedicating limited staff resources to doing so.

He set up no select committee to investigate the events surrounding the Capitol breach, though he warned the House Jan. 6 panel last year to preserve its files. He has signaled interest in exploring one avenue, saying that the House select committee that investigated the attack during the last Congress ignored the security failures that allowed the Capitol to be breached. He appointed Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, a Republican he views as being unfairly maligned by the Jan. 6 panel, as the chairman of a House Administration subcommittee tasked with investigating the matter.

Mr. McCarthy has risen to power during a tumultuous time on Capitol Hill. Republicans have a slim governing majority, and he had to repeatedly bend to a demanding hard-right flank in his quest for power.

Some of those same resisters celebrated Mr. McCarthy’s decision to give the footage to Mr. Carlson. “Thank you @SpeakerMcCarthy for following through on this!” Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado and one of Mr. McCarthy’s loudest detractors during the speakership battle, wrote on Twitter.

And Mr. McCarthy himself was eager to take political advantage of the move, blasting out a fund-raising email that told potential donors: “I promised I would give you the truth regarding Jan. 6, and now I am delivering.”

Even more mainstream Republicans backed him up.

Former Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, who as the top Republican on the Administration Committee during the last Congress watched hours of the footage, said he had pushed for it to be released to refute what he called Democrats’ “lies” that Republicans had given tours of the Capitol to rioters in advance.

He dismissed concerns that releasing the footage would endanger Capitol security, citing the Jan. 6 committee’s depiction of the evacuation of Vice President Mike Pence and others during the assault.

Mr. Davis also said there was nothing particularly surprising in the footage he reviewed, which showed the attack on the Capitol largely as it is widely understood to have transpired.

“The Capitol came under attack,” Mr. Davis said. “The brave men and women of the Capitol Police fought back. Hopefully, those who broke the law that day are held accountable.”

Still, Democrats said the move was deeply irresponsible, warning that Mr. McCarthy was granting access to sensitive video of escape routes, security camera angles and logistics at the Capitol.

“We have tremendous security concerns about what’s happening and we want to know what rules are in place for the viewing of this material, which goes right to the heart of how we protect the Capitol and our staffs,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, who was a member of the now-defunct Jan. 6 committee. “We want to make sure we are not giving a blueprint for attacking the Capitol.”

Today's Lügenpresse

In keeping with Daddy State Awareness, Rule 1, our friends at DumFux "News" have always bitched about how the mainstream media does nothing but lie to us.

That deafening sound of flapping wings is a shitload of chickens coming home to roost, Rupert.

‘Everything at stake here,’ billionaire founder Rupert Murdoch wrote to a top executive in November 2020, part of a cache of internal communications revealed in a $1.6 billion defamation suit.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Fox News faced an existential crisis. The top-rated cable news network had alienated its Donald Trump-loving viewers with an accurate election night prediction for Joe Biden and was facing a terrifying ratings slide, not to mention the ire of a once-loyal president.

Concern came from the very top: “Everything at stake here,” Rupert Murdoch messaged Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.

The billionaire founder was eager to see the Republican candidate prevail in the coming Senate runoff in Georgia — “helping any way we can,” he wrote. But he also advised Scott to keep an eye on the uptick in ratings for a smaller, more conservative channel whose election skepticism suddenly seemed to be resonating with pro-Trump viewers.

Newly released messages show Fox executives fretting that month over an uncomfortable revelation: that if they told their audience the truth about the election, it could destroy their business model.

“Getting creamed by CNN!” Murdoch wrote to Scott on Nov. 8, a day after most news organizations declared that Biden had won. “Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”

What Fox’s loyal viewers wanted to watch — and what Fox News was willing to do to keep them — emerged this week as a central question in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.

A stunning cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony obtained by the software company and made public on Thursday in a Delaware court filing showed high-level Fox executives and on-air stars privately agonizing over the wild and false claims of a stolen election that Trump allies promoted on Fox airwaves in the weeks after the 2020 election. “Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.

The plaintiff’s lawyers argue that such messages prove Fox brass knew the claims that Dominion had “flipped” votes from Trump to Biden were untrue — but “spread and endorsed” them anyway.

But the Dominion filing also lends ammunition to their long-held argument: that Fox allowed the false claims to air because it was fearful of losing viewers to Newsmax, an ever more pro-Trump news channel.

“The texts and emails support [Dominion’s] claim that Fox was more concerned about its audience and market share than the truth concerning the 2020 presidential election,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William & Mary Law School who specializes in the First Amendment and called the breadth of the internal communications “extraordinary.”

In a statement, a Fox spokesperson said: “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.”

Some exchanges showed Fox executives raising an alarm when journalists attempted to counter false claims from the Trump team.

On a Nov. 9 broadcast, news anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a live briefing by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, warning viewers that she was making unsubstantiated claims of fraud. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said on air. “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show this.”

Executives took notice: Cavuto’s actions were communicated to senior leadership at parent company Fox Corp. as a “Brand Threat.”

Meanwhile, they kept a close eye on ratings.

“The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling — truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored,” one message from Fox News President Jay Wallace to his CEO read. “Trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on war footing.”

Later that month, Fox broadcast the entirety of a news conference featuring Powell and fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani outlining their unsubstantiated case for election fraud — a performance that Murdoch dubbed “really crazy stuff,” in an email, “and damaging.”

But when Fox host Dana Perino speculated that such claims could draw a lawsuit from Dominion, Scott expressed concern in an email, saying on-air personalities couldn’t afford to “give the crazies an inch right now … they are looking for and blowing up all appearances of disrespect to the audience.”

In another message, Scott noted, “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us … We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”

The ratings concerns turned out to be warranted. In January 2021, for the first time in 20 years, the cable network reported monthly ratings that fell behind both of its main cable news competitors, CNN and MSNBC.

As Trump refused to let up on his election fraud claims, Murdoch suggested that Fox might have the clout to push back. In early January 2021, he relayed in a message to Scott a suggestion that their three biggest prime-time stars — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — “should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won.’” Murdoch passed on the suggestion that such a move “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”

But such a coordinated announcement never came. In forwarding his email to her staff, Scott added, “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.”

Within Fox, the messages show, many worried that the network had been hurt by two key incidents: a debate in which some conservatives believed Fox anchor Chris Wallace lobbed unfair questions to Trump; and Fox’s election night prediction that Biden would win the hotly contested state of Arizona.

Hannity wrote to Carlson and Ingraham on Nov. 12 that the combination “destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”

“It’s vandalism,” Carlson responded.

In a message to a colleague, Scott complained that Bill Sammon, then the head of the network’s Washington bureau, did not understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling AZ.” In a separate message, to Fox Corp. executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch, she wrote that: “Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a question of trust — the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”

“Yes,” Murdoch replied. “But needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.”

In another message, Ron Mitchell, the network executive in charge of prime-time programming and analytics, warned that Newsmax’s brand of “conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled [Fox News Channel] viewer is looking for.” As a result, he added, Fox should not “ever give viewers a reason to turn us off. Every topic and guest must perform.”

Mitchell continued: “‘No unforced errors’ in content — example: Abruptly turning away from a Trump campaign news conference.”

BTW, reports of the demise of DumFux News are exaggerated - and premature. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

But hey - a guy can dream.

Drifting Towards Justice

Michigan Sec'y of State Jocelyn Benson has been making a solid point about the need to fight misinformation, saying (I'm paraphrasing here):

It's illegal to lie about a product you're trying to sell. When your candidate loses, but you yell "fraud" and "stolen election", it's really no different than some Bait-n-Switch asshole rolling back the odometers on the used cars he has for sale.

Alex Wagner - and we should be talking about coming down hard on the tiny-dick terrorists who swallow all the bullshit being peddled on wingnut media, and then threaten public officials.

Ari Melber - DumFux News may finally take it in the shorts:

But we have to keep in mind that "the liberal press", even as they start to come around a bit, will continue to pimp the Middle Ground Fallacy.

Here's NYT with what ought to be something like a bomb going off in their neighbor's basement, more or less burying the story below the fold, "headlining" it in standard 20-point font.

Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff.’

The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.

The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”

On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”

Dominion’s brief depicts Ms. Scott, whom colleagues have described as sharply attuned to the sensibilities of the Fox audience, as being well aware that Mr. Trump’s claims were baseless. And when another Murdoch-owned property, The New York Post, published an editorial urging Mr. Trump to stop complaining that he had been cheated, Ms. Scott distributed it widely among her staff. Mr. Murdoch then thanked her for doing so, the brief says.

The filing, in state court in Delaware, contains the most vivid and detailed picture yet of what went on behind the scenes at Fox News and its corporate parent in the days and weeks after the 2020 election, when the conservative cable network’s coverage took an abrupt turn.

Fox News stunned the Trump campaign on election night by becoming the first news outlet to declare Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of Arizona — effectively projecting that he would become the next president. Then, as Fox’s ratings fell sharply after the election and the president refused to concede, many of the network’s most popular hosts and shows began promoting outlandish claims of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy involving Dominion machines to deny Mr. Trump a second term.

- more -