Part One: Inside Fox News with Katy and Cody

Robert reunites with his soul mates, Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll, to learn what Tucker Carlson and friends said behind the scenes after the 2020 election.

(Two Part Series)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's slowly destroying the brains of the people who raised
us my various Rupert Murdoch properties. I'm Robert Evans, host
Stuff Behind the Bastards, and today we have a very
special episode. Before we get into that, I'm going to
bring on my my co hosts, my once in Future

(00:25):
podcast buddies, Cody Johnston and Katie Stove Daniel forty five
straight seconds of air horns here, followed by a lap track. Yeah, beepeep,
How's how's everything going? Midc Yeah? Yeah, oh wow, Cody,

(00:45):
I might try to have you do a couple of
Murdoch lines for us, a little bit like Ringo. To me,
it sounds a little bit like my Boston and Colson.
It would be so much, It would be so good if,
like his historically, you could go back in time and
switch them so that, like Tucker, Carlson was kind of
the most replaceable beetle and Ringo was a fascist on

(01:07):
mets um. Anyway, how are you? How are you guys? Oh, Robert? Okay,
more specific question, have any of you, like had a
complications among your loved ones as a result of a
Rupert Murdoch property. I just laughed, and it's been a

(01:37):
thing that has complicated my life with a number of
family members, and it's a kind of a thing that like,
I have a couple of cousins, and every now and
then we'll talk, like, you know, something will be going around,
so to speak. I'm trying to be vague in the
interests of like family piece. Something will be going around
and we'll be like, yeah, it's fucking Tucker Carlson or
whatever like started started this saying this bullshit. Now a

(01:58):
bunch of the people, bunch of the very nice people
who raised me, believe something terrible. Um, and it's it's
deeply frustrating, it's very effective. Yeah, it's um, it's and
it's it's been kind of this black box up until recently,
Like every now and then you would get these lawsuits
involving Fox, you know, and a bit, one little bit

(02:21):
of it would go viral and you'd see in like
all of the lefty newspapers whatever, Oh Fox argues that
they're not you know, a news agency or whatever, that
it's a character or yeah. But we we we we
haven't gotten like a tremendous amount of detail about what
inside the company looks like until very recently. Now, you
have y'all been paying much attention to the Dominion lawsuit

(02:42):
against Fox News. No, it's no that that's that's good,
you're I'm aware of it. So there are there are yeah, yeah,
there are two big lawsuits that Fox is fighting off
right now. One is from Dominion Voting Systems, which is
in I think twenty eight states, and it's a one
point six billion dollar defamation suit. And there's also a

(03:04):
two point six billion dollar defamation lawsuit from Smart Mattock,
which I think was only in one state. But there
were a bunch of Fox allegations that they were like
hacking the election. We'll get into the details of all
this in a little bit, but um, it's it's been
interesting because you know, for years and years and years
there have been Fox has been what I would morally

(03:25):
consider not in a legal sense because they haven't been
found guilty this in a legal sense, but I would
morally consider them to be doing slander on a pretty
regular basis against a wide variety of people. I think
that's fair, Yeah, fair statement to make a fair statement
of protected opinion. But Dominion chose to fight back, and

(03:47):
I you know, I think there's an argument to be
made that they had more of a solid legal ground
than a lot of the people that Fox has targeted
over the years, or that Fox personalities have targeted over
the years. Um but they they they sue Fox, and
throughout twenty twenty two, they put together this team of
lawyers who started running through a laundry list of Fox

(04:07):
News producers, line executives, and on air personalities and in
deposing them. Right, so, you sit someone down, You sit
Sean Hannity down, you sit Tucker Carlson down, you sit
Lachlan Murdoch down, who who's probably going to be the
heir to Rupert Murdock's fortune, and you ask them questions
about what happened in you know, this kind of spate
of disinformation, and if they lie, they can go to jail,

(04:29):
right Like it's a crime to lie in a deposition.
And in order to help enforce that, there's also a
process called discovery where Dominion's lawyers got access to what
seems to be a mountain of text messages, memos, emails
from Fox personalities in order to hold them accountable because
you can actually see what they were saying to each

(04:51):
other in addition to what they claim during the deposition
and the questions that Dominion asked. They spread well beyond
kind of just the specific allegation Fox personalities made against
Dominion and went more broadly into Fox company culture and
how decisions filtered both up and down from management. And yeah,
it's as a result, it's given us kind of the

(05:12):
most complete look inside Fox and the most complete look
at like the kind of human beings who work there
and how they talk amongst themselves, and how they kind
of what they see, like the moral universe they inhabit
in a way that I never thought we actually were
going to get evidence of. And so that's what I

(05:33):
want to go into this week because there's there's a
tremendous amount here. It's worth noting before we start that
Fox is in actually some potentially serious financial trouble. We're
talking between these two lawsuits, somewhere around four billion dollars
that they could be found liable for. And this is
in addition to the one point two billion that Fox

(05:54):
is paid over the last decade due to the phone
hacking scandal that racked the Sun and News of the World.
You're both UK Murdoch properties, are you? Did you guys
hear remember do you guys recall much about the phone
hacking scandal. Not a lot of details, but I remember
the basic story. Yeah, the gist of it is that
Rebecca Brooks, who edited both of those publications and went

(06:16):
on to lead their UK publishing arm, and Andrew Colson,
who was an editor at News of the World, and
five of the papers journalists conspired to hack the voicemails
of more than six hundred people over a six year period. Yeah,
it's so. They hacked like a bunch of public figures
and celebrities. But what really got them in trouble was
they hacked the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl, um, in

(06:40):
order to like what, Yeah, it's fucked up like that
is unbelievable. I mean it's no, it's unbelievable. Yeah, I
mean it, Yeah, it's it's I think what's really unbelievable
is that Rupert Murdoch claimed whence this came public, that
he'd had no knowledge of it. Um, he told me
this is very fun. Actually, Cody, I'm gonna I'm gonna

(07:01):
toss this text into the into the chat and you
can you can do your Rupert Murdock boys. Oh god, yeah,
you're a really good Foilfield people I trusted. I'm not
saying who let me down? And I think they behaved
disgracefully and it's time for them to pay. Wow, I

(07:22):
think you're the one that led us all down by
that accent. No, I think that's a flawless Aussie. Thank you.
I just mean I've worked on it. Yeah, it's it's okay.
Most people who do an Australian accent it just winds
up really Boston. So you know, I'm glad that I
got New Zealand that happened crooking. So that's that's very funny.

(07:48):
Um that he's like, oh, those bad Fox News reporters,
I'm gonna make him pay. I had no idea this
was happening as the CEO of Fox News. A lot
of people wondered whether, you know, sorry, I'm sorry, like
it's time for them to pay. Is such a weird
thing like phrasing for like you could make that happens.

(08:09):
Yeah yeah, yeah, like be you know, taken to account
or like yeah there should be consequences, like it's time
for them to pay. Such a who phrasing whoever needs
to kill them is what he's saying. Yeah, Okay, um, yeah, yeah,
it's yeah, it's it's it's good, good old fashioned, weasely bullshit.

(08:31):
So now, obviously, legally I can't say that Rupert certainly
knew something. But we are in the United States and
I can say which I couldn't say if we were
in the UK. It seems kind of weird and suspicious
that he wouldn't know anything about this massive hacking scandal
as journalists and editors engaged in. And while I'm not
going to push much further than that, because he is

(08:53):
a billionaire with a lot of lawyers, what I will
do is quote a Fox News article about the UK
Parliamentary Committee investigation into the hacking scandal. Quote from Fox News.
Although Rupert Murdoch and his son James were not accused
of misleading parliament, the committee said it was simply astonishing
that they only realized that the hacking was not confined
to one rogue reporter in December of twenty ten. The

(09:16):
report said that they should ultimately be prepared to take
responsibility for the willful blindness of News International and News
Corporation over the scandal. Aside from the four hundred and
fifty four million they spent on legal fees. Yeah, yeah,
that's good stuff. So sketchy as that all was. The
phone hacking scandal did not wind up doing Murdoch or

(09:37):
News Corp any like permanent harm. But Dominion's lawsuit included
not only depositions under oath, but again this expansive discovery process.
So suddenly we know exactly what Rupert Murdoch's involvement was
here to a degree of legal certainty. I should also
note here because it's very funny that dominions lawyers to
post Sean Hannity for more than seven hours and honestly,

(10:05):
moment of silence for those lawyers because they had to
talk to Sean Hannity for seven hours. Brutal, that's hazard pay.
Yeah yeah, I hope they hope they have. They had
to take frequent breaks. Yeah, they needed some MDMA and
a therapist. Shit. So the bulk of the questions asked
and materials provided have to do with discussions around the
decision of several major Fox stars to host Sydney Powell

(10:28):
on their pro Remember Sidney Powell, Yeah, she was a
former lawyer for Donald Trump who filed lawsuits in numerous
states attempting to overturn the results of the election. Now
she spent most of her time since twenty twenty fighting
disbarment hearings. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like she's going to
get disbarred. I think the case wound up being in Texas.

(10:48):
But in the heavy days after November second, she started
massaging a collection of deeply questionable sources to argue that Dominion,
which ran voting machines in twenty eight states and smart
Mattock quote ran an algorithm that shaved votes from Trump
and awarded them to Biden. There's a lot more to
her allegations, and we'll cover those presently, but that's what
you need to go to start. And before we get
into all that, I wanted to begin this episode by

(11:10):
giving you guys an example of how good journalists treated
Sydney Powell, because we're going to spend most of this
time talking about how Fox did. I want to play
a clip from an interview she did with an Australian journalist,
so Cody, you can brush up on your accent working
for ABC four Corners, an Australian news agency. Yeah, it's
it's it's good stuff that Smartmatic shifted votes from Trump

(11:33):
to Biden in multiple battleground states. That was your argument,
wasn't it that there was an algorithm run the machines
via the software of it, shaved votes from Trump and
gave those Biden. What actual research or bactricking did you
do at the time to find out what smartmatics actual

(11:53):
involvement in the election was. If you work for smart matter,
Smartematic that the election. I think it's incumbent on both
of us to know what smart matos involvement was. It
seems like a pretty foundational fact. Confused right now about
why you're here because you made a series of very

(12:16):
strong allegations against smart Mating, containing many errors of fact.
Do you accept the fact now that the company that
you accused of stealing a national election only operated in
one county in LA in California, one county, one state. No,
I'm not prepared to accept that fact. I think smartmatics

(12:37):
involvement was far more significant than that. I think they're
trying to minimize their involvement, of course, I do. You
said that smart matic owns dominion. How do you justify
the basic factory error interview. We're not even in the
area of great dispute. These are the simple and she

(13:02):
gets up, what did she think this was? What did
she think she was showing up for? Which she interview like,
I love fuck Sydney. Legitimately, what did you think they
were going to ask? Think they were going to do
what Fox did? Actually, I think is the answer. It's like,

(13:26):
can you tell me you're just any any reason for
you to have made these claims? Do you work for them? Yeah?
Do you have any evidence that they were present in
more than one county in Los Angeles? Can you show
your work, Sydney. It's a simple question, Sydney. Um. We
will talk about where her what her sources later And

(13:48):
I don't want to spoil it, but it involves decapitation.
So yeah, I know, I know, I know that's going
to be started that word. I thought you were going
to say, DiCaprio no, but no, no, no. I do
believe everyone involved was older than twenty one, so he
was unlikely that we have played a role. Yeah. Yeah,

(14:09):
So we will continue our main source for today with
our main source for today, which is the public version
of a filing by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.
This is a brief in support of Dominion's motion for
summary judgment on liability. I'm going to explain the legally shortly.
The document opens up with several quotes, however, and I
think these are interesting. Quote Number one, seventy one million

(14:31):
voters will never accept Biden. This process is to destroy
his presidency before it even starts. If it even starts,
we either close on Trump's victory or delegitimize Biden. The
plan all caps that. Steve Bannon to Maria bartar Romo
on November tenth, twenty twenty. Maria bartar Romo is a
Fox News financial journalist and TV personality who hosts Mornings

(14:52):
with Maria and Maria Bartaromo's Wall Street. She used to
work at like CBS. She was like a fairly respected
border before all this um. When you google her name,
Rick Wikipedia provides this poll quote. As a reporter, I
approach every situation knowing that everyone has his or her
own agenda. It's not a bad thing. It's just a fact, Okay,

(15:15):
I mean not untrue. For example, the agenda you and
Steve Bannen hatched to de legitimize the Biden election. The
only thing, yeah, the only thing that I would push
back on is the it's not a bad thing part. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it is a bad thing in your case,
because your agenda was to overturn a democratic election and
commit treason. It certainly can. Yeah. Yeah. If the thing is,

(15:40):
for example, installing a dictatorship, then yes, that personal Agendato, Tomato, Robert.
If your personal agenda is increased post office funding, then
perhaps it's okay. Yeah, yeah, we could give that a path. Yeah.
So Maria started Fox's troubles when she interviewed Sidney Powell
right after the election on November eight, twenty. She said, quote, Sydney,

(16:03):
we talked about the dominion software. I know they were
voting irregularities. Tell me about that. And Powell replied, that's
putting it mildly. The computer glitches could not and should
not have happened at all. This is where the fraud
took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer
system or adding votes that did not exist. Now, immediately,
thank you, thank you. I've practiced for years now. Immediately

(16:25):
after airing this, Rupert Murdoch sent a message to one
of his producers saying it was very hard to credibly
cry foul everywhere because Trump had lost multiple swing states. Yeah,
it's hard point yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's one of
those things. You can see why there was an interest
on behalf of the Fox personalities using Sidney Powell to

(16:48):
tie in Dominion to this because they were they were
active in a bunch of different swing states and kind
of creating this and pushing this conspiracy allowed them to
explain how all of those swing states had broken against Trump,
which was the thing that Fox's reporting had led folks
to believe was not really possible. Dominion's filing notes that
Fox was aware that these claims were bogus from the jump.

(17:09):
And here's a message from Sean Hannity to Fox Politics
editor Chris Sterwalt that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing.
I did not believe it for one second. No reasonable
person would have thought that Stirwalt gets fired after this.
By the way, so the motion itself opens with this.
Fox knew from the top down. Fox knew that the

(17:32):
Dominion stuff was total bs. Yet despite knowing the truth,
or at minimum recklessly disregarding that truth, Fox spread and
endorsed these outlandist voter fraud claims about Dominion, even at
as it internally recognized the lies as crazy, absurd, and
shocklingly reckless. Those are all quotes from Fox executives. So

(17:52):
this all serves to support dominion's key contention that Fox
knew their claims were false unless they reported on an
election fraud in a way that demonstrated actual malice without
resort to motive or other circumstantial factors. That's the legal
term for they're completely at fault and they don't even
have a right to defend themselves, right, Like, that's that's
basically what complicit. Yeah, that's that that's more or less

(18:14):
what they are saying here, because like this is a
motion for summary judgment. So the thing that they're saying is,
we want the judge to just kind of rule on
this right now based on the merits of the case.
We think that this is such a clear case that
like there's there's really nothing else to say, um, based
on the information that discovery and the depositions have drug up,
Like it's like on its face prima facy or whatever,

(18:36):
however the fuck you're supposed to pronounce that, Um, this
is just such an obvious case that we want a
ruling right now, um, which is rare. You don't generally
get that, especially with very large lawsuits like this. We'll
see what actually happens. Um. But based on the reporting
they've put together, I think I think they have a
strong yeah. Yeah, um. So I want to continue from

(18:57):
the motion. But first, you know what motion. I want
to urge people towards forward, pulling out that pulling out
that wallet, Abby, pulling out that wallet. That's right, baby,
m shrimping the dingo ate your baby, that's right. Yes,

(19:18):
that's a that's Australian for purchase these products and services.
No one knows why we're back quite quite quode. I'm
gonna give you the rest of the episode to figure
out what that acronymics on it. So, um, I want

(19:40):
to continue from the motion here. Fox's correct call of
Arizona for Joe Biden triggered a backlash among its audience,
and the network was being rejected. That's a quote from
a Fox executive. Rival net network such as Newsmax took
advantage of the opening by promoting an alternative universe another
quote of election fraud. So Fox went on a war footing,

(20:01):
caring more about protecting its own following viewership than about
the truth and the words of Fox News is SVP
and managing editor of the Washington DC Bureau, Bill Salmon,
It's remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.
I might have a couple of notes for that, including
the idea that there were many good journalists at Fox News.

(20:24):
But that's where I went as well, Yeah, that's that's
where I might have an issue. So next dominion goes
on to assert why this is different from most defamation lawsuits. Normally,
plaintiffs proved defendant's actual malice, whether they knew it was
false or in fact entertained serious doubts as to the
truth of the statement by inference, as it would be
rare for a defendant to admit such doubts. And they

(20:46):
cite Solano versus Playgirl in that here, and they note
that here overwhelming direct evidence establishes Fox's knowledge of falsity,
not just doubts. And I want to I want to
talk about the Clanov Playgirl case. That it's a two
thousand and two ninth Circuit Court case that dominion brings
up here because because it's kind of interesting. And then
in the January nineteen ninety nine issue of Playgirl magazine,

(21:08):
there was a cover photograph of actor Jose Solano, who
played someone called Manny Gutierrez in Baywatch from ninety six
to ninety nine. Solano had not posed for or given
an interview to Play Girl, and he did not consent
for them to use his image. He was shown shirtless
and wearing red lifeguard trunks and had like a bunch
of models surrounding them on the front cover in like
a suggestive way that was kind of like meant to

(21:31):
portray an image of him as a less wholesome character
than he personally portrayed himself as. And since he hadn't
actually like sat down to be interviewed or anything by Playgirl,
his argument. Salano's argument was that they were basically there
was essentially direct like they either knew that what they
were doing was false or they had serious doubts as

(21:53):
to the truth of the statement. Right, Like that's kind
of the case that's being cited here as like a
previous example of um of precedent, and Salano won the
case and established damages. I think it's I don't know,
I think it's interesting that they're they're falling black on
this Playgirl case is sort of evidence of like this
is the most this is like this is the most
um directly similar kind of irresponsibility from like a major

(22:17):
a major media network in the recent past. UM Dominions
lawyers note that Fox to fame their company, uh not
once or twice, but many times over a period of months.
H Tucker Carlson accused Dominion of committing quote, the single
greatest crime in American history. Um. Yeah, and so again
that's yeah, it's pretty hard to mitigate that. I know, right,

(22:39):
there's a few genocides, there's a lot of Yeah, that
sounds pretty hyperbolic, oh, Tucker, and that that's that's going
to come back to bite Tucker in the ass in
a very short time. Here. UM Dominion notes that while
defamation cases tend to involve just the malicious acts of
either an individual employee at a company or maybe a
small group of people at Fox, literally dozens of people

(23:02):
with editorial responsibility were involved, which is part of why
they're saying, we just want the judge to rule on
this because the irresponsibility is so deep and far reaching.
M Fox, for their part, it admits Sidney Pale and
her team never provided Fox with any evidence as to
her claims. Dominion, by contrast, made thirty six hundred separate
communications to Fox, with a dozen separate and widely circulated

(23:25):
fact check emails, each pointing the third party information debunking
the claims. I bet the algorithm did something, no to
it made it lies? Well, yeah, because Sydney stuff just
trended so well. Yeah, yeah, I love that clip of
her talking. They love just like being like, an algorithm

(23:46):
did it. There's a seister algorithm. It's always, it's always
Algorithm's so easy to point to the thing that nobody
actually understands very well. That's the fun thing about algorithms,
and it's about to be the fun thing about AI
and deep fakes and that and that. Like, as far
as most people in media are concerned, it's just magic.
And so like, if you're a bad actor, like literally
anyone at Fox, you can just use the word algorithm

(24:08):
or now it's yeah, deep fake. It's easy. Yeah. Um,
it's just like saying a wizard did it, but some
sort of plausible explanation for an implausible thing. Yeah. And
I don't know. I'm torn on this because I do
think we need more wizards in American politics, but not
not like this, not like this. No, no actual wizards

(24:31):
computer wizards, not computer wizards, real wizard wizards. No wizards,
yeah wizards, Yeah, like Gandolf. Yeah, I want Gandolf to
have his own like fascist news show where he supports
Rhonda Santis in removing books from from elementary schools. That's
what I want, That's what even like a Gumbledore, I

(24:52):
don't know, Well, Gandolf in particular Hosts he got radicalized
after they banned indoor smoking. That really that really that
really got him. Well yeah, he's a big anti masker too.
Dumbledore and JK are type still so mm hmm yeah, problematic. Yeah,
I'm just glad he's dead. Um. So now Dominion is yeah,

(25:16):
moving for summary judgment, which again has a there's a
very high burden of evidence when you ask a judge
to do this. Dominion argues that they can cross it easily.
Quote Fox falsely claimed. Number one Dominion committed election fraud
by rigging the twenty twenty presidential election. Number two Dominion
Software and algorithms manipulated vote counts in the twenty twenty

(25:36):
presidential election. Number three Dominion is owned by a company
founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator, Hugo
Chavez and number four Dominion government official machines. This is
what this is what false the claims. But yeah, these
are the claims. They have to be ver falls. Yeah, yeah,

(25:57):
they don't have to prove it, like Dominions saying these
are obvious false claims, Like yeah, this is the only
evidence that they have that would make what they did
responsible if these were true, and it's it's patently ridiculous.
Um so the number four oh yeah, number four Cody
is Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials who used its
machines in the twenty twenty presidential election. Um yeah, this

(26:21):
is like, these are pretty serious allegations to make with
absolute there's not quite no history. Oh again, we're building
towards what the evidence here was for the greatest crime
in American history. So Dominion insists that it's irrelevant that
the accused statements that I just read were made by
guests of Fox rather than the hosts. Yeah, and basically

(26:44):
they're like, look, Fox is a publisher. Every statement that
they choose to put out without contradiction or questioning is
something they are publishing. If you were to have Sidney
Powell on and then question her like that, ABC four
current Corners journalist died. That's okay, Then you don't have
to defend what she's said, because you're deliberately like questioning
its accuracy, you know, like you're actually trying to report.

(27:04):
But if you just let somebody talk as Fox News,
you are publishing their allegations. Yeah. There's also like there's
a supportive language that a lot of Fox News, I
mean all of them, I guess, maybe use when dealing
with these topics because of stuff like this, because they
know they can't say one hundred percent, but they're not
always great at it. Yeah, and they maybe they won't

(27:28):
get away with it. Yeah. I mean it's like, uh,
you know when when when the three of us were
trying to launch that podcast on your network, and you
guys wanted to report on breaking news, and I wanted
to make a series of allegations against the Home Depot
Corporation um and and these of one bad time you

(27:49):
had at home Depot. Yeah. Well, and because of the
tunnels underneath home depots where they traffic, well, I probably
shouldn't make another trafficking children joke. The last one we
made went badly against us all see it. I can't
imagine why Robert, this is me being a responsible publisher.
That's right. Yeah, recognizing that the years of lawsuits from

(28:11):
home Depot when we tried to put that out are
not worth repeating a second time. See, unlike Fox, some
of us can learn your lessons. Go to home Depot,
did it dot Org? Anyway, let's move on. Let's move
on here. So yeah, the bulk of Dominion's assertion is
that they are due summary judgment because Fox editorially employees
demonstrated actual malice. Prevailing on summary judgment in this case

(28:34):
requires that they show just one person acted with malice
free false claim about the company. And this is where
the stuff that's really interesting to us comes in. Quote,
as Tucker Carlson told Sidney Powell November seventeenth, you keep
telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by
the software. I hope you will prove that very soon.
You've convinced them that Trump will win. If you don't
have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it's a

(28:55):
cruel and reckless thing to keep saying. And then on
November twenty first, Carlson texted, it was shockingly useless to
claim that Dominion rigged the election. If there's no one
inside the company willing to talk or internal dominion documents
or copies of the software showing that they did it,
and as you know, there isn't, which is is a
pretty clear evidence that Tucker knew that what Sidney was

(29:17):
saying was wildly irresponsible. Yeah, oh yeah, no, I mean
you're right. I'm wondering how like much pushback? Like what
qualifies pushback? Right, because again, what he said was like,
well this is a very it's compelling, and you've you've
convinced people, but you need to show evidence, so like
you know the thing that he does and he knows

(29:38):
that he's doing. Yeah yeah, Now. Dominion furthermore alleges that
the statements Fox made are what you call, again per
se defamatory. This means that they alleged that the dominion
that the defendant committed a serious crime, and those allegations
injured the defendant in their trade or profession. The key
here is that when a statement is per se defamatory,

(29:58):
the injured party doesn't need prove specific damages to establish liability, right,
not per se? Yeah, not per se. I love you,
you know lawyers, those wacky guys. Per Se defamatory so
Dominion also notes that Fox cannot claim they had some

(30:19):
sort of a right to report on Powell's allegations against
Dominion on the basis of newsworthiness, since doing so would
require them to report accurately that Powell had no evidence
to back up her assertions. Discovery has given Dominion some
interesting ammo here, including a text from Rupert Murdoch asking
Suzanne Scott, current Fox News CEO, whether it was quote
and here's Murdoch again, unarguable that high profile Fox voices

(30:42):
fed the story that the election was stolen and that
January sixth was an important chance to have the results overturned.
That is Rupert Murdoch telling the CEO Fox. It is
a unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story
that the election was and that jan six was an
important chance to have the results overturned. That's Murdoch's saying,

(31:04):
we absolutely caused January or help. That is nuts, an
unbelievable thing that he just said, Yeah, what he texted
his coworker. He texted the quiet part. You can't just
say that, Yeah, maybe you can't. He did. He did.

(31:25):
That's that's maybe I should have been paying attention to
this story we did January. That's that Rupert Murdoch quote.
We did January six. You put that on some merch.
I just wanted to get that lady Murky by the
Secret Service. Yeah, that's that's Rupert Murdoch for you. That's

(31:50):
a joke. It's not legally actionable. Uh So Fox News
responded to Murdoch's like state, but basically Murdoch is like,
I'm fairly certain that we contributed to this. Do we
have evidence of like our voices feeding, like our people
feeding the story that the election was stolen? And executives
responded to him with fifty examples of this um, which

(32:11):
again really making the lawyers at Dominion's job easy for them.
That's so they can't even be like Dominions like dug
up all these examples and Fox those aren't examples, they're
like noreast sign it signed Rupert. Yeah from Rupert. Here's
some perfect evidence. I hope, I hope it gave him

(32:35):
indigestion when he had to hand over all of his
fucking text messages to these rhea. I agree with you, Katie.
I hope, I hope he was shitting a sand bag.
So to spool boys, I hope. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch's shit.
There's a video going around. I tweeted it recently. If
a guy like getting sucked down into a grain silo,

(32:57):
that's the consistency of that is awful. Yeah, stay the
fuck away from grain silos, Yes, Joe, don't stay away
from them. Shoot them at a distance, talking about readily
grain silos, and I was like, what's that about? Didn't investigate? Now,
I know. I came from a small farming town where
every year people would die in grain silos, Grain silos

(33:21):
and drunken ATV rides. Um, those were two of the
leading causes of death. Um. If only Fox News had
a similar record. I'm going to continue quoting from the
dominion lawsuit, as Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott, who's again
the CEO of Fox in the aftermath of January sixth,
All very well for Sean to tell you he was
in despair about Trump. But what did he tell his

(33:43):
viewers When Rupert Murdoch watched Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell
spin their lives on November nineteenth, he told Suzanne Scott
terrible stuff, damaging everybody. I fear Scott concurred, Yes, Sean,
and even Piero agrees. They talk about judge Janine Pierrouh.
My god, yeah, look at all the damage. We're cozy. Yeah. Wow,
we're really fucking some shit up there. Um, you know

(34:06):
who else is fucking like all those other times? No
speaking of fucking shit up, but like in a good way,
in an ethical, capitalist way where we all learn about
what kind of mattresses we need. Cody, A lot of
people don't know this about you. You prefer to sleep
we call it PEB and J style, with a mattress
below you and another mattress on top of you. Makes

(34:29):
me feel secure, that's right, A little bit um, a
little bit cozier, a little bit more weight than a
weighted blanket. Yeah, I'm not rustling around. Yeah. If you
have guests over, they can stay on top. This is
this is the difference between us, Cody. I prefer to
sleep literally PEB and J style, where once a week
I bake two large bedside sheets of bread and I

(34:50):
fill them with jam and with peanut butter, and I
just I just roll around in a naked all night
and then in the morning my breakfast is ready. Oh,
I just licked myself clean like a lizard. Like that's good.
I'm good the mattresses. Yeah, anyway, here's some real ads. Ah,

(35:17):
we're back. I hope you enjoyed those good words from
the good people at Jeff Jeff. It mixes well with
your sweat. Um. Oh man, you're gonna steal the big
Jeff account from me, Cody, We're waiting w dot Patreon

(35:38):
backslash hit him up. Jeff a lot of money here, potentially. So.
One of the things I find compelling about the allegations
Dominions lawyers have put together is the fact that Fox
execs were aware ahead of time that Trump would claim
fraud if he lost. Now, this suggests you might say
something of a conspiracy, a loose plan to find a

(35:59):
serviceable election fraud argument and then push it whether or
not it's true. In the words of Chris Sterwalt, Fox's
politics editor, who again gets shit canned after this, during
the relevant timeframe, long before the election, Chris says, Trump
started making the claim that the only way he could
lose the election was by fraud, or that the only
way he would not prevail would be if it was stolen.

(36:21):
He had laid that predicate down throughout the spring and
into the summer, and it was very well known and
understood by everybody in the business that this was the
gambit that he was making. That's a straight quote from
Sterwalt's deposition. Now Sterwalt Welt said this under oath, and
dominion adds that other Fox executives made similar statements under oath.

(36:41):
They understood that Trump was laying out a false line
ahead of time so that he could justify contesting the
election even if the evidence did not support it. As
the COVID nineteen pandemic made more male in voting inevitable,
and understanding evolved that the discrepancy between in person counts
and mail votes would provide an opportunity to question the election.

(37:02):
So before the election, Fox personalities were talking about like, well,
you're going to have all the in person votes get
counted first, but then the mail ins are going to
come and it's going to cause a sudden shift. And
that what's funny is that we were all talking about
how they were going to be doing this. Yes see,
we're not so different after all, Katie, We're all things. Yeah,

(37:25):
we created I'm gonna quote again from Chris Steerwaltz deposition. Here,
election day votes are going to skew heavily Republican. Early
in absentee votes are going to skew heavily democratic. If
you stretch out the period of time over which that's
going to be counted, it's going to create a false
It could tend to create a false impression about the
direction that the election was going to go overall um.

(37:48):
He noted that political professionals and political journalists at Fox
universally understood this phenomenon, also termed the red mirage and
the blue shift. Yeah, so that's good. That's good, good
that they just said all this. Now, dominion just happened

(38:09):
to be in a position at the nexus of all
these facts, which made them a convenient scapegoat for false
claims of election fraud. Discovery in this case also gives
us some insight as to communications between Fox employees and
members of the Trump team. When Fox called Arizona first
at eleven twenty pm, a member of Trump's team called
Fox's Washington Bureau managing editor Bill Salmon and told him

(38:32):
it was quote way too soon to be calling Arizona.
White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows followed up shortly thereafter,
just as angry and Fox viewers were even more enraged.
Quote on November fifth, Fox's chief White House correspondent told
Salmon and FANC president Jay Wallace, we are taking major
heat over the AZ call. Our viewers are also chanting

(38:53):
Fox News sucks. Something I have never heard, something I
have never heard before. Why, I've definitely heard that. UM.
Listing Dominion also cites internal Fox emails, stating, holy cow,
our audience is mad at the network and they're all

(39:14):
caps furious. Um. It is at this point that we
get to one of the more into because again, parts
of this are redacted, and the way that redactions work,
you know, you don't you don't always know why, right, Um, Like,
that's that's sometimes yeah, yeah, But there's there's uh the

(39:34):
like immediately following those internal Fox emails. Um, there's this
paragraph that begins the backlash was so strong that and
then the rest of the paragraph is all blacked out. UM.
I am no idea what that's going on about, but
I hope we find out some days. Um. And the
mystery of what that paragraph holds is made all the
more enticing by what comes next. Fox hosts Tucker Carlson,

(39:58):
Laura Ingram, and Sean Hannity immediately understood the threat to
them personally. Carlson wrote his producer Alex Piffer on November fifth,
we worked really hard to build what we have. Those
fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me. He added
that he had spoken with Laura and Sean a minute
ago that they are highly upset. Carlson noted, at this point,

(40:19):
we're getting hurt no matter what. Phifer responded, It's a
hard needle to thread, but I really think many on
our side are being reckless demagogues right now. Tucker replied,
of course they are. We're not going to follow them,
and then he added what Trump's good at is destroying things.
He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily
destroy us if we play it wrong. This is awful

(40:41):
and so good it is. There's so much going on
there too, because He's like, first off, I'm furious they're
destroying our credibility by questioning the narrative that Trump's election
was stolen from him, Right, That's what they're doing that's
destroying our credibility, is they're making the audience distrust us
because the audience will only believe the lie that the
election was stolen. But then he's like, fuck these people

(41:02):
who spread the election lies in the first place, because
they're being reckless demagogues and we're not going to follow them.
But also Trump is a destroyer and I don't want
him to destroy It's this incredible mix of totally aware
of how much of a lie that they're spreading, and
also comprehensive cowardice. Yeah, and a history of that knowledge too,

(41:25):
because even the they're all they're acting like demagogues. Of
course they are, is what he's saying. Yeah, imply like,
of course they are. That's what they do, That's what
we are, right, Yeah, Yeah, they don't mind that part yep, Nope.
So Dominion Next presents evidence that Summit Fox sought to

(41:46):
actively reign in this disinformation. Chief political correspondent Brett bare
repeatedly told colleagues that there was no evidence of fraud,
and he alerted his boss when Maria Barbaromo posted baseless
allegations of vote dumps social media, telling him we have
to prevent this stuff, we need to fact check. And
it is a note of how bad this is that

(42:07):
Brett Baar is the is the voice of recent center
of the company out. Yeah, Like I I'm like, I
understand kind of because Shep Smith was like the other
guy at Fox there was not not not a completely
broken monster. Um. It's fascinating to me, like what these

(42:29):
guys must have told themselves in order to keep doing this,
because they clearly have some ethical center, right, because this
is also like it's interesting because this is just about
this one yeah topic. Yeah, and I can't imagine just
now do all the rest? Yeah, yeah, what have you
been saying about everything? Yeah? Yeah, because one of two

(42:50):
things is true. Either Brett does this with everything that
Fox lies about or this was the first time he
was like, well this is a bridge too far, right, Yeah,
like everybody like textasure like this is damaging. How we're
gonna do this and play it in a lie to people? Yeah? Yeah,
I think I kind of suspect because you remember there's

(43:13):
that thing, Um, oh god, what's her name? The lady
with the TV show who's like very popular liberal news person.
Um racial matter. I was literally she put anyway whatever, Um,
I can't believe I forgot her name. Um, But like
she's made comments about Tucker being a nice guy in
person and like they're friendly together, and I kind of

(43:34):
suspect that's what's going on with Brett, where it's like
there's a certain degree of like malfeasance and propaganda that
like his friends, who you know, are elsewhere in media
and politics. Don't mind from Fox Right, but this denying
the election entirely trying to inciting this fucking seditious act

(43:55):
of January sixth, that was fucking a step too far,
and it was it was gonna make him look bad
in front of his friends, so he had to. I
don't know, I don't know Brett Bete, but clearly for
some of them there's a line. By November sixth, Rupert
Murdoch had stated the same fears as Brett Bear and
Warren CEO Suzanne Scott. If Trump becomes a sore loser,
we should watch Sean especially, and others don't sound the

(44:17):
same union Sean, He's gonna be a wildcard on this
one if Trump ties to make himself a dictator. That
same day, Sidney Powell was a guest on lou Dobbs Tonight,
where she told viewers about a supposed CIA program called
Hammer and Scorecard. Hammer was a government supercomputer, she told viewers,
and Scorecard was a program that would allow it to

(44:40):
change votes. She told Fox viewers, this quote explains a
lot of what we're seeing. After the broadcast, a viewer
emailed Brett bar about Hammer and Scorecard. He forwarded this
to Fox president Jay Wallace and asked, what is this?
What the fuck is this? So there is evidence that

(45:02):
Murdoch even took steps with one of his other properties,
The New York Post, to stop stolen election conspiracy theories
from spreading. On November seventh, the Post published an editorial
begging Trump to admit he'd lost and quote get Rudy
Giuliani off TV Murdoch. One of the things that discovery
revealed is Murdoch thanking a Post employee for ensuring the
editorial was spread, so he had no problem with like

(45:26):
manipulating his various periodicals in order to get this message out,
which is particularly interesting to me given another factor revealed
by the dominion lawsuit. Dominion alleges Rupert Murdoch provided Donald
Trump's senior advisor and son in law, Jared Kushner, with
confidential information about the Biden campaign, and specific they gave
Kushner access to Biden campaign ads before publication, and information

(45:49):
on his debate strategy. Dominion does not go into more
detail here. That is just an allegation that they make
in their filing. Fox, for their part, say that Dominion
is mischaracterizing the acts here, and they further note quote
Dominion cherry picks any sound bite it confined from any
corner of the Fox organization, even though it admits in
its brief one hundred and seventeen pages later that most

(46:10):
of the evidence is utterly irrelevant to the legal issues
in this case. Dominions focus on such irrelevant evidence demonstrates
that it is more interested in headlines than in law
or fact. And what's compelling to me about this is
that that's not entirely wrong. I don't think they're Dominions
wrong on the facts. They are including a lot of
shit in here that is not specifically targeted towards their lawsuit. Right,

(46:32):
that is not specifically about claims Fox made about Dominion.
I think their strategy here is to try and improve
how comprehensive the malice and irresponsive delivers a Fox also
the culture and what this Yeah, yeah, painting a full
picture here, yeah, And I think what they're doing is fair.

(46:53):
I also kind of suspect that a piece of it
also is them being like, well, they fucking dragged our
name through the mud, and we can do that without
lying about I'll be fun pieces of shit. Well we
can throw down. You want to throw down, motherfuckers? Try me. Yeah,
that's what this is. But right now, do you want

(47:14):
to motherfuckers? Want to throw down by telling people your plugs?
This is part one. We're done. This is part one.
We're done. We're done and done a being bought a
boom baby and then the lessons. Yeah, and everything was
good forever. Yeah, this wraps up. Yeah, we've got piece
of shows for you to check out. Plug the podcast

(47:36):
Even More News. Oh but you guys have a podcast
and um and we talk about stuff. We shoot the ship,
we make jokes, we have fun guests. Sometimes Roberts a guest. Robert,
would you like to come on our show again soon?
We'll typically love to come down the show again. I've
been meaning to get into podcasting, so this could be
a really good I think that you'd be really good interesting, interesting, interesting,

(48:02):
Cody plug our other things. Oh yeah, we have another
show called some More News. Um. It's also available as
a podcast if you'd like. It's on YouTube dot com
as well as a video. There's stuff in it with
puppets are there sometimes and check out our Patreon dot
com s. Last some more news support those things. Yeah, furthermore, furthermore,

(48:26):
things to be continued doing when we return. Yeah yeah,
what yeah, how are you doing? Like, would you flex
for us? Maybe? Like lay down, take those shoes off,
get that shirt off too, you know, come on, come
on asking them to flex their cuddle up with me?
Just just just come on, get on, get on in here.

(48:48):
Another mattress, mattress on top of us. Just make that
a double texts. We got ourselves get covered in peanut
butter and jelly together. Kay, this guy, maybe watch season
one of True Detective. You know, good stuff, good stuff,
good stuff. It's a great season. I did. I rewatched
it recently. It's I love that show, that season, just

(49:11):
for the Regila to do of it, that show. Um, anyway,
I'm gonna go dig out my generator from this pile
of fucking snow. Yeah, and I'm gonna rewatch True Detective
season one again again already. Wow, I'm not going to
do either of Those Things behind the Bastards is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,

(49:33):
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.