March 16, 2023 • 53 mins
We continue the story of Dominion's lawsuit against Fox.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's someone who should probably not be allowed out in
civil society? My Tucker Carlson, Cody Katie guests of Behind
the Bastards. We've not done a bTB on Um on
Tucker Carlson Cody, you basically did. You had a massive
some more news episode on the Guy. It's a big one. Yeah.
(00:23):
Why is Tucker Carlson I believe? Yeah, but yeah, um
yeah he's a guy man. Yeah. All I would say
all you need to really know about Tucker Carlson aside
from like the Swanson airship and all that kind of stuff. Um,
and uh, what his son Buckley? I think anyway, Oh
(00:44):
my god, his letters to Yeah, I've never met a
Buckley that we needed in the world. And also he
doesn't shorten it to buck It's Buckley. Uh. Wrote a
letter to Hunter Biden thanking him for like helping him
his son getting too. Yeah, anyway, that's one of my
favorite Tucker facts. Um. When Tucker was working in print journalism, Uh,
(01:06):
he was getting a he called it a takeout hot dog,
Um is what he called it. My god. Yeah, you
know he's where he's literally wearing the bow ties he's
writing this, I'm sure. Um, so you got to take
out takeout Hot Dog? Yeh? Back off the people. Yeah,
And somebody in the office was basically saying, um uh,
(01:27):
they need somebody to go on TV to talk about
the OJ trial, that he'd an expert in the OJ trial,
UM to go and talk about it, and their OJ
expert can't do it? Um can you? And he was
just like yes, um. And in the book he's like,
I didn't know anything about the OJ trial, wasn't following
it at all. I immediately said yes to get on TV,
(01:48):
and then he did. And that's like the start of
his career on television. And I think it's just so
illustrative of like who he is and his like his
entire career is just that moment of like, who's an
OJ expert to go on TV? Oh, I am, I'll
do it after getting a Takeout Hot Dog? You know
I am. Years ago, for the nonfiction book, I wrote
a brief history of ICE. I talked to one of
(02:11):
the two guys who coined the Dunning Kruger effect, and
I also talked to the author of a paper about
I think the title of the paper was the Evolution
of Overconfidence, and it was kind of it's part of
this body of body of research is trying to answer
the question. I think people are broadly familiar with the
Dunning Kruger effect, which is a fairly durable finding a
(02:31):
neuroscience that people who are least competent in given tasks
tend to overestimate their own competence the most. That's kind
of the briefest way of describing it. And so there's
this question that people scientists in this field have, which
is like why right, because it does it kind of
seems if you're just kind of assuming on its surface
(02:52):
that like it would be a bad, bad trade evolutionarily
to be overconfident, because then you'll get yourself in situations
you can't handle and you'll you'll die horrible, right, right, right,
But like I guess it could be like psychologically protective it. Yeah,
Like that's I don't know if that's enough. Right. There's
the point that that was made to me as I
(03:13):
was trying to like understand why this still exists, is
that if you've got a resource that two different individuals
are competing over right, and they're more or less evenly matched,
or at least they can't know whether or not because right,
if you're like standing next to a guy who wants
to fight, who's roughly your's aye, you have no idea
who's going to win or not, unless you're like, you know,
you don't. It's they're a black box, right, you don't
(03:35):
know like who is who's better at fighting or whatever.
Um So if you the the the individual that is
more confident in their ability to take that resource, if
they just go for it and grab it, one of
two things will happen. Either the other individual will fight back,
in which case they either win or lose the fight,
or the other individual chooses not to fight and you
(03:57):
get the resource. And statistically, that's a pretty good bet
to make. Enough of the time that overconfidence is an
extremely common trait, not just among human beings. And I
think it's also interesting that like that is how fascism works, right,
They just keep grabbing and until you fight back, they're
(04:17):
just going to keep taking more and more, which is why,
you know, we could talk about certain shootings that have
occurred recently in the city of Portland, but I think
that like fundamentally, Tucker is a perfect embodiment of that fact,
both in his career where it's just like well, Yeah,
if you just try to do shit that you're not
(04:38):
competent to do, and you know, hope that you can
bullshit your way through it, sometimes you will, and then
you make tens of millions of dollars. And also if
you just keep pushing further and further as a fascist
and trying to incite more violence against your enemies and
no one stops you, then you get everything you want.
Which in yeah, it's literally fuck around and find out. Yeah,
(05:00):
just like evil it is. It is really evil. It's
interesting because we're I wonder what he's saying in his texts,
you know, in twenty twenty three, Um, but in twenty
twenty there's a degree of which you can see like
fear in him of what he's doing, Like which makes
sense help, Yeah, because he doesn't know if it's going
to work out for him or not. Um, but it does.
(05:22):
There's a degree to which I find it And maybe
he's more confident now. I don't know. There's a degree
to which I found a little bit of a a comforting
because it's like, oh, he knows he could lose, Like
he doesn't actually know how this is going to work out,
and he's he's second guessing himself and his his colleagues. Um,
and and maybe that maybe that means that there's hope.
Um maybe not. You know, it's twenty twenty three. It's
(05:50):
necessarily yeah now yes, um so yeah. Um. At any rate, uh,
we are back into the story of how Fox News
handled the election. Lies Well about this document, it was well, yeah,
well is a good way to describe it. Okay. So,
while murders sorry, no, no, no. While Murdoch apparently went
(06:15):
to pretty great lengths to curry favor with the Trump
campaign during the election, he does not seem to have
appeared to have wanted to push the stolen election line
after November second. But within Fox News itself, Murdoch had
a serious problem. He had hired a stable of hosts
who were let's say, either crazy assholes or evil enough
that all they cared about was their bottom line, and
(06:37):
they saw this as the best way to do it.
There's also a degree of like fear of Trump, that
they all have internal discussion, and these people could not
be entirely controlled. Right. Rupert Murdoch has a lot of power.
He does not have absolute control over Sean Hannity or
Tucker Carlson or Judge Jennine or any of these other
people because they were all multimillion dollar businesses, they have
a lot of leverage, you know. Um, you know, wasn't
(07:01):
it didn't Uh? Tucker Carlson at one point say on
like some like radio show, he was Rubert Murdock's bitch.
Wait did Yeah? Yeah that was more back in his
shock days though, wasn't it right? Right? Right? Right now?
He's like making it. Um, I just like that popped
in my head. Yeah, yeah, I mean a little bit now,
(07:22):
I mean because it definitely the the depiction you get
from these internal coms is not one in which he's
fully Murdock's bitch, although it's also one in which, uh,
you know, I don't know. I was actually kind of
surprised by how comparatively toothless it seems like Murdoch was
maybe just because of how much Fox is a talent
driven business. Um. But yeah, there's there's internal discussions that
(07:45):
dominion posts that are between Fox executives that are just
like this parade of worries, particularly that Sean Hannity is
not like controllable. Yeah. Um, they went so far, and
they did take some actions to try and mitigate this
Judge Janine pierrot November seventh show was canceled because, as
Fox executive David Clark said, her guests are all going
(08:06):
to say the election is being stolen, and if she
pushes back at all, it will just be token um
and then it's like token dot dot dot, and then
like two sentences are redacted. So I don't know what
the fuck else they were saying about Judge. I know
there's some tantalizing redactions here, and then we get to
this lovely bit quote. As Fox producer Justin Wells described,
(08:27):
they took her off because she was being crazy. Optics
are bad, but she is crazy, So he's like, the
optics of us questioning the election lies conspiracy theory are bad.
But also this pitch is nuts. That situation you find
when you hire people you know are inflammatory just to
(08:47):
be inflammatory. It's Pandora's box. They've opened Pandora's box and
they can No, they cannot. So these mild attempts at
responsibility did not extend to letting the network call the
election for Biden. First, they waited until all of the
other networks had finished. Viewers revolted. Rupert Murdoch complained to
Suzanne Scott that the company was quote getting creamed by CNN.
(09:09):
Guess our viewers don't want to watch it now. This
is the point at which Chucker Carlson, Yeah, I love
that funny. It's just like, yeah, they do the results
that kind of sorry, yeah, um, it's it's it is remarkable.
And at this point Tucker Carlson, who'd kind of started
out on like broadly speaking team reason like angry at
(09:31):
the election conspiracies, takes a turn. Carlson texted his producer,
do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we've
lost with our audience? We're playing with fire for real?
An alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us. Yeah, yeah,
they know exactly. Yeah, yeah, they know exactly. Like the
(09:52):
ship that they're in. Um yeah, they're in a bad
way back Fond might overtake us. Yeah, um, it's very
very funny. On November eighth, the day after the election
was called, Maria bartar Romo had Sidney Powell on again
to talk about Dominions software, which she alleged had an
(10:13):
algorithm that had stolen the election from Trump. Bartar Roma
knew ahead of time that Pale was going to spread
conspiracy theories about the company because Powell had sent her
a document the day before titled election fraud Info. Now,
this is the core of all of the information about
the Dominion and Smartmadock or whatever like this is this
is the actual nut of data that Sidney Powell has
(10:34):
that all of her claims are based on. Right. So
basically everything that Fox is going to magnify about the
election conspiracy comes from this document that Powell has been
sent from an anonymous source titled election fraud Info. Now,
for one thing, Powell describes the synonymous source as pretty whackadoodle,
right like, and what does that mean exactly? I bet
(10:56):
you're wondering what is from Sydney Powell the sentence or
the statement pretty whackadoodle mean. Here's how the motion describes
the election fraud Info document. In addition to promoting lies
about Dominion, the cinder claimed that Justice Scalia was purposefully
killed at the annual Bohemian Grove Camp during a week
long human hunting expedition, and that former Fox News CEO
(11:19):
Roger Ales, who died in twenty seventeen, and Rupert Murdoch
secretly huddle most days to determine how best to portray
mister Trump as badly as possible. The author continued, Who
am I and how do I know all of this?
I had the strangest dream since I was a little girl.
I was internally decapitated. Oh, Cody, you gotta hear this.
I was internally decapitated and yet I live. The wind
(11:44):
tells me I'm a ghost, but I don't believe it.
What right? You don't believe it? This is the source? Yea,
this is This is the source that three or four
billion dollars in loss suits are based around. Now. At
another point in this email, this anonymous source claims to
(12:07):
be able to quote time travel in a semi conscious state. Yeah,
which is also I think that just means dreaming. Yeah,
that is fucking incredible, like to know where it all
comes to. It's not even Sydney making stuff up or
just pretending to be a black box. She shares this
email with Fox hosts right so that she can inform
(12:30):
them what she's going to bring up, so they know
that the source of a lot of these election claims
is an internally decapitated woman who the wind tells us
a ghost and can time travel in a semiconscious state. Yeah,
in a semiconscious state. Very impressive, Yeah, very interesting info. Yeah.
I mean, Cody, I don't think any of your sources
(12:52):
can time travel in a semiconscious state. So she includes
all this in her resume and cover letters. Job, I'm
travel in a semiconta state. Um. Interestingly, our friend David
Bell puts that on his resume as well, So you
know that's true. That is true. He can wondering what
I did David Bell write? Does letter? No, he was
(13:17):
never internally decapitated. That's right, that's right. He would have
shared that. No, he sends me a cat scan of
his neck every single week, so I can I can
confirm he has not been internally decapitated. Um so Barter remo, Jesus,
what a stupid last name was aware of the email
and stated in her deposition that she knew that it
(13:39):
was nonsense, but at no point on air did she
mention that this email was the source of Powell's claims
about Dominion, which had aired on Fox to millions of viewers.
As Tucker Carlson texted that night, the software shit is absurd.
Half our viewers have seen the Maria clip and yeah,
not wrong. Yeah, it's the most interesting stuff in here
(14:01):
to me is this behind the scenes glimpse and how
Tucker communicates when he thinks he has a reasonable expectation
of privacy, because he seems equally preoccupied with how dumb
the conspiracy is, as he is with lambasting his colleagues
for not adequately furthering the conspiracy theory. Right, Like, he's
pissed about both. He's angry that this conspiracy's taking off,
and he's even angrier when his colleagues don't back it
(14:25):
up on the air. Um, what a weird position for
a giant asshole to be in. Yeah, that would be
his position, though, wouldn't it. Yeah, of course, because there's
no personal responsibility. There's nothing like be angry about everybody
the options but yeah, there are no what are the
options breaks on this ride he's on. It's just he
(14:47):
wants the drivers to guide it a little better. Yeah,
it's it's he's definitely not stopping. On November ninth, Carlson
told Suzanne Scott Fox, his CEO direct I've never seen
a reaction like this to any media company. Kills me
to watch it. Scott took that message down the line,
(15:07):
attacking her colleagues for having the arrogance to call Arizona.
She expressed that it was astonishing that a top executive
had signed off on the Arizona call, given that every
executive's first job was to quote protect the brand. Oh
that's their first job. Oh yeah, it's sheer shit, not
reporting the news, Katie. No, no, it definitely isn't that.
(15:30):
I'm going to continue from the motion. And on that day,
day one, as Scott termed it, Fox executives made an
explicit decision to push narratives to entice their audience back.
Scott and Lackland Murdoch exchanged texts about the plan going forward. Scott,
viewers going through the five stages of grief. It's a
question of trust. The Azy call was damaged. But we
will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers
(15:53):
know we hear them and respect them. Murdoch, Yes, but
needs constant rebuilding without any missteps. Scott. Yes, today is
day one and it's a process souces. Yeah. Yeah, and
that respecting their audience means embracing the lie their audience,
Yeah exactly, yeahf the lie. Maybe we've got to respect
(16:16):
our audience so funny. I think that one of the
things I find really compelling here is that like the
most honest any of them seems is when they are
distraught that the audience is losing trust in them. And
so it's like, I think they do feel bad that
they didn't embrace the audiences insane conspiracy enough that like, oh,
we let them down. They expected us to be as
(16:39):
batshit as they are and we really fell down on
the job there. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, feeling upset
that they can't that they're in this situation and they can't. Yeah, yeah,
that they that they failed their audience should have gone
in harder. I think at the outset it's embarrassing to
(16:59):
let your right. Now, we should have been dumber and faster.
I do say that a lot myself. But you know
who's as dumb and as fast as it's possible to be?
Sponsors are Sponsors? They are They are as they are
as fast as I don't know how to finish that
sentence anyway, here's our fucking ads. Ah, we are back.
(17:30):
On November ninth, Neil Cavuto cut away from a White
House press conference where Kaylee McKinney made unsubstantiated claims about
election fraud. Neil told viewers that he could not in
good conscience air her claims unless she had evidence to
back them up, which is honestly more of a principled
stand than I think any of us ever expected from
Neil Cavuto. Absolutely surprising, yeah, shocking. The brand team at
(17:54):
Fox panicked. Raj Shaw, who headed the brand team, notified
senior leadership at Cavo represented a brand threat. Tighten. With
all this and with Cucker's reaction, was an ever present
fear of Newsmax's built over into the course of November.
Fox exec and talent seemed to see Newsmax as a
mortal threat to their continued profitability, Which is funny because
(18:16):
didn't it just get dropped from like, uh, what is it? Um?
Was it Newsmax or the one News? Yeah? Direct Tv?
Direct Tv just dropped Newsmax because it didn't get enough
people watching it. It's interesting, so yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe
Fox was. I don't know, it may it may have
just been that, like in the moment, Newsmax was experiencing
(18:39):
a surge, but it clearly didn't last. They're not doing
well right now, which is very funny. Also fuck all
of those people. Quote. Prior to November eight, Fox executive
David Clark testified that Newsmax was not a credible media
outlet because quote, their hosts were extremely one sided, ignored
the facts, they did not seem to care about telling
(18:59):
the truth. They seem to invest truly in conspiracy theories
versus fact. Yeah, I mean that'll do it. Wow. Imagine
a news agency being like that. David fucked up. Huh.
On November tenth, Scott pointed out to senior Fox executives
a note from analyst Kyl Goodwin on Newsmax's ride. Fox
executive Porter Berry responded, just pulled up Newsmax's show and
(19:23):
they're heading cavudo. They're just whacking us. Smart on their part.
Lauren Peterson added, they definitely have a strategy across all
shows to try and target and steal our viewers. And
this is also really compelling to me just because like
at number one, obviously, at no point is even ideology
a primary concern. Like the concern is the competition, right,
(19:44):
Like it's it's pure, it's pure business, And there's almost
this like I can respect the degree to which they're
good at fucking us over. Yeah, we would do that too.
We would do that too, and it's a shame to
us that we weren't smart enough to do it. Master right. Yeah,
m Fox executives talk about Newsmax. They're way the rest
(20:06):
of us talk about Fox, which is one of the
most entertaining things in the document. Fox president Jay Wallace
describes Newsmax as truly an alternative universe that can't be ignored.
He then adds in a message to Suzanne Scott that
he is trying to get everyone to comprehend we are
on war footing. And again that's also from the point
(20:26):
I'm making about, like ideology doesn't seem to come into
it with these people. They're not at war with the Biden,
White House or Democrats. They're at war with other right
wing media that might steal their thunder. Yeah, who's yeah
out Fox using them. It's very very interesting. Yeah, Foxing,
I'm proud. I'm proud, proud of you, Cody. You know what,
(20:46):
Let's get on a call with the T shirt people
real quick. Yeah, let's let's get them on one of those.
So the T shirt people, the people. Everything that Fox
does next is influenced by this feeling of being at
war with New Max. This is what causes Tucker to
make common cause with Sean Hannity in order to push
the false claim that Dominion was the core of some
grand fraud. The express purpose of backing this conspiracy theory
(21:10):
was to bring viewers back from Newsmax. Quote Hannity told
Carlson and Ingraham on November twelfth, in one week, in
one debate, they destroyed a brand that took twenty five
years to build, and the damage is incalculable. Tucker responded,
it's vandalism. The hosts also discussed the possibility of competition
to Fox emerging. Hannity told them serious money with serious
(21:32):
distribution could be a real problem. I mho they need
to address. But what I don't know, Tucker, that could happen.
So yeah, feel that fear, Yeah, feel that, feel that fear.
It is nice to know that he can be afraid.
It's a little brain bug moment there, putting your hand
on the goop stick that Tucker Carlson uses to suck
(21:53):
the brains out of your aunts and uncles. Yeah, it's afraid.
It's afraid. Normally, normally I feel um a little bit
of empathy when an unlikable character when you realize that
you know, they're afraid that you know, humanize them. No,
not this guy be afraid. I would not feel empathy
(22:14):
if Tucker Carlson's asshole got sucked out of his backside
by one of those one of those sucker things in
a swimming pool, in a grain silo or something, yea,
or a grain silo. Yeah, let's let's grain silo. The fucker.
Um did you guys grow up with that? That like
that at your local pool? That there was like, oh yeah,
(22:35):
all their guts sucked up and then like a pollenux
short story, right, I think ended up doing a short
story about that urban legend, which if anyone ever yeah,
I would definitely say, Cody, if there's a short story
about getting your guts sucked out of your butt through
a swimming pool, chuck pals, Actually yeah, yeah, beautiful. I'm
(23:00):
gonna read it now. Okay, But for the record, I
would think it was funny if that happened to Tucker,
So yeah. That same day, Laura Ingram's producer Tommy Firth,
texted a Fox executive responsible for overseeing her show. He complained,
this dominion ship is going to give me a fucking aneurysm.
As many times as I've told Laura it's bs, she
(23:21):
sees shit posters and Trump tweeting about it. The next
sentence or so was redacted, but the Fox executive response,
this is the Bill Gates microchip angle to voter fraud.
The next day he messages Firth again asking how's it
going with the kooks? So they're both being like, oh, yeah,
Laura's you know, she's watching these ship posters. She's tweeting
(23:43):
about nonsense. But the executives like, yeah, you know, this
is something we can work with. It's this Bill Gates
microchip angle, but applied to work. Yeah, how's it going?
Are the crazy people biting? Feels you're not done telling
this story? But this all feels really damning, it does.
It feels like people should be locked up, Like we're
(24:07):
we're we're we have fun, we make our jokes, but like, honestly,
the real life repercussions of this ship families destroyed. People
kill themselves over this. There was just another like suicide
of an entire family over this shit, Like this is
destroyed so many lives, Like I don't know these people,
Like the money is not enough I don't see on
(24:30):
a moral level, I don't see any argument as to
why a lot of this shouldn't be criminally liable. But
none of it is obviously or ever will be. Um
because it's fine to do this. It's not fine to like,
yell at the Atlanta police after they shoot a guy,
then you get charged with domestic terrorism. But this is cool. Um. Yeah. So.
(24:53):
Also on November twelve, lou Dobbs took to the airways
with Rudy Giuliani as guest. After Giuliani repeated his litany
of false allegations against Dominion, Dobbs said on air, it's stunning.
They have no ability to audit meaningfully the votes that
are the votes that are cast because the servers are
somewhere else. This looks to me like it is the
end game to a four and a half year long
(25:14):
effort to overthrow the president of the United States. While
Dobbs dug that hole deeper, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and
Tucker Carlson, who are in a group text thread together,
and boy, that sounds like the worst group that want that.
I want to say it all every breaking news story
(25:36):
that happens. I want to see just everything. I don't
want to be on that thread in any way. Oh God,
I would love to read it for sure. Yeah, I
don't know. I'd like to be on there be like, hey, guys,
you know it's Friday. I got some beers, the liver
of a child that was drowned to death and Amaretto.
You guys want to come over, you know, have some bruise,
(25:58):
eat a little bit. Um. I assume. I assume when
Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson hang out together,
they eat like the human equivalent of an ortolan. That's
the that's the omni thing that they don't even hide
their shame from God though Tucker Nosey's more powerful. Um
so yeah, while Dobbs dug that hole deeper. Laura Ingram,
(26:20):
Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson are in their group chat
and Carlson shares a tweet by Fox reporter Jackie Heinrich.
And Jackie was one of the like three or four
people at Fox who had a shred of integrity and
she was she fact Trump tweeted about dominion like sharing
this Sydney Powell conspiracy and Jackie Heinrich fact checked it.
She noted there is no evidence that any voting system
(26:43):
deleted or lost votes. Carlson shares this and tells Hannity
please get her fired. Seriously, what the fuck? I'm actually shocked.
It needs to stop immediately, like tonight, it's measurably hurting
the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.
Tucker then adds, I just went crazy on me to
over it. Hannity responds that he had already sent to
(27:05):
Suzanne with a really. He then added, I'm three strikes
Wallace shit debate election night of disaster now this BS Nope,
not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavudo? They're so pissed,
They're so pissed. Yeah, it does feel good a little bit.
I can so see him. M yeah now, Hannity and
(27:26):
next text Suzanne Scott, who reached out to Fox's SVP
of Corporate Communications, Irena Briganti. Quote Sean texted me he's
standing down on responding, but not happy about this and
doesn't understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone
in news. She Heinrich has serious nerve doing this, and
if it gets picked up, viewers are going to be
further disgusted. By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her
(27:47):
fact checking tweet, So I guess look again, you know,
Heinrich had a little bit of a little bit of
what do you what do you say, courage or whatever? Yeah,
but not so much that when her bosses yelled at her,
she doesn't shows Yeah, yeah, texts. I don't know. Maybe
(28:09):
one thing you could take from that is that, like,
if you get caught telling the truth in right wing media,
there's not like a job open for you in normal media,
whereas if you get caught lying in mainstream media, there's
a job for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was putting
(28:31):
myself trying to put myself in that position, and it's like, yeah,
I could see how you get intimidated. I would like
to think I wouldn't because I would make those series
of choices where I was working at this place. But
you know, yeah, you know, there's this term you here
because of Hannah or Rent, the banality of evil, and
she was talking about like Holocaust perpetrators, but it gets
(28:52):
used a lot. I think it. I prefer to think
of things a little differently, which is that like, it's
not that evil has banal. It's that the vast majority
of evil is perpetuated so that people can pay their
mortgage like that, and that's what that's what's going on here,
and that's even what's going on with like like Tucker
doesn't have a mortgage or whatever, but it's it's very
(29:13):
much just about the bottom line, right, Like if the
money for Tucker had been in being a liberal or
left wing media personality, he would have been just as
fine doing that. He doesn't care. Like, Yeah, while this
is going on, Dominion representatives are frantically contacting Fox News
to try and correct these false allegations. In the first
like two months that followed the election, they send thirty
(29:35):
six hundred messages to Fox representatives. Fox executive David Clark
tells a colleague on November fourteenth, I have it tattooed
on my body at this point, l ol. Super aware
that we're we're lying criminally about a corporation LMAO. Yeah.
I hope they don't sue us for one point six
(29:56):
billion dollars kiss f Yeah. One fun thing I learned
reading this is that Fox does in fact have its
own fact checking department. Now that's an astonishing thing to hear.
If you have watched a lot of Fox News, you
a note they call themselves fucking losers. No, no, what
(30:17):
the brain rooms? But oh no, goodness room Yeah, incredible
love it. What what facts are they checking? They'll check
the facts so that they know, Katie report the opposite.
I would love to answer that question for you. But
(30:39):
as soon as the motion notes that Fox's fact checking
department is called the brain room, the next two full
paragraphs are redacted. Why again, there's some there's some juicy
shit that's black barred in this. It's the funniest place
to put redaction. It's it's it's really there is a
(31:00):
degree of comedic timing from some of these dominion lawyers. Yeah,
some of it's like intriguing something. Well, I wonder what
you're saying there. It's like, no, no no, no, the brain
room is the brain room. Yeah, we can't talk about
what happens in the brain room. So immediately after in
the brain room, So immediately after those two full paragraphs
of redaction comes this paragraph. Fox continued to broadcast its
(31:24):
lies about dominion as it nervously eyed Newsmax, and in
November sixteenth email, Rupert Murdoch told Scott to read a
Wall Street Journal piece about Newsmax, telling her these people
should be watched if skeptically. Trump will concede eventually, and
we should concentrate on Georgia helping any way we can.
We don't want to antagonize Trump further. But Giuliani taken
with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here,
(31:48):
it's so funny. Um, yeah, what a hard time. So
the paragraph that follows this is also redacted, and immediately
after all that redaction comes this line. Carlson told his
producer Alex Feiffer that night, Sidney Powell is lying, fucking bitch.
(32:11):
It's so good, struggling, having a rough one out, buddy,
letting it out. He continues to complain about this regularly
up to November eighteenth, when he tells Laura Ingram that
Powell is crazy, and Ingram responds, Sydney is a complete nut.
No one will work with her. Ditto Rudy Carlson response,
holy shit, check this out. Carlson response, it's unbelievably offensive
(32:35):
to me. Our viewers are good people, and they believe it.
Why do they believe it? Why do they believe it?
People believe it let's take it a step further. Man. Yeah,
it's so there's almost like a schizophrenic quality to reading
through this, because there's this mix of like Carlson responding
the way a regular person should. This is unbelievably offensive
(33:00):
up there, but also like you're doing it, Tucker, Like yeah,
it's so, it's like it's like, look what they're making
me do kind of stuff, like, yeah, the situation I'm
in and what I have to do because obviously, but
I respect the audience so much. There's such good people,
but I have to know they respect what the audience
means for his bottom line. But again, it's this not
(33:25):
surprising in any way, but you do an inability psychologically
incapable of seeing any accountability. No, no, absolutely not nightmare
to be married too, Tucker. You're doing it. You're doing it, yeah, Tucker.
The lies have come from inside the you, inside you.
(33:45):
This is this is entirely your fault, Tucker Carlson. But
you know what's not What isn't Tucker Carlson's fault The
joys of cooking. That's right, prepped meal. They delivered straights
to yours. Hello, Frienday, I bet I can make it.
(34:07):
We could find a case for how that's his fault.
But no, you know, he actually very excited. Dogs delivers
very exciting. We've got a couple of sponsors. We've got
a food box company and a mattress company sponsoring us,
and as a result, we're now offering our listeners for
a limited time, a mattress completely stuffed with tacos, a
(34:28):
taco mattress, unrefrigerated, no preservatives. Um, it'll just a larger
quantity of food than you can eat, stuffed in a
mattress that you have to cut open to get the
food out. Does this benefit you in any way? Does
it do nothing but cause problems for you? Yes? Of course,
just like Fox News, So use promo code. Yeah, I
(34:52):
would like a pile of rancid tacos stuck inside my mattress. Um,
and uh yeah, we'll be back in a minute. Ah. So.
On November eighteenth, SVP of Primetime Programming and Analytics Run
(35:13):
mitchell sends end message to underlings R E. Newsmax the
lack of any meaningful editorial guidance may be a positive
for them, at least in the short term. For example,
last night on Stitchfield at eight pm, the show sourced
websites like Gateway Pundit while talking about voter fraud. This
type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled
FNC Fox News Corporation viewers looking for. Mitchell concluded that
(35:36):
viewers are watching less Fox News and suggested fixes do
not ever give viewers a reason to turn us off.
Every topic and guest must perform no unforced errors and content. Example,
abruptly turning away from a Trump campaign press conference. Yeah, yeah,
(36:00):
keep fucking people's relatives up. So yeah, ruined bring down
a society to its knees. It sure it suis so
um yeah. Following this guidance, on November nineteenth, Fox broadcast
the entirety of a press conference with Rudy Giuliani and
Sydney Powell. Now, you guys probably all remember this as
(36:22):
the press conference where Rudy's hair melted off of his face.
I remember that, what an incredible moment for this country.
Made up It's ai r. It was a lie. It
didn't happen. I want to be like frozen so that
a thousand years from now, I can help journalists make
a documentary about America. And I want to cut straight
(36:44):
from like the battlefield at Gettysburg, thousands of corpses, a
nation fighting with its past in order to like finally right,
like the evil at the center of its existence. And
cut immediately from that to like Rudy Giuliani with his
hair melting off, leaking, just leaking from his skull. Nothing
else is important. We can cut the rest of American
(37:06):
history between those moments, from Gettysburg to Sydney, Ball and Juliani,
the two most pivotal points in American absolutely, no question. Yeah,
um yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we might even be
like morally obligated to have a little detour into four
(37:27):
season's total landscaping. Um, okay, I'm gonna play a little
segment from that from that clip because I know a
lot of people enjoyed Rudy's head melting, but I think
fewer people actually, like, actually listen to some of the
claims being made. Um, this is a particularly powerful moment
(37:48):
from that press conference, and I'm gonna play it in
just a second. Outrageous situation. Now, I don't think most
Americans know, but our ballots get calculated, many of them
outside the United States, completely open to hacking, completely open
to change, and being done by a company that specializes
(38:10):
in voter front back to you. He does not look well. Also,
Sidney Powell is very tall and wearing a leopard Prince
Real School. Interesting choice. What we are really feeling different?
Uncovering more by the day massive influence of communist money
(38:38):
inference are elections here in the United States, the dominion
voting systems smart Maadic technology software, and the software that
goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not
just Dominion. We're created Vendezuela, at the direction of Hugo
(39:00):
shaves to make sure he never lost an election. Okay,
that's oh my god, I do love the way she
says Venezuela too. Yeah yeah, uh. His the crude oil
leaking from his brain really distracted from the things that
she said, Yeah, which it should not have because yeah, yeah,
(39:23):
could talk about it. Attack maybe his plan. Yeah, Rudy
is much more cunning than we give him credit for.
He has. You know, some species of lizards can shoot
blood out of their eyes to like distracted attacker. Rudy
is able to do that to the entire nagent with
his head oil developed over millions of years himself, with
(39:47):
the symbiote yea, do my little trick. This is how
Rudy's Giuliani have managed to survive at the fringes of
the world for the last sixty five million years since
the death of the rest of their race. I consider
Rudy to be the same species as the dinosaurs in
the original Mario movie, you know, the one with Bob Hoskins.
You could just put Rudy in that movie and he
(40:09):
would He would out immediately the same way he wasn't
in that movie. Not not entirely. So. While this beautiful,
beautiful scene was unfolding, Rupert Murdoch sent out an email
with the subject watching Juliani exclamation point. The text of
that email real, really crazy stuff and damaging. If only
(40:34):
you had the power to stop this, Rupert Murdoch. Uh,
it's like watching a train crash. And also you have
the superman likability to stop any object in motion with
a moment's notice. It's probably problem, but it's it's a
trolley problem. But you're god, Yeah, it's very footing. White
(41:02):
House correspondent Kristin Fisher did at least fact check some
of the claims made during this press conference. Her boss,
Brian Boyton called her and told her emphatically that he
and his bosses were unhappy with her and that she
quote needed to do a better job of and this
is a quote respecting our audience. Fisher texted a colleague
about being punished for doing my job. Shortly thereafter real
(41:24):
lions eating faces party moment. Oh no, I like that.
This is their phrase. That's the way they're respecting our audience.
In a week, Yeah, lie to our audience. It's very fun.
It's also like you get these people at Kristin Fisher,
who is like, well, it's good that you were doing
your job as a journalist, but also like you did
work at Fox, like you did choose to work there. Yeah,
(41:48):
this isn't the first thing. Yeah, like a first questionable
move that they Yeah, you didn't have a long career
there without any kind of moral qualms. This is just
like happened to be the time that there were a
bunch of depositions. Maybe this is the only bad thing
they've ever done. Maybe this is the only bad thing
they've ever done. That's possible, we just can't know. So
(42:10):
the fact that there was regular spirited resistance within Fox
to the increasingly unhinged dominion conspiracy is very compelling to me.
At one point, Fox anchored Dana Perino comments that Dominion
would probably be able to sue over the comments made
in that press conference. This prompt CEO Suzanne Scott to
send an email saying, you can't give the crazies an
inch right now. They are looking for and blowing up
(42:31):
all appearances of disrespect to the audience. Scott separately 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.
I'm not positive what is being argued for here. She's
saying like, we can't give the crazies at Fox an
(42:54):
inch right now. They're looking for any opportunity to like
blow shit up. But also the audience feels like we're
shitting on them when we correct this stuff, and that's
damaged their trust, so we have to It's it's again
every there, Yeah, exactly. It's this impossible situation because you're evil,
Like you're evil, but you don't want to be choices
(43:18):
and the scenario that you've created that you know is bad,
but you also need in order to continue. Yeah, it's
like the crew of the Hindenburg got themselves into an
impossible situation when they explode it. We don't want to explode,
and yet this explosive thing. What a what A what
an impossible situation? Respect the explosion. Yeah, we're not respecting
(43:42):
the audience if we don't explode properly. Um, the audience
being hydrogen So Internally, Fox executives like Ron Mitchell laughed
at the clowns Rudy and Sidney who had put us
in a terrible place. He even asked a colleague jokingly
if Sidney was going to mention the quote international crime
conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Madiro Chavez, Antifa,
(44:05):
Cuba and China. It's noted in the conversation that silly
as these allegations are, if they put Fox in an
awkward place where we're going to need to thread the needle,
you're actually not in an awkward place. You don't have
It's okay, you don't have to do this. Yeah, nobody's
making you do this. Okay, you can help you make better.
(44:26):
On November twentieth, Dominion sends Fox's general counsel a cease
and desist. Internally, executives fretted over how reckless it was
to keep giving Powell air, but she continued to guess
regularly on Fox primetime shows, including Dobbs and Hannity that
same day. This continued into December. On December second, Bill Samon,
Fox's DC editor message to colleague, It's remarkable how weak
(44:49):
ratings make good journalists do bad things. It's good stuff,
good stuff. I might, yeah, I equipal with that, but
by late November even some of the bad journalists at
Fox were expressing a fear of where the recklessness might lead.
Suzanne Scott said privately, I had a number of conversations
with Sean where he wanted the president to accept the results,
(45:11):
and Hannity had understood that Joe Biden legitimately won the
election for some time. He admits this in his deposition too.
On November nineteenth, after the Giuliani Powell press conference, Carlson
very carefully tried to thread his own needle. On one hand,
he said publicly on his show that what Powell was
describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history,
but she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot
(45:32):
of requests on the other. However, he did not say
that what he believed privately that she was lying. Instead,
he closed by saying, maybe Sidney Powell will come forward
soon with details and exactly how this happened and precisely
who did it. We are certainly hopeful that she will.
And this is the most minimal pushback you could get
on this still too much for Fox viewers. The motion,
(45:55):
citing internal Fox communications, notes that there was a massive
viewer backlash Tor sent on this, which caused him to
mobilize with Raj Shaw from the brand team. Shaw messaged
a number of executives, including Lackland, Murdoch and Suzanne Scott
about this. But we don't know precisely what was said
because the next full page or so was redacted. Again,
(46:16):
super curious as to what was said there. When the
black bars end, we come to this. Shaw also texted
with producer Alex Piffer November twenty second, Shah wrote, shit
is so crazy right now, so many people openly denying
the obvious that Powell was clearly full of it. Phifer,
she is a fucking nutcase now. November twenty second is
the day that Trump finally disavows Powell. Noting that she
(46:39):
did not represent his campaign. This appears to have been
on the behest of Tucker Carlson, who messaged Ingram that
day that dealing with Powell totally wrecked. He spells it
r e c k ed my weekend. Then he says,
this is Teckel. Wow. I had to try to make
the White House disavow her, which they obviously should have
done long before. Ingrams no serious lawyer could believe what
(47:01):
they were saying. Carlson replies, but they said nothing in public.
Pretty disgusting. Oh yeah, well, oh, it's disgusting that they
didn't say it. Yeah, yeah. Oh. It's also interesting because
the White House does disavow Powell after this, Like Carlson,
that's just kind of evidence of the amount of poll
that he does have. January sixth came as a surprise
(47:26):
to everyone involved at Fox, at least based on what
the discovery documents suggest. It seems to have done something
to set up a sense of stakes for guys like Carlson,
but he was still too afraid of losing his audience
to reverse course. Late on January sixth, Carlson texted with
Fiffer that Trump is quote a demonic force a destroyer,
but he's not going to destroy us. On January twenty sixth,
(47:48):
Carlson invited his leading sponsor Mike Lindell on the show,
where Lindell spouted these same conspiracies on air after previewing
them for Carlson staff during a pre interview. And again,
this tycho to me between the almost panicked awareness of
how much trouble they're getting into by defaming dominion and
like inciting an insurrection. It exists on every level of
(48:09):
decision making that Fox. And the last quote I'm going
to read you from this motion is this. On January fifth,
Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott it's been suggested our primetime
three should independently or together say something like the election
is over and Joe Biden won, and that such a
statement would go a long way to stop the Trump
myth at the election as stolen. Scott forwarded the email
to Cooper, stating, I told Rupert privately that they are
(48:30):
all there. We need to be careful about how using
the shows and pissing off the viewers, but they know
how to navigate. They did not know how to navigate
and in fact refused to. But it's interesting that they
were aware, as it's this suggests that Murdoch is aware,
like we do have some sort of duty to use
our reach to try and quash this might be seen
(48:52):
as like evidence of guilt. Yeah, I mean, they're not unaware. Yeah,
it's interesting what lines they I mean. But again, you're
saying like they didn't do it, so yeah, yeah, they
didn't do it. Not the line is like considering doing something. Yeah,
I guess anyway, that's where we are, folks. That was
(49:18):
a real treat. It wasn't treat, wasn't it. I'm so honor.
Do you invite it? I loved it. I felt good
about it. Do you feel good? I feel great about it?
That's good. I mean I don't. I don't feel great
about it. But I change a lot of people's minds. Yeah.
That's the thing, right, That's what pisses me off most
about it is like, oh, here, it is objective proof
(49:39):
from the mouths of the people who run and are
the main faces on Fox that they are liars and
they are lying to their audience and they are like
doing it out of a pure cowardly venal desire for
money and fame and care nothing about the degree to
which they mislead people really and it will never matter
because facts, it's impossible to convince anyone with facts. You
(50:01):
put this in front of a person, like the tiny
little morsel right of here's well Tucker, here he is
saying that, like he needs evidence for it. So he
did push back, Like that's the game that they try
to play and sometimes exceed that. There's enough like you
can see people running cover for them already of like,
well no he did, It's he said it without acknowledging
(50:28):
anything else. It's very frustrating. I mean, it's it's this
thing where like I don't know, I shouldn't say it
doesn't matter at all because we just had this very
shocking like midterm upset where like maybe maybe we're coming
to like ahead of how much they can get away with.
I guess we'll know after twenty twenty four, but um,
(50:50):
it does. I do know that like the people in
my own life who have been listening to watching Fox
religiously for years, this won't stop them. This will not
have any impact. And like, and they're not dumb people,
nor are they bad people. It just they have gotten
bored into their reality tunnel and the like like digging
(51:12):
into this acknowledging the degree to which they've just been
manipulated for their viewership would be I think psychically painful.
So why why would you do it? It's hard to accept.
We see it all the time, the people that still
are on the Q trade, you know, like having a
hard time accepting the facts of it. But also I
(51:34):
would imagine that there's a lot of people who straight
up don't even know this story, like Fox News viewers
that oh, yeah, get this information because it's not like
this is going to be a breaking news segment on
Fox News, you know. Yeah. Anyhow, I want to read
more their texts, either adapted parts. Yeah, I would like
(51:57):
some of that too. There's a lot of very enticing pieces.
But what's more enticing is y'all's pluggables. Oh that's very true, Wow, Cody.
Check us out on YouTube dot com. Slash the search
bar and type in some more news for our video channel.
We do videos and stuff. It's a podcast too, if
(52:17):
you like podcasts. Speaking of podcasts, we also have another
podcast in that same podcast feed called even more News.
You go to that feed, you'll see both of them
in there. One episode will be the audio the YouTube show.
Another one will be us chatting with each other and
people about the news. Also we have a Patreon dot
(52:38):
com slash some more news. Wow, gods, you guys really
are a well oiled gazelle. Yeah we aren't. We get
that a lot. Yeah, we get the oil from Rudy's skull.
That's you know, that's where we need to invade. Next
is Rudy Juliani's forty. Send the Tenth Mountain Division in there,
(53:03):
get it out, get it all that fuel really out
right now, though, somebody needs to cut like, um, I
don't know, use an AI or something to like cut
him into X Files whenever there's one of the aliens
that have like the black oil coming out of there. Yeah, somebody,
somebody make Rudy into an alien super soldier on like
(53:26):
season six of the X Files. I feel like someone will.
Yeah yeah I could always a person. Thank you in advance. Yeah,
finally we'll all get to live our dream of seeing
Rudy's star opposite David Dukovney. And that's a good note.
Tanned On Behind the Bastards is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our
(53:48):
website cool Zonemedia. Dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's someone who should probably not be allowed out in
civil society? My Tucker Carlson, Cody Katie guests of Behind
the Bastards. We've not done a bTB on Um on
Tucker Carlson Cody, you basically did. You had a massive
some more news episode on the Guy. It's a big one. Yeah.
(00:23):
Why is Tucker Carlson I believe? Yeah, but yeah, um
yeah he's a guy man. Yeah. All I would say
all you need to really know about Tucker Carlson aside
from like the Swanson airship and all that kind of stuff. Um,
and uh, what his son Buckley? I think anyway, Oh
(00:44):
my god, his letters to Yeah, I've never met a
Buckley that we needed in the world. And also he
doesn't shorten it to buck It's Buckley. Uh. Wrote a
letter to Hunter Biden thanking him for like helping him
his son getting too. Yeah, anyway, that's one of my
favorite Tucker facts. Um. When Tucker was working in print journalism, Uh,
(01:06):
he was getting a he called it a takeout hot dog,
Um is what he called it. My god. Yeah, you
know he's where he's literally wearing the bow ties he's
writing this, I'm sure. Um, so you got to take
out takeout Hot Dog? Yeh? Back off the people. Yeah,
And somebody in the office was basically saying, um uh,
(01:27):
they need somebody to go on TV to talk about
the OJ trial, that he'd an expert in the OJ trial,
UM to go and talk about it, and their OJ
expert can't do it? Um can you? And he was
just like yes, um. And in the book he's like,
I didn't know anything about the OJ trial, wasn't following
it at all. I immediately said yes to get on TV,
(01:48):
and then he did. And that's like the start of
his career on television. And I think it's just so
illustrative of like who he is and his like his
entire career is just that moment of like, who's an
OJ expert to go on TV? Oh, I am, I'll
do it after getting a Takeout Hot Dog? You know
I am. Years ago, for the nonfiction book, I wrote
a brief history of ICE. I talked to one of
(02:11):
the two guys who coined the Dunning Kruger effect, and
I also talked to the author of a paper about
I think the title of the paper was the Evolution
of Overconfidence, and it was kind of it's part of
this body of body of research is trying to answer
the question. I think people are broadly familiar with the
Dunning Kruger effect, which is a fairly durable finding a
(02:31):
neuroscience that people who are least competent in given tasks
tend to overestimate their own competence the most. That's kind
of the briefest way of describing it. And so there's
this question that people scientists in this field have, which
is like why right, because it does it kind of
seems if you're just kind of assuming on its surface
(02:52):
that like it would be a bad, bad trade evolutionarily
to be overconfident, because then you'll get yourself in situations
you can't handle and you'll you'll die horrible, right, right, right,
But like I guess it could be like psychologically protective it. Yeah,
Like that's I don't know if that's enough. Right. There's
the point that that was made to me as I
(03:13):
was trying to like understand why this still exists, is
that if you've got a resource that two different individuals
are competing over right, and they're more or less evenly matched,
or at least they can't know whether or not because right,
if you're like standing next to a guy who wants
to fight, who's roughly your's aye, you have no idea
who's going to win or not, unless you're like, you know,
you don't. It's they're a black box, right, you don't
(03:35):
know like who is who's better at fighting or whatever.
Um So if you the the the individual that is
more confident in their ability to take that resource, if
they just go for it and grab it, one of
two things will happen. Either the other individual will fight back,
in which case they either win or lose the fight,
or the other individual chooses not to fight and you
(03:57):
get the resource. And statistically, that's a pretty good bet
to make. Enough of the time that overconfidence is an
extremely common trait, not just among human beings. And I
think it's also interesting that like that is how fascism works, right,
They just keep grabbing and until you fight back, they're
(04:17):
just going to keep taking more and more, which is why,
you know, we could talk about certain shootings that have
occurred recently in the city of Portland, but I think
that like fundamentally, Tucker is a perfect embodiment of that fact,
both in his career where it's just like well, Yeah,
if you just try to do shit that you're not
(04:38):
competent to do, and you know, hope that you can
bullshit your way through it, sometimes you will, and then
you make tens of millions of dollars. And also if
you just keep pushing further and further as a fascist
and trying to incite more violence against your enemies and
no one stops you, then you get everything you want.
Which in yeah, it's literally fuck around and find out. Yeah,
(05:00):
just like evil it is. It is really evil. It's
interesting because we're I wonder what he's saying in his texts,
you know, in twenty twenty three, Um, but in twenty
twenty there's a degree of which you can see like
fear in him of what he's doing, Like which makes
sense help, Yeah, because he doesn't know if it's going
to work out for him or not. Um, but it does.
(05:22):
There's a degree to which I find it And maybe
he's more confident now. I don't know. There's a degree
to which I found a little bit of a a comforting
because it's like, oh, he knows he could lose, Like
he doesn't actually know how this is going to work out,
and he's he's second guessing himself and his his colleagues. Um,
and and maybe that maybe that means that there's hope.
Um maybe not. You know, it's twenty twenty three. It's
(05:50):
necessarily yeah now yes, um so yeah. Um. At any rate, uh,
we are back into the story of how Fox News
handled the election. Lies Well about this document, it was well, yeah,
well is a good way to describe it. Okay. So,
while murders sorry, no, no, no. While Murdoch apparently went
(06:15):
to pretty great lengths to curry favor with the Trump
campaign during the election, he does not seem to have
appeared to have wanted to push the stolen election line
after November second. But within Fox News itself, Murdoch had
a serious problem. He had hired a stable of hosts
who were let's say, either crazy assholes or evil enough
that all they cared about was their bottom line, and
(06:37):
they saw this as the best way to do it.
There's also a degree of like fear of Trump, that
they all have internal discussion, and these people could not
be entirely controlled. Right. Rupert Murdoch has a lot of power.
He does not have absolute control over Sean Hannity or
Tucker Carlson or Judge Jennine or any of these other
people because they were all multimillion dollar businesses, they have
a lot of leverage, you know. Um, you know, wasn't
(07:01):
it didn't Uh? Tucker Carlson at one point say on
like some like radio show, he was Rubert Murdock's bitch.
Wait did Yeah? Yeah that was more back in his
shock days though, wasn't it right? Right? Right? Right now?
He's like making it. Um, I just like that popped
in my head. Yeah, yeah, I mean a little bit now,
(07:22):
I mean because it definitely the the depiction you get
from these internal coms is not one in which he's
fully Murdock's bitch, although it's also one in which, uh,
you know, I don't know. I was actually kind of
surprised by how comparatively toothless it seems like Murdoch was
maybe just because of how much Fox is a talent
driven business. Um. But yeah, there's there's internal discussions that
(07:45):
dominion posts that are between Fox executives that are just
like this parade of worries, particularly that Sean Hannity is
not like controllable. Yeah. Um, they went so far, and
they did take some actions to try and mitigate this
Judge Janine pierrot November seventh show was canceled because, as
Fox executive David Clark said, her guests are all going
(08:06):
to say the election is being stolen, and if she
pushes back at all, it will just be token um
and then it's like token dot dot dot, and then
like two sentences are redacted. So I don't know what
the fuck else they were saying about Judge. I know
there's some tantalizing redactions here, and then we get to
this lovely bit quote. As Fox producer Justin Wells described,
(08:27):
they took her off because she was being crazy. Optics
are bad, but she is crazy, So he's like, the
optics of us questioning the election lies conspiracy theory are bad.
But also this pitch is nuts. That situation you find
when you hire people you know are inflammatory just to
(08:47):
be inflammatory. It's Pandora's box. They've opened Pandora's box and
they can No, they cannot. So these mild attempts at
responsibility did not extend to letting the network call the
election for Biden. First, they waited until all of the
other networks had finished. Viewers revolted. Rupert Murdoch complained to
Suzanne Scott that the company was quote getting creamed by CNN.
(09:09):
Guess our viewers don't want to watch it now. This
is the point at which Chucker Carlson, Yeah, I love
that funny. It's just like, yeah, they do the results
that kind of sorry, yeah, um, it's it's it is remarkable.
And at this point Tucker Carlson, who'd kind of started
out on like broadly speaking team reason like angry at
(09:31):
the election conspiracies, takes a turn. Carlson texted his producer,
do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we've
lost with our audience? We're playing with fire for real?
An alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us. Yeah, yeah,
they know exactly. Yeah, yeah, they know exactly. Like the
(09:52):
ship that they're in. Um yeah, they're in a bad
way back Fond might overtake us. Yeah, um, it's very
very funny. On November eighth, the day after the election
was called, Maria bartar Romo had Sidney Powell on again
to talk about Dominions software, which she alleged had an
(10:13):
algorithm that had stolen the election from Trump. Bartar Roma
knew ahead of time that Pale was going to spread
conspiracy theories about the company because Powell had sent her
a document the day before titled election fraud Info. Now,
this is the core of all of the information about
the Dominion and Smartmadock or whatever like this is this
is the actual nut of data that Sidney Powell has
(10:34):
that all of her claims are based on. Right. So
basically everything that Fox is going to magnify about the
election conspiracy comes from this document that Powell has been
sent from an anonymous source titled election fraud Info. Now,
for one thing, Powell describes the synonymous source as pretty whackadoodle,
right like, and what does that mean exactly? I bet
(10:56):
you're wondering what is from Sydney Powell the sentence or
the statement pretty whackadoodle mean. Here's how the motion describes
the election fraud Info document. In addition to promoting lies
about Dominion, the cinder claimed that Justice Scalia was purposefully
killed at the annual Bohemian Grove Camp during a week
long human hunting expedition, and that former Fox News CEO
(11:19):
Roger Ales, who died in twenty seventeen, and Rupert Murdoch
secretly huddle most days to determine how best to portray
mister Trump as badly as possible. The author continued, Who
am I and how do I know all of this?
I had the strangest dream since I was a little girl.
I was internally decapitated. Oh, Cody, you gotta hear this.
I was internally decapitated and yet I live. The wind
(11:44):
tells me I'm a ghost, but I don't believe it.
What right? You don't believe it? This is the source? Yea,
this is This is the source that three or four
billion dollars in loss suits are based around. Now. At
another point in this email, this anonymous source claims to
(12:07):
be able to quote time travel in a semi conscious state. Yeah,
which is also I think that just means dreaming. Yeah,
that is fucking incredible, like to know where it all
comes to. It's not even Sydney making stuff up or
just pretending to be a black box. She shares this
email with Fox hosts right so that she can inform
(12:30):
them what she's going to bring up, so they know
that the source of a lot of these election claims
is an internally decapitated woman who the wind tells us
a ghost and can time travel in a semiconscious state. Yeah,
in a semiconscious state. Very impressive, Yeah, very interesting info. Yeah.
I mean, Cody, I don't think any of your sources
(12:52):
can time travel in a semiconscious state. So she includes
all this in her resume and cover letters. Job, I'm
travel in a semiconta state. Um. Interestingly, our friend David
Bell puts that on his resume as well, So you
know that's true. That is true. He can wondering what
I did David Bell write? Does letter? No, he was
(13:17):
never internally decapitated. That's right, that's right. He would have
shared that. No, he sends me a cat scan of
his neck every single week, so I can I can
confirm he has not been internally decapitated. Um so Barter remo, Jesus,
what a stupid last name was aware of the email
and stated in her deposition that she knew that it
(13:39):
was nonsense, but at no point on air did she
mention that this email was the source of Powell's claims
about Dominion, which had aired on Fox to millions of viewers.
As Tucker Carlson texted that night, the software shit is absurd.
Half our viewers have seen the Maria clip and yeah,
not wrong. Yeah, it's the most interesting stuff in here
(14:01):
to me is this behind the scenes glimpse and how
Tucker communicates when he thinks he has a reasonable expectation
of privacy, because he seems equally preoccupied with how dumb
the conspiracy is, as he is with lambasting his colleagues
for not adequately furthering the conspiracy theory. Right, Like, he's
pissed about both. He's angry that this conspiracy's taking off,
and he's even angrier when his colleagues don't back it
(14:25):
up on the air. Um, what a weird position for
a giant asshole to be in. Yeah, that would be
his position, though, wouldn't it. Yeah, of course, because there's
no personal responsibility. There's nothing like be angry about everybody
the options but yeah, there are no what are the
options breaks on this ride he's on. It's just he
(14:47):
wants the drivers to guide it a little better. Yeah,
it's it's he's definitely not stopping. On November ninth, Carlson
told Suzanne Scott Fox, his CEO direct I've never seen
a reaction like this to any media company. Kills me
to watch it. Scott took that message down the line,
(15:07):
attacking her colleagues for having the arrogance to call Arizona.
She expressed that it was astonishing that a top executive
had signed off on the Arizona call, given that every
executive's first job was to quote protect the brand. Oh
that's their first job. Oh yeah, it's sheer shit, not
reporting the news, Katie. No, no, it definitely isn't that.
(15:30):
I'm going to continue from the motion. And on that day,
day one, as Scott termed it, Fox executives made an
explicit decision to push narratives to entice their audience back.
Scott and Lackland Murdoch exchanged texts about the plan going forward. Scott,
viewers going through the five stages of grief. It's a
question of trust. The Azy call was damaged. But we
will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers
(15:53):
know we hear them and respect them. Murdoch, Yes, but
needs constant rebuilding without any missteps. Scott. Yes, today is
day one and it's a process souces. Yeah. Yeah, and
that respecting their audience means embracing the lie their audience,
Yeah exactly, yeahf the lie. Maybe we've got to respect
(16:16):
our audience so funny. I think that one of the
things I find really compelling here is that like the
most honest any of them seems is when they are
distraught that the audience is losing trust in them. And
so it's like, I think they do feel bad that
they didn't embrace the audiences insane conspiracy enough that like, oh,
we let them down. They expected us to be as
(16:39):
batshit as they are and we really fell down on
the job there. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, feeling upset
that they can't that they're in this situation and they can't. Yeah, yeah,
that they that they failed their audience should have gone
in harder. I think at the outset it's embarrassing to
(16:59):
let your right. Now, we should have been dumber and faster.
I do say that a lot myself. But you know
who's as dumb and as fast as it's possible to be?
Sponsors are Sponsors? They are They are as they are
as fast as I don't know how to finish that
sentence anyway, here's our fucking ads. Ah, we are back.
(17:30):
On November ninth, Neil Cavuto cut away from a White
House press conference where Kaylee McKinney made unsubstantiated claims about
election fraud. Neil told viewers that he could not in
good conscience air her claims unless she had evidence to
back them up, which is honestly more of a principled
stand than I think any of us ever expected from
Neil Cavuto. Absolutely surprising, yeah, shocking. The brand team at
(17:54):
Fox panicked. Raj Shaw, who headed the brand team, notified
senior leadership at Cavo represented a brand threat. Tighten. With
all this and with Cucker's reaction, was an ever present
fear of Newsmax's built over into the course of November.
Fox exec and talent seemed to see Newsmax as a
mortal threat to their continued profitability, Which is funny because
(18:16):
didn't it just get dropped from like, uh, what is it? Um?
Was it Newsmax or the one News? Yeah? Direct Tv?
Direct Tv just dropped Newsmax because it didn't get enough
people watching it. It's interesting, so yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe
Fox was. I don't know, it may it may have
just been that, like in the moment, Newsmax was experiencing
(18:39):
a surge, but it clearly didn't last. They're not doing
well right now, which is very funny. Also fuck all
of those people. Quote. Prior to November eight, Fox executive
David Clark testified that Newsmax was not a credible media
outlet because quote, their hosts were extremely one sided, ignored
the facts, they did not seem to care about telling
(18:59):
the truth. They seem to invest truly in conspiracy theories
versus fact. Yeah, I mean that'll do it. Wow. Imagine
a news agency being like that. David fucked up. Huh.
On November tenth, Scott pointed out to senior Fox executives
a note from analyst Kyl Goodwin on Newsmax's ride. Fox
executive Porter Berry responded, just pulled up Newsmax's show and
(19:23):
they're heading cavudo. They're just whacking us. Smart on their part.
Lauren Peterson added, they definitely have a strategy across all
shows to try and target and steal our viewers. And
this is also really compelling to me just because like
at number one, obviously, at no point is even ideology
a primary concern. Like the concern is the competition, right,
(19:44):
Like it's it's pure, it's pure business, And there's almost
this like I can respect the degree to which they're
good at fucking us over. Yeah, we would do that too.
We would do that too, and it's a shame to
us that we weren't smart enough to do it. Master right. Yeah,
m Fox executives talk about Newsmax. They're way the rest
(20:06):
of us talk about Fox, which is one of the
most entertaining things in the document. Fox president Jay Wallace
describes Newsmax as truly an alternative universe that can't be ignored.
He then adds in a message to Suzanne Scott that
he is trying to get everyone to comprehend we are
on war footing. And again that's also from the point
(20:26):
I'm making about, like ideology doesn't seem to come into
it with these people. They're not at war with the Biden,
White House or Democrats. They're at war with other right
wing media that might steal their thunder. Yeah, who's yeah
out Fox using them. It's very very interesting. Yeah, Foxing,
I'm proud. I'm proud, proud of you, Cody. You know what,
(20:46):
Let's get on a call with the T shirt people
real quick. Yeah, let's let's get them on one of those.
So the T shirt people, the people. Everything that Fox
does next is influenced by this feeling of being at
war with New Max. This is what causes Tucker to
make common cause with Sean Hannity in order to push
the false claim that Dominion was the core of some
grand fraud. The express purpose of backing this conspiracy theory
(21:10):
was to bring viewers back from Newsmax. Quote Hannity told
Carlson and Ingraham on November twelfth, in one week, in
one debate, they destroyed a brand that took twenty five
years to build, and the damage is incalculable. Tucker responded,
it's vandalism. The hosts also discussed the possibility of competition
to Fox emerging. Hannity told them serious money with serious
(21:32):
distribution could be a real problem. I mho they need
to address. But what I don't know, Tucker, that could happen.
So yeah, feel that fear, Yeah, feel that, feel that fear.
It is nice to know that he can be afraid.
It's a little brain bug moment there, putting your hand
on the goop stick that Tucker Carlson uses to suck
(21:53):
the brains out of your aunts and uncles. Yeah, it's afraid.
It's afraid. Normally, normally I feel um a little bit
of empathy when an unlikable character when you realize that
you know, they're afraid that you know, humanize them. No,
not this guy be afraid. I would not feel empathy
(22:14):
if Tucker Carlson's asshole got sucked out of his backside
by one of those one of those sucker things in
a swimming pool, in a grain silo or something, yea,
or a grain silo. Yeah, let's let's grain silo. The fucker.
Um did you guys grow up with that? That like
that at your local pool? That there was like, oh yeah,
(22:35):
all their guts sucked up and then like a pollenux
short story, right, I think ended up doing a short
story about that urban legend, which if anyone ever yeah,
I would definitely say, Cody, if there's a short story
about getting your guts sucked out of your butt through
a swimming pool, chuck pals, Actually yeah, yeah, beautiful. I'm
(23:00):
gonna read it now. Okay, But for the record, I
would think it was funny if that happened to Tucker,
So yeah. That same day, Laura Ingram's producer Tommy Firth,
texted a Fox executive responsible for overseeing her show. He complained,
this dominion ship is going to give me a fucking aneurysm.
As many times as I've told Laura it's bs, she
(23:21):
sees shit posters and Trump tweeting about it. The next
sentence or so was redacted, but the Fox executive response,
this is the Bill Gates microchip angle to voter fraud.
The next day he messages Firth again asking how's it
going with the kooks? So they're both being like, oh, yeah,
Laura's you know, she's watching these ship posters. She's tweeting
(23:43):
about nonsense. But the executives like, yeah, you know, this
is something we can work with. It's this Bill Gates
microchip angle, but applied to work. Yeah, how's it going?
Are the crazy people biting? Feels you're not done telling
this story? But this all feels really damning, it does.
It feels like people should be locked up, Like we're
(24:07):
we're we're we have fun, we make our jokes, but like, honestly,
the real life repercussions of this ship families destroyed. People
kill themselves over this. There was just another like suicide
of an entire family over this shit, Like this is
destroyed so many lives, Like I don't know these people,
Like the money is not enough I don't see on
(24:30):
a moral level, I don't see any argument as to
why a lot of this shouldn't be criminally liable. But
none of it is obviously or ever will be. Um
because it's fine to do this. It's not fine to like,
yell at the Atlanta police after they shoot a guy,
then you get charged with domestic terrorism. But this is cool. Um. Yeah. So.
(24:53):
Also on November twelve, lou Dobbs took to the airways
with Rudy Giuliani as guest. After Giuliani repeated his litany
of false allegations against Dominion, Dobbs said on air, it's stunning.
They have no ability to audit meaningfully the votes that
are the votes that are cast because the servers are
somewhere else. This looks to me like it is the
end game to a four and a half year long
(25:14):
effort to overthrow the president of the United States. While
Dobbs dug that hole deeper, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and
Tucker Carlson, who are in a group text thread together,
and boy, that sounds like the worst group that want that.
I want to say it all every breaking news story
(25:36):
that happens. I want to see just everything. I don't
want to be on that thread in any way. Oh God,
I would love to read it for sure. Yeah, I
don't know. I'd like to be on there be like, hey, guys,
you know it's Friday. I got some beers, the liver
of a child that was drowned to death and Amaretto.
You guys want to come over, you know, have some bruise,
(25:58):
eat a little bit. Um. I assume. I assume when
Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson hang out together,
they eat like the human equivalent of an ortolan. That's
the that's the omni thing that they don't even hide
their shame from God though Tucker Nosey's more powerful. Um
so yeah, while Dobbs dug that hole deeper. Laura Ingram,
(26:20):
Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson are in their group chat
and Carlson shares a tweet by Fox reporter Jackie Heinrich.
And Jackie was one of the like three or four
people at Fox who had a shred of integrity and
she was she fact Trump tweeted about dominion like sharing
this Sydney Powell conspiracy and Jackie Heinrich fact checked it.
She noted there is no evidence that any voting system
(26:43):
deleted or lost votes. Carlson shares this and tells Hannity
please get her fired. Seriously, what the fuck? I'm actually shocked.
It needs to stop immediately, like tonight, it's measurably hurting
the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.
Tucker then adds, I just went crazy on me to
over it. Hannity responds that he had already sent to
(27:05):
Suzanne with a really. He then added, I'm three strikes
Wallace shit debate election night of disaster now this BS Nope,
not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavudo? They're so pissed,
They're so pissed. Yeah, it does feel good a little bit.
I can so see him. M yeah now, Hannity and
(27:26):
next text Suzanne Scott, who reached out to Fox's SVP
of Corporate Communications, Irena Briganti. Quote Sean texted me he's
standing down on responding, but not happy about this and
doesn't understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone
in news. She Heinrich has serious nerve doing this, and
if it gets picked up, viewers are going to be
further disgusted. By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her
(27:47):
fact checking tweet, So I guess look again, you know,
Heinrich had a little bit of a little bit of
what do you what do you say, courage or whatever? Yeah,
but not so much that when her bosses yelled at her,
she doesn't shows Yeah, yeah, texts. I don't know. Maybe
(28:09):
one thing you could take from that is that, like,
if you get caught telling the truth in right wing media,
there's not like a job open for you in normal media,
whereas if you get caught lying in mainstream media, there's
a job for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was putting
(28:31):
myself trying to put myself in that position, and it's like, yeah,
I could see how you get intimidated. I would like
to think I wouldn't because I would make those series
of choices where I was working at this place. But
you know, yeah, you know, there's this term you here
because of Hannah or Rent, the banality of evil, and
she was talking about like Holocaust perpetrators, but it gets
(28:52):
used a lot. I think it. I prefer to think
of things a little differently, which is that like, it's
not that evil has banal. It's that the vast majority
of evil is perpetuated so that people can pay their
mortgage like that, and that's what that's what's going on here,
and that's even what's going on with like like Tucker
doesn't have a mortgage or whatever, but it's it's very
(29:13):
much just about the bottom line, right, Like if the
money for Tucker had been in being a liberal or
left wing media personality, he would have been just as
fine doing that. He doesn't care. Like, Yeah, while this
is going on, Dominion representatives are frantically contacting Fox News
to try and correct these false allegations. In the first
like two months that followed the election, they send thirty
(29:35):
six hundred messages to Fox representatives. Fox executive David Clark
tells a colleague on November fourteenth, I have it tattooed
on my body at this point, l ol. Super aware
that we're we're lying criminally about a corporation LMAO. Yeah.
I hope they don't sue us for one point six
(29:56):
billion dollars kiss f Yeah. One fun thing I learned
reading this is that Fox does in fact have its
own fact checking department. Now that's an astonishing thing to hear.
If you have watched a lot of Fox News, you
a note they call themselves fucking losers. No, no, what
(30:17):
the brain rooms? But oh no, goodness room Yeah, incredible
love it. What what facts are they checking? They'll check
the facts so that they know, Katie report the opposite.
I would love to answer that question for you. But
(30:39):
as soon as the motion notes that Fox's fact checking
department is called the brain room, the next two full
paragraphs are redacted. Why again, there's some there's some juicy
shit that's black barred in this. It's the funniest place
to put redaction. It's it's it's really there is a
(31:00):
degree of comedic timing from some of these dominion lawyers. Yeah,
some of it's like intriguing something. Well, I wonder what
you're saying there. It's like, no, no no, no, the brain
room is the brain room. Yeah, we can't talk about
what happens in the brain room. So immediately after in
the brain room, So immediately after those two full paragraphs
of redaction comes this paragraph. Fox continued to broadcast its
(31:24):
lies about dominion as it nervously eyed Newsmax, and in
November sixteenth email, Rupert Murdoch told Scott to read a
Wall Street Journal piece about Newsmax, telling her these people
should be watched if skeptically. Trump will concede eventually, and
we should concentrate on Georgia helping any way we can.
We don't want to antagonize Trump further. But Giuliani taken
with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here,
(31:48):
it's so funny. Um, yeah, what a hard time. So
the paragraph that follows this is also redacted, and immediately
after all that redaction comes this line. Carlson told his
producer Alex Feiffer that night, Sidney Powell is lying, fucking bitch.
(32:11):
It's so good, struggling, having a rough one out, buddy,
letting it out. He continues to complain about this regularly
up to November eighteenth, when he tells Laura Ingram that
Powell is crazy, and Ingram responds, Sydney is a complete nut.
No one will work with her. Ditto Rudy Carlson response,
holy shit, check this out. Carlson response, it's unbelievably offensive
(32:35):
to me. Our viewers are good people, and they believe it.
Why do they believe it? Why do they believe it?
People believe it let's take it a step further. Man. Yeah,
it's so there's almost like a schizophrenic quality to reading
through this, because there's this mix of like Carlson responding
the way a regular person should. This is unbelievably offensive
(33:00):
up there, but also like you're doing it, Tucker, Like yeah,
it's so, it's like it's like, look what they're making
me do kind of stuff, like, yeah, the situation I'm
in and what I have to do because obviously, but
I respect the audience so much. There's such good people,
but I have to know they respect what the audience
means for his bottom line. But again, it's this not
(33:25):
surprising in any way, but you do an inability psychologically
incapable of seeing any accountability. No, no, absolutely not nightmare
to be married too, Tucker. You're doing it. You're doing it, yeah, Tucker.
The lies have come from inside the you, inside you.
(33:45):
This is this is entirely your fault, Tucker Carlson. But
you know what's not What isn't Tucker Carlson's fault The
joys of cooking. That's right, prepped meal. They delivered straights
to yours. Hello, Frienday, I bet I can make it.
(34:07):
We could find a case for how that's his fault.
But no, you know, he actually very excited. Dogs delivers
very exciting. We've got a couple of sponsors. We've got
a food box company and a mattress company sponsoring us,
and as a result, we're now offering our listeners for
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(34:28):
taco mattress, unrefrigerated, no preservatives. Um, it'll just a larger
quantity of food than you can eat, stuffed in a
mattress that you have to cut open to get the
food out. Does this benefit you in any way? Does
it do nothing but cause problems for you? Yes? Of course,
just like Fox News, So use promo code. Yeah, I
(34:52):
would like a pile of rancid tacos stuck inside my mattress. Um,
and uh yeah, we'll be back in a minute. Ah. So.
On November eighteenth, SVP of Primetime Programming and Analytics Run
(35:13):
mitchell sends end message to underlings R E. Newsmax the
lack of any meaningful editorial guidance may be a positive
for them, at least in the short term. For example,
last night on Stitchfield at eight pm, the show sourced
websites like Gateway Pundit while talking about voter fraud. This
type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled
FNC Fox News Corporation viewers looking for. Mitchell concluded that
(35:36):
viewers are watching less Fox News and suggested fixes do
not ever give viewers a reason to turn us off.
Every topic and guest must perform no unforced errors and content. Example,
abruptly turning away from a Trump campaign press conference. Yeah, yeah,
(36:00):
keep fucking people's relatives up. So yeah, ruined bring down
a society to its knees. It sure it suis so
um yeah. Following this guidance, on November nineteenth, Fox broadcast
the entirety of a press conference with Rudy Giuliani and
Sydney Powell. Now, you guys probably all remember this as
(36:22):
the press conference where Rudy's hair melted off of his face.
I remember that, what an incredible moment for this country.
Made up It's ai r. It was a lie. It
didn't happen. I want to be like frozen so that
a thousand years from now, I can help journalists make
a documentary about America. And I want to cut straight
(36:44):
from like the battlefield at Gettysburg, thousands of corpses, a
nation fighting with its past in order to like finally right,
like the evil at the center of its existence. And
cut immediately from that to like Rudy Giuliani with his
hair melting off, leaking, just leaking from his skull. Nothing
else is important. We can cut the rest of American
(37:06):
history between those moments, from Gettysburg to Sydney, Ball and Juliani,
the two most pivotal points in American absolutely, no question. Yeah,
um yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we might even be
like morally obligated to have a little detour into four
(37:27):
season's total landscaping. Um, okay, I'm gonna play a little
segment from that from that clip because I know a
lot of people enjoyed Rudy's head melting, but I think
fewer people actually, like, actually listen to some of the
claims being made. Um, this is a particularly powerful moment
(37:48):
from that press conference, and I'm gonna play it in
just a second. Outrageous situation. Now, I don't think most
Americans know, but our ballots get calculated, many of them
outside the United States, completely open to hacking, completely open
to change, and being done by a company that specializes
(38:10):
in voter front back to you. He does not look well. Also,
Sidney Powell is very tall and wearing a leopard Prince
Real School. Interesting choice. What we are really feeling different?
Uncovering more by the day massive influence of communist money
(38:38):
inference are elections here in the United States, the dominion
voting systems smart Maadic technology software, and the software that
goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not
just Dominion. We're created Vendezuela, at the direction of Hugo
(39:00):
shaves to make sure he never lost an election. Okay,
that's oh my god, I do love the way she
says Venezuela too. Yeah yeah, uh. His the crude oil
leaking from his brain really distracted from the things that
she said, Yeah, which it should not have because yeah, yeah,
(39:23):
could talk about it. Attack maybe his plan. Yeah, Rudy
is much more cunning than we give him credit for.
He has. You know, some species of lizards can shoot
blood out of their eyes to like distracted attacker. Rudy
is able to do that to the entire nagent with
his head oil developed over millions of years himself, with
(39:47):
the symbiote yea, do my little trick. This is how
Rudy's Giuliani have managed to survive at the fringes of
the world for the last sixty five million years since
the death of the rest of their race. I consider
Rudy to be the same species as the dinosaurs in
the original Mario movie, you know, the one with Bob Hoskins.
You could just put Rudy in that movie and he
(40:09):
would He would out immediately the same way he wasn't
in that movie. Not not entirely. So. While this beautiful,
beautiful scene was unfolding, Rupert Murdoch sent out an email
with the subject watching Juliani exclamation point. The text of
that email real, really crazy stuff and damaging. If only
(40:34):
you had the power to stop this, Rupert Murdoch. Uh,
it's like watching a train crash. And also you have
the superman likability to stop any object in motion with
a moment's notice. It's probably problem, but it's it's a
trolley problem. But you're god, Yeah, it's very footing. White
(41:02):
House correspondent Kristin Fisher did at least fact check some
of the claims made during this press conference. Her boss,
Brian Boyton called her and told her emphatically that he
and his bosses were unhappy with her and that she
quote needed to do a better job of and this
is a quote respecting our audience. Fisher texted a colleague
about being punished for doing my job. Shortly thereafter real
(41:24):
lions eating faces party moment. Oh no, I like that.
This is their phrase. That's the way they're respecting our audience.
In a week, Yeah, lie to our audience. It's very fun.
It's also like you get these people at Kristin Fisher,
who is like, well, it's good that you were doing
your job as a journalist, but also like you did
work at Fox, like you did choose to work there. Yeah,
(41:48):
this isn't the first thing. Yeah, like a first questionable
move that they Yeah, you didn't have a long career
there without any kind of moral qualms. This is just
like happened to be the time that there were a
bunch of depositions. Maybe this is the only bad thing
they've ever done. Maybe this is the only bad thing
they've ever done. That's possible, we just can't know. So
(42:10):
the fact that there was regular spirited resistance within Fox
to the increasingly unhinged dominion conspiracy is very compelling to me.
At one point, Fox anchored Dana Perino comments that Dominion
would probably be able to sue over the comments made
in that press conference. This prompt CEO Suzanne Scott to
send an email saying, you can't give the crazies an
inch right now. They are looking for and blowing up
(42:31):
all appearances of disrespect to the audience. Scott separately 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.
I'm not positive what is being argued for here. She's
saying like, we can't give the crazies at Fox an
(42:54):
inch right now. They're looking for any opportunity to like
blow shit up. But also the audience feels like we're
shitting on them when we correct this stuff, and that's
damaged their trust, so we have to It's it's again
every there, Yeah, exactly. It's this impossible situation because you're evil,
Like you're evil, but you don't want to be choices
(43:18):
and the scenario that you've created that you know is bad,
but you also need in order to continue. Yeah, it's
like the crew of the Hindenburg got themselves into an
impossible situation when they explode it. We don't want to explode,
and yet this explosive thing. What a what A what
an impossible situation? Respect the explosion. Yeah, we're not respecting
(43:42):
the audience if we don't explode properly. Um, the audience
being hydrogen So Internally, Fox executives like Ron Mitchell laughed
at the clowns Rudy and Sidney who had put us
in a terrible place. He even asked a colleague jokingly
if Sidney was going to mention the quote international crime
conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Madiro Chavez, Antifa,
(44:05):
Cuba and China. It's noted in the conversation that silly
as these allegations are, if they put Fox in an
awkward place where we're going to need to thread the needle,
you're actually not in an awkward place. You don't have
It's okay, you don't have to do this. Yeah, nobody's
making you do this. Okay, you can help you make better.
(44:26):
On November twentieth, Dominion sends Fox's general counsel a cease
and desist. Internally, executives fretted over how reckless it was
to keep giving Powell air, but she continued to guess
regularly on Fox primetime shows, including Dobbs and Hannity that
same day. This continued into December. On December second, Bill Samon,
Fox's DC editor message to colleague, It's remarkable how weak
(44:49):
ratings make good journalists do bad things. It's good stuff,
good stuff. I might, yeah, I equipal with that, but
by late November even some of the bad journalists at
Fox were expressing a fear of where the recklessness might lead.
Suzanne Scott said privately, I had a number of conversations
with Sean where he wanted the president to accept the results,
(45:11):
and Hannity had understood that Joe Biden legitimately won the
election for some time. He admits this in his deposition too.
On November nineteenth, after the Giuliani Powell press conference, Carlson
very carefully tried to thread his own needle. On one hand,
he said publicly on his show that what Powell was
describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history,
but she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot
(45:32):
of requests on the other. However, he did not say
that what he believed privately that she was lying. Instead,
he closed by saying, maybe Sidney Powell will come forward
soon with details and exactly how this happened and precisely
who did it. We are certainly hopeful that she will.
And this is the most minimal pushback you could get
on this still too much for Fox viewers. The motion,
(45:55):
citing internal Fox communications, notes that there was a massive
viewer backlash Tor sent on this, which caused him to
mobilize with Raj Shaw from the brand team. Shaw messaged
a number of executives, including Lackland, Murdoch and Suzanne Scott
about this. But we don't know precisely what was said
because the next full page or so was redacted. Again,
(46:16):
super curious as to what was said there. When the
black bars end, we come to this. Shaw also texted
with producer Alex Piffer November twenty second, Shah wrote, shit
is so crazy right now, so many people openly denying
the obvious that Powell was clearly full of it. Phifer,
she is a fucking nutcase now. November twenty second is
the day that Trump finally disavows Powell. Noting that she
(46:39):
did not represent his campaign. This appears to have been
on the behest of Tucker Carlson, who messaged Ingram that
day that dealing with Powell totally wrecked. He spells it
r e c k ed my weekend. Then he says,
this is Teckel. Wow. I had to try to make
the White House disavow her, which they obviously should have
done long before. Ingrams no serious lawyer could believe what
(47:01):
they were saying. Carlson replies, but they said nothing in public.
Pretty disgusting. Oh yeah, well, oh, it's disgusting that they
didn't say it. Yeah, yeah. Oh. It's also interesting because
the White House does disavow Powell after this, Like Carlson,
that's just kind of evidence of the amount of poll
that he does have. January sixth came as a surprise
(47:26):
to everyone involved at Fox, at least based on what
the discovery documents suggest. It seems to have done something
to set up a sense of stakes for guys like Carlson,
but he was still too afraid of losing his audience
to reverse course. Late on January sixth, Carlson texted with
Fiffer that Trump is quote a demonic force a destroyer,
but he's not going to destroy us. On January twenty sixth,
(47:48):
Carlson invited his leading sponsor Mike Lindell on the show,
where Lindell spouted these same conspiracies on air after previewing
them for Carlson staff during a pre interview. And again,
this tycho to me between the almost panicked awareness of
how much trouble they're getting into by defaming dominion and
like inciting an insurrection. It exists on every level of
(48:09):
decision making that Fox. And the last quote I'm going
to read you from this motion is this. On January fifth,
Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott it's been suggested our primetime
three should independently or together say something like the election
is over and Joe Biden won, and that such a
statement would go a long way to stop the Trump
myth at the election as stolen. Scott forwarded the email
to Cooper, stating, I told Rupert privately that they are
(48:30):
all there. We need to be careful about how using
the shows and pissing off the viewers, but they know
how to navigate. They did not know how to navigate
and in fact refused to. But it's interesting that they
were aware, as it's this suggests that Murdoch is aware,
like we do have some sort of duty to use
our reach to try and quash this might be seen
(48:52):
as like evidence of guilt. Yeah, I mean, they're not unaware. Yeah,
it's interesting what lines they I mean. But again, you're
saying like they didn't do it, so yeah, yeah, they
didn't do it. Not the line is like considering doing something. Yeah,
I guess anyway, that's where we are, folks. That was
(49:18):
a real treat. It wasn't treat, wasn't it. I'm so honor.
Do you invite it? I loved it. I felt good
about it. Do you feel good? I feel great about it?
That's good. I mean I don't. I don't feel great
about it. But I change a lot of people's minds. Yeah.
That's the thing, right, That's what pisses me off most
about it is like, oh, here, it is objective proof
(49:39):
from the mouths of the people who run and are
the main faces on Fox that they are liars and
they are lying to their audience and they are like
doing it out of a pure cowardly venal desire for
money and fame and care nothing about the degree to
which they mislead people really and it will never matter
because facts, it's impossible to convince anyone with facts. You
(50:01):
put this in front of a person, like the tiny
little morsel right of here's well Tucker, here he is
saying that, like he needs evidence for it. So he
did push back, Like that's the game that they try
to play and sometimes exceed that. There's enough like you
can see people running cover for them already of like,
well no he did, It's he said it without acknowledging
(50:28):
anything else. It's very frustrating. I mean, it's it's this
thing where like I don't know, I shouldn't say it
doesn't matter at all because we just had this very
shocking like midterm upset where like maybe maybe we're coming
to like ahead of how much they can get away with.
I guess we'll know after twenty twenty four, but um,
(50:50):
it does. I do know that like the people in
my own life who have been listening to watching Fox
religiously for years, this won't stop them. This will not
have any impact. And like, and they're not dumb people,
nor are they bad people. It just they have gotten
bored into their reality tunnel and the like like digging
(51:12):
into this acknowledging the degree to which they've just been
manipulated for their viewership would be I think psychically painful.
So why why would you do it? It's hard to accept.
We see it all the time, the people that still
are on the Q trade, you know, like having a
hard time accepting the facts of it. But also I
(51:34):
would imagine that there's a lot of people who straight
up don't even know this story, like Fox News viewers
that oh, yeah, get this information because it's not like
this is going to be a breaking news segment on
Fox News, you know. Yeah. Anyhow, I want to read
more their texts, either adapted parts. Yeah, I would like
(51:57):
some of that too. There's a lot of very enticing pieces.
But what's more enticing is y'all's pluggables. Oh that's very true, Wow, Cody.
Check us out on YouTube dot com. Slash the search
bar and type in some more news for our video channel.
We do videos and stuff. It's a podcast too, if
(52:17):
you like podcasts. Speaking of podcasts, we also have another
podcast in that same podcast feed called even more News.
You go to that feed, you'll see both of them
in there. One episode will be the audio the YouTube show.
Another one will be us chatting with each other and
people about the news. Also we have a Patreon dot
(52:38):
com slash some more news. Wow, gods, you guys really
are a well oiled gazelle. Yeah we aren't. We get
that a lot. Yeah, we get the oil from Rudy's skull.
That's you know, that's where we need to invade. Next
is Rudy Juliani's forty. Send the Tenth Mountain Division in there,
(53:03):
get it out, get it all that fuel really out
right now, though, somebody needs to cut like, um, I
don't know, use an AI or something to like cut
him into X Files whenever there's one of the aliens
that have like the black oil coming out of there. Yeah, somebody,
somebody make Rudy into an alien super soldier on like
(53:26):
season six of the X Files. I feel like someone will.
Yeah yeah I could always a person. Thank you in advance. Yeah,
finally we'll all get to live our dream of seeing
Rudy's star opposite David Dukovney. And that's a good note.
Tanned On Behind the Bastards is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our
(53:48):
website cool Zonemedia. Dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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