Fox News host Tucker Carlson, texting a colleague on November 5 2020, following Donald Trump’s initial claims that the presidential election he was losing had been stolen:
What [Trump’s] good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.
Carlson on his TV show on November 11 2020:
So, was there voter fraud last week? That’s a question we’ve been working on since election night. We’ve tried to be careful and precise as we report this out. In moments like this, truth really matters more than ever. False allegations of fraud can cause as much damage as the fraud itself. Jussie Smollett hurt more people with his lies than any actual hate crime. And the last thing America needs right now is more damage. So we want to be accurate. What we’re about to tell you is accurate. It’s not a theory. It happened and we can prove it.
(Carlson proceeds to read the names of supposedly dead voters, provided to him by the Trump campaign. Several news outlets are able to debunk this, finding many of these voters alive, well and registered to vote. Carlson issues a retraction.)
Carlson texting a colleague on January 4 2021:
We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately … We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for [the last four years] because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
(On January 6, as Trump supporters, enraged by the election fraud story Carlson and his colleagues helped spread, attack the Capitol building, Carlson texts the same colleague, calling Trump a “demonic force, a destroyer”.)
Carlson explaining the texts on radio on March 23 2023:
Some idiot on the Trump campaign had sent us the name of these dead voters who had voted, and we went and I repeated them on air, and it turns out some of them were alive, so I was just … I felt humiliated.
Carlson to his audience, prior to airing an obsequious hour-long interview with Trump on April 11 2023:
For a man caricatured as an extremist, we think you’ll find what he has to say moderate, sensible, and wise.
