Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki – now a host on MSNBC – took a shot at Fox News' Tucker Carlson in light of court filings suggesting he doesn't believe some of the things he feeds his viewers.
“I had about 20 seconds where I thought … Tucker Carlson, maybe he’s one of us,” she said during an episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” “And then, by second 21, I thought, wait, he is intentionally sharing disinformation with his audiences and treating them like they are stupid, frankly, so that he can save his job, save viewers and make money.”
Filings from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case targeting Fox News showed comments from some of the network's top stars — including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Carlson — calling Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election "crazy" and dismissing them as unserious.
The filings also revealed Carlson's apparent disdain for Mr Trump. Texts he sent suggested he was excited to stop having to cover Mr Trump, and he went so far as to say "I hate him passionately."
Mr Trump took to Truth Social after the bombshell revelations to claim that Carlson "doesn't hate me, at least not anymore!"
Psaki said she wasn't surprised that the network's hosts were sharing incorrect information, saying we "know that with our own eyes”.
“I am horrified by the disinformation, but the fact that they knowingly did it, that is what I think is, in my view, the most problematic,” she said.
Psaki will host "Inside with Jen Psaki," an opinion and analysis show on MSNBC, which debuts this weekend.
It is unclear exactly what Psaki meant when she said "one of us" in reference to Carlson. She has never been a reporter — she began her career in political campaigns, working as a press secretary for former President Barack Obama and later joining the Department of State in a comms role and then hopping to CNN as a political commenter before serving as Joe Biden's official filter between the White House and the US public.
It’s possible that by “one of us” she meant a left-leaning American who opposes Mr Trump, given Carlson’s texts deriding the former president.
