The fallout from Dominion Voting Systems’s lawsuit against Fox News continued on Thursday as newly-released video depicted fired Fox host Tucker Carlson reacting to his participation in a deposition for the case.
In the video, obtained by left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters, the ex-Fox primetime star is seen talking to producers and other staff on the set of Tucker Carlson Tonight. He described the emotional toll that the questions asked by Dominion’s lawyer took, while fuming that the attorney had asked questions about which residence he uses as his primary home.
“[T]hat guy, he triggered the s*** out of me,” says Carlson in the clip.
“The amount of times I had, ‘First of all, f*** you,’ on my lips was like, it was unbelievable. Suggesting that I was...that I was cheating on my taxes?” he adds.
At another point, he says: “Holy s***, 10 hours. That slimy little motherf***er sitting across from me.”
It’s the kind of language critics of Carlson’s show came to expect after private messages between Carlson and his producers were released as part of Dominion Voting Systems’s $787m defamation suit against Fox over the past several months. Those texts revealed a toxic atmosphere behind the scenes at the top primetime Fox show, where offensive language that crossed the border into racism and sexism was not uncommon.
In one particularly revealing message that came to light in just the past week, Carlson was revealed to have texted to an associate that he was disgusted watching a group of Trump supporters gang up on a supposed member of Antifa, describing the scene as “not how white men fight”.
Carlson was fired from Fox last month in the biggest shakeup of the network’s primetime lineup in years. It was a development heralded as a victory by many on the left as well as advocates for honesty in the press as it meant an end to a broadcast that served to platform conspiracies and misinformation while embracing the racist theory of “Great Replacement”, which is a key component of white nationalist beliefs.
The ex-Fox host has not confirmed his plans going forward but as of yet has refrained from going to war with his former network.
In a brief video after his firing he swiped broadly at the mainstream cable news sphere and promised viewers “see you soon”. Former President Donald Trump, both a supporter and critic of the network at various times, lambasted the right-wing cable channel after Carlson’s firing and argued that chairman Rupert Murdoch’s should have defended his conspiracies about the 2020 election.
