Donald Trump appeared on his eldest son’s programme Triggered, saying that “it’s a shame what happened to Tucker Carlson” and that the ousted Fox host was willing to tell “the truth”.
Mr Trump blasted the $787.5m settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems following the voting machine company’s lawsuit against the network for its repeated broadcasts including lies about the election and Dominion’s role in it.
“They need a new law firm,” Mr Trump said, adding that the Dominion lawsuit is “the craziest case I’ve ever heard”.
“It’s a shame what happened to Tucker Carlson. He had the number one show. He was doing great. His show was very interesting, and he was out there in the sense that he was telling the truth,” he said.
He claimed that others in the media are “lying and they’re hiding and they’re afraid to talk”.
Donald Trump Jr said the payout Fox News made to Dominion was “tiny” to the company.
“If there's liability, and you do damage, it's based on what the company is actually worth. This seems like it's worth multiple times what the company could ever possibly be worth and yet they were willing to pay it,” he added. “And it seems like that was designed to probably prevent, you know, a Rupert [Murdoch] from having to testify or something like that.”
According to Macrotrends, Fox is worth $15.89bn as of 27 April.
“I don't know how they could have lost the case,” Mr Trump added. “If they had lawyers that would have talked about free speech and lawyers that would have talked about platforms – It's a news platform.”
“That means every time somebody goes into news, if they say something, and if it's wrong, CBS or NBC fake news or ABC fake news, any of them, any of these groups or outlets or platforms are going to be responsible for whatever [anyone] says,” Mr Trump said.
He added that it was “ridiculous”.
“You won't have any news, they ought to close up their news shows right now,” he said.
“I think losing Tucker, having Tucker not be there, is gonna have a big impact and a negative impact on Fox,” the ex-president added.
Fox News announced it was “parting ways” with Mr Carlson in a statement on Monday morning.
The statement confirmed that Mr Carlson’s last show occurred the preceding Friday, which ended with him eating pizza with Pennsylvanian delivery man Tyler Morrell, who was honoured after he helped police stop a suspected car thief.
At the end of the segment, Mr Carlson told his viewers he would see them again next week.
The statement’s language – and later comments by Fox News anchors – seemed to imply that Mr Carlson and Fox split ways mutually, though the statement lacked any comment from Mr Carlson. Later details suggested that Mr Carlson was blindsided by the decision, which reportedly came from the top of the network as late as Monday morning.
