(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Tucker Carlson: The Man with Two Faces [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-03-09 Tucker Carlson, the controversial Fox News host, has flung himself into maelstrom, with the release of security footage from the January 6 insurrection at the Capital by Donald Trump’s supporters. The footage, courtesy of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is part of a trove extending to thousands of hours, and comes at a time when the House GOP is desperate to put January 6 behind them. The recent midterms were all the party needed to realize that an embrace of Trump’s Big Lie was electoral suicide. What makes Carlson’s coverage of the footage, over two nights, so remarkable, is that his defense of Trump’s supporters and the “mostly peaceful chaos” that was their violent insurrection, is in stark contrast to how he seems to view the former president. The Dominion Lawsuit At the height of the 2020 elections, Fox News’ anchors such as Carlson and once-renowned reporter, Maria Bartiromo, platformed guests who spread the lie that Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company, was, in effect, rigging the election in favor of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Dominion has filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit , accusing Fox of wanting a “license to knowingly spread lies,” a charge which Fox denies, claiming that the lawsuit is an “unprecedented assault on the First Amendment.” A Delaware state judge will make a summary judgment on the facts of the case in order to decide whether the case should be heard. Given the documents that Dominion has already unearthed , there is a strong argument for the case to go forward and be heard around mid-April. The documents reveal a Fox News that is a far cry from the channel that tells it like it is. The chairman, Rupert Murdoch, did not believe the conspiracy theories around Dominion. Dominion’s legal filings express the two-faced nature of the organization: “Fox has produced no evidence — none, zero — supporting those lies. This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organization to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion ‘stolen election’ story.” Indeed, Fox News is not arguing that its reporting was true and has accepted that Dominion did not, in fact, adulterate the results of the election. Fox News’ argument seems to be that the conspiracy theories were “newsworthy” and therefore, the right-wing channel had an obligation to report them. Carlson the Trump-Hating Trump Supporter Tucker Carlson plays an outsized role in this battle, given his efforts to platform conspiracy theorists. Anyone familiar with Carlson during the Trump-era, will know that he has been one of the most vehement supporters of Trump and his MAGA policies, in the whole country. It is surprising then, to read a text that he sent a co-worker just days before January 6, where he said, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.” Carlson added, in case there was any confusion, “I hate him passionately”. In an email, Carlson wrote that, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.” This after four years when Carlson had placed Trump among the greatest presidents in the history of the United States! It seems that Carlson has not been the fair and honest journalist he portrays himself to be. it is one thing hating trump and covering him fairly, it is quite another pretending to adore him, and covering him in the most biased, and positive light possible. In fact, that is precisely Dominion’s argument. Carlson knew that everything he was saying was a lie, that Trump was a disaster of a president, but he had to keep lying. In an email to fellow Fox News host Laura Inghram, on Nov. 18, 2021, Carlson said of pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who was responsible for a lot of the conspiracy theories surrounding Dominion, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane”. At one point, the mask slipped during an interview with Powell, where he asked, “You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon. You’ve convinced them that Trump will win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.” That did not stop Carlson from saying later on, “Many of the people who entered the Capitol that day believed the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted. No honest person can deny it. Yet the beneficiaries of that election continue to lie about what is now obvious.” Carlson is representative of a culture at Fpx, that prizes ratings over truth, and placating the far-right to standing up for American values. He knows he is lying and, everyone at Fox knows he is lying and that they are in the business of lying, but, their entire business model depends on lies, and, if the Dominion lawsuit will serve anything, it will be to expose just how deep the rot is at Fox. 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