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However behind the scenes, Mr. Carlson and his producers had been amongst these scoffing.
Within the days earlier than the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, they mentioned their intense hopes that Mr. Trump would quickly depart the political scene. They mocked his plans to dam the certification of Mr. Biden’s win and raged at how Mr. Trump’s legal professionals had undermined their very own arguments about fraud with sweeping conspiracy theories and debunked allegations.
Two weeks after the election, Mr. Carlson, his government producer and a prime Fox government named Ron Mitchell traded texts a couple of information convention at which one among Mr. Trump’s legal professionals, Rudolph W. Giuliani, unspooled a litany of debunked allegations whereas hair dye dripped down his face. “I don’t see how one can cowl this,” Mr. Mitchell wrote. (That evening, Mr. Carlson devoted his opening monologue to the information convention, rigorously asserting that Mr. Giuliani “did increase official questions and in some instances, he pointed to what gave the impression to be actual wrongdoing.”)
Mr. Carlson has claimed to “by no means take a look at the rankings” for his present. However Dominion texts present Mr. Carlson, his bosses and his fellow hosts obsessing over them. Inside weeks of the election, it turned clear to them that Fox viewers badly wished them to concentrate on supposed proof of voter fraud.
“Tucker wrote me and Laura and mentioned final nights numbers had been a catastrophe,” Sean Hannity wrote to Fox producers in late November 2020, referring to Mr. Carlson and Laura Ingraham. (His government producer, Robert Samuel, famous that the earlier week’s most extremely rated programming minutes “had been on the voting irregularities.”) Mr. Carlson had additionally texted the 2 different hosts about rankings earlier that month, joking that an indignant Fox viewer who had ranted towards the community on Twitter would get “manner higher numbers than what we’ve” and warning Mr. Hannity that “the 7:00 was third final evening,” referring to the time slot instantly previous his personal.
As Mr. Carlson’s broadcast was coming to an finish on Nov. 10, a Fox employees member warned the host that he was being attacked on Twitter for not overlaying allegations of voter fraud. “It’s all our viewers care about proper now,” the employees member wrote. Mr. Carlson replied that it had been a “mistake” however that “I simply hate” the subject.
That evening and the following morning, Mr. Carlson and the unnamed colleague brainstormed how one can get into the story, buying and selling hyperlinks and tweets, ultimately seizing on a neighborhood information report in Nevada suggesting a lady who had died in 2017 had voted there in November. (An investigation later decided that the lady’s husband, a Republican, had used her poll to vote twice, then claimed her poll had been stolen.) They debated whether or not they might “rise up to 5 examples of particular names of useless those that voted,” and reached out to Jason Miller, a Trump marketing campaign official, asking for proof that they might then current on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“Clearly they should do no matter they’ll to assist us,” Mr. Carlson advised his Fox colleague.
On the afternoon of Nov. 11, as the following night’s broadcast approached, the employees member texted Mr. Carlson once more.
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