Tucker Carlson

Donald Trump says he will visit East Palestine, Ohio, two weeks after a freight train laden with toxic materials derailed and leaked into the community.

As Trump spread his stolen election lies, Fox was terrified of alienating its own audience, emails and texts show. By Andrew [email protected] Feb 18, ...

He was intensely careful to communicate to Fox viewers that he was on their side — really — and that he wasn’t one of the liberal elites mocking them and rolling his eyes at them. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.” He also texted Ingraham the next day that Powell was “lying” and that he’d “caught her.” Fox’s debate hosts tore into Trump with hard-hitting questions, but viewers who loved Trump expressed their outrage, and the network adjusted to take a less anti-Trump line, eventually outright championing him. Fox News anchor Dana Perino wrote to a Republican strategist about “this RAGING issue about fox losing tons of viewers and many watching — get this — newsmax! But we have to reassure some in the audience.” — this is a quote — ‘respecting our audience.’” She complained in texts that she was being “punished for doing my job.” So as Trump pressed forward with his stolen election lies and his attempt to overturn Biden’s win, Fox made it an immensely important, existential priority to regain the trust of pro-Trump viewers. Some of the outrage here may have been because Trump had praised claims from Fox opinion hosts, and Heinrich appeared to be rebutting them. In getting out on a limb and calling Arizona for Biden when no one else was doing so, it appeared to Fox’s pro-Trump viewers like the network was shivving Trump. He went on to say that what Trump is good at is “destroying things,” adding, “He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.” The consensus among other decision desks and election wonks was that Fox called the state too quickly, considering how much of the vote remained uncounted and where and whom those uncounted votes were coming from. But an ongoing defamation lawsuit from the voting machine company Dominion against Fox News tells a more complex story — one in which the network’s key players feel compelled to supply the conspiratorial content the audience is demanding.