Judge Jeanine Pirro says she talked with President Trump on the phone "earlier this evening." She will be sharing what he said on her show.
Eric Trump says on Fox that COVID "hit [his dad] very hard in the opening days."
Eric Trump: "I think it's going to be a quick recovery."
Mark Meadows: "He is doing extremely well. In fact, I'm very, very optimistic based on the current results. ... He's made unbelievable improvements from yesterday morning, when a number of us -- the doctor and I -- were very concerned."
Mark Meadows says that Trump "is probably tuned in right now, watching you, Judge."
Mark Meadows: "Yesterday, we were real concerned about that. He had a fever and his blood oxygen level had dropped rapidly."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Some filings made public yesterday in the Fox News/Smartmatic case include some internal criticisms from Fox employees about coverage (I BELIEVE from an internal 2020 company survey)
One said: "The content we produce has made the world, and especially our country, a worse place.”
There's also some new internal messages.
According to the filing, on Nov. 6, 2020, three days after the election, Lachlan Murdoch texted: "Problem is Trump is going to blame everyone for not winning, especially Fox"
Former Fox News managing editor Bill Sammon stated in his deposition that he believes he was fired by Fox News for "calling the Arizona state when I did."
Today, 468 pages of filings from Smartmatic's lawsuit against Fox News were unredacted. I went through them to try to highlight new internal text messages, emails & depositions
In one message, for example, Jeanine Pirro called Sean Hannity an "egomaniac"
Here is the full October 2020 text message from Jeanine Pirro to a friend about Sean Hannity, which mentions him using Trump's presidential bathroom:
Jeanine Pirro said in a text message to Ronna McDaniel that she saw her role at Fox as helping Trump and the GOP: "I work so hard for
the President and party"
Lachlan Murdoch, on Fox earnings call, about decision to settle with Dominion: "We made the business decision to resolve the dispute to avoid the acrimony of this trial and a multi-year appeal process."
The first analyst question asks about future potential Fox settlements and departure of Tucker Carlson.
On the Dominion settlement, Lachlan Murdoch said that the judge had "severely limited our defenses at trial," and the company "determined that the best course of action for the company and the shareholders was to settle."
As far as I know, Maria Bartiromo is still considered to be a member of the News division at Fox, which makes her sharing her Trump questions with Mark Meadows ahead of time particularly noteworthy. From CNN's new report: cnn.com/2022/04/29/pol…
This was the headline on my Nov. 29 story about that Bartiromo/Trump interview: "With Fox’s Maria Bartiromo as his first post-election interviewer, Trump found a sympathetic ear and few questions." washingtonpost.com/media/2020/11/…
Notice the "we" from Hannity and Bartiromo — in separate messages to Mark Meadows — when talking about pro-Trump forces.
Hannity: "Any place in particular we need a push."
Bartiromo: "We want to know he is strong he is a fighter & he will win."
Here's the full text message exchange between Sean Hannity and Mark Meadows on election day 2020, care of CNN: cnn.com/2022/04/25/pol…
I've asked Fox News for comment. In texts, Hannity refers to the Trump campaign/pro-Trump team as "we" and asks which states he can help with in terms of messaging.
Hannity made his support for Trump 2020 quite clear, but this speaks to a slightly higher degree of involvement.
According to an audio recording I obtained, CBS News co-prez Neeraj Khemlani told staff earlier this month that CBS needed to hire more Republicans for "access" reasons because the GOP would likely win midterms.