Media Matters has obtained a slide deck that Dominion lawyers used at a March 28 hearing in the Fox defamation lawsuit.
I'll be sharing some takeaways here.
In an email, Fox CEO Suzanne Scott responds to Fox's Eric Shawn fact-checking a Trump falsehood: "This has to stop now... this is bad business... the audience is furious and we are just feeding them material."
Here's a Maria Bartiromo email from November 7 in which she says that "We have to go to a full on war. They have used all systems to defraud." And adds that "Jared says he doesn't want to hear about any conspiracy theory."
"Raw notes" from a November 7, 2020, pre-interview with Kevin McCarthy for Bartiromo's show have him saying there was no "mass cheat" in the 2020 election
Dominion responds to Fox saying Tucker Carlson "respected" Sidney Powell with texts in which he calls her a "crazy person" and various slurs.
On November 13, Fox "Brain Room" employee Leonard Balducci circulated fact-checks from Dominion and the AP debunking various claims about the company.
Suzanne Scott, November 19, 2020 email: "I can't keep defending these reporters who don't understand our viewers and how to handle stories... We lost 25k subs from FOX NATION."
Tucker Carlson's team discussing an upcoming interview with Mike Lindell -- "He's definitely crazy" but "has bailed us out loads of times when no one else would" with ads.
Here's a November 20, 2020 email from Jeanine Pirro's executive producer to Fox executives saying that a pre-taped Pirro monologue "is rife w conspiracy theories and bs and is yet another example why this woman should never be on live television."
1. A Fox host told Trump over lunch two weeks ago that Iran was days from a nuke, which he apparently believed over the denials of the former Fox contributor he made director of national intelligence.
2. Then Trump woke up on Friday and saw wall-to-wall positive coverage of Israeli strikes on Iran, and decided he wanted some credit.
3. Now the former Fox host Trump named Secretary of Defense has the U.S. military marshaling forces in the region while a different former Fox host has been in a scorched-earth fight with the first Fox host to capture Trump's attention and stop it.
1. I'm going to thread out the very odd sequence of events that led Fox News anchor John Robert, theoretically a "straight news" guy, to pretend the early hours of June 7 actually happened a day ago in order to avoid pointing out that Donald Trump was wrong about something.
2. A few hours ago at the White House, Trump was asked when he last spoke to CA Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump replied that they had spoked "a day ago."
Pirro stands out, even among the long list of shills and propagandists Fox employs, as a diehard Trump sycophant. In 2018, my late colleague Simon Maloy wrote that her "advocacy for the president is so aggressive that it often borders on insane -- some of her commentary would be at home in an authoritarian state media apparatus." mediamatters.org/jeanine-pirro/…
Here's a thread of notes on Pete Hegseth, the Fox & Friends weekend co-host that Donald Trump is trying to make Defense Secretary, overseeing the U.S. military, massive Pentagon budget and bureaucracy, and sixth in line to the presidency.
Hegseth is an extreme hawk who has backed attacks on Iranian infrastructure and cultural sites and even floated a “preemptive strike” against North Korea. mediamatters.org/pete-hegseth/t…
Hegseth has complained that military rules of engagement in combat zones are “a huge problem” and were “written for us to lose.” He's backed that up by successfully lobbying Trump to give clemency to alleged and convicted U.S. war criminals. mediamatters.org/pete-hegseth/t…
Takeaway from the truck stunt is Trump won’t say anything bad about the supporter who spoke at his rally and called PR garbage, and indeed doesn’t seem able to even denounce the comment.
He’s just giving those influential Puerto Ricans who have been expressing outrage about the comments all week new material to post about, insane self-own.
Trumpy billionaires are hoping to ride a wave of grievance into power, then use it to cut their own taxes and demolish their competitors.
In exchange for his support, Trump is offering Elon Musk the power to, in Musk's own telling, destroy Tesla's domestic competitors.
The result would reverse the domestic manufacturing renaissance spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, eliminating good jobs in Republican parts of the country.