Bonus: “Fox News EXPOSED”

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 3 I'm Tommy Detour.

Speaker 2 We decided to jump into the studio here on a Friday. I mean, here's the thing: we weren't going to have a pod on Tuesday because it's, of course, President's Day weekend.

Speaker 2 But late Thursday night, we got a legal filing from Dominion Voting Systems that laid out just some of the extensive evidence uncovered during the discovery process in their defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Speaker 2 For those who aren't familiar with the case, Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox for defamation. They are seeking $1.6 billion

Speaker 2 with a B in damages.

Speaker 2 Their case is that Fox knowingly spread conspiracy theories that Dominion voting machines essentially helped rig the election for Joe Biden, that their hosts said that, that they had guests on that said that, and then they just kept spreading those conspiracy theories, knowing they were inaccurate, thus defaming Dominion voting systems and costing them their reputation and $1.6 billion in damages.

Speaker 3 My favorite part is of the conspiracy:

Speaker 3 Dominion was founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chavez, just in case everyone is wondering, Hugo Chavez died in 2013. Yeah, so it's a tough one.

Speaker 2 It all came from Sidney Powell. You guys might remember Sidney Powell, one of Trump's sort of D-list lawyers that came around at the end with, it was like a Rudy deputy, basically.

Speaker 2 I think she was almost going to be like Attorney General at Trump Party.

Speaker 2 Probably.

Speaker 3 She was one of the people who was in the Oval Office having meetings with the Overstock.com guy and Mike Lindell. Part of that crew.

Speaker 2 So the great thing about this lawsuit is you sue Fox News, they go through discovery, there was all this testimony with Fox executives and hosts, and they got text messages between Fox hosts and Fox executives as well.

Speaker 2 And so a lot of this was released Thursday night. And I mean,

Speaker 2 I was like stunned, even though it wasn't, it shouldn't be surprising to any of us that everyone at Fox asks like this, but I was also, I was still stunt.

Speaker 3 No, it is exactly what we always assumed was the case, which which is that it is a right-wing organization designed to make money by spreading Republican propaganda.

Speaker 3 But to see it all laid out in black and white, to see the cynicism, to see them believing one thing and saying another this clearly was shocking.

Speaker 2 I know, and it like, this is going to sound weird, but if Fox News was an organization filled with just like ideologically driven

Speaker 2 people who just really wanted to spread their bullshit and they deeply believed it and they wanted to they want to convince other people that they're right about Republican ideas and Republican politics.

Speaker 2 Like, I would detest that, but that would be one thing.

Speaker 2 What's clear from these text messages and from this testimony is that this is a company that knows, and this is the executives know this, the hosts know this, the producers know this.

Speaker 2 They know that their profits depend on keeping their audience brainwashed with crazy conspiracy theories.

Speaker 2 And so the disrespect and contempt that they have for their own audience, knowingly lying to them so that they can make money, it's like, and it's just all laid out here.

Speaker 3 And they also know that these lies are damaging to the country. They're damaging to the people saying them.
They're damaging to the people hearing them.

Speaker 3 They're damaging to the institutions of our government. And they just don't care.
All they care about is Newsmax potentially taking market share from them.

Speaker 2 And again, the way that this played out, and we're going to get to some clips and some of the text messages and testimony in just a bit.

Speaker 2 But the way this played out is Fox News is the first network to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 And then what happens is a bunch of Fox viewers are clearly pretty pissed that Fox, of all places, has called Arizona for Biden.

Speaker 2 And Fox executives and the hosts start seeing declining ratings as a result of Fox calling Arizona for Biden. And because now the audience is moving on to Newsmax instead.

Speaker 3 And I think Trump was probably tweeting, hey, turn off Fox, turn on these outlets. Right.

Speaker 2 So they're losing audience to the people who are even crazier than them. So they're starting to freak out.

Speaker 2 So then they start getting their shit together and start spreading these conspiracies themselves to win back their audience from Newsmax. And this is sort of the context for all this.

Speaker 2 Now, just so everyone knows, the legal standard for the case, the case is going to happen in April. This is just sort of discovery.
and evidence.

Speaker 2 Basically, the burden in the case falls on, this is from the New York Times, the burden in the case falls on Dominion to prove that Fox Fox acted with actual malice as the standard.

Speaker 2 So that means either Fox guests, hosts, and executives knew what was being said on the air was false and allowed it anyway, or people inside Fox were recklessly negligent in failing to check the accuracy of their coverage.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but like...

Speaker 3 I mean, I think the Fox defense, I started to read their response, but ran out of time.

Speaker 3 I think they're going to try to say, listen, we were just covering what the other side was saying about the election, and that's newsworthy, and the president was saying it, so how do we not cover it?

Speaker 3 But it does seem like they were pretty reckless and pretty negligent here. We'll find out.

Speaker 2 I'll find out. It's a high bar.
Okay, so let's get to the first clip here. Here's what viewers were hearing on Laura Ingram's show shortly after the election.

Speaker 4 Yep, this is coup 5.0.

Speaker 4 And the Department of Justice and the FBI really need to get after it right now and investigate all the reports of fraud. There are hundreds of them.

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, I hope Attorney General Barr is doing that. I'm very, very hopeful that he's doing that.
Otherwise, we're in big trouble as a country, especially with elections going forward.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that was Sidney Powell on Laura Ingram's show. She was on Laura Ingram's show many times.
She was on Tucker Carlson's show many times.

Speaker 2 She was all over Fox News, largely unchallenged most of the time that she was on Fox News. I think later in the month, Tucker finally...

Speaker 2 was like a little skeptical of her, but she was just on non-stop, unchecked. And here's what Tucker Carlson was texting Laura Ingram during that same month when Sidney Powell was on Fox all the time.

Speaker 2 Carlson, in a text to Ingram, Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her.
It's insane. Ingram says, Sidney is a complete nut.
No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.

Speaker 2 And then Carlson says, our viewers are good people and they believe it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that, and that's not unrepresentative of what other senior brass said Fox News thought. I think Rupert Murdock said that what she was saying was really crazy stuff.

Speaker 3 Hannity said, I did not believe it for one second. So everyone knew she was nuts.

Speaker 2 Hannity called her a fucking lunatic. That's a quote from Hannity about Sidney Powell.
And Dana Perino, another Fox host, former White House press secretary for George W.

Speaker 2 Bush, called it insane nonsense. So that's what they all thought of Sidney Powell.
Not one of them said that on the air.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think Rupert also said terrible stuff damaging everybody.

Speaker 2 All right, so then the great Maria Bartaromo also had Sidney Powell on her show, and she talked about election fraud repeatedly throughout the end of 2020. Let's listen.

Speaker 6 We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections.
We have so much evidence. I feel like it's coming in through a fire hose.

Speaker 7 Do you have the software in your possession? Do you have the hardware in your possession? How will you prove this, Sidney?

Speaker 6 Well, I've got lots of ways to prove it, Maria, but I'm not going to tell on national TV what all we have.

Speaker 3 Now, John, it turns out that the evidence wasn't coming in through a fire hose. It was coming in from a random email from a stranger who described herself as, quote, whackadoodle.

Speaker 3 Now, Maria Bartaromo knew this, and she booked Sidney Powell anyway.

Speaker 3 Also in this email was a claim that Justice Scalia did not die in his sleep on a hunting trip, that he was killed at an annual Bohemian Grove event. It's another one.

Speaker 3 And that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, who again died in 2017, huddle every day to decide to portray Trump as badly as possible.

Speaker 3 So the common thread here seems to be blaming things on people who have been dead for a very long time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the email that Maria Barbaromo

Speaker 2 read for her source, her one source for having Sidney Powell on for these claims,

Speaker 2 they had

Speaker 2 the Scalia conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 The woman also claimed to get her info from, quote, experiencing time travel in a semi-conscious state that allowed her to see what others don't see and hear what others don't hear.

Speaker 3 Some mushrooms. So, acid? What are we doing?

Speaker 2 So, apparently,

Speaker 2 this made me feel a little, I don't know if it made me feel better or angrier, but apparently, Fox executives all know that Maria Bernaromo is also crazy.

Speaker 3 Oh, absolutely. And you have to watch her show once.

Speaker 2 And so, Gary Schreier, one of a Fox News executives, said, this again, this was part of the evidence.

Speaker 2 The problem with Maria is she has GOP conspiracy theories in her ear, and they use her for their message sometimes. And that's who they have on the air all the time.

Speaker 3 I just love that Bartaromo had Powell on on November 8th. And one of the questions was, Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software.
I know that they were voting regularities. Tell me about it.

Speaker 3 Like, that's a level of pushback. Spray your conspiracy theories on my audience, please, Sidney.
And he's okay.

Speaker 2 It is. There we go.
Truly, truly unbelievable. All right,

Speaker 2 here's what the great Lou Dobbs was saying over at Fox Business.

Speaker 2 We should point out that Lou Dobbs was forced to leave the network after Fox was hit with a $2 billion lawsuit from SmartMatic, which is also accusing Fox of defamation. Let's listen.

Speaker 8 I think most Americans right now cannot believe what we are witnessing in this election. We have across almost every state, whether it's Dominion,

Speaker 8 EBS, whatever the company, voting machine company is, no one knows their ownership, has no idea what's going on in those servers. It is the most ludicrous, irresponsible, and rancid

Speaker 8 system

Speaker 8 imaginable in the world's only superpower. We look like a complete nation of fools.

Speaker 2 Here's what the president of Fox, president of the network, was saying about Lou Dobbs at the time that was airing. Quote, the North Koreans do a more nuanced show.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. I mean, Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs also was on CNN for years,

Speaker 3 years and years and years, primarily just spraying anti-immigrant bigotry onto the airwaves. And like the guy has lost the thread years ago, and so he just galted Fox Joe.

Speaker 2 The North, that is just like, that's good stuff. It's really good stuff.
So another Fox executive, Ron Mitchell.

Speaker 2 So at this point, they're looking around at Newsmax and they're looking around at some of these other and OAN and they're worried that they are you know giving viewers giving the Fox viewers what they really want and they need to get them back and so Ron Mitchell starts talking about Newsmax and one of these exchanges and he's and Newsmax is bringing up Gateway Pundit Gateway Pundit is like the furthest right crazy conspiracy theory

Speaker 2 and Ron Mitchell says this type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled Fox News channel viewer is looking for and so in saying that we need to get them back so we need to do more conspiratorial reporting of our own to get them back from Newsmax.

Speaker 2 And then the Sidney Powell Giuliani press conference happens, and the same Fox News executive Ron Mitchell said sarcastically in an exchange, Will you be mentioning the international crime conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Maduro, Chavez, Antifa, Cuba, and China?

Speaker 2 Those clowns just put us in a real awkward place where we're going to need to thread the needle. Again,

Speaker 3 Nigo Chavez has been dead since 2013. I'm really doing my best.
John, it's a Friday. It's Friday afternoon.
We're having fun here.

Speaker 3 I'm trying to laugh, but I'm also doing my best to prevent steam from coming out of my ears.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 people like us who have worked Democratic politics for years have known this is who Fox is for decades. But the hard part is the mainstream media punishes Democrats for saying so.

Speaker 3 Like, look no further than the coverage last week of Joe Biden skipping his Super Bowl interview with Fox News. Here's how Politico Politico Playbook led with it.

Speaker 3 They're like, after days of bickering, Joe Biden will not give an interview, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This morning we have to ask, was that such a good idea, question mark?

Speaker 3 Yes, it's a big audience, but there's no acknowledgement in that coverage, in that analysis, that Fox is an arm, a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and always has been.

Speaker 3 And like their goal is to damage Joe Biden. They don't even, most of the network doesn't even recognize that he's president currently.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, I think, and I think the key here is it's not a conservative network, right?

Speaker 2 It's not about Joe Biden or Democrats going on a network and debating someone who has a different point, a political point of view than you, right? Like I'm for that.

Speaker 2 It's like you said, their mission is to spread conspiracies, keep their audience brainwashed so they can make money.

Speaker 2 And part of that process is, look, we're going to bring Joe Biden on and make him look as bad as possible. That is exactly what they're trying to do.

Speaker 3 Their mission is to find and lift up any culture war issue they can find, usually racial.

Speaker 3 I will never forget when we were in the White House, actually, this is well before the White House, Fox News in 2006, right, they were the ones giddily spreading the birther conspiracy theories.

Speaker 3 They were the ones reporting that Barack Obama, when he was six years old, attended a madrasa, suggesting that he had some like radical Islamic upbringing in his school. But then that all happens.

Speaker 3 We go through this election cycle where Fox News found one one sort of lonely black panther outside of a polling place in Philadelphia, the 2008 campaign, to suggest that this was some sort of radical uprising by the Obama coalition.

Speaker 3 We get to the White House in 2009, and there was this moment when Obama did five Sunday show interviews, but left out Fox News. And it was reported as a snub.

Speaker 3 It is used as an example of Obama attacking the press in some way. There was another example that same year, October of 2009.

Speaker 3 The mainstream media reporters and the White House press corps lost their minds because Fox was left out of a series of interviews with some random treasury official.

Speaker 3 They were all beating their chests about how fair and balanced they were and how dare you.

Speaker 3 And as I was preparing for this discussion, I ran into this old factcheck.org article that was well actually Obama for calling out Trump's attacks on the media.

Speaker 3 And here's an actual comparison it made. This is the actual both sides in.
Trump says the press was the enemy of the people.

Speaker 3 But Obama may never have called Fox News enemies of the people, but he did say that its point of view was ultimately destructive to the U.S. in a Rolling Stone interview.

Speaker 3 Here's what Obama actually said: The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history.

Speaker 3 Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition.

Speaker 3 It is part of the tradition that is a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with.

Speaker 3 It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that is a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. This is actually

Speaker 2 so soft.

Speaker 3 You'll be surprised to learn there's a far longer answer than that, John.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's factually accurate. Fox News does the bidding of a capricious Australian billionaire.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, I don't even think, I mean, maybe it was accurate then. I think the point I'm trying to make now is: like, it's not just a conservative point of view.

Speaker 2 It's not just a view that we disagree with. They're spreading conspiracy theories that led to a fucking violent insurrection against the Capitol on January 6th that they know are lies.

Speaker 3 I think Obama's point was accurate then. And yes, you're right.
January 6th proved to be the case for the umpteenth time.

Speaker 3 And the other fiction that people people in Washington always put forward, the sort of establishment class, the permanent fixtures in Washington, you know, politicians, media, is that Fox is half opinion, but then it's got this straight news side.

Speaker 3 Let's check in with Fox News straight news guy, editor-in-chief, Brett Baer.

Speaker 3 Two days after the election day in 2020, Brett Baer emailed Fox News president Jay Wallace saying they should rescind Fox's call that Biden won Arizona.

Speaker 3 Quote, the sooner we pull it, even if it gives us major egg and we put it back in his column, the better we are, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 First of all, back in his column, Brett?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 When was it in Donald Trump's column? It wasn't.

Speaker 3 But, John, like later on, we know that Brett's producer was saying,

Speaker 3 texting him things like, it's dangerously insane these conspiracy theories. This was Lucas Tomlinson to Brett Baer.
And on November 5th, Brett Baer said, there is no evidence of fraud. None.

Speaker 3 Now, like, did Brett Baer quit? Did he walk out of the building? Did he denounce the opinion side, right? Did he take a a principled stand in support of this brave, straight news side? Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 There's a few more examples of that kind of thing in the legal filing.

Speaker 2 Reporter Kristen Fisher fact-checked the Giuliani Powell news conference and was reprimanded for it by her boss, saying, and he told her she needed to do a better job, quote, respecting our audience, respecting our audience by lying to them,

Speaker 2 letting them believe their lie. The lies that they believe, you have to let them believe that because you don't want to tell the audience what they don't want to hear.

Speaker 3 You tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.

Speaker 2 And then a report, this has been sort of widely reported yesterday and today, reporter Jackie Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet about Dominion, and Tucker Carlson texted Hannity and tried to get her fired.

Speaker 2 And he said, quote, this is measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.
Not a joke. Not a joke.
Not a joke, Tucker. Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 2 Tucker's mad that the stock price was down because a reporter fact-checked Donald Trump saying that Dominion voting machines had rigged the election. That's that.

Speaker 3 Now, the question is. It's like these are one of these moments where you read these things and you're like, how can Fox News go on existing?

Speaker 3 How long will the rest of Washington play along with this fiction that news should be part of its name? Remember when they used to say fair and balanced? That was their slogan for years, right?

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 3 what's so frustrating for Democrats is like, we are forced to have this debate over and over and over again. Like, do you engage with Fox or do you write them off? Because there is an audience there.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah. But the mainstream media plays along along and they make it harder.

Speaker 2 They do. I wanted to get to that question though, because I've been thinking about this a lot since this release last night.

Speaker 2 Because I don't think, I think Joe Biden was absolutely right in not going on Fox because they're trying to make him the president.

Speaker 2 It's not a place for the president of the United States to go on, right? I know there's a big audience. I get that.
But I do

Speaker 2 reading all this made me really angry because there are people out there, relatives of ours, friends of ours who like watch Fox News, who believe this shit.

Speaker 2 And it's like, how do you reach them if they're watching Fox? And I do think having some Democrats go on Fox to call them out for their bullshit is effective.

Speaker 2 Like I think that any Democrat who goes on Fox, anyone, anyone who, any never Trump Republican, anyone who believes in democracy and goes on Fox should be reading these quotes on air on Fox to the host next time they're on and forever.

Speaker 2 And like, if it's Democratic politicians, that's fine. If someone wants to go on and do this, that's great.

Speaker 2 I don't think it rises to the level level of having the president of the United States on, but like next Democratic strategist who's on, if Pete Buttigieg, he's great on Fox. He should do it.

Speaker 2 Read these fucking quotes from the legal filing to them on air and like just do it that way.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, that works if you're alive. A lot of this.

Speaker 3 So I have a nuance on this. I don't think Joe Biden should ever go on Fox News.
It's never worth his time at all. I wrote an opinion piece right when he took office suggesting.

Speaker 3 as much and got yelled at by a bunch of Fox reporters. During the campaign, this was a debate whether you engage Fox.

Speaker 3 And that story has gotten a little distorted because at the time, what was being debated in the Democratic primary was whether Democrats should go on Fox News and let them build town hall events around that appearance in the midst of an advertising boycott campaign led by Sleeping Giants and all these great other organizations to try to push back on the bigotry you were seeing on Tucker Carlson, right?

Speaker 3 Like that debate is long over. I agree with you.
I think Mayor Pete is excellent on Fox News. I think he does a great job.

Speaker 3 But again, the last time Mayor Pete, or sorry, Secretary Pete Buttigieg was on, he was dealing with accusations from straight news editor-in-chief anchor Brett Baer about whether it was appropriate for Chastin to come on an international presidential delegation with him.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 3 Because they're gay, right? Like every other lead of a delegation brings their spouse. It's completely appropriate.
It's within protocol.

Speaker 3 But Brett Baer was somehow pushing Pete on whether it was appropriate for Chastin to come simply because they're in a same-sex relationship.

Speaker 3 Like that's what these people face every time they go on this network.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I'm glad that Pete did that.

Speaker 3 I'm glad he did too.

Speaker 2 Because I think that if Pete wasn't on there to make his case, which he did very well, and to say, yeah, it is because I have a husband and because I'm gay, if he didn't do that, then Brett or Fox would have run a story without that point of view in it.

Speaker 2 And that's what the viewers would have got. So I don't think that you lose anything by going on there and arguing.
I'm not saying that.

Speaker 3 My point is good spokespeople should go on all the time, but we have to stop.

Speaker 3 treating like there's this occasional debate that comes up where people would be like we need that audience and they treat it like it's an interview that's going to be on the level.

Speaker 3 That was the that was the framework for the playbook piece and all these other pieces that Joe Biden should go on Fox News and be like, do this Super Bowl conversation.

Speaker 3 The suggestion was that he get a straight interview about issues and that it would be a great chance to inform the public.

Speaker 3 You have to go in and approach them knowing that this is an organization designed to damage the Democratic Party and treat it accordingly.

Speaker 2 I completely agree with that, which is why that's my point too, which is you need to go in there and be on war footing with them. And you need to,

Speaker 2 like, Pete could have gone further in my point of view and said, like, Brett, I know you have a very specific point of view. I know that you have a network that's telling you to do this.

Speaker 2 You know, like people need to start pulling back the curtain like this legal filing did when they're live on air. I would do a town hall with them because I think that's, that's live.
There's there.

Speaker 2 You can,

Speaker 2 you're, you're on a much more equal footing on a town hall than you are in some like pre-produced segment that they're going to be able to cut however they want.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the format matters.

Speaker 3 I mean, the town hall thing, the town hall debate at the time, again, was because of the advertising boycott and people just didn't want to kind of give Fox a lifeline when advertisers were running away.

Speaker 3 And I, you know, whatever, it's fine.

Speaker 3 But I think the problem is when you, if Joe Biden went on Fox and was super combative, Fox would then cut a ton of clips of him being super combative and make another series of stories about Joe Biden attacking Fox News.

Speaker 3 That's what they do. They play the victim.
They're very good at making the story about themselves and how they're attacked and how their audience is attacked.

Speaker 3 And they're always the victim of everything. And I think like not falling into that trap is another important piece of this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but at some point they are. Yeah.
But at some point you just got to realize like, right. If

Speaker 2 A, you have to be a really talented politician to do it or a talented speaker or strategist or whoever you are. And B, you have to say to yourself, okay, they're going to do exactly what you just did.

Speaker 2 But the audience for the Super Bowl, if you, that's what you pick, the audience for the Super Bowl, the number of people seeing that live is going to be far greater than the in the bubble audience that they clip it for later.

Speaker 2 And so I want my message to. The Super Bowl is

Speaker 3 not a normal example. I mean, I like at the end of the day, if I'm a president, I'm a Democratic lawmaker, I have an hour a week to do communications.

Speaker 3 I just don't think Fox should ever be a part of that hour. There's infinitely better ways you can reach people.
It doesn't have to be CNN or CBS or, you know, MSNBC.

Speaker 3 It can be like podcasts, YouTube shows, like getting out with local news. I mean, that is the broader challenge, and I think the opportunity for Democrats.

Speaker 3 But the other challenge that we face as a party for all the conversation about liberal bias in the the media, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 There was a really interesting report in Axios the other day where they got leaked kind of a how-to guide for House Republicans doing oversight hearings out in the field.

Speaker 3 And one of the recommendations was to embed reporters from Sinclair broadcasting in those hearings. A lot of people don't know what Sinclair broadcasting is.
It's basically local Fox News.

Speaker 3 They reach 185 TV stations in 86 markets. That's of last year, I think.

Speaker 3 And they're also known to do these must-run segments by like Republican partisans in Washington, D.C., that they just blast into every household.

Speaker 3 And so like that just, I think, is another piece of this broader structural disadvantage that Democrats are up against when it comes to bias in the media and like conservative tilt.

Speaker 3 And it's just like,

Speaker 3 it's why this conversation gets people like you and me and Dan so animated because we know the scales are actually firmly tilted in the direction of more conservative outlets or sort of like weaponized partisan outlets from the Republican side.

Speaker 3 And yet there persists this silly belief that the media is somehow liberal. And it's just not.

Speaker 2 It's not. Yeah.
Well, I think there's two audiences that we're trying to convince here. Certainly not the people listening to this podcast because they are firmly on our side.
For sure.

Speaker 2 But you're talking, there's the audience that's watching Fox right now.

Speaker 2 And I think to reach them, you have to either go on Fox or go on or find other places where they're getting their content information and reach them there.

Speaker 2 And not just go on and like play nice and act like it's on the level, but call out the bullshit that Fox is doing. So I think there's a strategy there.

Speaker 2 And then I think what you're talking about is convincing the press, the mainstream press, the Washington establishment that Fox is a propaganda apparatus and they should call it out and they should not pretend that it's just the right-leaning network that we all have to deal with that's on the up and up.

Speaker 2 And I think that's like sort of a slightly different strategy than they're like going directly to Fox.

Speaker 3 My recommendation is don't go on Fox. Don't waste your time.

Speaker 3 Find other ways to reach people.

Speaker 3 um one two part of the mainstream media problem part of the Washington culture problem that treats Fox as you know just your friendly right-leaning right of center organization with the news side is that they're all chummy and they're all buddies and they all go to the same book parties with each other and they want to get invited on you know Brett Baer's Sunday show when he when they have a book coming out right and like that's very hard to get past and it's very frustrating yeah just to a perfect end to this is um you might wonder how fox news has been responding to all this damning information that has come out about them.

Speaker 2 Well, here's Tucker Carlson just last night.

Speaker 9 There are so many unanswered questions, some of them lingering. How, for example, did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his former boss, rock star crowd surfer Barack Obama?

Speaker 9 Results like that would seem to defy the laws of known physics and qualify instead as a miracle. Was the 2020 election a miracle?

Speaker 9 Honestly, we don't know, and we don't expect to get an answer to it tonight.

Speaker 2 From the legal filing, Fox executives privately called Tucker Carlson, quote, crazy Tucker.

Speaker 2 And Tucker Carlson himself acknowledged that the Dominion voting allegations were, quote, ludicrous in a text, totally off the rails, and said this of Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.

Speaker 3 Tucker is a king of just asking questions. And in this case, it's a question that's very easy to find the answer to.
I think Joe Biden got more votes than Barack Obama because more people voted.

Speaker 2 And there's more people in the country. Donald Trump in 2020 got millions and millions of more votes than Donald Trump in 2016.
What do you think happened?

Speaker 3 It's a thing because population growth.

Speaker 2 And also it was a higher turnout election. It was the highest turnout election in a century in 2020.
That's why he got more votes.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is their reaction to a Dominion filing that lays bare just how full of shit all of them are. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, they are full of shit, and they will not be embarrassed about it. So we have to do it for them.
So

Speaker 2 for all of your relatives that watch Fox News, your crazy uncles that are posting on Facebook, whatever, send them these stories about Fox.

Speaker 2 Because I really do think that this is like watching the people that you see every night on television saying something completely different in private than they are telling you every single night.

Speaker 2 I do think, you know, it's not going to work for maybe even most people, but like it's the most effective form of sort of,

Speaker 2 you know, bringing people back from the brink and deprogramming them that you you can have. And that there's like plenty of studies about that.
They are all so afraid right now.

Speaker 2 They're probably less afraid of the actual lawsuit and the damages than they are being exposed to their own audience for being frauds. This is what scares them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think they have like 4 billion cash on hand and the judgment would be 1.6.

Speaker 2 They do not want to be exposed as frauds in front of the audience that they need.

Speaker 2 That's what it comes down to. All right.
Well, this is fun.

Speaker 2 I can't wait for this case to unfold.

Speaker 2 We'll certainly be covering it here. Thank you, Dominion.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Higo Chavez.

Speaker 2 And thanks, Tucker, of course.

Speaker 2 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez.

Speaker 2 It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Girard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montou.

Speaker 2 Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.

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