Part Two: Inside Fox News with Katy and Cody

and uh, what his son Buckley? I think anyway, Oh my god, his letters to Yeah, I've never met a Buckley that we needed in the world. And also he doesn't shorten it to buck It's Buckley. Uh. Wrote a letter to Hunter Biden thanking him for like helping him his son getting too. Yeah, anyway, that's one of my favorite Tucker facts. Um. When Tucker was working in print journalism, Uh, he was getting a he called it a takeout hot dog,

Um is what he called it. My god. Yeah, you know he's where he's literally wearing the bow ties he's writing this, I'm sure. Um, so you got to take out takeout Hot Dog? Yeh? Back off the people. Yeah, And somebody in the office was basically saying, um uh, they need somebody to go on TV to talk about the OJ trial, that he'd an expert in the OJ trial, UM to go and talk about it, and their OJ expert can't do it? Um can you? And he was

just like yes, um. And in the book he's like, I didn't know anything about the OJ trial, wasn't following it at all. I immediately said yes to get on TV, and then he did. And that's like the start of his career on television. And I think it's just so illustrative of like who he is and his like his entire career is just that moment of like, who's an OJ expert to go on TV? Oh, I am, I'll do it after getting a Takeout Hot Dog? You know I am. Years ago, for the nonfiction book, I wrote

a brief history of ICE. I talked to one of the two guys who coined the Dunning Kruger effect, and I also talked to the author of a paper about I think the title of the paper was the Evolution of Overconfidence, and it was kind of it's part of this body of body of research is trying to answer the question. I think people are broadly familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect, which is a fairly durable finding a neuroscience that people who are least competent in given tasks

tend to overestimate their own competence the most. That's kind of the briefest way of describing it. And so there's this question that people scientists in this field have, which is like why right, because it does it kind of seems if you're just kind of assuming on its surface that like it would be a bad, bad trade evolutionarily to be overconfident, because then you'll get yourself in situations you can't handle and you'll you'll die horrible, right, right, right,

But like I guess it could be like psychologically protective it. Yeah,

Like that's I don't know if that's enough. Right. There's the point that that was made to me as I was trying to like understand why this still exists, is that if you've got a resource that two different individuals are competing over right, and they're more or less evenly matched, or at least they can't know whether or not because right, if you're like standing next to a guy who wants to fight, who's roughly your's aye, you have no idea who's going to win or not, unless you're like, you know,

you don't. It's they're a black box, right, you don't know like who is who's better at fighting or whatever. Um So if you the the the individual that is more confident in their ability to take that resource, if they just go for it and grab it, one of two things will happen. Either the other individual will fight back, in which case they either win or lose the fight, or the other individual chooses not to fight and you get the resource. And statistically, that's a pretty good bet

to make. Enough of the time that overconfidence is an

extremely common trait, not just among human beings. And I think it's also interesting that like that is how fascism works, right, They just keep grabbing and until you fight back, they're just going to keep taking more and more, which is why, you know, we could talk about certain shootings that have occurred recently in the city of Portland, but I think that like fundamentally, Tucker is a perfect embodiment of that fact, both in his career where it's just like well, Yeah,

if you just try to do shit that you're not competent to do, and you know, hope that you can bullshit your way through it, sometimes you will, and then you make tens of millions of dollars. And also if you just keep pushing further and further as a fascist and trying to incite more violence against your enemies and no one stops you, then you get everything you want. Which in yeah, it's literally fuck around and find out. Yeah,

just like evil it is. It is really evil. It's interesting because we're I wonder what he's saying in his texts, you know, in twenty twenty three, Um, but in twenty twenty there's a degree of which you can see like fear in him of what he's doing, Like which makes sense help, Yeah, because he doesn't know if it's going to work out for him or not. Um, but it does. There's a degree to which I find it And maybe

he's more confident now. I don't know. There's a degree to which I found a little bit of a a comforting because it's like, oh, he knows he could lose, Like he doesn't actually know how this is going to work out, and he's he's second guessing himself and his his colleagues. Um, and and maybe that maybe that means that there's hope. Um maybe not. You know, it's twenty twenty three. It's necessarily yeah now yes, um so yeah. Um. At any rate, uh, we are back into the story of how Fox News

handled the election. Lies Well about this document, it was well, yeah, well is a good way to describe it. Okay. So, while murders sorry, no, no, no. While Murdoch apparently went to pretty great lengths to curry favor with the Trump campaign during the election, he does not seem to have appeared to have wanted to push the stolen election line after November second. But within Fox News itself, Murdoch had

a serious problem. He had hired a stable of hosts who were let's say, either crazy assholes or evil enough that all they cared about was their bottom line, and they saw this as the best way to do it. There's also a degree of like fear of Trump, that they all have internal discussion, and these people could not be entirely controlled. Right. Rupert Murdoch has a lot of power.

He does not have absolute control over Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Judge Jennine or any of these other people because they were all multimillion dollar businesses, they have a lot of leverage, you know. Um, you know, wasn't it didn't Uh? Tucker Carlson at one point say on like some like radio show, he was Rubert Murdock's bitch. Wait did Yeah? Yeah that was more back in his shock days though, wasn't it right? Right? Right? Right now? He's like making it. Um, I just like that popped

in my head. Yeah, yeah, I mean a little bit now, I mean because it definitely the the depiction you get from these internal coms is not one in which he's fully Murdock's bitch, although it's also one in which, uh, you know, I don't know. I was actually kind of surprised by how comparatively toothless it seems like Murdoch was maybe just because of how much Fox is a talent

driven business. Um. But yeah, there's there's internal discussions that dominion posts that are between Fox executives that are just like this parade of worries, particularly that Sean Hannity is

not like controllable. Yeah. Um, they went so far, and they did take some actions to try and mitigate this Judge Janine pierrot November seventh show was canceled because, as Fox executive David Clark said, her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen, and if she pushes back at all, it will just be token um and then it's like token dot dot dot, and then like two sentences are redacted. So I don't know what

the fuck else they were saying about Judge. I know there's some tantalizing redactions here, and then we get to this lovely bit quote. As Fox producer Justin Wells described, they took her off because she was being crazy. Optics are bad, but she is crazy, So he's like, the optics of us questioning the election lies conspiracy theory are bad. But also this pitch is nuts. That situation you find when you hire people you know are inflammatory just to

be inflammatory. It's Pandora's box. They've opened Pandora's box and they can No, they cannot. So these mild attempts at responsibility did not extend to letting the network call the election for Biden. First, they waited until all of the other networks had finished. Viewers revolted. Rupert Murdoch complained to Suzanne Scott that the company was quote getting creamed by CNN. Guess our viewers don't want to watch it now. This is the point at which Chucker Carlson, Yeah, I love

that funny. It's just like, yeah, they do the results that kind of sorry, yeah, um, it's it's it is remarkable. And at this point Tucker Carlson, who'd kind of started out on like broadly speaking team reason like angry at the election conspiracies, takes a turn. Carlson texted his producer, do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we've lost with our audience? We're playing with fire for real? An alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us. Yeah, yeah,

they know exactly. Yeah, yeah, they know exactly. Like the ship that they're in. Um yeah, they're in a bad way back Fond might overtake us. Yeah, um, it's very very funny. On November eighth, the day after the election was called, Maria bartar Romo had Sidney Powell on again to talk about Dominions software, which she alleged had an

algorithm that had stolen the election from Trump. Bartar Roma knew ahead of time that Pale was going to spread conspiracy theories about the company because Powell had sent her a document the day before titled election fraud Info. Now, this is the core of all of the information about the Dominion and Smartmadock or whatever like this is this is the actual nut of data that Sidney Powell has

that all of her claims are based on. Right. So basically everything that Fox is going to magnify about the election conspiracy comes from this document that Powell has been sent from an anonymous source titled election fraud Info. Now, for one thing, Powell describes the synonymous source as pretty whackadoodle, right like, and what does that mean exactly? I bet you're wondering what is from Sydney Powell the sentence or the statement pretty whackadoodle mean. Here's how the motion describes

the election fraud Info document. In addition to promoting lies about Dominion, the cinder claimed that Justice Scalia was purposefully killed at the annual Bohemian Grove Camp during a week long human hunting expedition, and that former Fox News CEO Roger Ales, who died in twenty seventeen, and Rupert Murdoch secretly huddle most days to determine how best to portray mister Trump as badly as possible. The author continued, Who am I and how do I know all of this?

I had the strangest dream since I was a little girl. I was internally decapitated. Oh, Cody, you gotta hear this. I was internally decapitated and yet I live. The wind tells me I'm a ghost, but I don't believe it. What right? You don't believe it? This is the source? Yea, this is This is the source that three or four billion dollars in loss suits are based around. Now. At another point in this email, this anonymous source claims to be able to quote time travel in a semi conscious state. Yeah,

which is also I think that just means dreaming. Yeah, that is fucking incredible, like to know where it all comes to. It's not even Sydney making stuff up or just pretending to be a black box. She shares this email with Fox hosts right so that she can inform them what she's going to bring up, so they know that the source of a lot of these election claims is an internally decapitated woman who the wind tells us a ghost and can time travel in a semiconscious state. Yeah,

in a semiconscious state. Very impressive, Yeah, very interesting info. Yeah. I mean, Cody, I don't think any of your sources can time travel in a semiconscious state. So she includes all this in her resume and cover letters. Job, I'm travel in a semiconta state. Um. Interestingly, our friend David Bell puts that on his resume as well, So you know that's true. That is true. He can wondering what I did David Bell write? Does letter? No, he was

never internally decapitated. That's right, that's right. He would have shared that. No, he sends me a cat scan of his neck every single week, so I can I can confirm he has not been internally decapitated. Um so Barter remo, Jesus, what a stupid last name was aware of the email and stated in her deposition that she knew that it was nonsense, but at no point on air did she mention that this email was the source of Powell's claims about Dominion, which had aired on Fox to millions of viewers.

As Tucker Carlson texted that night, the software shit is absurd. Half our viewers have seen the Maria clip and yeah, not wrong. Yeah, it's the most interesting stuff in here to me is this behind the scenes glimpse and how Tucker communicates when he thinks he has a reasonable expectation of privacy, because he seems equally preoccupied with how dumb the conspiracy is, as he is with lambasting his colleagues for not adequately furthering the conspiracy theory. Right, Like, he's

pissed about both. He's angry that this conspiracy's taking off, and he's even angrier when his colleagues don't back it up on the air. Um, what a weird position for a giant asshole to be in. Yeah, that would be his position, though, wouldn't it. Yeah, of course, because there's no personal responsibility. There's nothing like be angry about everybody the options but yeah, there are no what are the options breaks on this ride he's on. It's just he

wants the drivers to guide it a little better. Yeah, it's it's he's definitely not stopping. On November ninth, Carlson told Suzanne Scott Fox, his CEO direct I've never seen a reaction like this to any media company. Kills me to watch it. Scott took that message down the line, attacking her colleagues for having the arrogance to call Arizona. She expressed that it was astonishing that a top executive had signed off on the Arizona call, given that every

executive's first job was to quote protect the brand. Oh that's their first job. Oh yeah, it's sheer shit, not reporting the news, Katie. No, no, it definitely isn't that. I'm going to continue from the motion. And on that day, day one, as Scott termed it, Fox executives made an explicit decision to push narratives to entice their audience back. Scott and Lackland Murdoch exchanged texts about the plan going forward. Scott, viewers going through the five stages of grief. It's a

question of trust. The Azy call was damaged. But we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them. Murdoch, Yes, but needs constant rebuilding without any missteps. Scott. Yes, today is day one and it's a process souces. Yeah. Yeah, and that respecting their audience means embracing the lie their audience, Yeah exactly, yeahf the lie. Maybe we've got to respect

our audience so funny. I think that one of the things I find really compelling here is that like the most honest any of them seems is when they are distraught that the audience is losing trust in them. And so it's like, I think they do feel bad that they didn't embrace the audiences insane conspiracy enough that like, oh, we let them down. They expected us to be as batshit as they are and we really fell down on the job there. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, feeling upset

that they can't that they're in this situation and they can't. Yeah, yeah, that they that they failed their audience should have gone in harder. I think at the outset it's embarrassing to let your right. Now, we should have been dumber and faster. I do say that a lot myself. But you know who's as dumb and as fast as it's possible to be? Sponsors are Sponsors? They are They are as they are as fast as I don't know how to finish that sentence anyway, here's our fucking ads. Ah, we are back.

On November ninth, Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press conference where Kaylee McKinney made unsubstantiated claims about election fraud. Neil told viewers that he could not in good conscience air her claims unless she had evidence to back them up, which is honestly more of a principled stand than I think any of us ever expected from Neil Cavuto. Absolutely surprising, yeah, shocking. The brand team at Fox panicked. Raj Shaw, who headed the brand team, notified

senior leadership at Cavo represented a brand threat. Tighten. With all this and with Cucker's reaction, was an ever present fear of Newsmax's built over into the course of November. Fox exec and talent seemed to see Newsmax as a mortal threat to their continued profitability, Which is funny because didn't it just get dropped from like, uh, what is it? Um? Was it Newsmax or the one News? Yeah? Direct Tv? Direct Tv just dropped Newsmax because it didn't get enough

people watching it. It's interesting, so yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe Fox was. I don't know, it may it may have just been that, like in the moment, Newsmax was experiencing a surge, but it clearly didn't last. They're not doing well right now, which is very funny. Also fuck all

of those people. Quote. Prior to November eight, Fox executive David Clark testified that Newsmax was not a credible media outlet because quote, their hosts were extremely one sided, ignored the facts, they did not seem to care about telling the truth. They seem to invest truly in conspiracy theories versus fact. Yeah, I mean that'll do it. Wow. Imagine a news agency being like that. David fucked up. Huh. On November tenth, Scott pointed out to senior Fox executives

a note from analyst Kyl Goodwin on Newsmax's ride. Fox executive Porter Berry responded, just pulled up Newsmax's show and they're heading cavudo. They're just whacking us. Smart on their part. Lauren Peterson added, they definitely have a strategy across all shows to try and target and steal our viewers. And this is also really compelling to me just because like at number one, obviously, at no point is even ideology

a primary concern. Like the concern is the competition, right, Like it's it's pure, it's pure business, And there's almost this like I can respect the degree to which they're good at fucking us over. Yeah, we would do that too. We would do that too, and it's a shame to us that we weren't smart enough to do it. Master right. Yeah, m Fox executives talk about Newsmax. They're way the rest of us talk about Fox, which is one of the

most entertaining things in the document. Fox president Jay Wallace describes Newsmax as truly an alternative universe that can't be ignored. He then adds in a message to Suzanne Scott that he is trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on war footing. And again that's also from the point I'm making about, like ideology doesn't seem to come into it with these people. They're not at war with the Biden, White House or Democrats. They're at war with other right

wing media that might steal their thunder. Yeah, who's yeah out Fox using them. It's very very interesting. Yeah, Foxing, I'm proud. I'm proud, proud of you, Cody. You know what, Let's get on a call with the T shirt people real quick. Yeah, let's let's get them on one of those. So the T shirt people, the people. Everything that Fox does next is influenced by this feeling of being at

war with New Max. This is what causes Tucker to make common cause with Sean Hannity in order to push the false claim that Dominion was the core of some grand fraud. The express purpose of backing this conspiracy theory was to bring viewers back from Newsmax. Quote Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham on November twelfth, in one week, in one debate, they destroyed a brand that took twenty five years to build, and the damage is incalculable. Tucker responded,

it's vandalism. The hosts also discussed the possibility of competition to Fox emerging. Hannity told them serious money with serious distribution could be a real problem. I mho they need to address. But what I don't know, Tucker, that could happen. So yeah, feel that fear, Yeah, feel that, feel that fear. It is nice to know that he can be afraid. It's a little brain bug moment there, putting your hand on the goop stick that Tucker Carlson uses to suck

the brains out of your aunts and uncles. Yeah, it's afraid. It's afraid. Normally, normally I feel um a little bit of empathy when an unlikable character when you realize that you know, they're afraid that you know, humanize them. No, not this guy be afraid. I would not feel empathy if Tucker Carlson's asshole got sucked out of his backside by one of those one of those sucker things in a swimming pool, in a grain silo or something, yea, or a grain silo. Yeah, let's let's grain silo. The fucker.

Um did you guys grow up with that? That like that at your local pool? That there was like, oh yeah, all their guts sucked up and then like a pollenux short story, right, I think ended up doing a short story about that urban legend, which if anyone ever yeah, I would definitely say, Cody, if there's a short story about getting your guts sucked out of your butt through a swimming pool, chuck pals, Actually yeah, yeah, beautiful. I'm

gonna read it now. Okay, But for the record, I would think it was funny if that happened to Tucker, So yeah. That same day, Laura Ingram's producer Tommy Firth, texted a Fox executive responsible for overseeing her show. He complained, this dominion ship is going to give me a fucking aneurysm. As many times as I've told Laura it's bs, she

sees shit posters and Trump tweeting about it. The next sentence or so was redacted, but the Fox executive response, this is the Bill Gates microchip angle to voter fraud. The next day he messages Firth again asking how's it going with the kooks? So they're both being like, oh, yeah, Laura's you know, she's watching these ship posters. She's tweeting about nonsense. But the executives like, yeah, you know, this is something we can work with. It's this Bill Gates

microchip angle, but applied to work. Yeah, how's it going? Are the crazy people biting? Feels you're not done telling this story? But this all feels really damning, it does. It feels like people should be locked up, Like we're we're we're we have fun, we make our jokes, but like, honestly, the real life repercussions of this ship families destroyed. People

kill themselves over this. There was just another like suicide of an entire family over this shit, Like this is destroyed so many lives, Like I don't know these people, Like the money is not enough I don't see on a moral level, I don't see any argument as to why a lot of this shouldn't be criminally liable. But none of it is obviously or ever will be. Um because it's fine to do this. It's not fine to like, yell at the Atlanta police after they shoot a guy,

then you get charged with domestic terrorism. But this is cool. Um. Yeah. So. Also on November twelve, lou Dobbs took to the airways with Rudy Giuliani as guest. After Giuliani repeated his litany of false allegations against Dominion, Dobbs said on air, it's stunning. They have no ability to audit meaningfully the votes that are the votes that are cast because the servers are somewhere else. This looks to me like it is the end game to a four and a half year long

effort to overthrow the president of the United States. While Dobbs dug that hole deeper, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, who are in a group text thread together, and boy, that sounds like the worst group that want that. I want to say it all every breaking news story that happens. I want to see just everything. I don't want to be on that thread in any way. Oh God, I would love to read it for sure. Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to be on there be like, hey, guys,

you know it's Friday. I got some beers, the liver of a child that was drowned to death and Amaretto. You guys want to come over, you know, have some bruise, eat a little bit. Um. I assume. I assume when Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson hang out together, they eat like the human equivalent of an ortolan. That's the that's the omni thing that they don't even hide their shame from God though Tucker Nosey's more powerful. Um

so yeah, while Dobbs dug that hole deeper. Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson are in their group chat and Carlson shares a tweet by Fox reporter Jackie Heinrich. And Jackie was one of the like three or four people at Fox who had a shred of integrity and she was she fact Trump tweeted about dominion like sharing this Sydney Powell conspiracy and Jackie Heinrich fact checked it. She noted there is no evidence that any voting system

deleted or lost votes. Carlson shares this and tells Hannity please get her fired. Seriously, what the fuck? I'm actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight, it's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke. Tucker then adds, I just went crazy on me to over it. Hannity responds that he had already sent to Suzanne with a really. He then added, I'm three strikes Wallace shit debate election night of disaster now this BS Nope,

not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavudo? They're so pissed, They're so pissed. Yeah, it does feel good a little bit. I can so see him. M yeah now, Hannity and next text Suzanne Scott, who reached out to Fox's SVP of Corporate Communications, Irena Briganti. Quote Sean texted me he's standing down on responding, but not happy about this and doesn't understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She Heinrich has serious nerve doing this, and if it gets picked up, viewers are going to be

further disgusted. By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her fact checking tweet, So I guess look again, you know, Heinrich had a little bit of a little bit of what do you what do you say, courage or whatever? Yeah, but not so much that when her bosses yelled at her,

she doesn't shows Yeah, yeah, texts. I don't know. Maybe one thing you could take from that is that, like, if you get caught telling the truth in right wing media, there's not like a job open for you in normal media, whereas if you get caught lying in mainstream media, there's a job for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was putting myself trying to put myself in that position, and it's like, yeah, I could see how you get intimidated. I would like to think I wouldn't because I would make those series

of choices where I was working at this place. But you know, yeah, you know, there's this term you here because of Hannah or Rent, the banality of evil, and she was talking about like Holocaust perpetrators, but it gets used a lot. I think it. I prefer to think of things a little differently, which is that like, it's

not that evil has banal. It's that the vast majority of evil is perpetuated so that people can pay their mortgage like that, and that's what that's what's going on here, and that's even what's going on with like like Tucker doesn't have a mortgage or whatever, but it's it's very much just about the bottom line, right, Like if the money for Tucker had been in being a liberal or left wing media personality, he would have been just as

fine doing that. He doesn't care. Like, Yeah, while this is going on, Dominion representatives are frantically contacting Fox News to try and correct these false allegations. In the first like two months that followed the election, they send thirty six hundred messages to Fox representatives. Fox executive David Clark tells a colleague on November fourteenth, I have it tattooed on my body at this point, l ol. Super aware that we're we're lying criminally about a corporation LMAO. Yeah.

I hope they don't sue us for one point six billion dollars kiss f Yeah. One fun thing I learned reading this is that Fox does in fact have its own fact checking department. Now that's an astonishing thing to hear. If you have watched a lot of Fox News, you a note they call themselves fucking losers. No, no, what the brain rooms? But oh no, goodness room Yeah, incredible love it. What what facts are they checking? They'll check the facts so that they know, Katie report the opposite.

I would love to answer that question for you. But as soon as the motion notes that Fox's fact checking department is called the brain room, the next two full paragraphs are redacted. Why again, there's some there's some juicy shit that's black barred in this. It's the funniest place to put redaction. It's it's it's really there is a degree of comedic timing from some of these dominion lawyers. Yeah, some of it's like intriguing something. Well, I wonder what

you're saying there. It's like, no, no no, no, the brain room is the brain room. Yeah, we can't talk about what happens in the brain room. So immediately after in the brain room, So immediately after those two full paragraphs of redaction comes this paragraph. Fox continued to broadcast its lies about dominion as it nervously eyed Newsmax, and in November sixteenth email, Rupert Murdoch told Scott to read a Wall Street Journal piece about Newsmax, telling her these people

should be watched if skeptically. Trump will concede eventually, and we should concentrate on Georgia helping any way we can. We don't want to antagonize Trump further. But Giuliani taken with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here, it's so funny. Um, yeah, what a hard time. So the paragraph that follows this is also redacted, and immediately after all that redaction comes this line. Carlson told his producer Alex Feiffer that night, Sidney Powell is lying, fucking bitch.

It's so good, struggling, having a rough one out, buddy, letting it out. He continues to complain about this regularly up to November eighteenth, when he tells Laura Ingram that Powell is crazy, and Ingram responds, Sydney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto Rudy Carlson response, holy shit, check this out. Carlson response, it's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people, and they believe it. Why do they believe it? Why do they believe it?

People believe it let's take it a step further. Man. Yeah, it's so there's almost like a schizophrenic quality to reading through this, because there's this mix of like Carlson responding the way a regular person should. This is unbelievably offensive up there, but also like you're doing it, Tucker, Like yeah, it's so, it's like it's like, look what they're making me do kind of stuff, like, yeah, the situation I'm in and what I have to do because obviously, but

I respect the audience so much. There's such good people, but I have to know they respect what the audience means for his bottom line. But again, it's this not surprising in any way, but you do an inability psychologically incapable of seeing any accountability. No, no, absolutely not nightmare to be married too, Tucker. You're doing it. You're doing it, yeah, Tucker. The lies have come from inside the you, inside you.

This is this is entirely your fault, Tucker Carlson. But you know what's not What isn't Tucker Carlson's fault The joys of cooking. That's right, prepped meal. They delivered straights to yours. Hello, Frienday, I bet I can make it. We could find a case for how that's his fault. But no, you know, he actually very excited. Dogs delivers

very exciting. We've got a couple of sponsors. We've got a food box company and a mattress company sponsoring us, and as a result, we're now offering our listeners for a limited time, a mattress completely stuffed with tacos, a taco mattress, unrefrigerated, no preservatives. Um, it'll just a larger quantity of food than you can eat, stuffed in a mattress that you have to cut open to get the food out. Does this benefit you in any way? Does

it do nothing but cause problems for you? Yes? Of course, just like Fox News, So use promo code. Yeah, I would like a pile of rancid tacos stuck inside my mattress. Um, and uh yeah, we'll be back in a minute. Ah. So. On November eighteenth, SVP of Primetime Programming and Analytics Run mitchell sends end message to underlings R E. Newsmax the lack of any meaningful editorial guidance may be a positive

for them, at least in the short term. For example, last night on Stitchfield at eight pm, the show sourced websites like Gateway Pundit while talking about voter fraud. This type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled FNC Fox News Corporation viewers looking for. Mitchell concluded that viewers are watching less Fox News and suggested fixes do not ever give viewers a reason to turn us off. Every topic and guest must perform no unforced errors and content. Example,

abruptly turning away from a Trump campaign press conference. Yeah, yeah, keep fucking people's relatives up. So yeah, ruined bring down a society to its knees. It sure it suis so um yeah. Following this guidance, on November nineteenth, Fox broadcast the entirety of a press conference with Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell. Now, you guys probably all remember this as the press conference where Rudy's hair melted off of his face. I remember that, what an incredible moment for this country.

Made up It's ai r. It was a lie. It didn't happen. I want to be like frozen so that a thousand years from now, I can help journalists make a documentary about America. And I want to cut straight from like the battlefield at Gettysburg, thousands of corpses, a nation fighting with its past in order to like finally right, like the evil at the center of its existence. And cut immediately from that to like Rudy Giuliani with his hair melting off, leaking, just leaking from his skull. Nothing

else is important. We can cut the rest of American history between those moments, from Gettysburg to Sydney, Ball and Juliani, the two most pivotal points in American absolutely, no question. Yeah, um yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we might even be like morally obligated to have a little detour into four

season's total landscaping. Um, okay, I'm gonna play a little segment from that from that clip because I know a lot of people enjoyed Rudy's head melting, but I think fewer people actually, like, actually listen to some of the claims being made. Um, this is a particularly powerful moment from that press conference, and I'm gonna play it in

just a second. Outrageous situation. Now, I don't think most Americans know, but our ballots get calculated, many of them outside the United States, completely open to hacking, completely open to change, and being done by a company that specializes in voter front back to you. He does not look well. Also, Sidney Powell is very tall and wearing a leopard Prince Real School. Interesting choice. What we are really feeling different?

Uncovering more by the day massive influence of communist money inference are elections here in the United States, the dominion voting systems smart Maadic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion. We're created Vendezuela, at the direction of Hugo shaves to make sure he never lost an election. Okay, that's oh my god, I do love the way she

says Venezuela too. Yeah yeah, uh. His the crude oil leaking from his brain really distracted from the things that she said, Yeah, which it should not have because yeah, yeah, could talk about it. Attack maybe his plan. Yeah, Rudy is much more cunning than we give him credit for. He has. You know, some species of lizards can shoot blood out of their eyes to like distracted attacker. Rudy is able to do that to the entire nagent with his head oil developed over millions of years himself, with

the symbiote yea, do my little trick. This is how Rudy's Giuliani have managed to survive at the fringes of the world for the last sixty five million years since the death of the rest of their race. I consider Rudy to be the same species as the dinosaurs in the original Mario movie, you know, the one with Bob Hoskins. You could just put Rudy in that movie and he would He would out immediately the same way he wasn't

in that movie. Not not entirely. So. While this beautiful, beautiful scene was unfolding, Rupert Murdoch sent out an email with the subject watching Juliani exclamation point. The text of that email real, really crazy stuff and damaging. If only you had the power to stop this, Rupert Murdoch. Uh, it's like watching a train crash. And also you have the superman likability to stop any object in motion with a moment's notice. It's probably problem, but it's it's a

trolley problem. But you're god, Yeah, it's very footing. White House correspondent Kristin Fisher did at least fact check some of the claims made during this press conference. Her boss, Brian Boyton called her and told her emphatically that he and his bosses were unhappy with her and that she quote needed to do a better job of and this is a quote respecting our audience. Fisher texted a colleague about being punished for doing my job. Shortly thereafter real

lions eating faces party moment. Oh no, I like that. This is their phrase. That's the way they're respecting our audience. In a week, Yeah, lie to our audience. It's very fun. It's also like you get these people at Kristin Fisher, who is like, well, it's good that you were doing your job as a journalist, but also like you did work at Fox, like you did choose to work there. Yeah, this isn't the first thing. Yeah, like a first questionable move that they Yeah, you didn't have a long career

there without any kind of moral qualms. This is just like happened to be the time that there were a bunch of depositions. Maybe this is the only bad thing they've ever done. Maybe this is the only bad thing they've ever done. That's possible, we just can't know. So the fact that there was regular spirited resistance within Fox to the increasingly unhinged dominion conspiracy is very compelling to me.

At one point, Fox anchored Dana Perino comments that Dominion would probably be able to sue over the comments made in that press conference. This prompt CEO Suzanne Scott to send an email saying, you can't give the crazies an inch right now. They are looking for and blowing up all appearances of disrespect to the audience. Scott separately noted, the audience feels like we crapped on them and we

have damaged their trust and belief in us. We can fix this, but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer. I'm not positive what is being argued for here. She's saying like, we can't give the crazies at Fox an inch right now. They're looking for any opportunity to like blow shit up. But also the audience feels like we're shitting on them when we correct this stuff, and that's damaged their trust, so we have to It's it's again

every there, Yeah, exactly. It's this impossible situation because you're evil, Like you're evil, but you don't want to be choices and the scenario that you've created that you know is bad, but you also need in order to continue. Yeah, it's like the crew of the Hindenburg got themselves into an impossible situation when they explode it. We don't want to explode, and yet this explosive thing. What a what A what an impossible situation? Respect the explosion. Yeah, we're not respecting

the audience if we don't explode properly. Um, the audience being hydrogen So Internally, Fox executives like Ron Mitchell laughed at the clowns Rudy and Sidney who had put us in a terrible place. He even asked a colleague jokingly if Sidney was going to mention the quote international crime conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Madiro Chavez, Antifa,

Cuba and China. It's noted in the conversation that silly as these allegations are, if they put Fox in an awkward place where we're going to need to thread the needle, you're actually not in an awkward place. You don't have It's okay, you don't have to do this. Yeah, nobody's making you do this. Okay, you can help you make better. On November twentieth, Dominion sends Fox's general counsel a cease

and desist. Internally, executives fretted over how reckless it was to keep giving Powell air, but she continued to guess regularly on Fox primetime shows, including Dobbs and Hannity that same day. This continued into December. On December second, Bill Samon, Fox's DC editor message to colleague, It's remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things. It's good stuff,

good stuff. I might, yeah, I equipal with that, but by late November even some of the bad journalists at Fox were expressing a fear of where the recklessness might lead. Suzanne Scott said privately, I had a number of conversations with Sean where he wanted the president to accept the results, and Hannity had understood that Joe Biden legitimately won the election for some time. He admits this in his deposition too. On November nineteenth, after the Giuliani Powell press conference, Carlson

very carefully tried to thread his own needle. On one hand, he said publicly on his show that what Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history, but she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests on the other. However, he did not say that what he believed privately that she was lying. Instead, he closed by saying, maybe Sidney Powell will come forward soon with details and exactly how this happened and precisely

who did it. We are certainly hopeful that she will. And this is the most minimal pushback you could get on this still too much for Fox viewers. The motion, citing internal Fox communications, notes that there was a massive viewer backlash Tor sent on this, which caused him to mobilize with Raj Shaw from the brand team. Shaw messaged a number of executives, including Lackland, Murdoch and Suzanne Scott about this. But we don't know precisely what was said

because the next full page or so was redacted. Again, super curious as to what was said there. When the black bars end, we come to this. Shaw also texted with producer Alex Piffer November twenty second, Shah wrote, shit is so crazy right now, so many people openly denying the obvious that Powell was clearly full of it. Phifer, she is a fucking nutcase now. November twenty second is the day that Trump finally disavows Powell. Noting that she

did not represent his campaign. This appears to have been on the behest of Tucker Carlson, who messaged Ingram that day that dealing with Powell totally wrecked. He spells it r e c k ed my weekend. Then he says, this is Teckel. Wow. I had to try to make the White House disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before. Ingrams no serious lawyer could believe what they were saying. Carlson replies, but they said nothing in public.

Pretty disgusting. Oh yeah, well, oh, it's disgusting that they didn't say it. Yeah, yeah. Oh. It's also interesting because the White House does disavow Powell after this, Like Carlson, that's just kind of evidence of the amount of poll that he does have. January sixth came as a surprise to everyone involved at Fox, at least based on what

the discovery documents suggest. It seems to have done something to set up a sense of stakes for guys like Carlson, but he was still too afraid of losing his audience to reverse course. Late on January sixth, Carlson texted with Fiffer that Trump is quote a demonic force a destroyer, but he's not going to destroy us. On January twenty sixth, Carlson invited his leading sponsor Mike Lindell on the show, where Lindell spouted these same conspiracies on air after previewing

them for Carlson staff during a pre interview. And again, this tycho to me between the almost panicked awareness of how much trouble they're getting into by defaming dominion and like inciting an insurrection. It exists on every level of decision making that Fox. And the last quote I'm going

to read you from this motion is this. On January fifth, Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott it's been suggested our primetime three should independently or together say something like the election is over and Joe Biden won, and that such a statement would go a long way to stop the Trump myth at the election as stolen. Scott forwarded the email to Cooper, stating, I told Rupert privately that they are

all there. We need to be careful about how using the shows and pissing off the viewers, but they know how to navigate. They did not know how to navigate and in fact refused to. But it's interesting that they were aware, as it's this suggests that Murdoch is aware, like we do have some sort of duty to use our reach to try and quash this might be seen as like evidence of guilt. Yeah, I mean, they're not unaware. Yeah,

it's interesting what lines they I mean. But again, you're saying like they didn't do it, so yeah, yeah, they didn't do it. Not the line is like considering doing something. Yeah, I guess anyway, that's where we are, folks. That was a real treat. It wasn't treat, wasn't it. I'm so honor. Do you invite it? I loved it. I felt good about it. Do you feel good? I feel great about it? That's good. I mean I don't. I don't feel great about it. But I change a lot of people's minds. Yeah.

That's the thing, right, That's what pisses me off most about it is like, oh, here, it is objective proof from the mouths of the people who run and are the main faces on Fox that they are liars and they are lying to their audience and they are like doing it out of a pure cowardly venal desire for money and fame and care nothing about the degree to which they mislead people really and it will never matter

because facts, it's impossible to convince anyone with facts. You put this in front of a person, like the tiny little morsel right of here's well Tucker, here he is saying that, like he needs evidence for it. So he did push back, Like that's the game that they try to play and sometimes exceed that. There's enough like you can see people running cover for them already of like, well no he did, It's he said it without acknowledging

anything else. It's very frustrating. I mean, it's it's this thing where like I don't know, I shouldn't say it doesn't matter at all because we just had this very shocking like midterm upset where like maybe maybe we're coming to like ahead of how much they can get away with. I guess we'll know after twenty twenty four, but um, it does. I do know that like the people in my own life who have been listening to watching Fox religiously for years, this won't stop them. This will not

have any impact. And like, and they're not dumb people, nor are they bad people. It just they have gotten bored into their reality tunnel and the like like digging into this acknowledging the degree to which they've just been manipulated for their viewership would be I think psychically painful. So why why would you do it? It's hard to accept. We see it all the time, the people that still are on the Q trade, you know, like having a

hard time accepting the facts of it. But also I would imagine that there's a lot of people who straight up don't even know this story, like Fox News viewers that oh, yeah, get this information because it's not like this is going to be a breaking news segment on Fox News, you know. Yeah. Anyhow, I want to read more their texts, either adapted parts. Yeah, I would like some of that too. There's a lot of very enticing pieces.

But what's more enticing is y'all's pluggables. Oh that's very true, Wow, Cody. Check us out on YouTube dot com. Slash the search bar and type in some more news for our video channel. We do videos and stuff. It's a podcast too, if you like podcasts. Speaking of podcasts, we also have another podcast in that same podcast feed called even more News. You go to that feed, you'll see both of them in there. One episode will be the audio the YouTube show.

Another one will be us chatting with each other and people about the news. Also we have a Patreon dot com slash some more news. Wow, gods, you guys really are a well oiled gazelle. Yeah we aren't. We get that a lot. Yeah, we get the oil from Rudy's skull. That's you know, that's where we need to invade. Next

is Rudy Juliani's forty. Send the Tenth Mountain Division in there, get it out, get it all that fuel really out right now, though, somebody needs to cut like, um, I don't know, use an AI or something to like cut him into X Files whenever there's one of the aliens that have like the black oil coming out of there. Yeah, somebody, somebody make Rudy into an alien super soldier on like season six of the X Files. I feel like someone will.

Yeah yeah I could always a person. Thank you in advance. Yeah, finally we'll all get to live our dream of seeing Rudy's star opposite David Dukovney. And that's a good note. Tanned On Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia. Dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.