MSNBC’s Ari Melber pointed out the “smoking gun” among Tucker Carlson’s private texts in documents from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Wednesday (You can watch his address below).
The host tore up Carlson, whose texts this week revealed he passionately expressed “hate” for former President Donald Trump, and called on viewers to contemplate the messages.
“They are a smoking gun if I’ve ever seen one in a defamation case,” said Melber before he played clips of Carlson praising Trump on his show.
Melber, on Wednesday, called out Carlson for “basically admitting” that his show is a lie in writing.
″[He’s] confessing to both the fraud of ‘pretending’ he backs Trump in public and the failure of that endeavor, whether that’s measured for himself or Fox News or the whole conservative movement,” Melber said.
He continued: “Tucker Carlson’s secret private view is a reminder of the craven and dangerous lying alliance which props up Trump and whatever happens to him, which can prop up people like Trump in a time of rising authoritarian instincts in our country.”
The MSNBC host continued that Trump’s attack on the election “was so discredited” that it rubbed Carlson the wrong way in private.
“But then he and other hosts, who also showed similar requisite legal knowledge, pushed it on air anyway,” Melber said.
“That’s a textbook definition of the charge here, of the civil allegation. It’s a textbook definition of defamation.”
Melber noted that a jury would be the only one to find Fox News legally guilty of defamation but gave his two cents on text transcripts from Fox stars released thus far.
“This is some of the most overwhelming evidence of legal defamation ever assembled in modern First Amendment law,” Melber said.