Murdoch calls Trump election claims, top advisors 'crazy' in emails

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Billionaire Rupert Murdoch called Donald Trump's 2020 election claims "crazy" in a series of emails to senior Fox News executives even when anchors on his own media group continued to feed into Trump's allegations.

Documents on Thursday demonstrated that also some of Fox News' prominent hosts like Tucker Carlson mocked in private Trump's advisors who were claiming that Joe Biden lost the election to Trump. 

The filings come as part of vote machine maker Dominion's defamation lawsuit for $1.6 billion against Fox News in March 2021, claiming that the latter fed Trump's false allegations, which included that Dominion was used to manipulate the election results. 

At the time when Trump advisors Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were megaphoning the claim in November 2020, Murdoch reacted by writing an email to the chief executive of Fox News Media, Suzanne Scott. The subject line, "Watching Giuliani!" was followed by "Really crazy stuff. And damaging." 

At another time, he emailed: "Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear."

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Dominion is also suing Giuliani and Powell. 

'A complete nut'

The 192-page filing presents Murdoch constantly expressing fear over Fox's coverage of the election results. 

Three days after the election, Murdoch wrote to Scott again, "If Trump becomes a sore loser, we should watch (host) Sean (Hannity) especially and others don't sound the same." 

In the lawsuit, Dominion claims that Fox News endorses Trump's claims because it was losing an audience after becoming the first TV to predict Arizona's win for Biden. In another email, Murdoch is seen telling Scott, "Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don't want to watch it." 

Carlson told Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham in an email that Sidney Powell "is lying by the way. I caught her. It's insane," to which Ingraham responded, "Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy."

One email shows anchor Sean Hannity said, "Rudy is acting like an insane person."

In light of the accumulation of events, Fox News released a statement, saying, "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners," adding, "But the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution."

To win the trial, Dominion will have to show proof of Fox News acting with actual malice, and if the parties do not end up settling, the case could go into a civil trial. 

Murdoch’s media empire, which includes flagship paper The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, labeled Trump a "loser" in November who was responsible for putting the Republicans into “one political fiasco after another." Republican senators blamed the MAGA mogul for their party's losses. 

Trump, in return, accused Murdoch of going “all in” by backing Florida governor Ron DeSantis who he dubbed “Ron DeSanctimonious” and an “average Republican governor." On November 9, Trump warned DeSantis against making a bid for the White House in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections.