The liberal media went wild with glee after it was reported that Fox News star Tucker Carlson “hates” Donald Trump “with a passion,” but now we are finally learning just when and how that rift between the two began and what it actually amounts to.
On March 8, a text message between Carlson and a colleague from Jan. of 2021 was filed as part of a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News in which Carlson was seen complaining about Trump, according the BBC News.
The electronic voting company, which had one disaster after another in 2020, is suing Fox News for allegedly making baseless claims of vote-rigging against their machines from the 2020 election cycle.
For its part, Fox denies the accusations and claims that Dominion is taking the quotes of its on-air personalities out of context.
The Carlson texts in question are dated Jan. 4, 2021, two days before the Jan. 6 incursion on Capitol Hill.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” the text message included in the lawsuit read. “I truly can’t wait.”
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson added.
In another text, Carlson was seen saying that Trump’s presidency was a “disaster.”
“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump,” the message read.
Dominion claims these off-air messages prove that Fox News was purposefully airing false news to pump Trump up.
Fox blasted back at Dominion, claiming that its filing is a blatant attempt to violate freedom of the press.
“Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught red-handed again using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” Fox said in a statement reported by BBC News.
Tucker agrees that this invasion of privacy is outrageous. He is enraged that his private text messages were revealed like that. But he is also utterly refuting the claim that he “hates” Trump.
Carlson explained it all fully during a visit with former Rush Limbaugh producer, Bo Snerdley. Carlson told Snerdley that, to the contrary, he “loves Trump as a person.” And he added that his words in the text were just an overly passionate reaction to some bad information that he had been given by an “incompetent” Trump staffer after the 2020 election.
Carlson joined Snerdley on his Monday “Rush Hour” podcast and explained what led to his messages blasting Trump.
Like his employers, Carlson also feels the release of his text messages is an illegitimate tactic in the lawsuit. “Those were all grabbed completely illegitimately, in my opinion, in this court case which I guess I’m not allowed to talk about. But I’m enraged that my private texts were pulled.”
That being said, Snerdley asked Carlson if Tucker really hates the ex-president, to which the Fox talker replied, “Let’s see, I spent four years defending his policies, and I’m going to defend him again tonight.”
“Actually,” Carlson continued, “I love Trump like as a person. I think Trump is funny and insightful and — and I said this to Trump when he called me all wounded about those texts.”
But Carlson went on to explain what made him lash out at Trump in those text messages.
“That was a moment in time where I was absolutely infuriated,” Tucker explained. “Those particular texts were pulled at the moment when I was texting my producers because some idiot on the Trump campaign had sent us the names of these dead voters who had voted and we went, and I repeated them on the air and it turns out that some of them were alive. So, I felt humiliated.”
“And I thought then and I think now that that election was not on the level. It was not a free and fair election. I thought that then and I think it now,” Carlson insisted. “And so I was trying to, I wanted evidence.”
The Fox star went on to say that there is no way that “senile” Joe Biden got more votes than Barack Obama, and he has major doubts about the 2020 election.
“I mean there no way, the guy got 81 [million votes], he got more votes than Barack Obama? Really? You know? Whatever you think of Obama, I never liked Obama, but he is a really talented — a VERY talented — politician. And Joe Biden is senile and hid in his basement,” Tucker exclaimed. “Tell me how he got 81 million votes? So, I’ve always felt that was not on the level.”
“And so, I said to the Trump people, you’re saying that election was rigged, send me some examples of it and I’ll put it on the air,” Tucker reiterated. “And one of them was these dead voters, well it turned out some of them were still alive. And I was so mad by the incompetence of that campaign — which was completely incompetent.”
“Anyway, whatever, I was mad,” Tucker concluded.
Snerdley pointed out that we all, as human beings, say things in a “pique of anger” that don’t fully explain our true feelings about things. And Carlson enthusiastically agreed with that point.
Carlson noted that even thinking about how the staffer misled him even now “makes me mad,” and when the voters Carlson said on the air were dead called him to let him know they were, in fact, still alive, the Fox personality noted how embarrassed and mad he became over the whole incident. “At the time, I was just blaming the Trump campaign, and I was just livid.”
In the end, it is now clear that Tucker Carlson does not “hate” Donald Trump. He was only hoping to show evidence about the election and the text messages in which he vented anger at the Trump campaign was momentary passion based on a staffer’s misleading information. It was not a full definition of how Carlson actually feels about Trump as a person or as a president.
We can now close the book on the left’s latest indulgence of fake news.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.