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With DoorDash, you can get your Starbucks pick me up without the picking up. Seriously, we're bringing your go-to's right to you. Cheers to the any times, any reasons, and the anything in between. Starbucks delivery now available on DoorDash. Men who limited see the DoorDash app for details tap the banner to order now. Luke Combs here and I have an exclusive opportunity for you to win a half million dollars with the Living Lucky with Luke Combs lottery experience. Join me in Nashville for a private concert in 2024. From the Virginia lottery, learn more at VALatery.com slash Living Lucky. What's slowly destroying the brains of the people who raised us my various Rupert Murbdoch properties? I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Basterds. And today we have a very special episode. Before we get into that, I'm going to bring on my co-hosts, my once-in-future podcast buddies Cody Johnston and Katie Stone. Daniel, 45 straight seconds of air horns here, followed by a loud track. Beep beep. How's everything going? A Rupert Middark. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Cody, I am. I might try to have you do a couple of Murdoch lines for us. Sound a little bit like Ringo to me. Sounds a little bit like my Boston accent. Talk of Carlson. It would be so good if like historically you could go back in time and switch them. So that like Tucker Carlson was kind of the most replaceable beetle and Ringo was a fascist on mates. Anyway, how are you guys? Oh, Robert. More specific question. Have any of you like had a complications among your loved ones as a result of a Rupert Murdoch property? Sorry. Ooh, I just laughed and coughed at things. It's been a thing that has complicated my life with a number of family members. Kind of a thing that like I have a couple of cousins and every now and then we'll talk like you know, something will be going around, so to speak. I'm trying to be vague in the interests of like family peace. Something will be going around and it will be like, yeah, it's fucking Tucker Carlson or whatever started this saying this bullshit now. A bunch of the people, the bunch of the very nice people who raised me believe something terrible. Yeah, and it's it's deeply frustrating. It's very effective. It's it's it's been kind of this black box up until recently like every now and then you would get these lawsuits involving Fox, you know, and a bit one little bit of it would go viral and you'd see and like all of the lefty newspapers, whatever, Fox argues that they're not, you know, a news agency or whatever that it's yeah, I'm a character. But we we haven't gotten like a tremendous amount of detail about what inside the company looks like until very recently. Have you ever been paying much attention to the dominion lawsuit against Fox news? No. It's a no, that's that's good. I'm aware of it. So there are there are two big lawsuits that Fox is fighting off right now. One is from dominion voting systems, which is in I think 28 states and it's a $1.6 billion defamation suit. And there's also a $2.6 billion defamation lawsuit from smartmatic, which I think was only in one state. But there were a bunch of Fox allegations that they were like hacking the election. We'll get into the details of all this in a little bit. But it's it's been interesting because you know, for years and years and years, there have been Fox has been what I would morally consider not in a legal sense because they haven't been found guilty. This in a legal sense, but I would morally consider them to be doing slander on a pretty regular basis against a wide variety of people. I think that's fair. Yeah, fair statement to make a fair statement of protected opinion. But dominion shows to fight back. And I think there's an argument to me that they had more of a solid legal ground than a lot of the people that Fox has targeted over the years or that Fox personalities have targeted over the years. But they they they sued Fox and throughout 2022, they put together this team of lawyers who started running through a laundry list of Fox news producers, line executives and on air personalities and deposing them. Right. So you sit someone down, you sit Sean Hannity down, you sit Tucker Carlson down, you sit Lacklin Murdoch down, who is who's probably going to be the heir to Rupert Murdoch's fortune. And you ask them questions about what happened in, you know, this kind of spate of disinformation. And if they lie, they can go to jail, right, like it's a crime to lie in a deposition. And in order to help enforce that, there's also a process called discovery where dominions law years got access to what seems to be a mountain of text messages, memos, emails, from Fox personalities in order to like hold them accountable because you can actually see what they were saying to each other in addition to what they claim during the deposition. And the questions that Dominion asked, they spread well beyond kind of just the specific allegations Fox personalities made against Dominion and went more broadly into Fox company culture and how decisions filtered both up and down from management. And yeah, it's as a result, it's given us kind of the most complete look inside Fox and the most complete look at like the kind of human beings who work there and how they talk amongst themselves and how they kind of what they see like the moral universe they inhabit in a way that I never thought we actually were going to get evidence of. And so that's what I want to go into this week because there's there's a tremendous amount here. It's worth noting before we start that Fox is in actually some potentially serious financial trouble. We're talking between these two lawsuits somewhere around $4 billion that they could be found liable for. And this is in addition to the 1.2 billion that Fox has paid over the last decade due to the phone hacking scandal that racked the sun and news of the world, which are both UK Murdoch properties. Did you guys here remember do you guys recall much about the phone hacking scandal? Not a lot of details, but I remember the basic story. Yeah, the gist of it is that Rebecca Brooks who edited both of those publications and went on to lead their UK publishing arm and Andrew Colson, who was an editor at news of the world and five of the paper's journalists conspired to hack the voicemails of more than 600 people over a six year period. So they hacked like a bunch of public figures and celebrities, but what really got them in trouble was they hacked the voicemail of a murdered school girl in order. What? Yeah, it's fucked up. That is unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's I think what's really unbelievable is that Rupert Murdoch claimed once this came public that he'd had no knowledge of it. He told me this is very funny. Actually Cody, I'm gonna I'm gonna toss this text into the into the chat and you can you can do your Rupert Murdoch voice. Okay. Yeah, you're a really good Rupert Murdoch. I feel that people I trusted I'm not saying who let me down and I think they behaved disgracefully and it's time for them to pay. Wow. I'm not saying who's the one that let us all down by that accent. No, I think that's a flawless Aussie. Thank you. I worked on it. I just mean I just know I've got it. Yeah, it's it's okay. Most people who do an Australian accent it just winds up really Boston. So, you know, I'm glad that I got New Zealand. That happened. It's talking about it. It's talking about it. It's talking about it. It's talking about it. It's talking about it. It's talking about it. It's talking about it. I'm going to make them pay. I had no idea this was happening as the CEO of Fox News. A lot of people wondered whether you know, sorry, I'm sorry. Like it's time for them to pay such a weird thing like phrasing for like you could make that happen. The boss. Yeah, it's like a weird show. Like, be you know, take into account or like there should be consequences. Like it's time for them to pay such a. Who never is a charred. Who ever is a charred here needs to kill them is what he's saying. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's good good old fashioned weasley bullshit. So. Now, obviously legally, I can't say that Rupert certainly knew something, but we are in the United States. And I can say, which I couldn't say if we were in the UK, it seems kind of weird and suspicious and he wouldn't know anything about this massive hacking scandal as journalists and editors engaged in. And while I'm not going to push much further than that because he is a billionaire with a lot of lawyers. What I will do is quote a Fox News article about the UK parliamentary committees investigation into the hacking scandal. Quote from Fox News. Although Rupert Murdoch and his son James were not accused of misleading parliament, the committee said it was simply astonishing that they only realized that the hacking was not confined to one rogue reporter in December of 2010. The report said that they should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility for the willful blindness of news international and news corporation over the scandal, aside from the 454 million they spent on legal fees. Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. Indeed. That's good stuff. So sketchy as that all was, the phone hacking scandal did not wind up doing Murdoch or news corp any like permanent harm. But Dominions lawsuit included not only deposition's under oath, but again this expansive discovery process. So suddenly we know exactly what Rupert Murdoch's involvement was here to a degree of legal certainty. I should also note here because it's very funny that Dominions lawyers deposed Sean Hannity for more than seven hours. Oh. And honestly, a moment of silence for those lawyers because they had to talk to Sean Hannity for seven hours. Brutal. That's hazard pay. Yeah. Yeah, I hope they have. I had to take frequent breaks. Yeah, they needed some MDMA and a therapist if that's shit. So the bulk of the questions asked and materials provided have to do with discussions around the decision of several major Fox stars to host Sydney Powell on their pro. Remember Sydney Powell? Yeah, she was a former lawyer for Donald Trump who filed lawsuits in numerous states attempting to overturn the results of the election. Now she spent most of her time since 2020 fighting disbarment hearings. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like she's going to get disbarred. I think the case wound up being in Texas. But in the heavy days after November 2nd, she started massaging a collection of deeply questionable sources to argue that Dominion, which ran voting machines in 28 states and smart mad at quote, ran an algorithm that shaved votes from Trump and awarded them to Biden. There's a lot more to her allegations and we'll cover those presently. But that's what you need to do to start. And before we get into all that, I wanted to begin this episode by giving you guys an example of how good journalists treated Sydney Powell. Because we're going to spend most of this time talking about how Fox did. I want to play a clip from an interview she did with an Australian journalist. So Cody, you can brush up on your accent working for ABC four corners. An Australian news agency. Yeah, it's it's it's good stuff. The smartmatic shifted votes from Trump to Biden in multiple battleground states. That was your argument, wasn't it? That there was an algorithm run in machines via the software that shaved votes from Trump and gave those to Biden. What actual research or fact clicking did you do at the time to find out what smart matrix actual involvement in the election was? If you work for a smart man. Not magic. That's a good election. I think it's incumbent on both of us to know what smart matrix involvement was. It seems like a pretty foundational fact. Confused right now about why you're here. Because you made a series of very strong allegations against smart macabre. That's of the crime super minutes. Containing many errors or fact. You accept the fact now that the company that you accused of stealing a national election only operated in one county in LA in California. One county once paid. No, I'm not prepared to accept that fact. I think smart matrix involvement was far more significant than that. Do I think they're trying to minimize the involvement? Of course I do. You said that smartmatic owns dominion. How do you justify the basic factory error? I'm going to stop with some of you. I'm sorry. We're not even in the area of great dispute. These are the simple facts. And she gets on. What did she think this was? What did she think she was showing up for? I don't know. I don't know. Like a book. What did you think they were going to ask? She thought they were going to do what Fox did actually I think is the answer. You work for smart macabre. Can you tell me you're just any any reason for you to have made these claims? Do you work for them? Yeah. Do you have any evidence that they were present in more than one county in Los Angeles? Can you show your work Sydney? It's a simple question Sydney. We will talk about where her what her sources later and I don't want to spoil it, but it involves decapitation. Oh, yeah, I know. I know. When you started that word, I thought you were going to say decaprio. No, no, no, no. I do believe everyone involved is older than 21. So he was unlikely to have played a role. Yeah. Yeah. We will continue our main source for today with our main source for today, which is the public version of a filing by Dominion voting systems against Fox News. This is a brief in support of Dominion's motion for summary judgment on liability. I'm going to explain the legally shortly. The document opens up with several quotes, however, and I think these are interesting. Quote number one. 71 million voters will never accept Biden. This process is to destroy his presidency before it even starts. If it even starts, we either close on Trump's victory or de-legitimize Biden, the plan all caps. That's Steve Bannon to Maria Bartoromo on November 10, 2020. Maria Bartoromo is a Fox News financial journalist and TV personality who hosts mornings with Maria and Maria Bartoromo's Wall Street. She used to work at like CBS. She was like a fairly respected reporter before all this. When you Google her name, Rick Wikipedia provides this poll quote. As a reporter, I approach every situation knowing that everyone has his or her own agenda. It's not a bad thing. It's just a fact. Oh, gay. I mean, not untrue. Like for example, the agenda you and Steve Bannon hatched to de-legitimize the Biden election. The only thing that I would push back on is the it's not a bad thing part. Yeah, I mean, it is a bad thing in your case because your agenda was to overturn a democratic election and commit treason. It certainly can be that. Yeah, yeah, if the thing is for example installing a dictatorship, then yes, that person will legend is bad. Tomato tomato Robert. If your personal agenda is increased post office funding, then perhaps it's okay. Yeah, we can give that a pass. Yeah, so Maria started Fox's troubles when she interviewed Sydney Powell right after the election on November 8, 2020. She said quote, Sydney, we talked about the Dominion software. I know there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that. And Powell replied, that's putting it mildly. The computer glitches could not and should not have happened at all. This is where the frog took place where they were flipping votes in the computer system, or adding votes that did not exist. Now immediately after airing this, Rupert Murdoch sent a message to one of his producers saying it was very hard to credibly cry foul everywhere because Trump had lost multiple swing states. Yeah, it's hard. Fair point. Yeah, yeah. And it's one of those things you can see why there was an interest on behalf of the Fox personalities using Sydney Powell to tie in Dominion to this because they were they were active in a bunch of different swing states and kind of creating this and pushing this conspiracy allowed them to explain how all of those swing states had broken against Trump, which was the thing that Fox's reporting had led folks to believe was not really possible. Dominion's filing notes that Fox was aware that these claims were bogus from the jump. And here's a message from Sean Hannity to Fox politics editor Chris Sterewalt. That whole narrative that Sydney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second. No reasonable person would have thought that. Sterewalt gets fired after this, by the way. So the motion itself opens with this Fox knew from the top down Fox knew that the Dominion stuff was total BS. Yet despite knowing the truth or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth Fox spread and endorse these outlandess voter clock fraud claims about Dominion, even as it internally recognized the lies as crazy absurd and shockingly reckless. There's all quotes from Fox executives. So this all serves to support Dominion's key contention that Fox knew their claims were false unless they reported on election fraud in a way that demonstrated actual malice without resort to motive or other circumstantial factors. That's the legal term for they are completely at fault and they don't even have a right to defend themselves, right? Like that's that's basically what would complicit. Yeah, that's that's more or less what they are saying here because like this is a motion for summary judgment. So the thing that they're saying is we want the judge to just kind of rule on this right now based on the merits of the case. We think that this is such a clear case that like there's there's really nothing else to say. Based on the information that discovery in the depositions have drug up like it's like on its face, prima facie or whatever, how are the fuck you're supposed to pronounce that. This is just such an obvious case that we want a ruling right now, which is rare. You don't generally get that especially with very large lawsuits like this. We'll see what actually happens. But based on the reporting they've put together, I think they have a strong case. Yeah, so I want to continue from the motion. But first, you know what motion I want to urge people towards. Pulling out that wallet. Pulling out that wallet. That's right, baby. Tringo. The dingo. Eight your baby. That's right. Yes, that's Australian for purchase these products and services. No one knows why. We're back. Quite a, quite a, Cody, I'm going to give you the rest of the episode to figure out with that acronym. On it. So I want to continue from the motion here. Fox is correct call of Arizona for Joe Biden triggered a backlash among its audience and the network was being rejected. That's a. The biggest tournament in college basketball is here. Get in on the action at Draft King Sportsbook. Right now new customers can bet just five dollars on college hoops and get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Plus all customers can score a no sweat bet during round one and two of the tournament. Download the Draft King Sportsbook app and sign up with code behind new customers can bet five dollars and get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Win or lose that's code behind only a Draft King Sportsbook. 21 and over in most eligible states but age varies by jurisdiction eligibility and deposit restrictions apply. See DraftKings.com slash sportsbook for details and state specific responsible gambling resources gambling problem called 1-800-Gampler. In New York call 8-778-HOPE-NY or text-hope-NY. 4-6-7-369. 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So join today and save up to 25% off your first year. Go to lifelock.com slash news. That's lifelock.com slash news for 25% off. This show was sponsored by BetterHelp. Life is a process of learning more things about yourself. For example, I recently learned that reading about terrible people all the time can sometimes make you sad. And when you're sad, it helps to talk to people. If you think you might need to talk to someone, therapy is a great way to do that. It's all about deepening your self-awareness and understanding, because sometimes you don't know what you want or why you react the way you do until you talk through things with an objective observer. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who can take you on that journey of self-discovery from wherever you are. So if you're thinking about starting therapy, BetterHelp might be a good option for you. It's entirely online, it's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. Discover your potential with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash behind. Quote from A Fox Executive. Rival networks such as Newsmax took advantage of the opening by promoting an alternative universe, another quote of election fraud. So Fox went on a war footing, carrying more about protecting its own falling viewership than about the truth. And the words of Fox News's SVP and Managing Editor of the Washington DC Bureau Bill Salmon. It's remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things. I might have a couple of notes for that, including the idea that there were many good journalists at Fox News. But... That's where I went as well. That's where I might have an issue. So next, Dominion goes on to assert why this is different from most defamation lawsuits. Normally, plaintiffs prove defendants actual malice, whether they knew it was false or, in fact, entertain serious doubts as to the truth of the statement, by inference as it would be rare for a defendant to admit such doubts. And they cite Salono versus Playgirl in that here. And they note that here, overwhelming direct evidence establishes Fox's knowledge of falsity, not just doubts. And I want to talk about the Salono V Playgirl case, that it's a 2002 night circuit court case, that Dominion brings up here, because it's kind of interesting. In the January 1999 issue of Playgirl magazine, there was a cover photograph of actor Jose Salono, who played someone called Mani Gutierrez in Baywatch from 96 to 99. Salono had not posed for or given an interview to Playgirl, and he did not consent for them to use his image. He was shown shirtless and wearing red lifeguard trunks, and had like a bunch of models surrounding him on the front cover in a suggestive way. That was kind of like meant to portray an image of him as a less wholesome character than his personally portrayed himself as. And since he hadn't actually sat down to be interviewed or anything by Playgirl, his argument, Salono's argument was that they were basically, there was essentially direct, they either knew that what they were doing was false, so they had serious doubts as to the truth of the statement. Like that's kind of the case that's being cited here as like a previous example of precedent, and Salono won the case in established damages. I don't know, I think it's interesting that they're falling black on this Playgirl case is sort of evidence of like, this is the most, this is like, this is the most directly similar kind of irresponsibility from a major media network in the recent past. Minions lawyers note that Fox defame their company, not once or twice, but many times over a period of months. Tucker Carlson accused a minion of committing quote, the single greatest crime in American history. Yeah, and so again, that's, that's, it's pretty hard to mitigate that. I know, right? There's a few genocide. There's a lot of, yeah, that sounds pretty hyperbolic. Mm-hmm. Oh, Tucker, and that's, that's going to come back to bite Tucker in the ass in a very short time here. Dominion notes that while defamation cases tend to involve just the malicious acts of either an individual employee at a company or maybe a small group of people at Fox literally dozens of people with editorial responsibility were involved, which is part of why they're saying we just want the judge to rule on this because the irresponsibility is so deep and far reaching. Fox for their part, and admit Sidney Powell and her team never provided Fox with any evidence as to her claims. Dominion by contrast made 3,600 separate communications to Fox with a dozen separate and widely circulated fact check emails each pointing to third party information debunking the claims. I bet the algorithm did something. Yeah, yeah, we made it lies. Well, yeah, because Sidney stuff just trinned so well. Yeah, I love that clip of her talking. They love just like being like it an algorithm did it. There's a sister algorithm. It's always so easy to point to the thing that nobody actually understands very well. That's the fun thing about algorithms and it's about to be the fun thing about AI and deep fakes in that, and that like as far as most people in media are concerned, it's just magic. And so like if you're a bad actor, like literally anyone at Fox, you can just use the word algorithm. Or you say, yeah, deep fake. It's easy. Yeah. It's just like saying a wizard did it. You've got some sort of plausible explanation for an implausible thing. Yeah. And I don't know. I'm torn on this because I do think we need more wizards in American politics. But not not like this. Not like this. No, no actual wizards. No, not computer wizards. Not computer wizards. Real wizards. No, no, yeah, like Gandalf. Yeah, like I want I want Gandalf to have his own like fascist news show where he supports Ron DeSantis in removing books from from elementary schools. That's what I want. That's what even like a Dumbledore. I don't know. Yeah. Well, Gandalf in particular, he got radicalized after they banned indoor smoking. That really that really got him. Yeah. He's a big anti mask or two. Dumbledore and JK are tight still so. Mm hmm. Yeah, problematic. I gotta say problematic. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just glad he's dead. Um, so now Dominion is, yeah, moving for summary judgment. Uh, which again has a there's a very high burden of evidence when you ask a judge to do this. Uh, Dominion argues that they can cross it easily. Quote. Fox falsely claimed number one, Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 presidential election. Number two, Dominion software and algorithms manipulated vote counts in the 2020 presidential election. Number three, Dominion is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chavez. And number four, Dominion paid kick-ex to government official. These machines. This is what this is what this is what false. The Fox claim. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These are the claims they have to. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. They don't have to prove it. Like Dominion saying these are obviously false claims. Yeah. Yeah. This is the only evidence that they have that would make what they did responsible if these were true. And it's it's patently ridiculous. Um, so. So. So number four. Oh, yeah. And number four, Cody is Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials who used its machines in the 2020 presidential election. Um, yeah. This is like these are pretty serious allegations to make with absolute. There's not quite no. There's not quite no. There's a lot of American history. Oh, oh, again, we're building towards what the evidence here was for the greatest crime in American history. So Dominion insists that it's irrelevant that the accused statements that I just read were made by guests of Fox rather than hosts. Um, yeah. And basically they're like, look, Fox is a publisher every statement that they choose to put out without contradiction or questioning is something they are publishing. If you were to have Sydney Paolon and then question her like that ABC for corner corner journalist. That's okay. Then you don't have to defend what she said because you're deliberately like questioning its accuracy. You know, like you're actually trying to report. But if you just let somebody talk as Fox news, you are publishing their allegations. Yeah, there's also like there's a supportive language that a lot of Fox news. Probably all of them, I guess maybe use when dealing with these topics because of stuff like this because they know they can't say 100%. But they're not always great at it. Yeah. And they maybe they won't get away with it. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, when when the three of us were trying to launch that podcast on your network and you guys wanted to report on breaking news. And I wanted to make a series of allegations against the Home Depot Corporation. And and the one bad time you had at Home Depot. Yeah. Well, and because of the tunnels underneath Home Depot's where they traffic while I probably shouldn't make another trafficking children joke. So if the last one we made went badly against us. I can't imagine why Robert. This is me being a responsible publisher. That's right. And I can yourself. Yeah. Recognizing that the years of lawsuits from Home Depot when we tried to put that out are not worth repeating a second time. See, unlike Fox, some of us can learn. And your lessons go to Home Depot did it.org. Anyway, let's let's move on. Let's move on here. So yeah, the bulk of Dominion's assertion is that they are do summary judgment because Fox editorial employees demonstrated actual malice prevailing on summary judgment in this case requires that they show just one person acted with malice freeze faults claim about the company. And this is where the stuff that's really interesting to us comes in quote. As Tucker Carlson told Sydney Powell on November 17th, you keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon. You've convinced them that Trump will win. If you don't have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it's a cool and reckless thing to keep saying. And then on November 21st Carlson texted. It was shockingly useless to claim the Dominion rig the election. If there's no one inside the company willing to talk or internal Dominion documents or copies of the software showing that they did it. And as you know, there isn't. Which is is a pretty clear evidence that Tucker knew that what Sydney was saying was wildly irresponsible. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, you're right. I'm wondering how like much pushback like what qualifies as pushback right because what he said was like, well, this is a very it's compelling and you've convinced you've convinced people. But you need to show evidence. So like, you know, the thing that he does and you know, knows that he's doing. Yeah. Now Dominion furthermore alleges that the statements Fox made are what you call again, per se defamatory. This means that they allege that the defendant committed a serious crime and those allegations injured the defendant in their trader profession. The key here is that when a statement is per se defamatory, the injured party doesn't need to prove specific damages to establish liability, right? Not per se. Yeah, not per se. I love you know, you know, lawyers, those wacky guys per se defamatory. So Dominion also notes that Fox cannot claim they had some sort of a right to report on Powell's allegations against Dominion on the basis of newsworthiness. Since doing so would require them to report accurately that Powell had no evidence to back up her assertions discovery has given Dominion some interesting ammo here, including a text from Rupert Murdoch asking Suzanne Scott, current Fox News CEO, whether it was quote and here's Murdoch again, unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6 was an important chance to have the results overturned. That's not an unbelievable thing that he just said. Yeah, he texted his coworker. He texted the quiet part. You know, I don't know if you know what I'm saying. We absolutely cost January or else. And unbelievable thing that he just said. Yeah, what he texted his coworker. He texted the quiet part. You can't just say that. Yeah, that's oh, maybe he did. He did. That's maybe I should have been paying attention to this story. We did January 6. We've been. Yeah, that's that Rupert Murdoch quote. We did January 6. You put that on some merch. I just wanted to get that lady murked by the secret service. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's that's Rupert Murdoch for you. That's a joke. It's not legally actionable. So Fox News responded to Murdoch's like state. The basic Murdoch is like, I'm fairly certain that we contributed to this. Do we have evidence of like our voices feeding like our people feeding the story of the election was stolen and executives responded to him with 50 examples of this. What's again, really making the lawyers a dominion's job easy for them. Well, that's so like because they can't even be like dominions like dug up all these examples and foxes. Those aren't examples. They're like, no, I love to sign it. Signed Rupert. Yeah, from Rupert. Here's some perfect evidence. Love, mom. I hope I hope it gave him indigestion when he had to hand over all of his fucking text messages to these guys. I don't think he even bad diarrhea. I agree with you, Katie. I hope he was shitting a sandbag. So to speak. That's a terrible phrase in nights. What I hope. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch. There's a video going around. I tweeted it recently. If a guy like getting sucked down into a grain silo, that's the consistency of shit. Oh, that is awful. Yeah, stay the fuck away from grain silo. Don't go in grain silo. Just stay away from them. Shoot them in a distance. I did. I was talking about green silo's and I was like, what's that about? Did an investigate? Now I know. I came from a small farming town where every year people would die in grain silo. And grain silo's and drunken ATV rides among those worst two of the leading gosses of death. If only Fox News had a similar record, I'm going to continue quoting from the Dominion lawsuit. As Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott, who's again the CEO of Fox in the aftermath of January 6th, all very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump. But what did he tell his viewers? When Rupert Murdoch watched Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell spin their lies on November 19th, he told Suzanne Scott terrible stuff, damaging everybody, I fear. Scott concurred. Yes, Sean and even Piro agrees. They still give out judge Jeanine Piro. Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my god. Look at all the damage we're cozy. Yeah, wow. We're really fucking some shit up there. You know who else is fucking. I like all those other times. No. Speaking of fucking shit up, but like in a good way in an ethical capitalist way, where we all learn about what kind of mattresses we need. Cody, a lot of people to know this about you, you prefer to sleep. We call it PB and J style with a mattress below you and another mattress on top of you. Makes me feel secure. That's right. That's right. It's a little bit a little bit cozier, a little bit more weight than a weighted blanket. Yeah. I'm not rustling around. Yeah. Me and I have guests over. They can stay on top. Exactly. And this is this is the difference between us, Cody. I prefer to sleep literally PB and J style, where once a week I bake two large bedside sheets of bread. And I fill them with with jam and with peanut butter. And I just I just roll around and it naked all night. And then in the morning, my breakfast is ready. Oh, that's nice. I just lift myself clean like a lizard. I dreamy, baby. I'm just a little bit more. That's good. That's good mattresses. Yeah. Anyway, here's some real ads. Ah, we're back. I hope you enjoyed those good words from the good people at GIF. GIF, it mixes well with your sweat. 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In the words of Chris Stirlal, Fox's politics editor, who again gets shit canned after this during the relevant time frame, long before the election, Chris says, Trump started making the claim that the only way he could lose the election was by fraud or that the only way he would not prevail would be if it was stolen. He had laid that predicate down throughout the spring and into the summer, and it was very well known and understood by everybody in the business that this was the gambit that he was making. That's a straight quote from Stirlal's deposition. Now, Stirlal said this under oath and Dominion adds that other Fox executives made similar statements under oath. They understood that Trump was laying out a false line ahead of time so that he could justify contesting the election even if the evidence did not support it. As the COVID-19 pandemic made more mail-invoting inevitable, and understanding evolved that the discrepancy between in-person counts and mail-invotes would provide an opportunity to question the election. So before the election, Fox personalities were talking about like, well, you're going to have all the in-person votes get counted first, but then the mail-ins are going to come and it's going to cause a sudden shift. You know what's funny? Is that we were all talking about how they were going to be doing this? Yes, it's so amazing. It's so maddening. See, we're not so different after all, Katie. We were all talking about the same thing. Yeah, we agree. I'm going to quote again from Chris Stirlalts' deposition here. Election day votes are going to skew heavily Republican. Early in absentee votes are going to skew heavily Democratic. If you stretch out the period of time over which that's going to be counted, it's going to create a false. It could tend to create a false impression about the direction that the election was going to go overall. He noted that political professionals and political journalists at Fox universally understood this phenomenon also termed the red mirage and the blue shift. Yeah. So that's good. That's good. Good that they just said all this. Now, Dominion just happened to be in a position at the nexus of all these facts, which made them a convenient scapegoat for false claims of election fraud. Discovery in this case also gives us some insight as to communications between Fox employees and members of the Trump team. When Fox called Arizona first at 11.20 p.m., a member of Trump's team called Fox's Washington Bureau Managing Editor Bill Salmon and told him it was, quote, way too soon to be calling Arizona. White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows followed up shortly thereafter just as angry and Fox viewers were even more enraged. Quote, on November 5, Fox's chief White House correspondent told Salmon and FNC president Jay Wallace, we are taking major heat over the AZ call. Our viewers are also chanting Fox News sucks. Something I have never heard before. Somebody's in their bubble. Yeah, I've definitely heard that. They also. Dominion also sites internal Fox emails stating, holy cow, our audience is mad at the network and they're all caps furious. It is at this point that we get to one of them more into because again, parts of this are redacted and the way that redactions work, you know, you don't, you don't always know why, right? Like that's that's sometimes. Yeah, but there's there's the like immediately following those internal Fox emails. There's this paragraph that begins the backlash was so strong that and then the rest of the paragraph is all blacked out. I am no idea what that's going on about that I hope we find out some days. And the mystery of what that paragraph holds is made all the more enticing by what comes next Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity immediately understood the threat to them personally Carlson wrote his producer Alex Fyfer on November 5th. We worked really hard to build what we have those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me. He added that he had spoken with Laura and Sean a minute ago that they are highly upset Carlson noted at this point we're getting hurt no matter what Fyfer responded. It's a hard needle to thread. But I really think many on our side are being reckless demagogues right now. Tucker applied. Of course they are. We're not going to follow them. And then he added what Trump's good at is destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that he could easily destroy us if we play it wrong. This is awful and so good. It is. There's so much going on there too because he's like first off I'm furious they're destroying our credibility by questioning the narrative that Trump's election was stolen from it right. That's what they're doing that's destroying our credibility is they're making the audience distrust us because the audience will only believe the lie that the election was stolen. But then he's like fuck these people who spread the election lies in the first place because they're being reckless demagogues and we're not going to follow them. But also Trump is a destroyer and I don't want him to destroy it's this incredible mix of totally aware of how much of a lie that they're spreading and also comprehensive cowardice. Yeah and a history of that knowledge too because even the they're all they're acting like demagogues of course they are is what he said. Yeah. And applying like it's of course they are that's what they do that's what we are right. Yeah. Yeah they don't mind that part. Yep. Nope. So Dominion next presents evidence that summit Fox sought to actively rain in this disinformation chief political correspondent Brett bear repeatedly told colleagues that there was no evidence of fraud and he alerted his boss when Maria Bartiromo posted baseless allegations of vote dumps on social media telling him we have to prevent this stuff we need to fact check and it is a note of how bad this is that Brett bear is the is the voice of reason inside the ethical center of the company pops is a little head out. Yeah. Like I'm dead like I understand kind of because chef Smith was like the other guy at Fox. Yeah. Not not not a completely broken monster. It's fascinating to me like what these guys must have told themselves in order to keep doing this because they clearly have some ethical center. Right because this is also like it's interesting because this is just about this one. Yeah topic. Yeah. And I can't imagine just now do all the rest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not all the other one. This is one of you been saying about everything. Yeah. Yeah. Cause one of two things is true either Brett does this with everything that Fox lies about or this was the first time he was like well this is a bridge too far. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like everybody like Texas. Like this is damaging how we're going to do this and play it in the line of people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I kind of suspect because you remember there's that thing. Oh God. What's her name? The lady with the TV show who's like very popular liberal news person. Rachel. Rachel matter. I was literally my she put it anyway, whatever. I can't believe I forgot her name. But like she's made comments about Tucker being a nice guy in person and like their friendly. Yeah, they used to work together and stuff. I kind of suspect that's what's going on with Brett where it's like there's a certain degree of like malfeasance and propaganda that like his friends who you know are elsewhere in media and politics don't mind from Fox. Right. But this denying the election entirely trying to inciting this fucking seditious act of January six. That was fucking a step too far. And it was it was going to make him look bad in front of his friends. So he had to I don't know. I don't know Brett bear. Let's go to the other line. But it's clearly for some of them. There's a line by November 6th. Rupert Murdoch had stated the same fears as Brett bear and Warren CEO Susanne Scott. If Trump becomes a sore loser, we should watch Sean, especially and others don't sound the same. Good night, Sean. He's going to be a wild card on this one. If Trump dies to make himself a dictator. That same day, Sydney Powell was a guest on Lou Dobbs tonight where she told viewers about a supposed CIA program called Hammer and Scorecard. Hammer was a government super computer. She told viewers and Scorecard was a program that would allow it to change votes. She told Fox viewers this quote explains a lot of what we're seeing after the broadcast of viewer email Brett bear about Hammer and Scorecard. He forwarded this to Fox president Jay Wallace and asked, what is this? So there is evidence that Murdoch even took steps with one of his other properties, the New York Post to stop stolen election conspiracy theories from spreading on November 7th, the post published an editorial begging Trump to admit he'd lost and quote get Rudy Giuliani off TV. Murdoch, one of the things that Discovery revealed is Murdoch thanking a post employee for ensuring the editorial was spread. So he had no problem with like manipulating his various periodicals in order to get this message out, which is particularly interesting to me given another fact revealed by the Dominion lawsuit. Dominion alleges, Rupert Murdoch provided Donald Trump senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner with confidential information about the Biden campaign and specific they gave Kushner access to Biden campaign ads before publication and information on his debate strategy. Dominion does not go into more detail here. That is just an allegation that they make in their filing. Fox for their part say that Dominion is mischaracterizing the facts here and they further note quote, Dominion cherry picks any sound by it confined from any corner of the Fox organization, even though it admits in its brief 117 pages later that most of the evidence is utterly irrelevant to the legal issues in this case. The compelling to me about this is that that's not entirely wrong. I don't think the Dominions wrong on the facts. They are including a lot of shit in here that is not specifically targeted towards their lawsuit right that is not specifically about claims Fox made about Dominion. I think their strategy here is to try and prove how comprehensive the malice and irresponsibility is. The culture and what this yeah, in the agenda in relationship, if there's a clear. Yeah, painting a full picture here. Yeah, and I think what they're doing is fair. I also kind of suspect that a piece of it also is them being like, well, they fucking dragged our name through the mud and we can do that without lying about. Yeah, fuck yourself. Fuck, I'm fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking. Fuck these pieces of shit. Well, we can throw down you want to throw down motherfuckers. Try me. Yeah, that's what this is. But right now, do you want to mother fuckers when a throw down by telling people your plugs? This is part one. We're done. This is part one. We're done. We're done. We're done. We want to done by a being by a boom, baby. And then they learned your lesson. Yeah, and everything was good forever after that. Yeah, this wraps up. Yeah, we've got a few shows for you to check out allegedly, the podcast, even more news. Oh, you guys have a podcast. We do. And we talk about stuff. We shoot the shit. We make jokes. We have fun guests. Sometimes Robert's a guest Robert. Would you like to come on our show again soon? We'll talk later. I know you come down the show again. I've been meaning to get into podcasting. So this could be a really good way for me to hold that. Yeah, I think that you'd be really good at it. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Cody, plug our other thing. Oh, yeah, we have another show called Some More News. It's also available as a podcast if you'd like. It's on youtube.com as well as a video. There's stuff in it with puppets are there sometimes. And check out our patreon.com slash some more news. Just pour those things. Yeah, furthermore. Furthermore. Thanks. Yeah. How you doing when we return? Yeah, we were. Yeah. What are you doing? Like, would you flex for us? Maybe like lay down. Take those shoes off. Get that shirt off too. Come on over here. What are you asking them to flex their feet? Cut it up with me. Just just come on. Get on in here. Get on in here. Get our listeners. Get another mattress. Pop up mattress on top of us. Yeah, just just make that a double. We got covered in peanut butter and jelly together. Maybe watch season one of true detective. You know, good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. That is a great season. I did. I rewatched it recently. It's I like that show. That season. Just for the Reggie to do with it. That's how I'm going to go dig out my generator from this pile of fucking snow. Yeah. And I'm going to rewatch true detective season one again. Again already. Wow. I'm not going to do either of those things. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone media. For more from Cool Zone media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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