Murdoch blasted for priming Fox viewers 'like a powder keg' in the runup to Jan. 6
Former GOP strategist Rick Wilson tore into billionaire right-wing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch for his role in Fox News' election lies and the radicalization of former President Donald Trump's base.
This comes as filings in a $1.6 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems reveal Murdoch was fully aware his network was pushing lies and did nothing about it. Fox News disputes this version of events, accusing Dominion of "cherry-picking" conversations of Fox executives and claiming they were simply reporting both sides of a controversy.
"I think what matters here is the scope of the deception, not only of the MAGA base that believed that Fox was telling them the truth and was elevating these people they internally believed as crooks and liars, but the damage they were willing to do to the country as the climate Fox built led to January 6th," said Wilson. "He primed his audience for weeks and weeks knowing it was a lie he allowed Tucker and Laura and Sean and the rest of the clown show to go out every night and generate more anxiety and fury with the MAGA base, which led to the moment they were primed like a powder keg on January 6th. Moral culpability is not something Rupert Murdoch is familiar with."
"There are people who are tired of this," said anchor Ari Melber. "They don't want to talk about it anymore, don't want the talk about Fox News. I'm curious what you think that sure, they got away with a lot. That may have emboldened them, may have fed this environment, but it also may be — I'm curious what you think, that this time there are enough straws on the back that Fox could pay."
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"I think that the interesting pressure here is going to come from the Right," said Wilson. "A lot of the Fox audience has been OAN-curious or Newsmax-curious because they don't think of them — Fox — anymore as suitably ideologically reliable. There's a lot of Fox's reporting — I use that word — now take a different position and say, they must have been compromised. The Deep State must have gotten to Rupert Murdoch. We're going to OAN, Newsmax, some freakshow Telegram somewhere. But I also think that you can't be exhausted by this at a certain level. It's the most important and large-scale cable network in the country. They have a massive reach, make billions of dollars off cable carriage fees and have a significant impact as a major normative force and a huge part of American culture."
"And so I think the Dominion suit ... sharpened up this contribution we've seen for a long time," Wilson added. "Is it Fox News or entertainment? What they haven't been until now is accountable, which they should be."
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