Closing summary
This blog is wrapping up for the day but will be back with all the US politics news tomorrow, covering developments as they happen.
Here’s how the day went:
Top US intelligence official Avril Haines said that American intelligence does not believe Russia can make “major territorial gains” in Ukraine this year because of heavy casualties and the Kremlin’s inability to replenish weapons and ammunition.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department after the killing of Tyre Nichols earlier this year and also look into the use of specialized police units nationwide.
The Department of Justice has issued its review, concluding that it found racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following their investigation into the city’s law enforcement after the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
Further big Russian advances on Ukraine territory difficult - DNI
The top intelligence official in the US said earlier today that American intelligence does not believe Russia can make “major territorial gains” in Ukraine this year because of heavy casualties and the Kremlin’s inability to replenish weapons and ammunition.
Speaking to a Senate committee, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines also cited other constraints on the Russian military, including dysfunction in leadership and declining troop morale, the Associated Press reports.
Meanwhile, despite recent sharp criticism of the US by Chinese president Xi Jinping, Haines said: “We assess that Beijing still believes it benefits most by preventing a spiraling of tensions and by preserving stability in its relationship with the United States.”
China is challenging the US around the world economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world and “remains our unparalleled priority,” Haines said and NBC reported.
Updated
Georgia extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took the gavel today as the temporary speaker of the House of Representatives.
For a long time, the hard-right Republican prone to conspiracy theories could be kept at arm’s length as a fringe character but her influence has grown since she shimmied up to Kevin McCarthy as a crucial ally during his extraordinary multi-round effort to finally get voted into the speakership in January, after the GOP scraped into control of the House during the 2022 midterm elections.
McCarthy not only sold his soul for the speakership, he sold the House, too.
— Linus Fan 💉💉💉💉💉 (@LinusAlso) March 8, 2023
Shameful day: Today, Kevin McCarthy appointed Marjorie Taylor Greene to act as speaker pro tempore https://t.co/Wa5utLYuXq
She’s very pleased about it.
The House will be in order. pic.twitter.com/8154CGMQqQ
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 8, 2023
Others less so.
Kevin McCarthy has announced Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker Pro Tempore….meaning she will fill the role of presiding officer of the House in the absence of the Speaker of the House. Absolutely insane.
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) March 8, 2023
As my colleague Adam Gabbatt reminds us, Greene has suggested Jewish space lasers are responsible for wildfires, speculated whether 9/11 was a hoax and supported the QAnon conspiracy theory, was part of a new wave of Trumpian Republicans and was mocked, ridiculed and reviled in equal measure – including by some in her own party.
The Atlantic’s “Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this?” is also an illuminating read, describing how prosperous but aimless suburbanites can fall down the rabbit hole.
Last month, Greene again proposed a “national divorce” so that states can secede along political lines, something that is unequivocally unconstitutional in the United States.
Updated
The testimony in today’s House hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal has brought witnesses, lawmakers and audience members to tears.
In another gripping account, Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a US Marines sergeant grievously injured in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, was asked to tell the panel about the girl he saved during the evacuation.
Stationed at the airport, Vargas-Andrews said he was helping to push back the crowds outside of the airport, he noticed a little girl, roughly about 7 or 8 years old, who had managed to squeeze past, holding the hand of her younger brother and a baby in her arms.
“In this chaos, I had tunnel-vision and saw her and I was like, I need to help them,” Vargas-Andrews said, recalling that their faces were “dirty and bruised” and streaked with tears.
When he reached the children, he noticed that the baby’s face was blue and didn’t appear to be breathing. He took the youngest children in his arms and together they fought their way through the crush of people. Not knowing if the baby was alive, they searched frantically for a medic who could perform CPR on the baby.
They found one, administered aid, and the baby’s face “flushed pink” and the infant began to breathe, as the little girl sobbed. She tugged on his uniform and begged for abba, father.
He climbed onto an SUV overlooking the razor wire fence erected around the airport and hoisted the girl into the air to survey the scene below. After a few minutes, amid the hundreds of people desperately waving documents and flinging luggage, she pointed to a man with his hands on his head staring back at her, tears streaming down his face.
“I was like that is her dad,” Vargas-Andrews said. He quickly reunited the family and together they were able to leave the country.
“For me, that was a moment that my personal injury was worth it,” said Vargas-Andrews, who has since undergone 44 surgeries for the extensive injuries he suffered during the bombing. “I know those three little kids will have a life of freedom and opportunity now because of that.”
The former Maryland governor Larry Hogan has ruled out a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 – but not ruled out a third-party tilt.
Hogan told ABC on Tuesday: “I haven’t ruled that out. But it’s not something I’m really working toward or thinking about” even though “the question keeps popping up more and more”.
Hogan flirted with a run for the nomination as a moderate but pulled back on Sunday, saying: “To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Donald Trump.
“There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multi-car pile-up that could potentially help Mr Trump recapture the nomination.”
Polling has shown the potential for opponents to Trump (including the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and most likely the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis) to divide the vote and give him the nomination without needing a majority, as happened in 2016.
Polling has also shown vanishingly small interest in Hogan among voters in a party dominated by Trump and DeSantis.
Hogan told ABC: “Trump has to stumble, which is hard. And he’s been diminishing. But still, he’s the 800lb gorilla. And then if he doesn’t make it, it goes to DeSantis, and then DeSantis has to stumble. And then you have to consolidate everyone else and overcome that.”
He said No Labels, a centrist group of which he is an honorary co-chair, had “raised about $50m to get [ballot] access in all 50 states as kind of an insurance policy” for an “in case of emergency break glass” scenario.
“They’re not trying to start a third party,” he said. “They’re not committed to doing that. But in case the country is burning down, you may have to have an alternative.”
Hogan said a Biden-Trump matchup would be such a scenario.
“I think that would be the trigger. I think that’s what they’re talking about. I’m not sure we’re gonna get to that point … Frankly, I’m hopeful that Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee. And I’m going to work toward that goal. And I’m assuming Joe Biden may be the nominee, but who knows? I mean, he’s 80 years old. And we got a long ways to go.”
Biden, who would be 86 a the end of a second term, has not confirmed a run for re-election. All signs, however, suggest he will soon take the plunge.
Hogan said he was “not sure if it’s feasible” he could be a No Labels candidate.
“And it’s also just not something I’m working toward. But, I mean, look, if you got to an election when the nominees were Biden and Trump and 70% of America didn’t want that, you wouldn’t rule it out, right?”
The White House chimed in on the Department of Justice finding racist, unlawful conduct by the Memphis Police Department as a result of its investigation following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot dead almost three years ago during a botched raid.
First noting that the DoJ is independent from the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added that: “The president has said repeatedly that a key part of building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve is ensuring there is accountability when we see an officer violate the law.”
Jean-Pierre noted Joe Biden’s executive order last spring that sought to rein in police excesses and improve safety and trust, and once again lamented that Congress has failed to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
“The president has said himself, Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy, a blow to her family, to her community and also to America more broadly.”
She added that Biden notes that “Black women experience a disproportionate share of violence in this country and he will continue to fight for legislation that advances police reform and makes sure that we keep the Black community safe.”
KJP, who is the first Black woman to be White House press secretary, was wearing white in a nod to the battle for women’s suffrage, pointing out to the assembled journalists that it is International Women’s Day. She is also the first openly gay White House press sec.
She also spent quality minutes at the briefing today excoriating Tucker Carlson.
Updated
In his forthcoming budget proposal, Joe Biden will propose to cut the US deficit by nearly $3tn, the Associated Press reports.
The AP adds:
That deficit reduction goal is significantly higher than the $2tn Biden had promised in his State of the Union address last month. It also is a sharp contrast with House Republicans, who have called for a path to a balanced budget but have yet to offer a blueprint.
White House officials have been briefing on the proposal, which Biden is due to discuss in Philadelphia tomorrow, Thursday.
A proposal it will almost certainly remain, of course, given Congress has the power of the purse, and given that control of Congress is shared between Democrats who hold the Senate and Republicans who hold the House.
Interim summary
It’s been a lively day in US politics so far and there is much more to come. The White House has just called Fox’s Tucker Carlson shameful and the Department of Justice is looking into special police divisions across the country, especially in the wake of high-profile killings of Black Americans amid accusations of racial bias in incidents of brutality and misconduct.
Here where things stand:
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department after the killing of Tyre Nichols earlier this year and also look into the use of specialized police units nationwide.
The Department of Justice has issued its review, concluding that it found racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following their investigation into the city’s law enforcement after the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
Tucker Carlson 'not credible ... shameful', says White House
The White House has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, criticized the security footage of the riot at the Capitol that Carlson has played on his show for the last two nights heavily edited so that it gives the impression of depicting what he described as “peaceful chaos”.
Many hours of footage was handed over to him by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
“To have said what he said when we saw police officers lose their lives is just shameful,” Jean-Pierre just said at the daily briefing in the west wing, when asked about Carlson’s latest actions.
She said that the White House agrees with the chief of the Capitol police, Tom Manger (who said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions) and the “rage of bipartisan lawmakers”.
“We have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives…on a very dark day in our democracy,” Jean-Pierre said.
She added that in various legal battles, the White House agrees with Fox’s own attorneys and executives who “have repeatedly stressed in courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular”.
She cited this September 2020 piece from National Public Radio (NPR) on which the headline was: “You literally can’t believe the facts Tucker Carlson tells you. So say Fox’s lawyers.”
Updated
In emotional testimony to the House foreign affairs committee this morning, two US service members recounted harrowing scenes at the Kabul airport, where they were stationed when a suicide bomber attacked on 26 August 2021.
“It was complete chaos,” said Aidan Gunderson, a former army specialist who left active duty in July.
Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a US Marines sergeant who lost an organ and two limbs in the attack, offered some of the most startling testimony of the morning, recalling mothers desperately handing over children while some Afghans chose to take their own lives rather than face the brutality of the Taliban.
Speaking under oath, Vargas-Andrews told the panel he identified the suicide bomber among the crush trying to enter the airport but was not given approval to shoot the suspect dead.
The attack killed 13 US service members and injured at least 20.
“My body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings,” Vargas-Andrews said, pausing to fight tears. “Almost immediately we started taking fire from the neighborhood and I saw how injured I was with my right arm completely shredded and unusable. I saw my lower abdomen soaked in blood.”
“The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence,” said Vargas-Andrews, who has undergone 44 surgeries.
Vargas-Andrews stated that he was appearing in his personal capacity. His account, detailed in the Washington Post, disputes aspects of the Pentagon’s account of the incident.
“This is not the story of a Biden failure or a Trump failure. This is the story of an American failure and the effect it has had and continues to have on Afghans who served alongside myself and so many others,” Peter Lucier, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who helped evacuate allied Afghans with Team America Relief, told the panel.
“The failures that led to this point are owned and shared by four administrations, by Congress and by 320,000,000 Americans. This was our war.”
GOP use hearing to condemn Biden's "disastrous" pull out from Afghanistan
House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Opening the House foreign affairs committee hearing earlier, the Texas congressman Michael McCaul called for a moment of silence for 13 US service members killed in a terrorist attack near the Kabul airport during the evacuation. More than 100 Afghan civilians were also killed in the attack.
“What happened in Afghanistan was a systemic breakdown of the federal government at every level,” McCaul said, vowing to hold to account officials responsible for what he said was the “abdication of the most basic duties of the United States government to protect Americans and leave no one behind”.
For nearly two weeks in August 2021, the world watched as harrowing scenes played out live on television, including desperate Afghans clinging to the underside of a US transport plane, after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.
In the chaos, McCaul said, the US left more than “1,000 American citizens” in Afghanistan as well as “almost 200,000” Afghan allies. To those “left behind,” the Republican chair said he was committed to getting them “the hell out of there”.
The ranking Democrat, Gregory Meeks of New York, said Joe Biden made the “right decision” to end a 20-year war which extracted a “great cost” on the nation.
Meeks acknowledged that “mistakes” were made during the evacuation but noted it was Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who struck a deal with the Taliban for US forces to leave Afghanistan by May 2021.
To that end, Meeks urged the committee to use this opportunity to understand what went wrong, rather than to “score political points”.
DoJ also to investigate Memphis police - and special police units nationwide
Attorney General Merrick Garland has also announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department in Tennessee, in particular its use of force, where resident Tyre Nichols died in hospital a few days after being brutally beaten and left for dead by a group of now ex-officers earlier this year.
The DoJ intends to examine the tactics of the now-disbanded “Scorpion” special unit of the Memphis police whose officers attacked Nichols and those who beat him have been charged with murder.
But it also intends, separately, to look into the use of specialized police units nationwide. The Memphis Scorpion unit was accused of baseless, excessive targeting of Black residents in its mission to crack down on violent crime in the city.
The killing of avid skateboarder Tyre Nichols was part of a pattern of police brutality, victims’ families told the Guardian last month. Nichols’s beating was caught on video from multiple angles and released by the city relatively quickly as the scandal over Nichols’s killing mounted.
The DoJ review of Memphis police will examine “policies, practices, training, data and processes related to MPD’s use of force, de-escalation and specialized units,” the department said today, with a public report to follow.
The review was requested by Memphis mayor Jim Strickland and the police chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis.
A DoJ release today said: “The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) announced today it will be undertaking two important reviews: one related to the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and one that will examine the use of specialized units within law enforcement.
Associate attorney general Vanita Gupta said:
In the wake of Tyre Nichols’s tragic death, the Justice Department has heard from police chiefs across the country who are assessing the use of specialized units and, where used, appropriate management, oversight and accountability for such units. The COPS Office [Community Oriented Policing Services] guide on specialized units will be a critical resource for law enforcement, mayors and community members committed to effective community policing that respects the dignity of community members and keeps people safe.”
Gupta was speaking at a press conference in Louisville, in which the DoJ made the two announcements above and released its findings about the Kentucky city’s police in relation to the killing of Breonna Taylor there in 2020.
Updated
More on the Justice Department’s finding that Louisville, Kentucky, police have engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.
The announcement was made moments ago by US attorney general Merrick Garland. A Department of Justice report found the Louisville/Jefferson county metro government and Louisville Metro Police Department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law,” The Associated Press reports.
The report said Louisville police “discriminate against Black people in its enforcement activities,” uses excessive force and conducts searches based on invalid warrants. It also said the department violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech, like the street protests in the city in the summer of 2020.
“This conduct is unacceptable, it is heartbreaking,” Garland said.
The sweeping probe announced in April 2021 is known as a “pattern or practice” investigation — examining whether there is a pattern of unconstitutional or unlawful policing inside the department.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was roused from her bed by police who came through the door using a battering ram after midnight on March 13, 2020. Three officers fired shots after Taylor’s boyfriend, fearing an intruder, shot an officer in the leg. Taylor was struck several times and died at the scene.
The warrant used to enter her home is now part of a separate federal criminal investigation, and one former Louisville officer has already pleaded guilty to helping falsify information on the warrant. No drugs were found in Taylor’s home.
Louisville police have undergone five leadership changes since the Taylor shooting, and new Mayor Craig Greenberg is interviewing candidates for the next chief. The city has settled a number of lawsuits related to the incident, including a $12 million payment to Taylor’s family that ended a wrongful death lawsuit.
Attorney General releases results of civil rights investigation into Louisville police
Attorney General Merrick Garland is giving details of racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following the Department of Justice’s investigation into the city’s law enforcement following the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
Garland said the police has a pattern of using excessive force, especially against Black residents.
The DoJ found “unlawful racial disparities” in Louisville law enforcement and Garland announced that the city and its police have agreed to work with the federal government “to address the problems that we have identified.”
Breonna Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician studying to become a nurse, was roused from sleep by police who came through the door of her apartment using a battering ram on March 13, 2020. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thinking it was a home invasion, fired a gun once, and police opened fire, killing Taylor. No charges were brought over Taylor’s killing.
A no-knock warrant had been approved as part of a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found at her home. Taylor became a prominent figure whose death was protested as part of the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrations in 2020 and beyond over police brutality and systemic racism.
More details shortly.
Updated
Congressman and member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Jamie Raskin, is further laying into Fox and its influential commentary show host, Tucker Carlson, for talking points around the Capitol attack.
Some extremist Republicans try to depict rioters held in jail for the insurrection, either awaiting trial or convicted, as unfairly incarcerated “political prisoners” and some are even talking about arranging a congressional delegation to visit them behind bars. At the same time, right-wingers have also tried to claim that January 6 was a “false flag” with left-wing extremists or “deep staters” pretending to be Trump supporters as they attacked the Capitol…and some of this has been echoed by Fox commentators over the months.
Here’s Raskin:
Jamie Raskin destroys the whole Tucker Carlson and GOP talking points around the Capitol attack.
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) March 8, 2023
"They claim they were really ANTIFA and FBI agents but on the other hand they are trying to get them out of jail. Which is it? Why are they trying to get these ANTIFA imposters out… https://t.co/vcvIN1jIKT pic.twitter.com/zfy9QHeNps
Updated
Even as the latest court filings in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox emerged last night, the cable channel’s star host Tucker Carlson continued to broadcast security footage from the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol in his attempt to cast the deadly attack on Congress as “peaceful chaos.”
The insurrection was carried out by extremist supporters of Donald Trump who were intent, at the-then president’s urging, of finding a way to overturn his November, 2020, electoral defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. On January 6, rioters broke into the Capitol and violently tried in vain to prevent the official certification by Congress of Biden’s victory ahead of his inauguration as the 46th president of the United States.
Newly-installed House Speaker, California Republican Kevin McCarthy, has handed over tens of thousands of hours of security footage from January 6 to Carlson in another Faustian pact with Fox, which Carlson has been selectively airing to focus on rioters milling about at the Capitol, not hunting down lawmakers, threatening and attacking police and breaking into the House chamber.
After Carlson’s first broadcast on Monday, Democrats, Senate Republicans, the chief of Capitol police and the family of an officer who died the day after the riot were among those to condemn him. Yet Carlson aired more last night in the same vein.
GOP senators rebuke Tucker Carlson's narrative that Jan. 6 was largely peaceful
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 7, 2023
TILLIS: "It's bullshit"
CRAMER: "just a lie"
GRAHAM: "I'm not interested in whitewashing Jan. 6"
ROMNEY: "Trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting"https://t.co/PX7FYy9pfP
Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell already condemned Carlson’s use of the footage on Monday.
Here's that moment. https://t.co/DSnil2sP4m
— The Recount (@therecount) March 7, 2023
Last night Carlson claimed Democrats had shown “hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger” over his use of the January 6 footage. It was “not outrage”, he said, but “fear. It’s panic.”
He then focused on Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, saying footage would show the January 6 security failure was her fault.
Trump was impeached – and acquitted in the Senate – for an historic second time, tried by Congress in 2021 accused of inciting the insurrection. He was impeached in 2019 over threatening to withholding aid from Ukraine unless president Volodymyr Zelenskiy dug dirt on Joe Biden and his family for him.
Fox were eager for minions to promote Carlson’s show last night.
Producers from Tucker Carlson’s show are pushing other Fox staffers hard to "PLEASE PROMOTE" Tucker's second night of Jan. 6 footage, per this email leaked to me by a tipster. pic.twitter.com/GJ5AMdifJZ
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 7, 2023
Updated
Fox star host Tucker Carlson continues to get it in the neck from high-profile figures over the latest revelations in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox as well as over his selective airing of tapes of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
First Dominion: he’s being slammed for his dishonest pushing of Donald Trump’s claims that he’d been deprived of victory in the 2020 presidential election because of widespread voter fraud, even though Carlson and other Fox figures were aware that Trump had lost to Joe Biden in what was shown to be a fair and square result.
Here’s US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.
I was invited on Tucker Carlson’s show.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) March 8, 2023
I will agree to go on after Tucker Carlson admits to his viewers live on air that he has been lying to them about the 2020 elections and about what happened on January 6th.
Here’s Ryan Goodman, a professor at the New York University School of Law and, in 2015 and 2016, special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense.
With Tucker Carlson spreading January 6th and election lies.
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) March 8, 2023
Here's his internal correspondence Nov. 2020 (from Dominion lawsuit doc dump tonight).
- Tucker agrees that certainly no evidence election stolen
- Tucker says the stolen election conspiracy is bad for the country pic.twitter.com/pCLh2GEKvn
The Fox News host Tucker Carlson told an associate he “hated” Donald Trump “passionately”, new filings in the $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems have revealed.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson said in a text on 4 January 2021, two days before the riot. “I truly can’t wait.”
He also wrote: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Unearthed texts from Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News:
— The Recount (@therecount) March 8, 2023
Tucker Carlson: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. … I hate him passionately.” pic.twitter.com/c13Ge328Gx
Many observers think the Dominion suit, over the broadcast of lies about electoral fraud by Trump and his allies, could prove seriously costly to Fox News.
Hosts and executives up to and including Rupert Murdoch have been shown to have said Trump was lying, and to have ridiculed surrogates including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – who made increasingly-wild claims from November 2020 onwards that Trump had been fraudulently denied re-election victory – but to have broadcast those claims regardless.
In one message newly revealed on Tuesday, the host Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and said “no one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
In a statement, Fox News said Dominion was “using further distortion and misinformation in its PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on freedom of speech and freedom of the press”.
You can read the rest of the piece here.
Updated
Fox rocked by more revelations over support for Trump's 2020 'stolen election' lie
Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
The New York-based conservative cable TV channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, was plunged into what one executive called an “existential crisis” between its news reporting side and its opinion show side.
The company’s election “decisions desk” that was crunching the voter numbers stuck to its conclusion that Joe Biden beat Trump in the pivotal state of Arizona and then went on to win the 2020 election, while leading hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were not just examining Trump’s claims but were amplifying them on air.
“In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis – at least journalistically,” Bill Sammon, a senior news editor who was leading the decisions desk at the time, texted to a co-worker, court motions showed.
Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News Networks for $1.6bn, accusing the channel of boosting false claims that their voting machines were used to rig the presidential election against Trump.
Updated
Fox News in 'existential crisis' over pushing of Trump's bogus claims
Good morning, US politics live blog readers, there’s a lively day in store in Washington and the overnight deluge of new revelations in the $1.6bn lawsuit against Fox, Rupert Murdoch’s rightwing US cable news channel, over its backing of Donald Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud continues to wash over America.
Here’s what’s happening:
More revelations and reverberations as details continue to surface from the massive civil case by voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News Networks for boosting Trump’s lie that he had won the 2020 presidential election, not Democrat Joe Biden.
Evidence emerging as part of Dominion’s motion in court for summary judgment of its $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox show that figures at every level of the company knew Trump’s claims were false and there ensued a war between the news side of Fox, which declared Biden’s victory, and the opinion side, which one executive called an “existential crisis” at the cable channel.
Anger continues, meanwhile, over Fox star host Tucker Carlson. He’s revealed as part of the above case to “passionately hate” Trump, but now he’s once again aired selective footage from the January 6, 2021, insurrection, supplied to him by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, purporting to show them milling around the US Capitol not violently trying to overturn the election result.
On Capitol Hill, the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, the CIA director, William Burns, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, and others will testify at a hearing by the Senate intelligence committee on the latest perspective on “world threats” to security.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is due to hold the daily media briefing in the West Wing at 12.30pm ET.
