Paul Ryan is responding to a wave of criticism aimed at him and other Fox executives after testimony and other evidence revealed during the course of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against the company showed that top personalities on the network spread Donald Trump’s election lies while trashing them in private.
The former speaker of the US House of Representatives has been vocal in his disdain for the former president since leaving office, and called his actions impeachable after the attack on Congress. But now, the lawsuit against his company has shown that Mr Ryan himself profited from the company that employed opinion hosts who, in 2020, were active in questioning or flat-out dismissing the veracity of the election results on-air while privately admitting that the Trump team had no case.
The most recent revelations have included texts from Tucker Carlson to his fellow Fox primetime host Laura Ingraham in which Mr Carlson directly accuses Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell of lying, while Ms Ingraham derides both Ms Powell and her colleague Rudy Giuliani as “nuts”.
Mr Ryan defended his role at the company in an interview with The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes, who panned the company as nothing more than a pipeline for “toxic sludge, racism, disinformation, and attacks on democracy”.
The former speaker was asked directly if he has a responsibility to stand up to the kind of misinformation and outright lies that were spread on Fox News before the attack on Congress.
“I do,” Mr Ryan responded. “I have a responsibility to offer my opinion and perspective and I do that, but I don't go on TV and do it, right? So I offer my perspective, my opinion, often. I'll just leave it at that.”
He also dodged a question about whether there was a “red line” that, if Fox hosts crossed on-air, would cause him to leave the company.
“I think it's gonna have to be a part of the solution if we're going to solve the problem in the conservative movement,” he said of Fox News. “Because there isn't a bigger platform than this in America.”
And he singled out Mr Carlson as a host with whom he disagreed on many issues, including, apparently, the denigration of America’s election systems.
“Do I disagree with Tucker on this stuff? Of course, I absolutely disagree with him. Different kinds of conservatives – I don’t agree with that part,” he said.
Mr Ryan joined Fox Corp’s board in 2019, shortly after leaving the US House with the 2018 takeover of the chamber by his Democratic rivals. The Fox News channel’s role in echoing Donald Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election are now the subject of a massive $1.6bn defamation suit against the company; the suit has progressed for months despite Fox’s protests that it is an assault against the First Amendment.
The former speaker, as a prominent former public servant, has faced more scrutiny and pressure to stand up and demand changes at the network than most members of the Fox Corp board and this week was denounced by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the renowed founder of the Executive Leadership Institute.
"By silently going along with misconduct about which they are aware, all directors, including Paul Ryan, are guilty of complicity through their complacency,” the Yale professor and associate dean told CNN.
