Fox News host Tucker Carlson desperately tried to walk back disparaging comments he made in private about Donald Trump that were revealed in court filings from Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year.
The voting machines company filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox Corp, alleging the media company defamed them by knowingly spreading lies about the 2020 election.
Included in court filings were text messages from Carlson saying he hates Trump “passionately” and “can’t wait to ignore him”. He also called the former president a “demonic force.”
However, during an interview with conservative radio host Bo Snerdley’s show on Monday, Carlson claims he adores Trump.
“I spent four years defending his policies and I’m going to defend them again tonight,” Carlson said in a clip posted by Media Matters. “And actually, and I’m pretty straight forward, 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, you know, all wounded about those texts.”
“Those particular texts were pulled at exactly the moment where I was texting with one of my producers because some idiot on the Trump campaign had sent us the name of these dead voters who had voted. And we went and I repeated them on air, and it turns out some of them were alive. So, I felt humiliated,” Carlson said.
The Fox News host added that his texts “were all grabbed completely illegitimately,” and he’s “enraged.”
Trump appears to have move past the text messages, writing in a post on his Truth Social app: “He doesn’t hate me, or at least, not anymore!” referring to Carlson.
[Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
