After it was reported that former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson criticized his erstwhile colleague, anchor Chris Wallace, for not going along with former President Donald Trump's election lies after the 2020 election, Wallace had a pointed response.
Speaking to MSNBC host Ari Melber, Wallace, who now works for CNN, remarked on a leaked private message in which Carlson accused Wallace of failing Fox's audience by refusing to spread disinformation about the election results, which showed President Joe Biden won decisively.
Carlson no longer works for Fox and now hosts a show on X that recently featured the social media platform's owner, Elon Musk, joking about why no one has tried to assassinate Vice President Kamala Harris.
Carlson's departure from the network came mere days after Fox paid over $787 million to settle a case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which argued Fox News and its top hosts spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged despite being aware the claims were false.
Carlson was perhaps Fox News' biggest conspiratorial mouthpiece and text messages he'd sent to other Fox personalities—which featured heavily in Dominion's lawsuit—showed he was acutely aware of the damage he was doing but continued to lie anyway.
And Wallace had this to say:
“Well, I’m employed and Tucker really isn’t anymore."
"I had a very good nearly 18-year run at Fox and they never messed with me the whole time. As you can see from some of those reports, I asked tough questions, I booked the toughest guests, and I never got second-guessed by the executive floor at Fox."
"I sensed a change in Fox as time went on, particularly after the 2020 election, particularly after we were the first to call Arizona on Election Night and the Trump campaign was very upset with us and a lot of Trump supporters were very upset with us ... there was less interest, even on the news side, in sticking to the facts, sticking to the truth and trying to win that audience back, telling them what they wanted to hear."
"And they paid a big price for it. I'm not unhappy that Fox had to pay $787 million because there ought to be a price to pay when you don't tell the truth and you deliberately misinform people that the evidence in that case showed wasn't true."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Many appreciated his clap back.
Wallace also spoke about his experience with Fox earlier this week in remarks to Mediaite.
He said he has "no problem with conservative opinion any more than I do with liberal opinion" but that he does "have a problem with is conspiracy, lies." Wallace described the truth as "non-negotiable" and "not something that you can sit there and shade or in any way play with."
He also addressed the Dominion settlement, saying that Fox broke "our almost sacred charter, which is to inform people, not to misinform people" and that he was "happy to see that cost was being exacted.”
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