Ex-Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson weighed in on Fox Corporation’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems during an appearance on CNN with host Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, arguing that the conclusion of the $1.6 billion legal fight won’t result in meaningful change at Fox News.
“I don’t think this will change the way Fox does news, and therefore I don’t think it will change the way viewers view them,” she told Cooper.
Carlson, who reached her own $20 million settlement after suing then-Fox CEO and chairman Roger Ailes for sexual harassment, said she was surprised that the case with Dominion went on for as long as it did.
“I’m not a lawyer. I didn’t take the LSATs. But I feel like I’m sort of a half lawyer after everything I’ve been through, and the one thing you learn is that you should never put your CEOs or C-suite executives under deposition unless you’re pretty sure that you have a solid case,” she said. “So I was really surprised that they allowed all of that information and mistruths to be able to go public.”
Carlson emphasized that Fox ultimately decided to settle the case because they “saw the writing on the wall.”
“The judge had several rulings during hearings that were not in their favor, and it could’ve also been the makeup of the jury. Remember, the jury was seated and maybe they didn’t like what they saw,” she explained. “Also, I think that they obviously did not want their top hosts to be coming in and be media fodder for five or six weeks under oath. It would be an interesting place. I’m sure media coverage would have been massive and I’m sure all media outlets would have liked to have seen that. But that would have been one of the first times that those particular hosts would have to be under oath and actually telling the truth.”
However, she admitted that she was “vicariously living” through Dominion and “hoping that they would be able to get to the truth.” On Sunday, Carlson tweeted “PLEASE Dominion — Do not settle with Fox! You’re about to prove something very big.”
When asked if Fox should’ve apologized for lying during the 2020 election, Carlson said that she doesn’t think it would have mattered.
“Even if they had to go on set and give a 20-second apology, in the era that we live in now of fake news and believing only what you want to believe, I assume the majority of those viewers wouldn’t believe the apology anyway,” she said.
When asked if she was surprised by the text exchanges between hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, Carlson replied “no.”
“Look, I think that even Rupert Murdoch said that it was all about making sure that they were in the green and keeping things making money for them,” she said. “I think it’s a travesty. I think it’s a threat to American democracy to promote that kind of misinformation.”
She noted that there’s a “huge difference between espousing conservative viewpoints and having an intellectual conversation between conservatives and liberals.”
“There’s a huge difference between that and telling lies to the American public and that’s where we now have come in the evolution of Fox News, at least with regard to the 2020 election and January 6,” she added.
When asked if she believes the 2024 election will have the same lies about the 2020 election told over again, Carlson admitted it “depends on who the candidate is.”
“I have no way of predicting that,” she said. “But I would love to be able to reach out to all of those Fox News viewers and hope that somehow we could get them back into the reality of what’s really going on. But I think we’re so far gone in this fake news era that I’m not necessarily hopeful about that.”
Watch the full interview in the video above.
