John Oliver returned for his 10th season of “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday, and to kick things off, he honed in on an old target: Fox News. Specifically, Oliver noted that the bombshell texts revealed by Dominion Voting Systems really should make Fox News viewers feel “betrayed.”
In a new court filing on Thursday, Dominion Voting provided texts, emails and other forms of communication between Fox News hosts from after the 2020 election, in which they called out some of the network’s guests for perpetuating unsupported claims that voting was electronically rigged against twice-impeached former president Donald Trump.
Among the messages were ones that said things like “Sidney Powell is lying,” sent from Tucker Carlson to his producer Alex Pfeiffer on Nov. 16, less than two weeks after the election, and “Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Sorry but she is,” sent from Laura Ingraham to Carlson and Sean Hannity the day before.
“Wow, if I were a Fox Viewer, I’d feel pretty betrayed by that,” Oliver said. “This is like finding out that Big Bird regularly texts Elmo ‘F— them kids’ and Elmo agrees!”
Oliver admitted that, in some circumstances, touting things you don’t believe on live television wouldn’t be a huge offense — but that this is not one of those circumstances.
“This finding shows the degree to which Fox hosts did not believe the s— that they were selling, which is completely fine, if you work for QVC and you have to fill an hour on why a bejeweled squatty potty will change your life,” Oliver mocked. “But it’s a bit more concerning when you pretend to be the news.”
In response to Dominion’s reveals, Fox filed an amended counterclaim on Thursday, and a Fox spokesperson said that Dominion “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context” for their original filing.
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” Fox News said in a statement. “But the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”
