Tucker Carlson warned Bret Baier of ‘very bad’ Fox News fallout as more leaks drip out, Gutfeld jumps in

The full-throttled attempt by the mainstream media to smear Tucker Carlson’s reputation in the wake of his shocking dismissal from Fox News has been nothing short of comical, as the steady leaks of off-air moments and private text messages continue to have the opposite effect his detractors are clearly desperate to accomplish.

The latest release, a series of election-related texts between Carlson and Fox News anchor Bret Baier obtained by The Daily Beast, reveals that Carlson was extremely concerned about the network’s questionable decision to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden.

November 3, 2020, was election night, and the race in Arizona was about as tight as one could get. Fox News, along with the Associated Press, called it early for Biden, sparking outrage from Fox News viewers. It was so close that the AP backed off the call, temporarily throwing the state back into the too-close-to-call column, but Fox News held fast. Ultimately it was decided that Biden won The Grand Canyon state by just a 0.3% margin.

Two days later, on Nov. 5, the nation was still waiting to hear who would be named President of the United States, and Carlson knew the Fox News audience would revolt against the network for its role in what many saw as a “rigged” election and a betrayal of President Donald Trump.

“I continue to think the company isn’t taking the [sic] seriously enough,” an astute Carlson told Baier in a text. “We need to do something to reassure our core audience. They’re our whole business model.”

“Is there some way I could help?” Carlson asked his colleague. “Obviously I’d never do anything without full approval from the top.”

Carlson noted a Twitter post from Semafor co-founder Ben Smith, who detailed the corner into which Fox had painted itself.

“So Fox has a very tricky decision to make: Call NV and the election, based on that early AZ call, and escalate war with Trump; or wait for someone else to call based on PA and follow that. (It’s all an artifact of TV’s bizarrely oversized role here ofc.),” Smith had tweeted.

“Do we have a plan for this?” Carlson asked Baier. “We could lose our audience.”

“We have been pushing for answers,” Baier replied. “I have pressed them to slow. And I think they will slow walk Nevada. The votes don’t come in until tomorrow.”

“Please let me know if they don’t seem to be obeying,” Carlson responded, suggesting he, too, would add some pressure, presumably to ensure they got it right. “We could really f**k up a lot of what we’ve built.”

“I totally agree,” Baier replied.

Carlson was so intent on giving his audience all the facts, he even proposed doing an interview with the person in charge of the Decision Desk.

Reports The Daily Beast:

Elsewhere in the exchange, Carlson floated the idea of interviewing Decision Desk director Arnon Mishkin—who made the decision to call Arizona for Biden on election night and faced intense backlash—on his own program. “But maybe you come on to walk us through it? Viewers trust you. Or maybe he interview Mishkin? I’m open. But again I want to help. Let me know,” Carlson wrote.

“Arnon would be good. For YOU to grill him,” Baier wrote. “But I have had him on a bunch. I am happy to do it. But may say I wouldn’t have made the call when we did. But we did.” (Carlson ultimately did not get the opportunity to grill Mishkin on his primetime show.)

 

Carlson stressed that “the last thing I want to do is make it worse, or even get involved,” but he urged his fellow Fox News colleagues to “see if there’s any way I could help calm viewers down.”

Seeing the writing on the wall, he accurately noted, “When Trump loses, he’s going to blame us. That’s going to be very bad.”

This exchange — one which shows only Carlson’s genuine understanding of his audience and attempts at transparency — is now being framed by the mainstream media as a hit piece, and like all the recent hit pieces against the controversial former Fox News host, it’s backfiring bigly.

“Tucker was correct,” wrote one user on Twitter. “I tolerated Faux Fake News up until they proved incontrovertibly that they were co-conspirators in the Great Election Coup of 2020. Falsely calling Arizona was more than enough proof that Faux News completely surrendered to the Communists.”

“It was called way too early. That tainted Fox News forever,” stated another. “Tucker was the only reason I could even stomach it.”

“Oh wow,” wrote a third, “he was thinking the same thing everyone was thinking.”

Meanwhile, popular Fox News host Greg Gutfeld is openly standing up for Carlson against Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz, who continues in true tattle-tale fashion to release off-air clips of Carlson joking around with his set crew, thanking them for their help and addressing them by name.

“Imagine having to tell your parents that your job is narcing on the casual comments of other people while they, happily unaware, make a living,” Gutfeld tweeted. “Your parents would be so embarrassed and ashamed they’d rather tell their friends you died in a fire.”

Melissa Fine

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