Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin Tells CNN Dominion’s Bombshell Brief Shows ‘Pervasive Fear’ of Trump at Fox News

Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin appeared on CNN Newsroom Sunday to discuss the latest revelations in the litigation between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News with anchor Jim Acosta and CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy.

Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, alleging that the cable news network had promoted former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, despite knowing that these conspiracy theories were not based in fact.

This “bombshell lawsuit is exposing what some of the biggest names over at Fox really felt about Donald Trump, even as they pushed his claims of election fraud,” said Acosta to kick off the segment. “A court filing claims that anyone who veered from the narrative faced sharp pushback.”

This court filing by Dominion included a trove of emails and text messages exchanged among Fox News executives and on-air personalities, expressing dismay over the “crazy” election misinformation, fretting over their audience’s furious reaction to the network calling Arizona for Joe Biden, and fearing losing viewers to competitors on the right like Newsmax and OAN. One particularly notable revelation was that top-rated Fox News host Tucker Carlson aggressively called for his colleague, White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, to be fired after she tweeted a fact-check of one of Trump’s election lies.

Fox News has denied the claims in Dominion’s lawsuit, characterized the demand for $1.6 billion in damages as unreasonable, and issued a statement defending the network’s actions as constitutionally protected free speech.

Darcy noted that to win their lawsuit, Dominion would have to “prove that Fox disregarded the truth,” but said there was “a mountain of evidence that might suggest or show that Fox executives and their hosts — their top level talent people like Tucker Carlton, Sean Hannity — that they knew behind the scenes that what they were selling, what the network was selling to the audience was bogus.”

“But the truth never made it to the Fox viewers, which is really the sad part here,” Darcy added, calling it “just really quite reprehensible” how Carlson was continuing to cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election “as recently as this week.”

Turning to McLaughlin, Acosta noted that Mediaite “looks at what the media business does writ large,” and asked for his analysis as to how Fox was “putting dollars over democracy” and “putting ratings over the republic.”

McLaughlin highlighted the “crucial” moment where Fox News was the first network to call Arizona for Biden, which “enraged Trump, his supporters, and campaign, and that outrage trickled down to Fox News’ viewers,” creating a “pervasive fear” at Fox “that viewers would flee to Trumpier pastures like OAN and Newsmax that were embracing these lies more aggressively.”

Acosta recalled that he had been covering the White House at the time of the election, and the ratings were showing that people were “migrating over to Newsmax and other outlets because they were going to give them what they wanted.”

Acosta asked McLaughlin about what it would mean if Dominion is successful with their lawsuit, what that would do to a “titan of the media industry” like Fox?

The U.S. has “really strong First Amendment protections,” McLaughlin replied, “and that’s a great thing.” Dominion would have to prove Fox acted with a reckless disregard for the truth in order to win their defamation claim, essentially proving that Fox knew the claims they were putting on air were not true.

This remains “a steep hill for Dominion to climb,” he continued, noting there were many legal experts who were saying the company “really has a strong case against Fox,” so the lawsuit “could have serious consequences” for the network.

“Usually, a network would not allow a case like this to go to trial,” McLaughlin said, but the whopping $1.6 billion Dominion was demanding undoubtedly played a part in Fox’s refusal to settle.

“When you talk to legal experts, they don’t think the $1.6 billion number is reasonable,” he said, “but this could really hurt Fox News,” despite the “lucrative” network’s $1 billion annual profits.

Watch above via CNN.