To be clear, I definitely believe he’s a fascist. That part’s not an act. But I believe his support of all these people he has said in secret are liars and scammers is an act. That support is the act, because it forwards his fascism. Not that he , entirely, is an act.
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Me in anticipation of the circle of recrimination likely to occur next :
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Exactly.
And he has zero concern for his credibility outside of his audience. His real concern is the sloppier D list grifters like Pillow and Rudy are not on his same level of (relative) prestige and here I kind of agree. Why is anyone listening to an ex drug addict turned pillow manufacturer about voting machine integrity?
I also love the idea about Pillows being Tucker’s mirror… how can tucker distrust Pillows without also hating himself?
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Doesn’t matter if it’s “an act” or not, nor does it matter what percentage is ‘true’; the immense damage done is still the same.
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Indeed, something something ironically fascist something something sheep fuckers something.
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These uncovered texts are amazing. All the back-stabbing that happened, all the admissions that they think everyone on their shows (both guests and hosts) are “nuts,” all the panic as the liars at Fox started getting left in the dust by the ever-more insane lies of their allies and media competitors. The self-destruction involved… (firing Jeanine Pirro because they’re convinced she’s going to go over to another right-wing media outlet and burn them all by repeating election conspiracies on the way out, but also firing someone for not repeating election lies). This whole trial is going to be so much fun - Fox are so screwed.
Yeah, that’s really something, isn’t it? The premise that Tucker Carlson (and Fox) have any credibility. The fact that Tucker Carlson is upset about someone else’s conspiracy theories, seeing them as undermining the credibility of his own baseless, racist conspiracy theories. The fact that he thinks these other people are somehow responsible for destroying his credibility despite the fact that’s only true because he’s actively allied himself with them. And then follow all that up with Tucker inviting people on his show to repeat the nonsense that he himself thinks is credibility destroying, thereby making him completely responsible for the ruination of his own credibility.
I think he pretends to be dumb, but is also actually dumb (but not as much as he pretends. Maybe).
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Hey now… don’t forget about how badly he kissed Hunter Biden’s ass to try to get his kid into a good school too 
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Obligs:
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Whether they had objective credibility or not, it’s clear that when they felt it was at risk, they chose to double/triple/infinity-down on pushing lies rather than expose reality to their audience. That audience would have revolted, and that’s a rational fear. They’re stuck and they did it to themselves. They paved the way to hell, trying to avoid consequences at every step.
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful of what we pretend to be.
— Kurt Vonnegut
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His affection for, and agreement with, the worst clowns in the clown car might be an act, but his support for them is his public performance
There is no difference between the act of support and the fact of support
Whatever he believes secretly inside his own head, he’s still sitting in the same clown car with the rest of them and wearing the same clown suit 
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Lots of predictions here that these private messages going public means Fox is fucked, but no explanations of how or why.
I mean, I may be missing something and I’d dearly love that outcome, but didn’t the network wriggle out of some other lawsuit by claiming it’s not a real news network, but rather an outlet for satire?
And it doesn’t seem like much of a threat to ratings either. It’s not like many of those who watch and swear by Fox News will even hear about these private messages, let alone be fazed by them.
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I hear ya. I do think that this case is different. With previous cases, they were defending Tucker for stupid shit he said on his show, since it is an opinion show for entertainment. The election denialism, and the specific attack on Dominion, was a full-court press from top to bottom and side to side at Fox. I don’t think they can wriggle out of that no matter how much slime they excrete.
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Thanks, that is hope inspiring.
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It’s at least tangentially related to the “Boris” Johnson approach: pretending to be (i.e. being) a buffoon to distract from the fact that you are actually an idiot. (And unrelated to the “George W Bush phenomenon” where everyone is so distracted by one’s malapropisms and general word salad that they fail to notice just how fundamentally stupid the ideas trying to be conveyed also are.)
In this case they were admitting, internally, that the stories they were telling about Dominion voting machines were false and the people telling them were not remotely credible, but still presented the lies (and allowed those others to present them) as true. Which seems like the heart of the whole lawsuit…
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I’m often too optimistic about these things. But not always wrong. 
Also, I forgot to post a hagfish slime gif to go with the metaphor!
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See, that’s the bit that worries me a bit. That’s how satire generally works-- you present something outlandish as true, while those in the know know you’re joking. (Not that pretty much any Fox fan does think they’re joking.)
The disingenuous “I was just JOKING!” defense has become too common from the far-right to allow me to feel certain it won’t work again in this case.
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Some of the details from the Tucker/Fox “no one believes Tucker is telling the truth” successful defense.
And unfortunately it didn’t lose them a single viewer.
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Can I just say that the picture for this article is [chef’s kiss] magnifique!
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That works in online debates and many forums, but it doesn’t tend to work when dealing with acts of malice perpetrated by a company in a defamation suit in a court of law. The fact that this hasn’t been quietly settled out of court with a large transfer of cash despite Fox I imagine trying to do just that means we’re going to likely get to see it all. Dominion’s out for blood, and if this very early set of releases from discovery are anything like the rest of it, they’re going to get their blood.
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