Tucker Carlson called a lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems a “slimy motherfucker” who “triggered” him in a lengthy deposition last August.
The now fired Fox News host made the comments in new on-set footage published on Wednesday by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog critical of Fox News which has published a string of such videos.
Carlson made the comments on set, wearing the same clothes he did on his 26 August 2022 show, the day he was deposed in the Dominion case, Media Matters said.
“Holy shit, 10 hours,” Carlson says in the video. “That slimy little motherfucker sitting across from me. The amount, it was so unhealthy … the hate that I felt for that guy.”
Carlson adds: “It’s totally bad for you to feel that way. But that guy, he triggered the shit out of me. ‘Where are you now? Where do you live?’ The amount of times I had, ‘First of all, fuck you,’ on my lips was like, it was unbelievable. Suggesting that I was – that I was cheating on my taxes?”
A Dominion spokesperson declined to comment.
Last month, Fox News and the voting machines company reached a $787.5m settlement of a closely watched defamation lawsuit, brought over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Text messages from Carlson in which he criticized the network, discussed his hatred for Trump and used abusive terms to describe Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s allies, were made public as part of the case.
Carlson’s show at Fox was abruptly cancelled last week. The reason remains unclear, with various justifications publicly floated.
One theory is that it was connected to the Dominion settlement – which Dominion and Fox deny. Last week, a Fox spokesperson described the idea as “categorically false”.
In his deposition, Carlson was reportedly asked about his use of word “cunt” to describe Powell in a text.
Asked if it was the only time he had used the word, according to the Daily Beast, he said: “You know I-I-I can’t know and I just want to apologize pre-emptively. I mean you’re trying to embarrass me, you’re definitely succeeding as I am embarrassed.”
The Beast said the exchange was a factor in Carlson’s termination.
Late on Tuesday, the New York Times published a text message, sealed by the court, that the paper said alarmed the Fox board on the eve of the scheduled trial in the Dominion case.
In the message, sent the day after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Carlson described watching a video of “a group of Trump guys … pounding the living shit” out of “an Antifa kid”, or counter-protester.
Carlson added: “Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him.
“I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be.”
