The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter 01:03:18

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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on! It's on!

Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naeema Raza. And today, Kara, we're celebrating your uncle's retirement.

Rupert Murdoch. Oh, Uncle Satan. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uncle Satan's, you're right. He's retired. He ain't going too far. He stepped down on Wednesday. He promised to stay a regular presence in the halls. Very Logan Roy of him. He's not going anywhere. Season four Logan Roy, unfortunately. I'm going to take him out feet first, that old crocodile. He gave a farewell speech on Wednesday. That was kind of part love letter to his heir apparent, Lachlan, and then a

Part screed on modern media. He called out the, quote, intolerant elite, who he says, quote, regard differing opinions as anathema. Kara, as a member of this intolerant elite, what say you? He typed this as he's on his private plane with cashmere throws on the way to Abu Dhabi. Give me a break. This guy is the most elite of the elite. Rich people telling us how they're a man of the people is one of my more exhausting tropes of late.

Marc Andreessen does it. Well, there are many books to see Uncle Rupert off into the sunset. Not the sunset, really, but the sunset of Abu Dhabi, I guess. One is by Michael Wolff that came out in September. It was called The Fall, End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty. And a new one by Brian Stelter, our guest today, it's called Network of Lies. Mm-hmm.

Brian is best known, of course, as the face of CNN's reliable sources until he was ousted from that job in August of 2022. He was one of the kind of dominoes that fell at the network after Chris Cuomo got fired and CEO Jeff Zucker resigned.

But that's where Stelter came from. You obviously have known him for a long time. Yeah, I knew him when he did a blog. I knew him when he did a blog, a media blog. But, you know, he's a very talented media reporter. He's good at scoopiness. He's a very scoopy person. And, you know, he got fired by Chris Lick, which I think is a compliment now. But, you know, he's been a very dogged reporter on Fox News and

morning shows and things like that. And his first book was quite good. Yeah. Brian's second book was called Hoax, and that was the first Fox News book. This is kind of an unexpected sequel of sorts, I guess. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of material now in this case they lost, and they're going to lose the next one, and they're going to lose the next one. A Smartmatic one that's coming up. Shareholder lawsuits, all of them. They're going to lose every single one of them, and they're going to pay up. The book is, it really zooms in on the fallout of Fox.

It starts with the cherry on the top, Tucker's fateful ouster in April. And then it rewinds back to the election 2020, the coverage there. And then, of course, ends with this Dominion lawsuit, which Fox ends up settling for almost a billion dollars, for over $700 million.

A lot of it is a bit more packaging of information that was already out in the ether, like making sense or crystallizing. What did you take away from it? What did you find revelatory? A lot of it. I think just putting it together is really important. Obviously, you had little scoops about the details. There's a lot of books like this. You sort of put it together and you get an idea of what happened here. I think it's important to come to some conclusions about how, for example, Tucker was fired from

what the real reasons were versus what he's putting out. 'Cause Tucker is every time, you know, there's an expression, how do I know you're lying? Your mouth is moving. I think, you know, I think it's good to put clarification and get points of view on what happened. And that's good. It's very helpful. And it's a very fast read in that regard. And so I liked it. I liked that. I liked those kinds of books. Does that expression apply to your uncle too? Oh, uncle Rupert, no. Or no, is he more honest?

You know, he is in a weird way. He's not an out-and-out liar. He just sits there and says nothing and wields power. For me, the most revelatory parts of the book were actually less about Fox and more about Dominion in some way. Their strategy, which is kind of a B story in this, but how strategic they were about what they went after, who they deposed, and how much Viet Dinh and the legal team at Fox News seemed to really underestimate Dominion.

the case against them and overestimate their First Amendment protections. I thought that was insightful. Yeah, well, they just were terrible. There were so many emails. There was emails and proof and what they had done. They knew it was wrong. I know a lot of First Amendment people are like, we must defend them. I'm like, no, we mustn't. And it wasn't by accident. I believe in accidents. I thought when the New York Times got in trouble around Sarah Palin, it was an accident. It was a mistake.

And they corrected it. That's very different from what happened at Fox News. Part of what happened here, which didn't happen in the Sarah Palin case, is the level of people being deposed and the contents of their inboxes and text messages and the insidiousness and the hatred of one another and the racism, the stuff that we saw at Fox News, which it was crazy. And Brian's book certainly does that. Yeah. It's good for someone to put together this whole situation at Fox, which was...

Reprehensible how they pushed election lies for ratings, essentially. We should note the actual interview was taped live on Tuesday, the 14th of November at the 92nd Street. Why? That organization has been dealing with its own controversy of late. Yeah, of course, around Israel and Hamas and the speakers that they canceled. And, you know, it was quiet. There wasn't any protest. It was relatively quiet. It was.

They canceled a reading by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen because he had signed an open letter that called for a ceasefire in Gaza, which

led to an off-site event, staff resignations, some protesting, the 92nd Street Y, of course, being a Jewish organization, but also a cultural hub and a place for expression. Curious what you thought. Did you think twice about going there? You know, I was contacted by a reporter about this, and I feel like this has happened everywhere, and I don't—people make their own decisions and live their own consequences. I thought it was—

It was their decision to do. And as a Jewish organization, I can see it. At the same time, people should be able to speak. But this is going to, it reverberates everywhere. So obviously I went. So obviously I thought it was fine. I think that not a good look for a place that bills itself as a place for expression of ideas. But let's take a quick break and we'll be back at the 92nd Street Y with Brian Stelter.

We're going to start talking about your book, Rupert Murdoch, someone I love to talk about because he's really the nicest man I know. So Michael Wolff's book, I know you called him your arch enemy, is that correct? Sounds right. Sounds right. Okay. I won't deny it. It came out a few months ago and you wrote that his pen was, which I thought the New York Times paid attention to, oft full of poison. Yes, very poisonous. Yes, oft is what caught me. What is your pen full of?

Oh, I don't use pens. It's all keyboards. I think you were using a metaphor. But I think I am much more optimistic as a person. I think I am not nearly as ugly as a person as Wolf. Listen, Wolf and I have a history. He's definitely my nemesis. Or is it nemenon? I don't know what the word would be. Nemesis. He comes out with a book about Fox about six, seven weeks ago. And to me, the thesis was wrong.

I think he was producing liberal wish fulfillment. He was saying, this is the end of Fox News. Fox News is dying. And I know maybe some readers want to believe that, but I just don't think it's true. So what is your pen full of? Accuracy? What? Let's say accuracy. Let's say accuracy. So you're trying to depict what's happening to this very important television institution. But I do love that Wolf exists. We need lots and kinds of media critics. We need

wolf types as well. You know, the history between us is that very early in the Trump administration, three weeks in, he came on Reliable Sources and beat the you-know-what out of me. You're the problem. The media is out to get Trump. He did this whole shtick against me on live TV. And I know why he did it. Because Donald Trump was watching. And the next day, Trump called him up for half an hour and said, come over to the White House. And that's how fire and fury happened.

No joke. That's how Wolf gained that access to the White House. So I feel like he's always had a schtick in that way. But look, I think there was one important thing about his book that I have rebutted very clearly in this book, in Network of Lies. It is that Tucker Carlson was not fired because of Dominion. It wasn't a condition of the Dominion settlement. Mm-hmm.

I feel like Wolf just took dictation from Tucker about that. And I think what I've done is done a much more thoroughly reported version. So, yeah, the pen's full of reporting. Reporting. All right. So let's get to the book, which is essentially a play-by-play of the Dominion voting case at Fox News in an attempt to understand why Fox fired the most prominent host, who you referred to, Tucker Carlson. Yeah. Let's start with Tucker's firing.

Talk about your theories of what happened based on your reporting. My theories of what happened is that everything happened. This wasn't about one thing. It was everything.

I've never had a breakup quite this bad, but it's like any really bad breakup. By the time the person's actually dumped, the other person has 20 reasons why they're doing it. I think with Tucker, it was his behavior, it was his repelling advertisers, it was his conspiracy theorizing on the air, his indulgence of lies, there were all of these reasons. I do think Dominion was important in one way though. Dominion forced the Fox executives to look square in the face at who Tucker was.

They were looking at his emails, looking at his texts that Dominion had dredged up, his text messages calling a female executive the C word, his messages saying this is not how white men fight. And there's other messages that will remain redacted forever. I don't know what they say. But the Fox board knows. The Fox board looked. And within a few days, they decided, Lachlan Murdock decided to cancel him. So to me, the story is so much more interesting than Dominion wanted me fired, which is what Tucker says.

Why then? Why at the moment it did? Because this has been going on for years and years. Totally, totally. And, you know, it should have, you know, if you believe, as I do, that he's been a force, you know, he's been a dangerous force in the country, should have happened after Patriot Purge, his false flag lies about January 6th. But I think it happened right after the Dominion settlement because Lachlan Murdoch is looking around, sizing up what his company is going to be, and...

Some people aren't going to buy this. I'm not sure if I'd buy it. But I think Lachlan Murdoch wanted to make his network a little bit less fringy, a little bit less radical, a little bit less far right. I think he wanted to drag it a little bit more toward the center. I know there's nothing as a center, but Lachlan Murdoch calls Fox News center right. But you can't really plausibly say that when Tucker Carlson's the face of the network. So I think Lachlan Murdoch decided enough was enough.

And he had more than enough reasons to do it. Again, why then? Because it felt like it was linked to the settlement or that Tucker Carlson himself was leaving and they wanted to fire him before he could leave. He definitely wasn't leaving because, you know, he wrote an email to his staff a few minutes after he was told the show was over. I print that email for the first time in the book. He's in shock. He says he doesn't know what's happening. He doesn't know what's going to happen to the staffers. And then a minute later, his email is turned off.

That moment, I think for him, was one of the worst moments of his life. He wasn't allowed to sign off on the air the way that I was allowed to sign off at CNN. Yeah, the world's tiniest violin is playing right now.

But I think it is all related. Couldn't get one more shot in as a brown person. Right, one more time calling me a eunuch on live TV. I do think ultimately Lachlan Murdoch, you know, again, I think there's a lot of criticism of how he's been running Fox Corporation, but he's looking around and saying this is the moment in April of 2023 after having paid this historically large settlement amount to make real change. And I would argue Fox News has lowered the temperature a little bit.

Okay. Still a lot hotter than it should be, but without Tucker, it's lowered a little bit. I would not agree with you, but let's go on. We'll go on to that in a second. This is not the first time Fox lost its star host. Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, they were all huge stars, disposable to this network over time. Was this departure different or was it not?

This departure was much more of a shockwave. Much more of an earthquake and had much more of a shockwave. I don't know if I'm mixing my metaphors. That's my pen. But I think that the impacts were so much larger. Bill O'Reilly, when he was ousted, the ratings decline was not nearly as dramatic. Megyn Kelly, when she went to NBC, the ratings collapse was not nearly as dramatic.

Tucker Carlson really did cause this shockwave for Fox's ratings. Newsmax took full advantage. Others took full advantage. But the untold story, the underappreciated story, is that the Fox audience mostly came back. So it was different because of the magnitude of the shock.

But ultimately, it once again proved that Fox is bigger than any of its stars. Let me delve a little bit more into Tucker and what made him popular and made him the most popular show on that network, correct? By far. The only months where he lost, he was losing to The Five, which is that 5 p.m. talk show. And when that would happen, his staff would freak out. I say in the book there were periods where the order would come down, we need more animal segments, we need more funny segments at the end of the show. They were doing whatever they could do to beat The Five. But otherwise, it was always Tucker, number one.

So talk about how he got there, because some people think he's an opportunist. Some people think he's just a stone-cold bigot. You quote Bret Stephens comparing Tucker to Father Coughlin. He says, at least Coughlin was an honest-to-goodness fascist, a sincere bigot, whereas Carlson only plays one on TV. LAUGHTER

I think Tucker was playing one on TV, but he talked himself into believing a lot of what he says. And, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not in his brain. I don't want to be in his brain. I don't know. But I think he has truly radicalized himself. He has become what the Republican base is. I think he isolated himself. I think he became unglued in the Trump era.

He was living in Washington at the start of the Trump years, brand new prime time star. People seemed to like him. The hot new thing. Yes. And I back then still recognized him. I still recognized the guy that I had known for almost 20 years. I still recognized him on TV. But there were a couple of incidents that I think really reshaped him. One I write about in detail about the day there were protesters outside his home in Washington. Definitely scary. I don't want to minimize that. Scared his wife. The police got involved.

But he also seems to have exaggerated what happened. And of course, when I wrote about that, he freaked out. When I wrote about that for CNN, he freaked out. After that protest, that was one of the reasons why he left DC. And what's the impact of that? It means he's not at work with his staff. He's not with his producers in person. He's not on set with guests as often. He's doing his show from two compounds, one in Maine, one in Florida. And I think that sense of being on an island is a very real explanation of what happened.

So Maine radicalized him. I'm saying Washington. I'm saying D.C. I'm saying the protests. I'm saying, but I think it's actually more of his information diet. I think it's more about what he's reading and hearing, the stuff that's being forwarded to him. Remember, his head writer was caught posting homophobic, racist, sexist comments over a period of years. Yeah, which came as a shock to all of us.

I know you're going to say that, but we shouldn't expect this. We shouldn't tolerate it. We should have a higher standard for these shows. And of course, CNN's Oliver Darcy, my former colleague, caught that, reported on it. The guy left. Tucker Carlson went on the air, and he sounded more upset about the guy getting fired than about the racist posts. I think him moving off to these compounds is a metaphor for him moving away from the reality and the diversity of the real world.

In the book, you describe Newt Gingrich's claim on Fox that thieves in big cities stole the election. You called it a merry dog whistle for racists in a viewing audience. Tom Ruholstrom was the face of that at Fox News at the time, although initially he wasn't, but then he shifted to it, correct? I think that's true, and I think we can look at...

unfortunately, two massacres as two examples of this. El Paso, the Walmart in El Paso, where Tucker Carlson is the one who's been on television talking about the great replacement theory that whites are being replaced. And then you have a gunman saying many of the same things. Now that manifesto did not mention Tucker, did not mention Foxx.

But it came from the same world. And then again in Buffalo a few years later. One of the differences with Buffalo at the top supermarket is that Democrats like Chuck Schumer speak out. There becomes a more forceful response to this right-wing rhetoric that's pushed not just by Tucker, by an entire network of lies, but Tucker's the leading. He's the face of it.

I think when we look at those episodes, those massacres, and we see that there are people who are consuming this content, maybe not directly Tucker's. Again, I want to be clear. It's not as if we know he's a Tucker junkie.

But he's living in an environment where these ideas are becoming mainstream and then they act on them. So was he the face of that or do you blame Fox News for that, for allowing it to go on? Because a lot of times it's easy to pin it on this guy, right? But they let it go on. They didn't stop it in any way. That gets to the leadership story here. It's a giant leadership lesson or lack of leadership lesson.

Roger Ailes, who was a genius television programmer, but also a sexual predator, Roger Ailes ran Fox from the top down. What he wanted is what happened. And many people were hurt as a result. But there was a clear, forceful, autocratic boss. Ever since he was forced out and then died, there hasn't been that kind of leader at Fox.

It's really much more bottom up now. Every show for itself, every host for him or herself. And so I think in that environment, Harry Carlson was, I don't want to say doing whatever he wanted, but coming pretty darn close to doing whatever he wanted. I mentioned in the book that he was going to Hungary. He went off and did a week of shows in Hungary celebrating that autocrat, Viktor Orban,

He didn't have approval to go, and he went anyway. And that's the kind of dynamic that was happening. So he had no minder. There was nobody making decisions like Suzanne Scott, who was...

You know, Suzanne Scott is the pain sponge. Thank you, Succession, for making this so clear. She is the employee of Rupert Notlin Murdoch who's there to soak up all the pain, to make all the awkward phone calls, to deliver the bad news. But then she also pushes downward as well. So she makes her deputies the pain sponges. And all of a sudden, you've got all these people who are pushing responsibility downward as opposed to having a leader on the top, at the top. At the top, telling them what to do.

How has he done since he left on X or whatever they feel like calling it today? I think he would tell you he's doing wonderfully. I think his friends would tell you that he's getting more viewers on X, but no one should believe that, right? The metrics are BS. Yeah. So what do you think of that move, that idea? I describe him as a diminished figure. I keep thinking of the scene at the end of Sunset Boulevard as just the pictures that got smaller. Yeah.

He seems really small. You know, I don't want to compare my experience with Tucker's because, well, for a lot of reasons. But,

When I got fired by CNN... We'll get to that. Oh, we are? Okay, yeah. I went back to my farm, and I had the best few months of my life. Like, this has been the best phase of my life, having time with my kids, being able to relax, being able to see the world differently. Tucker, what did he do? He raced onto Twitter and started making videos. I don't want to use the word desperate, but he desperately wanted to recreate that fame. And I think that's what he's doing now. He's posting videos a lot more often. He's going on a world tour with far-right figures. He's flirting with Donald Trump at a UFC match.

He very much wants to restore his power and fortune and popularity. I think it's going to be very hard to do that without Fox, but if anyone can try, it's him. Was Jesse Waters the right replacement? Talk about what's happened since. He doesn't have any advertiser boycotts, at least, so that's a plus. How is he doing?

He is doing as well as anybody could replacing Tucker Carlson. He moved from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. He was Bill O'Reilly's sidekick. He was the one Bill O'Reilly would send out to do ambush interviews and ask weird questions in front of unsuspecting strangers. Waters is basically a comic. He's the sidekick, but he's become the main actor and

You know, he was probably the easy choice. That's what Fox News is about now. It's about minimizing headaches and maximizing profits. That's why you choose Jesse Waters. He's not going to get you in as much trouble as Tucker did. He's not going to go as far off the field, although, I mean, Jesse Waters pushes nonsense almost every night. But, you know, he's not going to do false flag conspiracy theories about January 6th as explicitly as Tucker did.

Right. Which is a shame that that's how low the bar is in the basement. Ratings have rebounded? Mostly rebounded. Yeah, 2.5 million plus a night. Tucker was at three, right? Yeah, Tucker was at three on a good night. I think what it speaks to is an addiction on the part of the audience. I don't use words like brainwashing lightly. I don't use the word cult lightly. Lightly.

but those are the appropriate words to use. No, I would agree. My mom has it on all the time. You're a little more willing to use those words. Well, my mom has it on all the time. I'm always like, turn off Fox when I'm trying to talk to her and it's just yammering in the background. And do you think she believes it all or just likes the company? It's companionship on one level and I view that...

Seriously. It's homicidal screaming. I don't know what else to call it. I was there one time when there was a snowstorm, and I literally, by the end of the weekend, was homicidal. Because it was going on. It was going at the end. You could see why. Has she ever come to New York or D.C. or SF with you and seen the real city? She does. Okay. One of the things that grinds my gears about Fox is how they lie about New York. They lie about D.C. Yes. They make it out to be this terrifying hellscape. And I know we got our problems, but...

- Yeah, I send her pictures from San Francisco having beautiful oysters and delicious bread and I go, "Hell-scape, San Francisco." - Yeah, exactly. - Please don't come.

And also you tech people stay out too. It's much nicer since you left. Let's move on to the bigger picture of Fox's political coverage in the Dominion lawsuit. I did a very early interview with its CEO in which he was mulling the lawsuit. And he recounted quite a bit about the personal and corporate damage. Did Fox think this wasn't going to happen?

That they've gotten ignored before and people go away? I think Fox might have become too comfortable getting those threatening legal letters and thus didn't take this one as seriously as they should have.

Because if you go back to November of 2020, if you actually look at the evidence now, the way I've assembled it, it is abundantly clear that Dominion has a winning case within a week of the lie. The first lie, the timing is so interesting because I always thought going into this that it was Trump, that Trump was the one that seeded this storyline. And yeah, yes, the night of the election, Trump came out and said he had won when he hadn't won yet. But by the time he actually lost, Saturday the 7th of November,

Fox needed a new story, Trump needed a new story. And the new story came from a random woman in Minnesota who, by her own account, sees ghosts and talks to the wind, who describes her ideas as wackadoodle, who gets ideas from listening to people in the grocery store checkout line. This random woman sent an email to Sidney Powell, the then Trump-aligned lawyer, with this conspiracy theory about Dominion and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Feinstein, all of these conspiracy theories. Venezuela's in there somewhere. It's all in there. It's all in this email.

that Sidney Powell then forwards to Maria Bartiromo. And this is the beginning of the infection. This is the moment it starts. It wasn't Trump that came up with it. It was Fox. It was Sidney Powell sending it to Maria Bartiromo because Sidney's going to be on the show the next morning. And then Maria sends it to her buddy, Eric Trump. And within minutes, this BS is in the White House. It's in the Trump family. So this all happens Sunday, November 8th.

In the real world, we were doing interviews about Biden's election and what was going to happen next. But in this fantasy world, Maria brings on Sidney Powell. Maria teased her up to smear Dominion. Maria looks down at what appears, I don't know this for sure, but I think she's looking at a piece of paper because she reads almost word for word the Looney Tunes email that she received from the woman in Minnesota. So she's mainstreaming this conspiracy theory to millions of people saying that it's Dominion's fault.

Trump lost the election, maybe, but it was stolen. It was Dominion's fault. Dominion's the villain. Dominion's the thief. That's on November 8th, and by November 12th, Trump starts repeating the name Dominion. So to me, by November 12th, Dominion has a winning case. And the fact that they waited until March to sue, it shows incredible restraint, actually. But as you put it, a $787 million settlement was the cost of doing business. And the audience seems to have moved on in some way. Yeah.

Was this a smart thing for them to do, even if by accident? I think the amount of damage that it's done to Fox, I think the amount of legal exposure that continues to this day means it was not worthwhile. And I think if they had the kinds of checks and balances that other networks have, this wouldn't have happened.

So you're new at CNN. I'm a CNN veteran. At CNN headquarters, there's this thing called triad, standards and practices. There are lawyers. There are editors. There are people who have been around 30 years who can look at an article, who can look at a script, and tell you if it's going to get you in trouble.

and they saved my skin more than once. That's the value of an actual network that has actual editors and layers of approval and vetting. It doesn't mean mistakes aren't made. Everyone's human, but at least it gives you a fighting chance. And what Fox has done, first of all, they don't have that kind of system. Second, what they did have was a brain room. They called it the brain room in the Yale's era, and they have been laying people off from the brain room.

During November of 2020, there were times when Janine Pirro's script would be sent to the brain room. These researchers would say, yeah, this is full of BS. You need to change this. You could send that to my toddler's preschool and figure that out. And that's right. Like a toddler, she just shrugged. She didn't want to make the changes. So there isn't a system at Fox, there wasn't in 2020, and there isn't today... You can't say that. ...for that kind of accountability. Right.

Ultimately, I think that's what went wrong. I haven't seen any signs that they're trying to change that, but paying out the $800 million was a big deal. Didn't the calculus work? They had all those ratings. They had all those profits during those years. And even though it's a large sum, it's still cost of doing business. That's why I quoted this information researcher, Caroline Bueno, in the book, saying it's a line tax. They had to pay a tax for line, and it's baked into the business model. Right.

But let's see where we are in a year or two. Smartmatic is still suing Fox. Depositions are underway. That lawyer, Jared Connolly, he tells me in the book, he says the damages are bigger. Smartmatic case is so, can I tell you why it's so interesting? Smartmatic has a better case than Dominion. Because Smartmatic, you know, Dominion was easily, it was easy for Dominion to prove that all the lies were lies. Smartmatic, it's even easier.

Because Smartmatic was only operating in 2020 in one county in California. Sorry, one county in the United States. Los Angeles County, California. Nobody believes that Trump won Los Angeles County, California. Smartmatic, all Connolly has to do is get up and say, this was the only county we were in.

You know, it should be case closed. That's why I think, you know, Fox will have to settle this before trial, but only after Connolly gets his depositions, because he gets a second bite of the apple. So you ultimately concluded that Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch were passengers on this trip, and don't check your phone, and Fox was essentially leaderless. You essentially say they were leaderless despite having a nominal CEO in Suzanne Scott and then the recently departed legal head. Viet Dinh, yeah. Yeah, Viet Dinh.

I find this hard to believe. I have worked for Rupert Murdoch. I remember. Explain your theory, since mine is a lot more satanic. Well, can you tell me your satanic theory while I find my favorite quotes? What's your satanic theory? I wouldn't turn my back on that man 10 days after he was dead. Well, it sounds like the audience is with you based on that reaction. I was astonished by Rupert's deposition.

Because it's under oath. And it's really the only time he's been interviewed in a decade. He doesn't talk to the press. He never would dare. He doesn't submit to questioning. But he had to sit down with Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson.

And the lawyers later left and they told people, he seemed sharp as a tack. He seems all there. He doesn't seem senile. And yet, Rupert repeatedly contradicted himself, acted like he had no idea what happened in 2020, acted like he was, you know, totally unplugged. And I get, you're thinking that's his shtick. It reminds me of that mobster down on, that used to run around in a bathrobe.

Pretending he was crazy when in fact he could kill you with a look, essentially. But my assessment of it is more from his emails where he is saying what is true but then not intervening with what is false. And I want to be clear because I've gotten questions about this.

I don't think media owners should be intervening in newsrooms. They shouldn't be meddling in the real news. I worked at CNN when AT&T owned CNN. They shouldn't be, but they do at News Corp. I used to get calls from them all the time. No, they do at News Corp with real news, with accurate reporting. Yes. But what I'm saying is what Rupert should be doing when he should intervene is when there are lies airing on his network.

when he should pick up the phone is when there is BS being spread by his hosts. And that's what he didn't do. He, you know, on Saturday, November 7th, he was emailing with Cole Allen, who was the editor of the New York Post at the time, Cole Allen. And he was saying, let's, maybe we should write something that Trump might see, that Donald might see. And they ended up writing an editorial saying, get Rudy off TV. You know, end your presidency with dignity. Like, don't humiliate yourself, Donald Trump.

So here you have the head of the company saying, get Rudy off TV. And then the next morning, he's on TV with Maria Bartiromo. He's on Fox with Maria Bartiromo. And he's on again the next Sunday. And he's on again a few weeks later. And I'm thinking to myself, Rupert,

Where are you, man? Pick up the phone. Do something. So why didn't he? I think he thought it was good for ratings. I think he wanted to have plausible deniability. On January 5th, he emailed Scott to suggest that maybe the three top hosts, Tucker, Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, could put out statements saying the election over and Joe Biden won. Right. Great idea, by the way. Why wasn't, from your perspective, more forceful...

And would the hosts have complied? That's right. This is just before January 6th. This is when the country, you know, is at a very dangerous moment. And I think we should remember that week for a moment. I was on air Sunday the 3rd. I said there might be violence. A lot of us were on air saying this could get very hairy on Wednesday. It was not as if it was a surprise that a mob attacked the Capitol. Gosh, Pete Hegsteth was on Fox that morning saying D.C. feels like a constitutional tinderbox.

It's not as if they knew it was going to happen, but they sensed it. They smelled it. You could sense it in the air. So in that environment, here's Rupert Murdoch. Oh, by the way, Sean Hannity messaging Mark Meadows saying, I'm very afraid of the next 48 hours. Sure. So in that environment, you have Rupert having a great idea. His friend Preston Patton, former Fox executive, emails him with basically a script for the primetime anchors to read saying, we know Biden won. We're on board. We're going to be the loyal opposition. Suzanne Scott, the head of Fox News Media, she's the one who replies to Rupert and says,

Our hosts are all there. We have to be careful. I'm not direct quoting, but I'm paraphrasing. You have to be careful not to tick off the audience. You have to be careful not to offend the audience. I think that's what it all came down to. Even when Rupert was right and had a wise idea about showing leadership, there was this, hey, let's tiptoe. Let's tread lightly. We don't want to piss off our audience. So we wanted to make money. So it gets to your point. It was about ratings. It was about the fear of the viewers tuning out and going over to Newsmax where they wouldn't be offended by the truth.

And so he took a dive, in other words. And so he took a dive. So it was a purposeful thing. There's no weakness in this person from my perspective. I agree with that assessment that there's no weakness. What I find baffling and frustrating is that I think there's a moral and ethical responsibility. And I think what I'm trying to call out is that failure to show that leadership. Wow, what a shock. Uncle Satan became...

That's what I call them on full steam. You know, people can still be pressured into doing the right thing, can't they? Sometimes, once in a while, no. No, not this guy. Hey, at least by 5 p.m. on January... Should we move on to Elon? No. No, they can't be pressured. At least by 5 p.m. on January 6th, the head of Fox Business says, no, Donald Trump, you cannot call into Lou Dobbs' show. We don't think it's responsible for you to be on the air during the riot. It was as if at the very end, once the blood had stained the Capitol, someone at Fox finally had a shred of a conscience.

We'll be back in a minute. So let me read a part of a New York Times review of your book. His Fox News is a nightly Russell Stover assortment of ginned up grievances and predictions of cataclysm and collapse. The network delivers an insinuation instead of reason. In this account, irritable gestures instead of journalism, a great deal of voice and very little mind. Fox News is biased against expertise and culture. Its hosts patrol and destroy as white blood cells do in the body. Any hint of sequential reasoning?

They deliver the kind of shallow and primitive totalitarian propaganda that George Orwell in 1984 called "Prolfeet." In the network of lies, it is a dead-end grotto of the human spirit. Flood the zone with wit, as Steve Bannon did not say. Accurate? Accurate? Is that what it is now still?

I think Dwight Garner should write the next book about Fox. I agree. He's an excellent writer. Incredible. So the actual Steve Bannon quote is flood the zone with shit. He said it early on in the Trump years. And journalists felt that experience. We felt the you know what coming at us.

Flooding the Zone is what they're still doing today, these disinformation artists, and it's bigger than Fox. It really is a network of liars. But I do think he describes it correctly. I would just make it a little more complicated and say, and I know some people in our audience are not going to believe this,

There are still people at Fox who believe they are journalists, who believe they can do the right thing. Trey Inks in Israel is the best example right now, but there are many others, not as many as there should be, not as many as there used to be, but there are still others there who think they can make this product better. So let's talk about that, because many people, including, as you wrote in the book, Biden privately, have called Murdoch the most dangerous man in the world. Do you think he's the most dangerous man in the world?

I have not listed in my head the top 10 or bottom 10. I think we could make a case for Elon if we were going to make that list as well just because of what's happened to X.

But I think the, yeah, so let me sleep on it. Okay, but he's stepping down. He is, tomorrow. Sure. Yeah. Oh, oh, well, right, stepping down. Look, I call it semi-retirement. I think that's the, this is the closest to retirement he'll ever get, but it's only semi-retirement. Why?

I think he's trying to anoint his son, Lachlan, even more than he already has. He's trying to prop up Lachlan even more than he already has. I quote a person in the book saying, he's trying to show that Lachlan's the chosen one. He's trying to make it harder for the other adult children to overrule or intervene in the future. So many consider him to be, I don't know how else to put it, a whiter shade of pale to his father. And he will lose power. It's a song. He will lose power when and if...

Rupert sheds his mortal coil, correct? That is the $60 billion question. I'm not sure what the market value today was if stocks were up today, but that's the question between Fox and News, what happens to these two companies? And for those who don't know the background, there's four votes in the trust. After Rupert dies, there's four votes in the trust. Each adult children gets a vote. Lachlan gets a vote, but so does his liberal brother, James. James is disgusted by Fox News. He thinks it's poison.

So does his wife, Catherine. They're even spending some of the money they gained from the Disney deal, where Fox sold assets to Disney, on antidotes to Fox's poison. They are. So James does have a vision for Fox's future. He would like to drag the network back toward the center, not toward MSNBC, but toward a reality-based network, a network with more journalistic rigor.

But he can't do that as long as his dad's alive. Will anything be different in the next election? Dominion Voting System's case, with all the costs, did not change at one iota, you say, at least in the category of pushing lies. Will they change their 2024 coverage? I think a couple things have actually changed. Donald Trump is not allowed to call in anymore. He can't be in his pajamas at Trump Tower. Sorry for the image. Right, right.

You know, and rant with the Fox & Friends hosts. He also can't be on live at all, even if he was on camera. They only tape the interviews because they're afraid of legal exposure. What a remarkable thing to say about a former president. They don't trust him to be live on TV. So I think that is what's changed. And then beyond that, I noticed something when Biden gave a primetime address that I thought was kind of interesting and maybe a hint of what's happening.

Biden gave a primetime speech about Israel and Hamas. And it was anchored by Brett Baier and Martha McCallum, who Fox considers the news side, the news anchors, the news leaders. It was not Jesse Waters who was allowed to be in the chair. Jesse Waters, who won't even call the president President Biden, he calls him Sleepy Joe. It was actually the news side. And I know that sounds like, again, we're in the sub-basement in terms of expectations. That is the...

Most basically you can expect on a Fox. So you think they will cover it in a lot? I think it's different than Tucker. I think Tucker took pride in not showing Biden's addresses live. There was a difference. Now, one of the differences is there's now a war in the Middle East active. But I do wonder, and I think what we should look for are signs in 2024. How much do the news people have power versus the opinion people? The propaganda arm versus the news arm.

I have no problem with a conservative news operation. We should have lots of journalists at Fox out there reporting stories. But instead, they mostly just have the propaganda on. Defer to the propaganda. That's right. You've shown that Fox radicalized the audience. You also demonstrated that the audience programs the network. Yeah. This is not a breakable situation, correct? Breakable, what do you mean? Meaning the audience will lead. That's my feeling.

I think that's right. And I think what the rest of us have to do as media consumers, as citizens, is to push and prod however we can and hold Fox Canada however we can to say, you know, in this tug of war between democracy and autocracy, there's got to be a lot more of us tugging on the democracy side. They have many, many competitors. If it redeems itself, which I don't think it would...

Right. Picking up their audience, I'll visit the- Running the Newsmax, right? Yes. After FoxNews.com, there are Washington Examiner, Epoch Times, Newsmax, The Blaze, National Review, Daily Wire, Western Journal, Daily Caller, Washington Times, Town Hall, and of course, Breitbart. And then there's Bannon and others. Are any of these right-wing media outlets well-positioned to become the standard bearer besides Fox, or do you think the audience goes back to it?

The reason they're not positioned is because they don't have those lucrative spots on cable. And as much as people have ridden off cable and as much as we've seen cord cutting, it is still, especially for older Americans-- the median Fox viewer is about 70 years old--

You know, cable is still the primary way to access it. Fox News has something called Fox Nation. It's been around about five years. It did last longer than CNN Plus, rest in peace. But it's a streaming service that they've tried to get going. And I report in the book it might get to two million subscribers this year. So, you know, it just goes to show it's very hard to start something new in that way. It will still remain the dominant.

Cable is still the number one network on cable because it still has that connection through the cord and if anything the next two years are going to bring rebundling. Cable is looking more and more appealing as the streaming prices get higher and higher and the service gets worse and worse. So they remain the top. I think they have that first mover advantage. What role does X play? Is Elon Rupert 2.0? He's trying to be certainly. He's trying to be but that

morning when Axios published a story saying Elon's the new Rupert. He's the new conservative kingmaker. Oh, those Fox executives were howling. They even said there was even an edict that night when Ron DeSantis was going to announce his campaign on Twitter Spaces. Remember that? Remember the crash? It was a disaster. So he had this announcement on Twitter Spaces. A memo went out and Fox said, hey guys, let's

downplay this. We've got him on our own air at 8 p.m. Don't play up the Twitter spaces thing. There was definitely some competition that night. But then it was a disaster. The thing didn't work. They were making fun of him, making fun of it on Fox. And for Fox executives, especially the Murdoch's inner circle, this was a reaffirmation that Elon's not the new Rupert. The next cannot, the Twitter cannot be a replacement for Fox. So count me as skeptical. Do you think he wants to be?

I don't think, no, I think his vision's different, right? His vision is to be the everything app and have us do our banking on X. You're going to give over your accounts? You suggest that there is an actual vision. Interesting.

I think it's just whatever he thought of the night before at the rave. But that goes to speak of the fact that there's not really a successor. There's not something that can take over for Fox. Yes, there's Newsmax. Yes, there's The Daily Wire and Steve Bannon's War Room. And they all matter a little bit. They all contribute to the network of lies effect. They all contribute to this echo chamber where you're hearing this craziness over and over again. But Fox is still the beating heart. You're still on the platform, aren't you, a lot? I

Don't be mad. I'm not mad. I'm still... I'm Twitter blue. I paid for a check mark. You did? Wow. I did.

Only to DM sources. I use Twitter just to insult Elon. That's what I do. I have thought about deleting all my old tweets, though. Really? Why? Because, you know, 11, 12 years ago when Twitter was innocent and the Internet was pure, I used to post where I was. And one night I was on the Lower East Side. Remember a bar called Epstein's? I do not. A decade later, trolls tried to say that I was at Jeffrey Epstein's house. Wow. They used that old tweet. I'm at Epstein's. Yeah. As if it was proof.

So it's like, I think I might need to delete my old tweets for safety. Oh, what do you care? No one's coming for you anymore. You're still a frequent punching bag on the platform, though. It's enjoyable to watch. I am. They're helping me sell copies to the book today. They do. It's really astonishing. And the verify tab is now the way to see all your haters. It's so convenient. I don't get that on Twitter. It's interesting. Except from Elon. They think that you're untouchable. No, Elon called. You're invincible. No, Elon said I was seething with hate. I can still breathe. As you can see, I am seething. Oh.

It's not even good words. I'm like, seething? Is that the correct word? No. On that note, but you do write your book is about achieving accountability for assaults on democracy. I think so. You obviously focus on Fox News, but what about the tech giants? Very seriously. Yeah. Who do you think presents a bigger threat to democracy? You're seeing the conflict in the Mideast getting uglier still because of online? Right.

If you had to stack rank them, what would you do? I don't know if we can untangle them because these things go back and forth so dramatically. Not go back and forth. They're so connected. The video that's on Fox then gets shared on every platform. And crazy posts on X get posted live on Fox. And they're the premise of a segment on TV. So I don't know if we can detach them. I think they are so connected.

I think if I had to stack rank them though, right now, as the parent of a four year old and a six year old, biggest fear in my life is about what happens when they get phones, when they demand to have a phone, when they're on social media, when they're on anti-social media.

I think that's, as a society, the biggest issue in media we have to reckon with is, and we're seeing that with AGs suing Facebook, and Meta, the Instagram debate. We are seeing activity on that front. To me, that is-- - It's not the same thing as Fox, though? Or there's just more intentional-- - I think the difference is there's no regulatory regime that oversees Fox News because Fox is on cable, and there won't be any time soon.

At least with Meta and Google, there is activity, there's energy in Washington around something. Now, I'm skeptical, and I think you are too, about the results. Well, it's been 25 years. Exactly. We've had a generation that's been hurt by this software. But if I had to rank them, I would put that there. The reason I focus on Fox and I talk about the accountability for the big lie is that every time a Trump indictment came out this summer, I scurried to rewrite my book. Every time I would read the indictment, one of these indictments,

I would see new examples of how Fox was a part of it, how all of this related back to Fox, how Rudy and Sidney Powell, who were named as unindicted co-conspirators, were on Fox line all the time. In Georgia, those voting machines that were breached in Coffey County, Georgia, what kind of machines were they? Dominion machines. Right.

It all goes back to the smear that was on Fox. And so that's why I think this book is basically a preamble for the Trump trials. It's because it's looking at how it all went down to get to the point where Trump was indicted. Right. So you need organized versus the disorganized misinformation on social media. Yeah, I think so. So I'm not letting you out of this. We're talking about CNN, your former home and a network that's not without its own controversy. As I disclosed, I am now a regular panelist on Chris Wallace's show.

Do you think you were too forgiving of CNN, especially in comparison to Fox? Eric Wemple wrote that you were shilling for Chris Cuomo, for example. Stephen Colbert took you to task. Oh, my God, that was so intense. Yeah, I bet. It was like the day Andrew Cuomo resigned and I'm hooked on Stephen Colbert. Yeah, well, there you were. Wolf called you, of course, for...

designated Fox besmircher, which is kind of a great term, and I wouldn't run away from that necessarily. And, you know, it called out some of your righteousness, you know, that you had on the air. Looking back, do you think you were too soft on the old brass or too righteous? I think on the righteous front, like, there's a couple of commentaries that I would have deleted a sentence.

But deleting a sentence or rephrasing the tone of a word, it doesn't take back the body of work. And I think we should be honest about what we were facing in those years. And frankly, what we're facing today. There's this war on truth. And television networks and journalists have to be in the battle.

You know, it doesn't mean that we're opposing candidates or opposing politicians. We have to favor truth and be on the side of truth. And that's uncomfortable. And it's going to cause people to lie about you and lie about your network. And maybe you're going to raise your voice a little bit too much once in a while.

On being soft, no. I had Wemple on talking about Chris Cuomo, and Wemple went pretty hard at CNN, as I recall it. What I tried to do during the Cuomo controversies is book outside guests so that it wasn't me, the CNN guy, talking about it. It was better to have people that weren't paid by CNN talking about that controversy. So I'm proud of the way that was handled.

You were fired by Chris Lick last summer, even though Reliable Sources was oftentimes the network's highest-rated weekend show. I didn't tell you to say that either, by the way. That's the truth. You was. I checked. That's an accurate statement. I checked. Why do you think he fired you? Um...

I think, well, listen, I truthfully don't know. So I truthfully don't know and I'm at peace not knowing. It's kind of freeing actually not to know. Maybe that's what Tucker and I have in common. Tucker's going out there and he's come up with conspiracy theories about it. I've tried not to go in that direction. I,

I think it's clear, though, that CNN was trying to send a public signal that it wasn't the network of the Trump era, that it was something different now. And they're well within their rights to do it. Nothing on TV lasts forever. So that's my best guess. But I don't know, and I'm very, very happy not to know. And then Chris got canned after one of the most devastating magazine profiles ever written, I think. Did you have schadenfreude at that? Was the firing the right move for CNN?

No, I actually approached it as a reporter. I was amazed by what Tim Alberta reported, and I got on the phone and started doing follow-ups. I had all these CNN people calling me, telling me there was a mutiny underway, that anchors and correspondents were telling David Levy, the new COO, that Licht was not fit for the job and that he had to go. So that weekend, I was at my keyboard writing a story about

Because for me, the most comfortable thing is just to go back into reporter mode. You know, just try to write. You know, the best thing you and I can do is put new information into the world. So that's how I approached it. No, you know, look, I had to call Chris for comment. So, you know, I was just back to reporter mode. No, the only emotion I feel about it is,

It created a really rocky period for CNN in a time where there's no time for that. Industry's changing too dramatically. The race to streaming is on. There's no time for that kind of uncertainty and that. Do you think that got set up by Jeff Zucker running the network? I know he was... What set up? In terms of what happened and then it shifted from him. How do you look at his tenure when you look back at it?

Well, it was stable, right? The ship was steady. Everyone knew who was in charge. Everyone was rowing in the same direction. And we had leaders, not just Jeff Zucker, by the way, who would have our back when it was scary, when it was complicated, when it was controversial. And I say not just Zucker because AT&T was the owner of CNN for basically the entire Trump presidency.

AT&T with a board of directors, not exactly the most liberal Democrat board of directors you're going to find at a company. But between Zucker being a heat shield and AT&T having the networks back, we were able to tell the truth the way we saw fit. And so that's the way I look back at it. Do you think he was unfairly fired or let go? I don't know how to answer that question. I don't know.

Ask me, can you call me tomorrow and I'll think about it? Really? You haven't thought about this? That specific question, no. Whether it was unfair. Really? I really haven't. You're close to him. We did not speak for six months after he was ousted. I think he might not have loved the way I covered the news. And I don't know if you've, you've probably had that experience, right? Someone who you worked for, someone you were close with.

You know, who doesn't love the way you cover them? No. No, it's never happened to Kara. You'd be surprised to text me. No, my point is, you know, when he was ousted, I had to report on it like it was happening at another company. Yeah. And that was very difficult. But I haven't sat back and thought, was it fair or not? I don't know.

You don't know? Okay. I think what CNN needs and what they have with Mark Thompson is someone who's a strong leader. Former CEO of the New York Times, former director general of the BBC, a lot more pedigree in jobs, obviously, than Chris for sure. Any thought on his potential to steer the ship correctly? Yeah. He has said that conventional TV can no longer define CNN and the company is still nowhere near ready for the future. He's addressing digital things. Yeah.

Is he right? That's why burning the boats was such a tough decision. Burning the life raft. CNN Plus was the life raft. I know CNN Plus is sort of a punchline. It's amusing. It lasted for only a month. You know, I had a show on it and they ordered coffee mugs for liable sources daily and the mugs didn't come until after the network was canceled. My favorite mug at home now. But the point about CNN Plus was not that the programming on day one was the right programming. It probably wasn't.

I probably wasn't the right show at 11 a.m. that weekday, but it was a life raft. It was building a boat to get to the future. And there's no time to waste. So when he talks about prioritizing building those boats, I think that's the right thing. What I know from my reporting and from my relationships there is that morale is a lot better at CNN today.

Yeah, I thought it was a mistake to get rid of CNN Plus the way they did. Well, I thought it was a mistake that it was called CNN Plus and there was no CNN in it. That was one of the problems I had. But the vision was to bring the flagship channel... That's like Hammer Plus without a hammer. The vision was to bring the flagship shows over to CNN Plus within a couple of years. Yes, but they weren't the flagship shows. It was Jake Tapper's Book Club, for example. Hey, I hope I can be part of Jake Tapper's Book Club someday. Okay, I think that's something the world doesn't need. I've told this to Jake. When's your book coming out? February, February.

I love the cover. Have you all seen the cover? With her sunglasses on? It's called Burn Book. You can imagine what it's about. Burn Book. Pre-order now. Yeah, pre-order now. Last minute lightning round. Do you think Zaslav will keep CNN or sell it? Quick. Sell it. Sell it. If I had to be quick, I'm just going to guess. Sell it. Sell it. Who will succeed Rupert Murdoch? No one. No one. Okay. Who will win the 2024 presidential election? Kara Swisher. Kara Swisher.

I'd be so good as president. Who would win? Kara Swisher's not running. It's not too late. Yes, it is. I have to pass. Pass. That's not my job, to forecast. You're not working for CNN. Why not? I think of myself as truly a reporter, as a journalist. Okay. Forecast. All right. Okay, but if you want me to go on a limb and embarrass myself, I don't think this country wants an autocrat. I really, really don't. Okay. Okay.

I don't see it. I don't see it in the data. I don't see it in the lived experience of our neighbors. I live in a beautiful red town now in a red county. I moved out of the city the same week I was fired by CNN. It was the perfect timing. I started a whole new life. And my neighbors don't want a dictator. They don't want a fascist wannabe. Now,

ultimately Trump may gain a lot more votes than that, but I don't think this country wants that. Okay. All right. I think what's going to happen is... Now I've said it on a microphone, so it's going to happen. See, I knew you would. I want to end the interview on how you end the book. You wrote, quote, the network of reality will in the end triumph. I get why you say that. But you think I'm wrong. I think you're wrong. I think it's Pollyannish. We have to root for the future for our kids. Disinformation has become as powerful as alternative points of view. I agree with that. I would

hoping is different than living. What is the network of reality today?

The network of reality is flawed but trying. The network of reality is everything from my local paper, from the local blog in your neighborhood, to the New York Times and CNN and the AP. It's everything from a really great aggregator on X to the mom who posts on Facebook about news in her community. The network of reality is basically all of us. It's everybody in this room. It's everybody who's a member of the media now who wants to know what is real and wants to fight back against what is false.

We have to be louder than the liars. And that means different things for different people in different moments, different places. But I think that's what actually is happening every day. People are being louder than the liars. And I think that's what we're going to have to do. We have to find a way to push back against this

Oh, here it goes. Network of lies. Okay. Hey, there we go. All right, Brian. All right. And Karen Swisher. Thank you all for your interest in this. Thank you. You have to be louder than the liars. Do you agree with that advice? Sure.

It's like saying you have to breathe air. Of course you have to be louder than liars, but liars are pretty loud. And I think they're on the same level. And so I think he's more sunny, but he's a more sunny person than I am about. I think lies do rather well for themselves, mostly. I think the problem is when everyone thinks everybody else is a liar, then everyone's just loud, which seems to be our current world. Well, that's the point of lying, because then the truth is made to seem like a lie. It doesn't mean the truth isn't true. It just means that you can't hear it. Yeah.

But I think about that sometimes. What are we wrong about? What am I wrong about? When I sometimes turn on Fox News, I know it turns you homicidal apparently. Yeah.

But I do turn it on and think, oh, what am I missing in my media diet around the Hunter Biden? You know, not just Fox, but not just them, but also the journal, reading the editorials. I don't know that. Come on, you're being manipulated by them. It's just like... I'm not being manipulated, Cara. It's a shitty sign. He didn't take money. There's a thing called proof and they haven't gotten it yet. When they get it, I'm happy to look at it. They just are trying to do it for ratings. That's what they do at Fox News. They do whatever topic they do and they've been found out in court for doing it. So...

I'm sorry. Look at what they did with the election denial. That's all I need to know. We definitely don't need to, you know, be doing yoga to Steve Bannon like Naomi Klein was, but I'm not being manipulated. I just think insularity is unhealthy. I want to know what other people think. Sure. So that I can be aware, informed, informed.

interrogate question in the right way. Great, but you assume they're good intent. I assume they do not have good intent. No, I don't. But Brian brought this up, like there are reporters at Fox News who consider themselves great journalists. And there are some, and I know some. Not just some, Jennifer Griffin's amazing. I think she's one of my favorite people in Washington. But what advice do you have for those people? Because do you think they have to get out of this? Do their job. Out of this world? No, I think- Or do you think they should stay and fight the fight? They're not fighting the fight. They're doing great reporting.

They're reporters. They're news reporters. I think there's lots of great news reporters at Fox. I have no problem with a lot of their stuff. It's the fight between propaganda and news. But Fox loves their propaganda. So they made their choices. They got to pay close to a billion dollars, and I hope they have to pay billions more for their shitty behavior. A lying tax that will only clock up, it seems, with a smartmatic case and otherwise. It seemed that Brian was kind of arguing Rupert's crime was effectively inaction, right? Knowing better and not doing more.

Do you think that's fair? No, I think the guy has his finger on the pulse of everything. That I did not agree with. I have been up close and personal with Rupert Murdoch. He was circling mistakes in the Wall Street Journal with a pen. He is so active. I don't care how old he is. He's as active as ever. He's the one who made the policy. I've been in so many times...

in close proximity to him, he's in charge, let me just say. Even though he's retired? Yeah, whatever. He's in charge. Like I said, I wouldn't turn my Mac on that man if he was as dead as could be. Yeah, 10 days. 100 days. Check the crypt for Nosferatu. So no. He's probably frozen and cloned himself, Kara, just to come back and haunt you. I guess. However you see Rupert, how do you hold someone like that accountable?

He's in charge. He's the CEO. No, but I don't mean how do you hold him accountable. I'm not asking why you hold him accountable. I'm saying what is the mechanism for accountability for Rupert Murdoch? You sue him and take his money and hope that you sue him enough that he stops. Yeah. That's the only way. And if he commits a criminal thing, you jail him, I guess. But they haven't caught him on anything like that. But, you know, that's how it goes. He's probably too smart for that. Yeah. Well, a lot of these people get out of these behaviors. They do. They get out. Life isn't fair. But in this case...

the case was ended correctly. You know, there was a conversation that was very interesting about who's more accountable, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News or tech companies, right? I think tech companies are too. Yeah. Seems like you think equal barrel, basically. I think Fox News has been a particular toxic... I think if you combine social media, Fox News, and gerrymandering, that's... you got a toxic cake of... Mavlatov cocktail. Right, exactly, for democracy. Obviously, this is a fantastic book. People should pick it up. But...

But I also really liked hearing him speak about CNN and thought he should write a book about that. No, no one cares. No one cares? No, there's not any really good characters. No good characters? Not particularly. Not like Fox. Fox is full of them. That's a great- Zaslav isn't a good character, you don't think? Not particularly.

You've never had that experience of someone you worked with who wasn't happy with how you covered them after? They always end up talking to me. At some point. At some point. They always come back. But you've had, not maybe worked for, but certainly people you've covered who, I mean. They always come back. Look no further than your inbox for the asshole email. I know, but he'll come back at some point.

He will? Will you welcome him with open arms? I shall not. He has worked my last nerve, so I shall not. Last thing, will Elon be the new Rupert? No, I don't think so. I think Rupert's a great media. I think he's good at media and he's good at his job. And I don't think Elon is particularly good at media.

In fact, he's terrible. Stick with rockets, Ilan. All right, Carrie, you want to read us out? Yep. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro-Rossell, Kateri Yoakum, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you don't have to be the cryptkeeper for Rupert Murdoch. If not, you become Brian Stelter's new nemesis. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow.

Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.