Vinay Menon: Tucker Carlson has a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, new court documents reveal

Is it possible Tucker Carlson has multiple personality disorder?

That’s not to say they all can’t be doofuses. This $160-billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News keeps exposing two Tuckers, two Sean Hannitys, two Laura Ingrahams …

I’ll concede there is only one Maria Bartiromo.

Glasses or no glasses, she’s a singularly authentic nutjob.

On Tuesday, in the latest tranche of court filings, Dominion revealed more texts and emails Fox personalities hurled into the ether around the time Donald Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden. He still refuses.

Two days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Mr. Carlson texted an associate: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”

Tucker also wrote of Trump: “I hate him passionately.”

It was like hearing Ernie backstab Bert.

Hey, MAGA, you may want to remove your red hats for a moment of silence. It seems your folk hero Tucker Carlson has a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

This week’s documents are more proof Fox stars believe one thing and then say the exact opposite when the cameras are rolling.

It’s an upside-down where partisan gamesmanship is the only game.

Fox opinion slingers don’t stand for anything — they just stand against.

If Biden said America needs more AR-15s, Hannity would call to abolish the Second Amendment. If Biden proposed a national ban on the Drag Queen Story Hour, Carlson would do his next show dressed as Marilyn Monroe in an act of defiant protest.

That is the crux of this case that is already a Super Bowl for media watchers: Why did Fox enable Trump’s Big Lie when everyone inside knew it was just that?

Fox chair Rupert Murdoch never once thought the election was stolen. But he failed to reel in the piranhas and barracudas swimming his airwaves nightly with predatory lies. Privately, Carlson accurately believed Trump was a “demonic force” flanked by insane lawyers who were pushing a “cruel and reckless” fraud.

Then another Tucker in high-def makeup would publicly play footsies with that fraud.

Incredibly, he is still pandering and betraying a cynical assumption his viewers are total chumps. This week, he’s cherry-picking random clips from more than 40,000 hours of security footage House speaker Kevin McCarthy gave him exclusively re: the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The goal? To Picasso the memory hole.

It’s bonkers. If you gave me 40,000 hours of footage from the Second World War, I could easily isolate and decontextualize serene moments in which soldiers laughed and nibbled on sandwiches with nary a firefight in sight.

Unfortunately for McCarthy, reality has a much bigger audience than Carlson.

We all saw what happened that day. This is why even Republicans are calling BS on Tucker’s ploy to rewrite history. How does a “peaceful protest” lead to so many deaths? Why would “noble patriots” assemble gallows and travel with bear spray?

I’ve been a “sightseer” in many cities and not once have I found myself attacking cops, kicking in windows, defecating in the corridors of power, searching for a vice-president to hang or trying to overthrow a government.

No tourist visits the Eiffel Tower with fever dreams of coup d’etat.

But the Tuckers, all of them, do not care about truth or reality. They only care about ratings and power. And the exhibits Dominion has submitted hint at a Fox civil war.

In one exchange revealed this week, Hannity and Steve Doocy openly mock the “straight news” side of operations. It’s like Burger King employees hating on the Whopper. These two blowhards seem annoyed at the very idea of journalism.

Why? As Hannity told Doocy: “You don’t piss off the base.”

I bet Dominion lawyers now have T-shirts emblazoned with those words.

Carlson routinely twisted up his constipated resting face to excoriate the despised liberal media for its perfectly reasonable criticisms of Trump. Privately, it sounds like he should have stayed at CNN or MSNBC.

Here’s Carlson on Trump’s legacy: “That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

What a shame he never had the stones to say that on air.

Pending a settlement, Dominion still has a steep hill to climb if this goes to trial next month. The First Amendment protects free speech. But it’s not an impossible slope. Just ask Hulk Hogan. Fox was founded as a conservative network, an antidote to perceived liberal bias, and there is nothing wrong with that.

But there is something profoundly wrong about systematically deceiving your viewers because you fear they will cover their eyes and ears and sprint away from the truth.

What you end up with is a corporate dissociative identity disorder.

And a democracy in turmoil.

One Tucker makes performative sport of hoodwinking the zombies watching him because he’s terrified they will eat his brain. One Ingraham takes any culture war issue and pushes it to the front lines. One Hannity yearns for right-wing hegemony, even if the middle class gets bamboozled into cheering on policies at odds with their own best interests. Then Fox viewers blame the MSM for everything.

They should turn off the TV and read this week’s court documents.

It’s Fox that keeps lying to you.

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