Tucker Carlson texts were bad for PR — but he's a huge future legal liability: reporters

Speaking to MSNBC host Ari Melber on Tuesday, New York Times writer Jim Rutenberg and MSNBC analyst and Crooked Media podcaster Juanita Tolliver explained how the newly revealed Tucker Carlson texts would continue to be a problem for Fox News in the coming months.

"As we reported, this came to the attention of the company's board of directors over the weekend before trial while settlement talks are taking place," Rutenberg said. "This is something they're worried about coming out in front of a jury, and mind you, Tucker Carlson at this point is 1/20 of the case. Everything you talked about in the setup wasn't an issue in this case. Tucker Carlson had one of 20 segments involved. But in terms of publicity and trouble in lawyers' view, clearly, and board members' view, it's way outside compared to what it should be. So, as the company's looking at this, that's going from an asset to the company to a liability in this case. There's definite concern about how this text will play in front of a jury that's coming together on the ground in Delaware, and as this is taking place, there's settlement talks that will lead to a record settlement amount."

Another video has been released by Media Matters revealing Carlson on camera talking to a producer.

“It’s totally bad for you to feel that way," Carlson says in the video. "But that guy, he triggered the sh-t out of me. ‘Where are you now? Where do you live?’ The amount of times I had — ‘First of all, f--k you,’ on my lips was like, it was unbelievable. Suggesting that I was – that I was cheating on my taxes?"

Melber wondered if it was an attitude of Carlson and others at Fox.

"If this was an attitude of him and other people who, as you remind us wouldn't take the stand, might they have been looking at a potentially higher permanently from this jury?" he asked.

Rutenberg thought it was possible.

"This text is one thing in the mix. There's a lot going on here," Rutenberg said. "There's also Tucker on the stand, Rupert Murdoch on the stand. There were a lot of reasons they wanted to settle this case, but if you're the board and certain senior executives and you see this, you see how it's in the mix, and that goes to what is Tucker Carlson as an asset for your company? I think there's more to the story we all want to know, but this all does add up in terms of this being more of a liability than they wanted in an already really hard case."

But it was Juanita Tolliver who linked the concerns of the Fox board, the lawsuits and the jury together with the hate and white supremacy that remains on the airwaves.

"I think in the clip you play of that host saying that, someone else at the table questioned that racist statement, and he doubled down," Tolliver explained. "Why did he double down? He knew the people off camera, the execs would have his back. And it shows kind of that same type of vibe not only of racism and white supremacy flowing through the studio like oxygen, but you have a reassurance behind the scenes that you're okay to say these things."

"The only other thing I want to mention about the trial that never was is the fact that the jury was comprised of black and brown people as well as white people, and that is the signal that you know something like this text would not go across or translate positively in any way," she continued. "Because when Tucker Carlson is texting that message to his producer not 24 hours after the violent mob attacked the Capitol building, that's what's striking the time of this. He was the one texting and begging Trump and his team to call them off. But what did they do? They attack."

See the full discussion with the writers below or at the link here.

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