On the night of the 2020 US presidential elections, Fox News was the first cable news network to call the state of Arizona in favor of Joe Biden, leading to a flood of angry phone calls and texts from supporters of Donald Trump. Behind the scenes, recently released court documents show that top Fox News figures – including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Rupert Murdoch- expressed trepidation over the network’s calls, fearing they could spell doom for the outlet.

The documents, included in a 200 page motion for summary judgement in Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News, reveal Carlson texted his producer that those “f**kers are destroying our credibility” and could easily “destroy us if we play it wrong.” Similarly, Hannity recognized Dominion’s central role in the false fraud narrative of the election and lamented that Trumpworld had managed to