Joe Scarborough marked Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems as an embarrassment for the network, given how they waited until they were just about to be put on trial.
Scarborough kicked things off on Wednesday by looking at how Fox News agreed to pay Dominion a $787.5 million settlement on the first day of what was expected to be a six-week defamation trial. This was the largest media settlement in American history by far. However, even though Fox will avoid a full-blown trial over their promotion of 2020 election lies, they still face another lawsuit from Smartmatic, which is suing the network for $2.7 billion.
As Scarborough talked about those who might be disappointed with Fox News wiggling out of the trial, he focused on Rupert Murdoch, who was expected to testify if the trial had continued.
This is what happens when you have a 93-year-old man running a company, and everybody’s just a yes man to him,” Scarborough said. “I can’t believe Murdoch 20 years ago would have settled this months ago.”
Scarborough called this “the worst of all worlds” because “you settle these things early if you’re Fox or if you’re another business so you don’t humiliate everybody at the network.” Instead, Scarborough explained, they were “stubborn” and allowed the case to be brought to trial after a bruising discovery process shed a negative light on many of their top people.
They said ‘We’re going to be stubborn. We’re going to humiliate all of our anchors. We’re going to humiliate all of our executives. We’re gonna humiliate everybody that works at this network, and we’re going to fight a case that we know we’re going to lose because we’re stubborn, and we think we can get away with it.’
And then, at the last second, they pay $800 [million]. So they have the worst of both worlds, and they’ve got another suit coming!”
