Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell loudly complained on Friday morning about Fox News host Tucker Carlson calling her out for not presenting any evidence to back up her baseless election-fraud allegations, claiming she told him not to contact her again because he was “very insulting, demanding, and rude.”
Carlson, who up until Thursday night had credulously amplified Team Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies, raised eyebrows when he kicked off his Thursday program by casting doubt on Powell’s outlandish claims that a cabal of “international leftists”—which includes long-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez—had stolen millions of Trump votes via corrupted software.
Hours after the Trump legal team’s unhinged press conference that not only featured Powell’s crazed conspiracies but a sweaty Rudy Giuliani acting out My Cousin Vinny while hair product dripped down his cheeks, Carlson noted that Powell had been making those same claims for days, prompting him to reach out to her this past Sunday.
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“What Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history,” he stated. “Millions of votes stolen in the day. Democracy destroyed, the end of our centuries-old system of self-government, not a small thing.”
After adding a bunch of disclaimers and caveats about how he didn’t dismiss her allegations out of hand and that his program is solely focused on seeking the truth, Carlson then explained to his viewers that Powell was unwilling to provide him any proof to back her supposedly bombshell accusations.
“We invited Sidney Powell on this show, we would’ve given her the whole hour, we would’ve given her the entire week and listen quietly the whole time at rapt attention—that is a big story,” he declared. “But she never sent us any evidence despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing she got angry and told us to stop contacting her. When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people with positions of authority, they told us Powell has never given them any evidence of either, nor has she provided any today at the press conference.”
Carlson also seemed to anticipate a backlash from angry MAGA fans for apparently turning his back on Trump’s coup attempt, adding: “We’re telling you this because it’s true. In the end, that’s all that matters, the truth. It’s our only hope, it’s our best defense. It’s how we are different from them. We care what’s true and we know you care too. That’s why we told you.”
Appearing on the Fox Business Network program hosted by Maria Bartiromo—one of the biggest boosters of Trump’s voter-fraud conspiracy theories—Powell insisted that she wasn’t mad when Carlson pressed her for evidence.
“No, I didn’t get angry with the request to provide evidence,” she insisted on Friday morning. “In fact, I sent an affidavit to Tucker that I had not even attached to a pleading yet to help him understand the situation, and I offered him another witness who could explain the mathematics and the statistical evidence far better than I can. I’m not really a numbers person.”
The QAnon-sympathetic attorney then grumbled about Carlson’s attitude during their exchanges, claiming that was the reason she stopped responding to his requests.
“But he was very insulting, demanding, and rude, and I told him not to contact me again, in those terms,” she concluded.
While Fox News has come under fire from Trumpworld since the network’s early call of Arizona for President-elect Joe Biden, which has prompted Trump to urge his supporters to abandon Fox for far-right alternatives Newsmax and One America News, Carlson had largely remained unscathed in the eyes of MAGA nation.
That is, until now.
“Tucker wants to be some holy high priest now. Bow to Tucker. He can dispense holy communion,” far-right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich grumbled on Twitter. “Spare us future monologues on realpolitik. The left always lies, they dox, they kill. Giving benefit of the doubt to Sidney Powell is hardly some deadly sin. I’ll wait and see.”
Former Republican congressional candidate Angela Stanton King, a QAnon adherent who had previously been a frequent Fox guest, said she was taking Powell’s word over Carlson’s, mocking the Fox News host over his claim that UPS temporarily lost his coveted Hunter Biden documents.
Other right-wing media figures, such as former Fox Nation hosts Diamond & Silk and Islamophobic pundit Brigitte Gabriel, also lashed out at the conservative primetime star for having the temerity to question Powell’s unsubstantiated and fantastical allegations.
