Fox News star Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night seemingly took a shot at the voting software firm currently suing his network for defamation while claiming that the use of electronic voting machines “shakes people’s faith in the system” and shows America is “not serious about democracy.”
Carlson, who has long claimed the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” for Joe Biden, was brought on to offer his analysis during Fox News’ coverage of Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Carlson segment if he didn’t take the opportunity to inject race into the conversation, which he did with ease while offering up his spin on the Democrats’ underperformance with Hispanic and minority voters in Florida.
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“It’s really a hopeful outcome, I would say. And I’m not saying that as a partisan. I’m saying it because you don’t want a country where it’s white men against everybody else. And that really was the dream of the Democratic Party,” he declared. “That’s the politics they hope to create. And what you’re seeing is instead NPR listeners versus everyone else.”
Chief political anchor Bret Baier, meanwhile, noted that Pennsylvania’s Senate race was likely to be a nail-biter and that it “could be a long time” before they are able to call it due to vote counting.
“Well, that’s the problem,” Carlson replied. “I feel sorry for you, Bret and Martha, because it will be a late night for you, a tense one. Look, the country is divided in lots of different places. You’ll have close election results. People have to have confidence that those results are real, that they can trust the mechanics of the election.”
At that point, the primetime host quickly turned his attention to Arizona and the issues some precincts reportedly experienced with vote-counting machines earlier in the day.
“And what happened today in Maricopa County, where some huge percentage of voting machines… 30 percent, they claim these are Dominion voting machines, but it almost doesn’t matter,” Carlson insisted. “Electronic voting machines didn’t allow people to vote apparently.”
After some vote tabulators went down at roughly 20 percent of polling places in Maricopa County in Arizona—“ground zero” for election conspiracy theories—former President Donald Trump and other election-denying Republicans quickly pounced on the issue to claim it proved their baseless allegations of election fraud. Despite the ordinary problems with the machines quickly being fixed, the conspiracy theories had already taken hold
“Whatever you think of it, the cause of it, it shakes people’s faith in the system,” Carlson continued. “That’s an actual threat to democracy. The core problem: We’re not serious about democracy if we’re using electronic voting machines. You’re going to have these moments where everybody in the country fears volatility because one side doesn’t believe the result is real.”
Claiming that distrust in voting machines runs on “both sides” and is not “just the crazy right,” Carlson said he hoped there would be a “bipartisan” demand to ban electronic voting machines and “require voting IDs.”
Carlson bringing up voting machines like those made by Dominion on Fox News airwaves came just hours after MAGA pillow salesman and “Stop the Steal” dead-ender Mike Lindell asserted on a QAnon-linked livestream that the Fox star had reached out to him after the FBI seized his phone.
“Tucker Carlson texted me, he said, ‘Enough’s enough,’ and he put it up there. And they even said the word ‘Dominion’ on Fox News,” Lindell exclaimed. “Come on, it’s true, it’s true. Now, I heard it—at least it rhymed with ‘Dominion.’”
The invocation of Dominion by the Fox News host also stands out considering that Fox News is currently in the middle of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit with the voting software company. Dominion alleged that the network knowingly aired discredited election fraud lies about the firm following the 2020 election in order to court disgruntled MAGA viewers, an accusation that Fox News disputes.
Carlson, along with other Fox News stars, has recently been questioned by lawyers for Dominion as the case moves forward. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, meanwhile, is expected to be deposed soon.
