A 2.7 billion-with-a-B lawsuit has the power to focus an executive's mind. So when SmartMatic, a voting data system company, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Thursday, it took Fox's honchos mere hours to shut off the lights on one show named in the suit, "Lou Dobbs Tonight."
"Lou Dobbs Tonight" was Fox's top-rated show, and it ran five nights a week. But the lawsuit named Dobbs as an individual defendant, along with Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, two other well-known Fox anchors.
Dobbs's show got started in 2011. Dobbs has always been conservative, but Trump's presidency turbocharged his opinions. Trump loved the show. The New York Times says Trump even patched Dobbs into policy discussions with the White House staff -- that is, he made Dobbs another voice at the table.
The lawsuit accuses Dobbs of being "one of the primary proponents" of a ‘disinformation campaign’ against SmartMatic, listing multiple conspiracy theories that Dobbs promoted about the 2020 election.
Among many other examples, the suit nailed Dobbs for linking SmartMatic with the late Hugo Chavez, onetime president of Venezuela, and saying that with SmartMatic’s system, votes could be changed on the sly. The statement's source was Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump, who Trump eventually fired for making nutty remarks. Powell was also behind the phrase "cyber Pearl Harbor," which Dobbs used in describing an invented voter-fraud conspiracy. (SmartMatic has sued Powell and Rudy Giuliani as well.)
SmartMatic’s defamation suit has a fine chance of winning in court, according to CNN. If that weren't enough, bear in mind that Fox is already being sued by Dominion Voting Systems.
Dobbs is still employed by Fox, but if he keeps on working there, it probably won't be on camera.
Are you surprised Fox would cancel their #1 show over a lawsuit? Does that suggest they expect to settle or lose? Might It mean that Fox has decided to change its programming and be less dramatically dishonest? If Trump stops sharing fake right-wing news, how will that change affect society?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/05/media/lou-dobbs-fox-show-canceled/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3NiYkKqRJPp_Pg3Tt2xZ13kTOmlhWlmmSmg6vxqMyvEBb9OJJ-sD5XYk4
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