Tucker Carlson in texts to Bret Baier: ‘When Trump loses, he’s going to blame us’

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson texted anchor Bret Baier in November 2020, voicing concerns that former President Trump would “blame” the network when he lost the election, according to text messages obtained by The Daily Beast.

“See if there’s any way I could help calm viewers down,” Carlson said to Baier. “When Trump loses, he’s going to blame us. That’s going to be very bad.”

The messages, which are reportedly part of redacted court filings in Dominion Voting Systems’s former defamation case against Fox News, show the two Fox News personalities discussing the backlash the network faced after calling Arizona for President Biden.

“I continue to think the company isn’t taking [this] seriously enough,” Carlson texted Baier on Nov. 5, 2020, according to The Daily Beast. “We need to do something to reassure our core audience. They’re our whole business model.”

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“We have been pushing for answers,” Baier responded. “I have pressed them to slow. And I think they will slow walk Nevada. The votes don’t come in until tomorrow.”

Baier sent an email on Nov. 5, urging the network to withdraw its call for Arizona, The New York Times’s Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser reported in their book last year. They also previously reported the Fox Decision Desk was not allowed to call Nevada for Biden.

“Please let me know if they don’t seem to be obeying,” Carlson said in response to Baier’s comments about Nevada. “We could really f— up a lot of what we’ve built.”

“I’ve got four more years here,” Carlson also said in the messages. “I’m stuck with Fox. Got to do whatever I can to keep our numbers up and our viewers happy.”

Fox News emphasized in a statement that it “stood by the Arizona call despite intense scrutiny.” 

“Given the extremely narrow 0.3% margin and a new projection mechanism that no other network had, it’s hardly surprising there would be postmortem discussions surrounding the call and how it was executed, no matter the candidates,” the network said.

After Baier’s Nov. 5, 2020, email originally emerged, he noted in a statement that “the vote margins in Arizona narrowed significantly” in the days after the election and he “communicated these changes to our team along with what people on the ground were saying and predicting district by district.” 

“I wanted to analyze at what point (what vote margin) would we have to consider pulling the call for Biden,” he added. “I also noted that I fully supported our decision desk’s call and would defend it on air.”

Following Fox News’ massive $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems last month, Carlson was booted from his prime-time hosting slot at the network.