Host Who Won $20 Mil Sexual Misconduct Settlement From Fox News Tells CNN She Wanted Dominion To Hold Out For Apology
Ex-Fox News host Gretchen Carlson told CNN’s Anderson Cooper she wanted Dominion to hold out for an apology in the blockbuster suit that ended in a substantial financial settlement almost 40 times larger than the one she received from Fox News.
In a stunning turn of events Tuesday afternoon, Fox News agreed to a settlement that included a $787.5 million payout in the defamation suit that was just about to play out in a weeks-long trial after volumes of damaging revelations were publicized pretrial. The settlement also included a tepid and conspicuously non-apologetic “acknowledgment” of “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”
On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper interviewed Carlson, who settled a sexual harassment suit with Fox News for $20 million and received an apology — but is also bound by a non-disclosure agreement.
Carlson told Cooper she was “disappointed” there was no apology or a trial to “get to the truth” that her settlement did not, but also said she didn’t think an apology would make a difference to Fox viewers:
COOPER: Do you think there will be — were you disappointed that there wasn’t an apology from FOX?
CARLSON: At first, I was. And I think I tweeted out on Monday night —
COOPER: Yeah, I saw your tweet. You said, “Please, Dominion — do not settle with FOX. You’re about to approve something very big.”
Why did you hope that they weren’t — that Dominion wasn’t going to settle?
CARLSON: Well, as somebody who’s also had a very high-profile lawsuit against the former CEO and chairman of FOX News, Roger Ailes, as somebody who’s been silenced as a result of that, with being able to tell all the facts of what actually happened to me — you know, I was vicariously living through Dominion and hoping that they would be able to get to the truth.
COOPER: I think a lot of people were — you know, a lot of observers who are not fans of FOX were wanting that. And yeah, Dominion is a corporation. They have shareholders. They have a parent company.
From a financial sense, that certainly makes sense.
CARLSON: It’s totally different than my case. You know, I actually did get an apology. And that is something that I hold close to my heart every single day that I think about it because so many survivors were living through me when I got that apology.
It’s a validation. It’s holding people accountable, and it rarely happens. And so, for me, that was the most important thing that happened in my case.
I think in this case, I don’t think it really would have mattered to the people that were trying to reach to change their hearts and minds.
COOPER: The people — who are loyal viewers of FOX, who believe what Tucker Carlson and believe what Sean Hannity are saying.
CARLSON: That’s right. And even if they had to go on set and give a 22-second apology, in the era that we live in now of fake news and believing only what you want to believe, I would assume that the majority of those viewers wouldn’t believe the apology anyway.
Watch above via CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
