MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday suggested three words could have saved Fox News from paying out $787.5 million in the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems.
Had Fox hosts said “if that’s true” after hearing baseless claims that Dominion’s voting machines somehow rigged the election against former President Donald Trump, then “The Last Word” anchor said the conservative network wouldn’t have been sued and then had to settle for the massive amount as it headed to trial.
“The stupidity in the executive offices at Fox and at the anchor desks led to this outcome, which was completely avoidable,” he explained. “Someone at Fox could have said to the people hosting their shows, ’You can let [former Trump attorney] Rudy Giuliani tell any lie he wants for as long as he wants and at the end of it, all you have to say is, ‘If that’s true … this is a terrible situation and we’re going to have to do something about it.’”
Fox “never could have been sued because the host would have said, ‘if that’s true,’” O’Donnell continued. “Those are the legal safe words that save you $787 million, and everyone working at Fox was too stupid to know those legal safe words.”
“Rupert Murdoch was too stupid to tell his people to use those legal safe words,” he added. “And so Fox lost and truth won.”
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