I remember when Lou Dobbs was seen as some kind of legitimate news broadcaster, with his own show on a major cable news network. Then he seemingly went barking mad over immigration, and that was the gateway drug to a complete and utter off-the-deep-end spiral to lunacy and supporting Donald Trump. I think he went to Fox News first, but he was too f–king crazy even for them, so they relegated him to their version of CNBC, which is Fox Business. He apparently did very well over there – he had the highest ratings of anyone on Fox Business, which is sort of like saying you’re the most popular serial killer on death row.
Dobbs and his assortment of bad toupees were just named in a massive lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election technology company. Smartmatic, like Dominion Voting Systems, were name-checked repeatedly on Fox News and Fox Business as part of the unhinged election conspiracy pushed by Trump and the people who worked for him. Dobbs, along with Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, were called out in the Smartmatic lawsuit as Fox anchors who pushed lies about the company. Smartmatic wants $2.7 billion from Fox and I hope they get every damn cent. Meanwhile, Fox News corporate is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. They fired Dobbs not even 24 hours after Smartmatic’s lawsuit was filed.
Lou Dobbs, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal media supporters, abruptly lost his pulpit on Friday when Fox Business canceled his weekday television show, which had become a frequent clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential race.
Mr. Dobbs’s decade-long tenure at the network ended with little warning — a guest host filled in for his Friday slot — only a day after the election technology company Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and Fox News. The suit, which seeks damages of at least $2.7 billion, also named Mr. Dobbs as an individual defendant along with two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. Smartmatic specifically cited Mr. Dobbs’s program, which by late last year had become so packed with falsehoods about Mr. Trump’s defeat that Fox Business was forced to run a fact-checking segment debunking some of its own anchor’s assertions.
Executives at Fox did not elaborate on Friday about why they had canceled Mr. Dobbs’s program, which was the top-rated show on Fox Business and drew a bigger audience than its competition on CNBC. The network said in a statement that it regularly reviewed its programming lineup. “Plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate postelection, including on Fox Business,” the network said. “This is part of those planned changes.”
A person familiar with Fox’s decision said the network’s concerns about Mr. Dobbs predated this week’s filing of the Smartmatic lawsuit. But the person, who requested anonymity to describe private personnel matters, conceded that Mr. Dobbs’s extreme and unrepentant endorsements of Mr. Trump’s false election claims had imperiled his position, as did other moments. For instance, on the day of siege at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Dobbs described protesters as merely “walking between the rope lines.”
Cancel culture warriors, where art thou? The mothership, Fox News, just cancelled one of your favorite nutjobs and you can’t blame it on AOC and Nancy Pelosi. I saw various people making this point, and so here goes: it’s amazing to see how simple it actually was to deplatform Nazis and cancel nutjobs, right? We were banging our heads against a wall for years about these batsh-t crazy liars and fascists, and all it took was a violent insurrection incited by Donald Trump, two multi-billion-dollar lawsuits and Jack Dorsey no longer feeling the need to put up with Nazis. And that was it! Trump is out of office, we don’t have baby-fisted Twitter tantrums, Giuliani & company have been effectively neutered and now Crotchety Lou Dobbs is gone. I hope drunk-ass Jeanine Pirro is next, and I have no idea what’s even happening with Bartiromo anymore. She used to be a respected CNBC anchor! To see her go Full MAGA is really weird. (Oh, and Tucker Carlson’s white supremacist, QAnon-supporting ass needs to go too.)
Screencaps courtesy of Fox News/Business.
🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Oooh, just wait until you read the lawsuit brief. The shade, the snark, the trolling, it’s a thing of beauty! Whoever wrote it is deserves a Pulitzer.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/04/964097006/election-tech-company-sues-fox-news-giuliani-and-others-for-2-7-billion
“They knew the election wasn’t stolen just as they knew the world is round and two plus two equals four.” In 15 years of lawyering I have never seen anything like that put into the complaint. It’s ah-mazing! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I come here for the gossip, but really Kaiser’s writing is sometimes what makes my day! Love, love love the writing on this piece!!
The song keeps getting better and better.
So happy this lying gasbag is gone.
Get that $2.7 billion from these professional liars!
Being sued and losing money may be the way to truly stop these liars. Before the election when there was news about possible riots and _____ (fill in the blank with the most awful thing you can think of) I remember reading an article that talked about election and post-election madness. It basically said that America was NOT going to devolve into Civil War, because big business wouldn’t let that happen. They would lose way too much money and they would call DT or whoever and tell them to cut that ish out to save the economy. I don’t know if any of that happened, although I doubt it, but it showed me how money is the most important thing to these people. Not democracy. Not freedom in its ideological sense. They love capitalism and “freedom” because they are free to do whatever it takes to own the means of production and live lives that 99% of us cannot imagine. When THAT is threatened is when we will really see the limits of what is allowed to happen. I see these lawsuits as the way of big business taking back control of the narrative. This may be the most effective way to rein in the loonies. Hit them all where it hurts the most.
Of course, THE US is a capitalist society. Money drives everything here.
Yes, I have such mixed feelings about it. Very glad to see the Trump train stopped, but not happy about big business having that much power.
Legal experts: Does firing Dobbs actually help Fox in regard to the lawsuit, or is it just a PR move?
I really really really hope the voting machine companies don’t settle. I will happily watch this be dragged out
Not really. Mitigation efforts after the lawsuit is filed won’t fly, but I’m sure they finally recognized the liability Dobbs is and has been to the brand. Last straw and all that. Maybe a little more than a PR move. They are still all jointly and severally liable for the damages, however. I hope Dominion and Smartmatics bankrupt the lot of them.
I’d assume the plan is to throw Dobbs under the bus, and pray it helps their case, but…nobody’s gonna buy that.
Tucker and Hannity alone show Lou Dobbs isn’t the only host lying. So Dobbs’ cancelation won’t mean much legally.
Firing Dobbs might help prevent future damages. However, it does not undo past damage.
It’s an effort to stop the bleed but the wound is already there. The last thing Fox needed was an on-camera rant about the lawsuit giving it even more teeth.
No because it doesn’t mitigate past damages. My guess is that their lawyers saw the unhinged My Pilliow interview on Newsmax where the anchor literally walked off the air so he wouldn’t get sued, and realized Dobbs would probably allow something like that to go unchecked on his own show.
I’m a litigator and I’ll put my two cents in: it’s mostly symbolic and as other’s mentioned, will only help prevent future damages. At the time that he was spouting defamatory comments about Smartmatics company and their products, he was in Fox’s employ, so they are liable for everything he did and said on-air as an agent of theirs.
Perhaps he refused to stop selling the big lie on his show.
Dobson may be the highest rated show on Fox Biz, but he has lost all of his major advertisers which means Dobbs loses money. Given the rating losses to more batsh*t crazy broadcasters, Fox can’t afford a money pit. The Smartmantic suit gave them the out they were looking for.
Lawyer here. Legally speaking, this might be helpful to protect against future damages if he were to continue with the lies post-filing. However, these folks are employed by contract, and so the more simple answer was they were looking for a reason to let him go and the lawsuit just happened to meet that threshold to do so without paying anything out. That better explains the timing.
I remember when Dobbs and Bartiromo were legit. The mind-bending they’ve done to become the 🤡🤡 they are now should fuel research in years to come.
I kind of watched Dobbs spiral down. He seemed OK-ish at one point, I don’t know how many years ago now. Then he started becoming really crabby and reactionary, so I avoided him. Finally just, yeah, full-on hateful Trumper. So glad he’s been shown the door.
And that’s what they all are right? You can always expect a maga to be angry and argumentative and this all got worse while their dear leader was in office! They were never happy after he won. They were always the biggest whiners even thought their guy was in.
Also, the big ass American flags and stars and stripes in the background of all of these maga network shows makes me laugh and want to vom.
I only ever knew of Dobbs as “angry old white man” but I do remember Bartiromo being, or at least appearing, normal. I was kind of shocked to see what she’s become.
I do find it kind of funny that her makeup people at Fox must hate her, because she always looks like she’s been sobbing and then had to quickly go on the air.
I am thrilled these companies are standing up to the lies and suing, big time, and including all the “anchors” personally.
It always comes down to money.
Yep.
This was a joy to read, and not only because Lou Dobbs is getting his comeuppance. @kaiser, this was a brilliantly hilarious read.
I agree! Even though I don’t know who all the people are (I’m not American), it was sure funny.
The most popular killer on death row. Am saving that phrase in my memory bank. Thank you
This is wonderful news. If I were Bartiromo or Judge Box-o-Wine I would be a touch worried right now. Bye Lou Dobbs, I wish I could say we barely knew ya
Maria Bartiromo Is the one who always surprised me. She used to be legit and respected.
She used to get all of her finance “news” from sleeping with traders. She was a dim bulb even then-but was the only woman reporting on finance. She was never a real journalist.
Proof, please @MaryContrary. Otherwise, “woman sleeping her way to the top” is an aggressive, ugly assumption, one no one deserves. So when anyone uses charged words like these as if they were actual, provable facts, then please provide proof. I realize we are a gossip site, but that’s not gossip. This is my opinion.
@Gail Hirst there’s no “proof” I’m going to find you that you’re going to accept.
If I link some other gossip site will you believe it? I don’t like the narrative either, but it was common knowledge if you worked on Wall Street in the early 90s. (I have family/friends who have been in that arena since that time and know her.) I’m not going to say she slept with anyone she worked with, or at CNBC when she was there-I have never heard that. I’m just going to say what word on the street was about how she got her scoops. This is just as much “gossip” as anything else on this site-conjecture and opinions based on what we read/see and potentially have some inside knowledge of.
What exactly made Dobbs go around the MAGA bend back in the day? He used to be stuffy and pompous, but credible.
It was the racism. He’s always been a racist. Don’t let his Mexican wife fool you.
Shoot, John Wayne’s wife was Hispanic IIRC, and he was right racist. Explains a lot—thanks!
I know!
From what I understand Smartmatic was only used in one particular county and in one particular state. Not sure why they were targeted as California is not a swing state and Los Angeles is blue.
Along with dominion, I hope they take every last cent from Rudy, pillow guy, Dobbs and all the rest.
I gut laughed when I heard this yesterday.
I experienced actual glee. Giddy glee. Lol
I agree with commenter above:it all comes down to money
Fox may not be in the actually news business but the entertainment business but their audience believes it is news. And lies become legit when people like Dobbs -who “seems” respected and has a power position – spews them with no resistance.
This cancellation is just SO GOOD.
Now we need to get tucker Carlson gone. He is evil.
The Schadenfreude is chef’s kiss delicious.
This was the best news of the weekend.
They need a refresher course in journalism 101 about SLANDER.
I’m going to sound like a old fart but back in the day reporters sat at a simple desk to read the news then leave.
The weather use to be a picture of the sun for a nice day and a picture of clouds for rain.
I’m so sick of reporter commenting.
Just give the news and STFU.
I don’t care about your personal life.
I have been waiting for the voting system companies to sue. I was hoping that the Defendants (such as Fox News) had to prove their claim that the voting systems were rigged against Trump. However, what I have read about USA libel cases, the Plaintiff needs to prove the Defendant lied and had done so with malicious intent (I think that is how it works – I am not an attorney). A win for the voting system companies (Smartmatic and Dominion) would mean that their systems were not rigged against Trump. This really is important and needs to happen.
As far as Smartmatic is concerned they apparently were only set up in LA county during the 2020 US election – hardly would have had an effect on a Trump win/loss. It seems to me Smartmatic has an easy case to prove and they hopefully will be paid every cent of what they are asking for.
People like Lou Dobbs, et al, need to be made to pay for their repeated lies of election fraud. I hope Dobbs is made bankrupt, along with the rest of them who have done so much damage to the USA with their lies.
Fox dropped him like a hot potato. Hilarious to see how they stick by people.
No tears shed here, good riddance
“ his assortment of bad toupees were just named …..
in a massive lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, “
Aww. I was super excited because it sounded like he has an assortment of toupees and we were about to find out what their names were.