Tucker Carlson says Trump’s payoff to a porn actress is ‘ordinary in America’

Fox News’s resident Trump cheerleader Tucker Carlson was back at it again on Monday in defence of the former president, this time as Donald Trump faces a looming criminal indictment.

In a segment on Monday evening the primetime host spun a narrative about the hush payment Mr Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016, days before the presidential election, which would go on to be classified as an illegal campaign contribution and land Mr Cohen in prison.

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That context was ignored as Carlson instead likened the act of paying for Ms Daniels’s silence to the nondisclosure agreements that have become commonplace in corporate America, and made no mention of the very different standards to which candidates campaigning for office are held.

“Settlements like this, whatever you think of them, are common. Both among famous people, celebrities, and in corporate America. The result is usually known as an NDA, a nondisclosure agreement. In this case you can believe whatever side you want to believe, but paying people not to talk about things, hush money, is ordinary in modern America,” said Carlson.

It was classic spin from one of the network’s opinion hosts most beloved by the hardcore base of Donald Trump’s supporters. Carlson has worked to keep those good graces alive after mainstream media organisations relentlessly reported on text messages he was revealed to have sent to other Fox employees and hosts regarding the former president stating that he wished to be rid of Mr Trump forever and describing his personal distaste or even hatred for the ex-president personally.

Those texts were made public as part of a massive lawsuit facing Fox News filed by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims about their products and their use in the 2020 election that were spread like wildfire across the opinion side of Fox after the presidential election. Carlson’s show in particular was a stopping point for Sidney Powell, one of Mr Trump’s former attorneys, who spread disinformation and outrageously bizarre conspiracies about Dominion’s products.

Carlson continues to echo the stolen election lies that Mr Trump has embraced and hung on to since his defeat to Joe Biden, and during his show on Monday warned that voters had one last chance to save America’s election systems from the imaginary fraud that supposedly controls it by electing Donald Trump president in 2024.