Fox Thinks Firing Lou Dobbs Will Protect Them From Defamation Lawsuits

Fox host Lou Dobbs was fired late last week, shortly after the Fox organization was hit with a multi-billion dollar defamation suit, partially based on claims that Dobbs had made. Analysts believe that Dobbs is being made into the sacrificial lamb, but this won't do anything to stop the lawsuits. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

On Friday, it was announced that Fox organization was going to be parting ways with their Fox business host Lou Dobbs. Uh, over the years, Dobbs has expressed many Zena phobic, uh, thoughts and sentiments, uh, basically not wanting, uh, well, he's kind of like Tucker Carlson, light, you know, lot older than Tucker Carlson, but, uh, pretty much the same viewpoints, just not always as blatant as Tucker, uh, Lou Dobbs. Of course, also during the Trump administration, it had been reported that he had a direct line literally into the president, uh, would be on phone with him speakerphone during cabinet meetings and giving the president advice. So he's now gone from Fox news and the timing of this has obviously led a lot of people to believe that Dobbs was fired. Not because of lagging ratings, not because of an advertiser Exodus, uh, his ratings were not actually lagging by the way.

Um, but because Fox news just got hit with a multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit, partly based on things that Dobbs said, and they believe, uh, some of these media analysts believe that Dobbs has become the sacrificial lamb, the one they could really do without, they don't want to get rid of Jeanine Pirro they don't want to get rid of Maria. Bartiromo, you know, they don't want to get rid of any of the other folks who do have higher ratings. So Dobbs kind of sit in there, good ratings, but not as good as the others. They said, well, we could get rid of him. And then we can use that to show people, Hey, look, we're doing the right thing. This guy was named in the lawsuit for defamation. So we cut bait. We got rid of him.

That's not going to matter though, because that's not how that works. Uh, first and foremost, it will all depend also on whether or not that's even the reason they did get rid of him. Maybe they didn't like him anymore. You know, maybe his show was getting stale. His ratings, as I said, were pretty decent, but he did have a problem attracting advertisers much like Tucker Carlson, but he didn't have the kind of ratings boost that Tucker Carlson has to make up for the fact that nobody wants to advertise on his show. So you had a guy with mediocre ratings and no advertisers. Yeah. Kind of seems like a no brainer there. And of course, if he is going to continuously get you in trouble, get you sued for defamation. He becomes a major liability at that point. And so yes, it would make sense to go ahead and fire him.

So keep in mind, this has nothing to do with Lou Dobbs, extremist views, nothing to do with his xenophobia or, or hatred of, uh, the others. This is all business strategy. And I do think a lot of it has to do with the lawsuits. Again, Dobbs was one of the people on the network, along with pre, uh, PIRO and Bartiromo and a couple of the other hosts who were pushing the crazy theory that Venezuela via smart MADEC had somehow changed the results of the election smart MADEC last week, uh, hit them with a big multi-billion dollar lawsuit. And that's where we land at the end of the week with Lou Dobbs being fired. It's not going to save him from the lawsuit. Okay. The damage that Lou Dobbs did has not been undone by the network, firing him, does not undo the damage. And that's why I'm saying like, you can fire him.

You can fire all of them. If you want that doesn't undo what was done. You still have to come out, you have to issue corrections and apologies and do what you have to do to make it right. And in fact, you were given the chance to do that Fox you chose not to. And that's why you got hit with the defamation suit, which though you're likely not going to have to pay out billions for it. I imagine by the time it's all over, you will definitely still have to pay out millions. But Hey, thanks for firing Lou Dobbs in the process. We all greatly appreciate that.