Jason Koerner/Getty Images and Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
- Trump said triumphantly that Fox News host Tucker Carlson "doesn't hate me" anymore on Sunday night.
- This followed revelations that Carlson previously told a confidant that he hated Trump.
- All appears to be forgiven after Carlson broadcasted a misleading edit of Capitol riot footage.
Former President Donald Trump said on Sunday night that Tucker Carlson "doesn't hate me, or at least, not anymore!"
This followed revelations this month of a message between the Fox News host and a confidant from 2021, when Carlson said he hated Trump.
"I hate him passionately," Carlson wrote in one message. In another, he wrote longingly about no longer having to cover the former president on his show.
Posting to Truth Social late on Sunday, Trump shared an article about one of Carlson's recent episodes, which misrepresented the January 6 Capitol riot, portraying it as a peaceful event.
This portrayal is politically beneficial to Trump, and the former president used it to make his claim about Carlson's personal feelings about him.
A Fox News representative did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent out-of-hours.
The remark appears to be Trump's first public reaction to Carlson's barbed comments about him, as revealed by court filings attached to a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
The lawsuit alleged that the network knowingly misled viewers about the 2020 election, amplifying Trump's false claims it was stolen from him, and dragging the vote-machine company's reputation through the mud in the process.
Dominion says that many of the unearthed messages between Fox News producers and on-air stars like Carlson revealed how little they believed what they were saying. In Carlson's case they also revealed his contempt for Trump himself.
Carlson's remarks came as a surprise not only in the context of the lawsuit, but also because of his long-time support for Trump — or at least Trump-style politics — on his show.
Fox News said the messages had been cherry-picked and presented out of context.
Trump's Sunday night claim that Carlson doesn't hate him after all came in reaction to Carlson's portrayal of 41,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol riot, granted to him exclusively by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Last week, Carlson presented his take on the riot, choosing calmer moments from the roughly six-hour attack on the Capitol and telling his audience the footage "demolishes" the idea that it was an insurrection.
Trump shared an enthusiastic write-up of the show by hard-right media company Right Side Broadcasting Network along with his comment.