Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' " Carlson first told viewers, "Remember the facts of the story. These are undisputed." But they aren't undisputed. They're not even facts. He then proceeded to say, "Two women approach Donald Trump and threaten to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn't give them money. Now that sounds like a classic case of extortion." In reality, McDougal never approached Trump. She and her representative had spoken to ABC News and to the National Enquirer because, she said, she feared word of the affair would leak out during the campaign anyway and she preferred to be the one to tell the story. It wasn't publicly known that David Pecker, then the CEO of the tabloid's parent company, had promised Trump he would help keep stories about extramarital affairs from seeing the light of day. Carlson and Fox never corrected that significant error, as The Washington Post's Erik Wemple underscored. In sum, the Fox News lawyers mocked the legal case made by McDougal's legal team. She alleged "a reasonable viewer of ordinary intelligence listening or watching the show ... would conclude that [she] is a criminal who extorted Trump for money" and that "the statements about [her] were fact." "Context makes plain," Fox's lawyers wrote, "that the reasonable viewer would do no such thing." The judge fully agreed.
The judge was a Trump appointee, btw. And the last paragraph was the best. They literally argued that only a moron would believe what Carlson says. That was the actual argument HIS OWN LAWYERS made.