Tucker Carlson axed from Fox News primetime slot
Tucker Carlson, cable news’ most-watched anchor and the most influential mouthpiece for far-right perspectives in mainstream media, has been let go by the network he called home for almost 15 years.
It was not immediately clear why Carlson was fired. Fox Corp. Executive Chair Lachlan Murdoch, son of owner Rupert Murdoch, was the one who made the final call on Carlson’s termination. His involvement in pushing 2020 election conspiracies — and the financial fallout that it eventually cost Fox News — certainly played a role in his dismissal. Additionally, Carlson and his production team are facing another lawsuit from a former producer who maintains that the conservative superstar created a misogynistic and anti-semitic workplace.
According to a new report by the Wall Street Journal — which is also owned by the Murdoch family — a “Succession”-style power game played out between Carlson and Fox management. Carlson was allegedly petulant and combative with Fox executives, and both sides hired former Trump aide Raj Shah to be a mediator between them.
This did not soften the relationship. For example, the Fox legal team working the Dominion trial “had persuaded the court to redact from a legal filing the time he called a senior Fox News executive the c-word, according to people familiar with the matter,” explained the Wall Street Journal.
“Mr. Carlson, Fox News’s most-watched prime-time host, wasn’t impressed. He told his colleagues that he wanted the world to know what he had said about the executive in a private message.”
Even before his record-breaking rise to the top of reactionary media, Carlson’s career was quite industrious: He spent the 1990s as a gonzo-style magazine writer before anchoring shows for CNN, MSNBC and PBS. He also founded the conservative “news” website The Daily Caller.
From 2009 to 2016, he made his way through the circles of Fox News before landing a primetime show.
Yet it was after Carlson’s program took over the time slot once belonging to beleaguered Fox icon Bill O’Reilly that his true colors were revealed. From an early age, Carlson had always been a dyed-in-the-wool polemicist and feverish antagonist of progressive politics. But it was his rise alongside Donald Trump that seemed to cement his xenophobic, traditionalist sensibilities. With each season of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” came a new level of neo-fascist apologia.
Carlson also promoted baseless conspiracies like the aforementioned “Great Replacement” theory.
He eventually became one of Trump’s preferred sources, though depositions from the aforementioned Dominion lawsuit revealed Carlson had grown to find the former president infuriating.
It’s unclear where Carlson will go from here. His harsh rhetoric, cynical style and faux anti-authoritarian bona fides have attracted a committed audience — even among those not typically associated with Fox’s demographics. He very well could establish an independent means of delivering his Hour of Hate, and a Russian state TV channel has even requested his services.
On Wednesday evening, Carlson released a brief, cryptic video on Twitter indicating he would soon find a new way to reach his audience.
Regardless, this is definitely not the worst thing that could have happened to someone with a deep-seated martyr complex like Carlson. It’s in all likelihood just another rung on the ladder for mass media’s most punchable face.
