Tucker Carlson Out at Fox News
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Fox News’ top-performing host Tucker Carlson is leaving the network after appearing in the prime-time slot since November 2016.
“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” the company wrote in a statement.
The sudden departure did not leave Carlson time to host a final farewell episode of his wildly successful program Tucker Carlson Tonight. His last episode was broadcast on Friday, April 21, the network said.
An interim show featuring a rotating cast of Fox News personalities will fill the 8 p.m. hour until a new host is named.
On Friday, the day of his last regularly scheduled show, Carlson delivered the keynote speech for The Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. The anchor touched on many themes, namely the moral decay plaguing American society and the unprecedented weaponization of the U.S. government against political opponents.
While the reason for Carlson’s departure from Fox is unknown, many conservatives have observed that his on-air coverage often appeared to be at odds with the headquarters and other media divisions within the firm. For example, there have been long-standing tensions between Carlson and 26-year Fox veteran and network CEO Suzanne Scott, Mediate reported. However, Tucker Carlson Tonight continually landed at the top of the charts. In 2022, the show averaged 3.3 million viewers as cable news’ second most-popular program after Fox News’ The Five.
Carlson came under fire in the last few years for questioning the popular mainstream media portrayal of January 6 and suggesting that federal agents may have even orchestrated the day’s events. In March, Carlson played footage of the day, provided to him by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, while shows on the news side of the network stayed relatively quiet on the matter. That contentious commentary came amid Dominion’s defamation case against Fox, in which the voting machine company sought $1.6 billion in damages over false claims the cable news network made in the wake of the 2020 election.
Dominion accused Fox News staffers and guests of defaming the company with false allegations that its voting machines had switched votes for then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. February court filings from Dominion revealed internal communications in which Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch and other Fox figures admitted the network’s claims about Dominion rigging the race were false. Last week, Fox reached a settlement with Dominion for $787.5 million.
Given the massive bill Fox has been ordered to pay Dominion, some observers have speculated that the network would try to tone down its on-air personalities to avoid future legal troubles. Last week, now-former Fox host Dan Bongino also parted ways with the network. After Smartmatic, another voting-technology company, sued Fox for $2.7 billion in damages in February 2021, former host Lou Dobbs was let go. Dobbs offered the most comments cited as defamatory false claims of fact in the judge’s ruling in the case, our Jim Geraghty noted.
As part of the lawsuit, Dominion released a series of text messages in which Carlson criticized Fox management as “incompetent” and tone-deaf to its traditionally conservative fan base. A source familiar with the company’s reasonings told the Washington Post that Carlson’s comments about leadership likely contributed to the break-up.
“Do executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?,” Carlson wrote in a text to a colleague a day after Fox announced that Biden was the projected winner of the 2020 election.
“These f—–s are destroying our credibility,” he wrote of the executives running the network in another message.
“A combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening,” he said in another message.
Other texts involved in the lawsuit showed Carlson also privately harbored resentment toward Trump, whom he often defended on TV from attacks by Democrats and praised for his handling of certain issues, like immigration. Carlson didn’t shy from criticizing Trump when he believed he was bending the knee to the establishment GOP, however.
“I hate him passionately,” one text sent by Carlson to a colleague said. “What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote in another message just two days before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”
In one of his last interviews, Carlson sat down with Trump, who recently announced his third presidential bid, to discuss foreign policy and problems facing the country. Carlson changed his tune on the former president in that conversation, telling his audience: “For a man who is caricatured as an extremist, we think you’ll find what he has to say moderate, sensible and wise.”
