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Tucker Carlson Tonight


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Selling your soul night after night was never going to last forever, but you gave it everything.  And in the end, your lies and firing still went public.  Guess there's a lesson lost in there somewhere.  If only you could see it.

Confused Tucker Carlson GIF by GIPHY News 

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https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-04-24/tucker-carlson-is-out-at-fox-news

 

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The network announced the departure of its top-rated and most provocative conservative prime-time host Monday with no explanation. His last show was Friday.

“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” the network said in a statement. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”

 

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A Fox News representative had no other details on Carlson’s exit. People familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, the producer fired by the network last month, the people said. Carlson’s senior executive producer Justin Wells has also been terminated, according to people familiar with the matter. A Fox News representative would not comment.

 

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Murdoch is also said to be concerned over Carlson’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which the host has promoted the conspiracy theory that it was provoked by government agents.

Carlson has called Ray Epps — a Texas man who participated in the storming of the Capitol but did not enter the building — an FBI plant, without presenting any evidence.

Epps was interviewed Sunday on “60 Minutes” and said he has been subjected to death threats as a result of Carlson’s statements about him. The FBI told “60 Minutes” that Epps has never worked for the agency.

 

Spoiler

The decision is not related to the $787.5-million settlement Fox News agreed to pay to Dominion Voting Systems last week, according to a representative for Dominion.

However, some of the comments that Carlson had made about management in communications that turned up in the discovery process for the case may have also played a role in Carlson’s demise.

Dominion accused Fox of knowingly making false claims related to the 2020 election.

Grossberg was moved off of “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” and onto “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” where she said was bullied and subjected to antisemitic comments. She filed a lawsuit in New York.

Carlson was by far the most popular individual host on Fox News, averaging more than 3 million viewers a night.

But he also brought controversy to the network on a regular basis with his provocative views on immigration and race, which alienated advertisers.

Starting Monday, Carlson’s 8 p.m. Eastern time slot will be filled by rotating Fox News personalities until a new host is named, the company said.

 

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5 minutes ago, The Dog said:

 

"Stand with..."

Appropriate since Tucker changes his stature as often as MTG does.  Because he's a feckless trend follower, metaphorically.  And literally, she has to because her limited toes mandate she continually adjust her weight and posture.  

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19 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:


I heard they let Tom Wambsgans give him the news.

Well the ATN carveout barely seems worth it at this point, given the exit of the most prominent on-air personality.  

I love how FoxNews openly calls the primetime hosts "Personalities" instead of of Journalists, Interviewers, or even hosts.  They're not even pretending anymore.

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2 hours ago, The Dog said:

 

Wait, he was fired by the guy that didn't have anything to do with running Fox News according to what Fox News told the judge in the Dominion case? (and then got sanctioned for that lie)? Awesome. Just fucking awesome. 

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1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

fun fact - Tucker Carlson gave Rachel Maddow her shot at the big time, and they're friends. Or were, anyway. 

I have a feeling ole Tucker has very few 'friends' that don't use him for something. I don't see how in any way you can be an honorable man in society and represent yourself to the public the way he did. he's a snake and deserves everything coming to him

1 minute ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Claire McCaskill just raised a disturbing prospect: what if Tucker Carlson runs for President?

he'll get fucking crushed. dumb idea

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2 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:


I heard they let Tom Wambsgans give him the news.

He delegated it to Greg (ory)

 

also I’m assuming he got a pretty good severance package. I wonder if it has non-disparagement language 

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23 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

Also, fun tidbit.  He's probably worth about 40x more.  Funny tweet, tho. 

You might want to hold off on any pronouncements about his wealth until *after* Dominion and Smartmatic are done with him.

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9 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:


Depends on the circumstances.

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I’m assuming they have him dead to rights on “fault”.

 

 

 

 

Well, the great replacement theory wasn’t exactly what Tucker told the “cousin fuckers” it would be.

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31 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

Also, fun tidbit.  He's probably worth about 40x more.  Funny tweet, tho. 

How much of his net worth is actually because of him though?  I mean he was paid very well to froth up gullible Americans by lying to them, but how does that compare with what he was already born into?

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4 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

How much of his net worth is actually because of him though?  I mean he was paid very well to froth up gullible Americans by lying to them, but how does that compare with what he was already born into?

I believe he married into the fortune, the Swanson family food company. But maybe he was born super rich as well. 

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3 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

"Swanson" is literally one of his middle names.

Looks like it was his stepmom, his dad married into it. 
 

As his stepmom was Patricia Caroline Swanson, heiress to the Swanson Frozen Foods empire, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson probably knows more about Hungry Man epicure than he’ll ever admit on the air. At least one part of the recipe is bonehead simple: Eat real journalists for breakfast. Then spit them out. Then leave them to the mongrel dogs.

https://www.qwoted.com/lous-views-tucker-carlson/

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/tucker-carlson-fox-news-execution

 

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The last time Tucker Carlson texted me, it was about a Twitter rumor that new management at CNN might toss me overboard. Carlson clearly wanted an excuse to turn a random tweet into national news for his millions of devotees. “Do you have comment?” he asked. “Thanks.” By that point, in April of 2022, I had sworn off any contact with Carlson. I’d had enough of the swearing and trolling. But Monday presented an astonishing reason to reach back out to Carlson. I texted: “Any comment on your departure from Fox?”

 

 

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It’s been a few hours, and he has not replied yet. Carlson has chosen silence at one of the most consequential moments in his life: his firing from Fox News. Officially, Carlson and Fox “agreed to part ways.” That’s what the terse press release from Fox said. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”

The real “tell” about the terms of Carlson’s departure came in the second and last paragraph, where Fox revealed that “Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st.” Carlson is not signing off. To put it more bluntly: He’s not being given a chance to say goodbye. It is technically possible, I suppose, that Carlson turned down a chance to sign off on his own terms. But my 20 years of experience covering cable news suggests otherwise.

 

 

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Four months after Carlson texted about the rumor of my departure, CNN CEO Chris Licht told me he was canceling Reliable Sources, the Sunday morning program I had led for nearly nine years. Notice that I didn’t call it “my show”—it’s a crucial distinction. News anchors don’t own their time slots, they rent. Anchors who let their egos delude them into thinking they own their time slots, well, they don’t last very long.

 

Spoiler

But Carlson, more than anyone else in cable news, might have been able to credibly call the 8 p.m. hour on Fox News “my show.” I spent oodles of time on Reliable Sources analyzing the rise of Tucker Carlson Tonight as a force in both television and politics. Carlson became, for a couple of years, even bigger than his network. He was said to have a chummy relationship with Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch.He was also said to be sharply critical of the women who ran Fox News for Murdoch. Fox staffers believed that Carlson could get away with anything for two main reasons: his friendship with Murdoch and his reliably high ratings.

But virtually every show gets canceled eventually. Which brings me back to my departure from CNN. Licht showed me grace while ending Reliable Sources: He offered me a final show. One final episode to dissect the media, including CNN, and to say thanks to the viewing public. I could interview whomever I wanted, bring up any topic I wanted, and say whatever I wanted. No one in management read my sign-off monologue in advance. This was the result of mutual respect—and it was mutually beneficial. I had a chance to say my piece, and CNN was credited with being courteous to a departing anchorman.

Sign-offs mean the world to the hosts who are allowed to give them. I could see it in Sean Spicer’s eyes when he said farewell to his fans on the Fox-wannabe channel Newsmax earlier this month. The former Trump White House press secretary tried to use his sign-off to turn Newsmax viewers into his own subscribers: He read aloud the URL for his personal website and plugged his Twitter handle and YouTube account. “Stay in touch,” he said, either eagerly or desperately, depending on your point of view.

For a TV host like Spicer, those last few minutes of airtime are close to priceless. (After I signed off on CNN, multiple people told me that I should have plugged a Substack or something, but I was eager to take several months off.) I’m telling you all of this to emphasize that Carlson is not saying goodbye. The takeaway, at least for some TV insiders, is that Carlson was shoved— hard—by Fox management. As Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported Monday, Carlson was blindsided by his own cancellation. Not being given a chance to sign off is the television equivalent of an execution.

“Damn,” a former Fox producer said to me right after it happened. “It had to be O’Reilly-level bad for him to not even get a goodbye show.” You’ll recall that Bill O’Reilly, the longtime renter of the 8 p.m. time slot at Fox, was booted in 2017 in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations and revelations about secret settlements. That’s not why Carlson is out—in fact, a well-placed network source says Carlson was not the subject of any misconduct investigation. Carlson has many, many flaws, but they’re distinct from O’Reilly’s flaws.

So what doomed Carlson? Here is a theory. The revelations from Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox, which the network settled last week for $787.5 million, were embarrassing for many individuals, including Carlson, whose private emotions about Donald Trump (a “destroyer,” a “demonic force”) and Fox’s own journalists were published for all the world to read. Hundreds of pages of emails and text messages from within Fox were published in Dominion’s pre-trial legal filings. But there is a huge number of other pages that remain out of public view. The redactions were voluminous. Only three groups of people know what those pages contain: Dominion’s lawyers, Fox’s top executives, and obviously the people who were sending and receiving the messages. So what was Carlson saying about, say, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott? What was he texting about the Murdochs? We don’t know. We may never know. But this theory may explain why Carlson’s top producer and textmate, Justin Wells, was also terminated.

I have received conflicting answers about whether the redacted material from Dominion’s legal briefs will ever see the light of day. I have also asked Fox PR if the unearthed messages factored into Carlson’s firing, and I have not heard back.

Other potential factors include former producer Abby Grossberg’s discrimination lawsuit against the network, which depicted the Tucker Carlson Tonight production environment as a frathouse where “sexist, demeaning comments” were free-flowing. Truth be told, Carlson’s exit may always be shrouded in some amount of mystery. Both Fox and Carlson may be incentivized, for financial reasons, to stay semi-peaceful in public. But at the time I’m filing this, six hours have passed since Fox made the announcement for him. Carlson still hasn’t released a statement or replied to my texts. One of the biggest, baddest loudmouths in television history is suddenly silent. 

 

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