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He Tucked around and found out.
Tucker Carlson, the biggest star in cable news history, found out he no longer had a job at FOX News on Monday, reportedly only ten minutes before the rest of the world got the news. His show Tucker Carlson Tonight ran from 2016 to 2023 and was the highest-rated cable news show ever, at times averaging over five million viewers.
Carlson, who TIME magazine said in 2021 “may be the most powerful conservative in America,” closed his show on Friday promising viewers he’d be back on Monday, but by Monday he was gone. He wasn’t even given an opportunity to bid his viewers a fond farewell, which one critic called “the television equivalent of an execution.”
Some sources say FOX’s top dog Rupert Murdoch fired him. Others say the decision came from Murdoch’s son Lachlan and Suzanne Scott, FOX’s dead-faced affirmative-action gender-equity-hire CEO. Carlson’s replacement has yet to be named. For now, FOX is using a rotating series of talking stiffs to fill the vacuum left by his absence.
Neither Carlson nor FOX have commented on the specific reasons for his axing, so for now it’s all speculative.
Some suggest he became the fall guy for the fact that last week, FOX News settled a lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems had filed against them for $787.5 million. Two days after the 2020 presidential election, possibly suggesting that FOX’s executives saw a financial incentive in supporting Trump’s claims of election fraud, Carlson texted a producer:
We worked really hard to build what we have. Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me. . . . What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.
In the weeks following the election, when FOX’s management was attempting to appease Trump’s base by alleging that Dominion was involved in undermining the results, Carlson was their lone voice crying out that Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell had failed to provide evidence of her claims. On November 19, 2020, Carlson told viewers, “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”
As part of discovery in the case, it was revealed that Carlson had messaged Powell by saying:
You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon. You’ve convinced them that Trump will win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.
He privately texted FOX host Laura Ingraham:
Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane. . . . Our viewers are good people and they believe it.
Although Carlson was FOX News’ biggest human asset, he was hardly a company man. Some theorize that although he might have been the only honest person at the network regarding the fact that Sidney Powell wasn’t coughing up any evidence for her claims about Dominion Voting Systems, FOX executives and their bruised egos placed all the blame on Carlson for having to fork over nearly a billion dollars in damages for pushing that narrative.
You can buy Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! here.
It’s been rumored that Rupert Murdoch was displeased with Carlson’s coverage of whatever you want to call what happened at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a friend of Murdoch’s, has publicly stated that Carlson has drawn “offensive and misleading conclusions” about January 6. At various times, Carlson has suggested the event was a federal setup and that Ray Epps was an FBI plant. Earlier this year, he aired footage provided to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that undermined the Biden Administration and FBI’s insistence that the event was a strictly violent white-supremacist terrorist insurrection.
Another theory being floated about Carlson’s dismissal is the fact that FOX News, which has been dogged for years by sexual-harassment cases ranging from Roger Ailes to Bill O’Reilly and many, many others, was sued in late March by the decidedly mannish and unpleasant-looking Abby Grossberg, who served a brief stint as producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight before taking a medical leave of absence, claiming she’d been effectively crippled by enduring a toxically woman-hating workplace. Grossberg’s lawsuit manages to embody every extant stereotype of hysterical women and why they really belong in the kitchen, barefoot while suckling one child and pregnant with another:
[There is a] misogynistic environment that permeates Fox News and fosters a toxic workplace where truth remains a fugitive while female workers are verbally violated on almost a daily basis by a poisonous and entrenched patriarchy. . . . Clearly the #metoo movement’s slogan, “Believe All Women,” had not made its way to Fox News. . . . Ms. Grossberg encountered systemic chauvinism at Fox News. . . . In these discussions, no woman, whether she was a Republican politician or a female staffer at Fox News, was safe from suddenly becoming the target of sexist, demeaning comments, such as being called a “cunt.”
What a cunty thing to say!
Interestingly, despite the rampaging sexism and objectification of women that was alleged in her workplace, Grossberg’s suit makes no mention of any males in the office making a single sexual come-on toward her, but since pictures of her face are readily available to the viewing public, perhaps Grossberg’s lawyers advised her not to press the matter too far.
The suit also alleged a stifling environment of virulent anti-Semitism at FOX, but the only “evidence” the suit coughed up was an alleged incident where an associate asked Grossberg whether Judaism forbade Jews from having tattoos (it does), and another situation where one worker said that a Jewish co-worker went to a Jewish bakery to buy bread and “see his people.” Oy vey, it’s anuddah Shoah!
Yet another rumor about Carlson’s defenestration revolves around the sudden cancellation last month of 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch’s two-week-old engagement to dental hygienist Ann Lesley Smith, who reportedly referred to Carlson as a “messenger from God” shortly before Murdoch broke off the engagement. “Rupert Murdoch was perhaps unnerved by Carlson’s messianism because it echoed the end-times worldview of Murdoch’s ex-fiancée Ann Lesley Smith,” writes Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair. Last Friday, Carlson spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala and spoke of a battle between “good” and “evil” hinging on the issues of transgenderism and abortion. “That stuff freaks Rupert out,” a source told Vanity Fair. “He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk.”
Another thing that neither Rupert Murdoch nor his son are likely to enjoy is losing advertisers. Carlson, who seems unique among American newscasters in that he seems to say what he wants rather than what he’s told to say, has lost dozens of advertisers for speaking his mind about Vladimir Putin, women, immigration, Black Lives Matter, the COVID vaccines, trannies, the war in Ukraine, unchecked American militarism, Deep State corruption, elite manipulation of the media, bankers’ malfeasance, GOP ineptitude, and especially the Great Replacement, which is roundly derided as a wackadoodle and thoroughly debunked white-supremacist conspiracy theory, despite the fact that major newspapers openly print editorials with titles such as “We Can Replace Them.”
He’s the only major broadcaster I can think of who is entirely unpredictable and seemingly uncontrollable. You don’t expect such a high-profile “conservative” to love the Grateful Dead, to speak at Hells Angels president Sonny Barger’s funeral, to say that a book by Elizabeth freaking Warren was “one of the best books I’ve ever read on economics,” to admit he was wrong about the Iraq War, and to draw more viewers among Democrats than any other cable news host.
My favorite thing about him is that face he makes when listening to someone on his show struggling to disagree with him. He’s mastered that face, and it says, “You make absolutely no sense, you are clearly mentally ill, and I’m very concerned not only for your welfare, but for that of everyone around you.”
At 8:01 PM EST last night — almost the exact time when his show used to air — Carlson posted a two-minute video on Twitter. Here is the full transcript of what he said:
Good evening, it’s Tucker Carlson. One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country — kind and decent people, people who really care about what’s true, and a bunch of hilarious people, also. A lot of those. Gotta be the majority of the population, even now. So that’s heartening. The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, you won’t even remember that we had them. Trust me as someone who’s participated.
And yet at the same time — and this is the amazing thing — the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War. Civil liberties. Emerging science. Demographic change. Corporate power. Natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That’s a depressing realization, but it’s not permanent. Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won’t. The people in charge know this. That’s why they’re hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion; they’re resorting to force.
But it won’t work. When honest people say what’s true calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who’ve been trying to silence them shrink, and they become weaker. That’s the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some. And that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.
Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCE
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2023
I hope he pulls a Joe Rogan and starts his own media company, one where he depends on subscribers rather than advertisers and feels free to say whatever the fuck he wants. Despite what seems like a devastating setback, I trust that he has the intelligence and integrity to keep on Tuckerin’.
America’s last sane TV newsman is gone. Hopefully, so is American TV news.
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26 comments
I also heard a theory relating to his exit. It is said that Blackrock has taken a bigger stake in either Fox News or Fox Corp (not sure which) and this larger shareholding from the faceless controlling voting block has instigated this discussion based on their corporate and commercial reach.
It has also been said that Carlson is on the ‘bench’ due to the Murdoch family still paying him and restricting his next move for a period of time. Just a speculative comment I heard.
The comment about advertising pressure is the same real threat here in the UK. There is a group called Stop Funding Hate that has lobbied (and been successful to a point) in scaring off advertisers from GB News.
From across the Atlantic he seemed at times the only person with huge reach talking sense. I liked him and his interview with Spectator TV (on Youtube) was very informative of the man and very charming.
I await his return.
In addition, while Tucker is planning his next move, let’s all piss ourselves laughing at the prize fruit – Lemmon.
Why was Syd Powell intentionally lying about voter fraud?
I’ve no idea, I didn’t mention her. Why would I know? She’s the lawyer that Tucker is talking about I presume? That’s a matter for the American voters. I do not have a dog in the fight, looking in from the UK.
It seems like Trump and the people around him wants attention and adulation only and doesn’t care about truth, evidence or actually getting stuff done.
“Trump and the people around him wants attention and adulation only and doesn’t care about truth” You are an idiot or a liar. Take your pick.
Glad someone is covering this here. I winced at some of the conspiracies he latched onto the past couple of years, but all in all he was a net positive in willingness to talk about verboten topics. If they say never touch a ‘third rail’ Carlson would gladly do so seemingly as a recharge, atypical courage from anyone rated highly in news who would normally have incentive to play it safe. I think many knew of him more from how other media outlets were spurred to react to him. I don’t have much sense of what kind of reaction Bill O’Reilly gets nowadays other than people will ask him what Carlson might do next.
Wow. At last Jim writes a good commentary. I knew there was hope out there.
As a disclaimer, I’m not a Tucker fan although I do think he’s done some very good things and some bad. Although much less bad or perhaps more forgiveable. I think he sensationalizes news stories and presents very logical-sounding arguments that ignore opposite points of view and controverting evidence. However, that may be said of almost every major news outlet. Even white identity type ones: but fortunately less here on Counter-Currents I think.
There was another newscaster who offered a differing POV (point-of–view) to Tucker on Fox. There was a feud between them and the other guy resigned in disgust and claimed to have a more objective but less sensationalist presentation of the news. This was about 8 to 10 years ago. I’ve forgotten his name and now can’t even Google it, as all search results I get are about Tucker’s leaving or firing.
What I liked about Tucker was that apparently he had the resources to bring to light unpleasant news that The Leviathan didn’t want to have exposed to the light of day. As far as unpleasant comments or that he was difficult to work with, I think these are mere distractions. It’s a newsroom, not a church sunday school youth group for God’s sakes. Nasty comments and criticsm will be heard, I can’t imagine that anyone really is so thin-skinned in that business that they truly get offended by comments.
I believe that Musk will be next. I’m imagine that a lot of highly-paid cognescenti {brainiacs} at Washington DC focus groups are getting together to plan out the Leviathan’s next steps. Coming on the back of Bud-Light’s eminently wise decision NOT to fire Marketing VP Mulvaney for losing the company 6 Billion dollars in one week, it shows that Progressives are protected for their views. Also they own the presentation of the dialogue or news that American inhabitants receive
Follow the money, as always. Whatever the reason, Carlson’s departure involved money not feuds. The Anheuser-Busch thing is not over. Corporations are sensitive to optics and wont just sever ties with Mulvaney immediately. The usual way is to wait things out a little and then quietly terminate a relationship for a “totally unrelated reason”. Also consider that Anheuser-Busch is worth 114 billion and Fox news only worth 16 billion. There are also people working at the beer company who dreamed up this idea. They won’t leave immediately, but I imagine cutbacks in their departments down the road.
I watched a video in the last week or two where Tucker trashed White solidarity as a “Nazi” idea and did so far more enthusiastically than necessary if he was just being strategic. The libertarian virus still lives in him.
Although to the anti-White establishment he represents the dangerous White male, like Trump, or Matt Walsh, he is not one of us.
Not going to lie, but I’m pretty butthurt to see Tucker go. I’m also totally dumbfounded since he was arguably the flagship of the network. I guess Murdoch/the powers to be are hellbent on not having a populist voice in 2024. Even if Murdoch doesn’t especially like Tucker he was buttering fox’s bagel pretty good.
If in fact Tucker was the scapegoat for the Dominion lawsuit it begs the question who will be up next with the Smartmatic lawsuit that is also coming up.
Watches as he comes on counter-currents…
Still others say Tucker was fired for giving a platform to RFK Jr, among other reasons. Even though Bobby’s against us on racial & demographic issues, i.e., the most important questions, I am considering supporting him. He’s right about most everything else, has the courage of his father, and cannot be bought.
The most telling point is that his family states they support bidet. I guess establishment families can’t give it up even for a native son. I don’t believe he meant all of what he said in his announcement, but it was refreshing for a democrat. He should run third party and cause heart attacks on both sides of the aisle. The always mysterious center could decide things again. Pull a Perot.
The most interesting reaction came from Department of Defense officials who spoke anonymously to Politico. They claimed to be “thrilled” because Tucker had “wrecked” the DOD by highlighting their woke policies. Interestingly, the DOD pushed out a story a couple months ago claiming that the military recruitment shortfall was not because of their woke policies. But their reaction shows otherwise. I bet Tucker was hurting their recruitment.
Very enjoyable article, thank you.
He’s the only major broadcaster I can think of who is entirely unpredictable and seemingly uncontrollable. You don’t expect such a high-profile “conservative” to love the Grateful Dead, to speak at Hells Angels president Sonny Barger’s funeral, to say that a book by Elizabeth freaking Warren was “one of the best books I’ve ever read on economics,” to admit he was wrong about the Iraq War, and to draw more viewers among Democrats than any other cable news host.
One of Tucker Carlson’s regular guests was Glenn Greenwald, who used to appear frequently on “Democracy Now” with Amy Goodman, and wrote for the Guardian. Both Carlson and Greenwald are too freethinking to conform to any political pigeonhole. They’re too anti-authoritarian for such petty control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbnm939b6wQ
Fight back.
Cancel your cable TV subscription.
Tucker’s downfall is a net positive for WN in the same way Limbaugh’s departure has been. Nobody can or will replace him, including himself, which is the second-best outcome. He is no Joe Rogan, who has a variety of occupations and talents, and intersects them all within his podcast. So there will be no second act for Tucker, just like there wasn’t for Bill O’Reilly despite being number one. Tucker’s shtick ran its course. It’s poetic how one of his last interviews was him passionately disavowing whites.
I voted twice for Trump, not because I thought he would make a good president or even win, but because I wanted him to delouse the GOP of recrudescent neoconservatism, which will likely happen again. Another generation of Cuckservatives will be wiped out in the primaries.
The point is to keep these outlets anarchic like hot talk radio, cable news anchors and presidential nominees. Limbaugh was the undisputed king of radio. They all followed his lead as these Cuckservative cutouts. Nobody has been able to take his spot since his demise and recapture the audience lost to decentralized podcasts. Tucker reshaped cable news in its last-gasp. The Hannity model doesn’t work anymore. There is no business-as-usual or going back to the pre-Trump GOP Boy Scout. That should always be the goal because the center-right are our greatest enemies. They pretend to represent us and our people whole holding us back in a bipartisan consensus. Tucker, like Trump, is a princeling pretending to conspire in a palace coup against the elite. They are outcasts now, but they still aren’t us. We both used each other until the wheels fell off the iconoclastic-nihilism of populism.
I have to disagree with that. TC is no O’Reilly and l state that in the best possible terms. He’s not a blowhard nor is he antiquated.
I never implied that. But he will never regain what he had. His audience are Boomers. They will not follow him into his next endeavor, just like the bulk of every other deplatformed celebrity had to leave behind their former status. It even happened to Trump. I once believed Tucker could be a presidential contender, but the more that has been unearthed about his privileged background and his latest statements the more unlikely it appears. Maybe he could reinvent himself as he builds his own paywalled network, but I doubt it.
If you are hoping for a movement even the size of Transnistria, don’t view the center right as ‘enemies’ but as a place from which to recruit. Liberals become more conservative as they age, and events that strike them personally can elicit change immediately, as in Frank Rizzo’s quip that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged last week.
Once again, totally not what I said. I don’t know why I even try here.
I haven’t owned a TV for many decades, and I rarely watch Youtube vids. So I never actually saw Tucker. Maybe he knows more than he lets on. Or maybe he’s a type of ‘squishy’ conservative – the rare type that is relatively honest, but ideologically weak. I recall a guest op-ed he wrote in the WSJ back in the 90s – maybe as far back as the early 90s. It was a real sniveler, filled with inapposite references to “Nazis” and “eugenics”. It might have had something to do with an excellent if go-nowhere proposal to offer financial incentives for welfare mothers – or maybe only drug addicted ones- either to get permanently or temporarily sterilized. I apologize for not recalling details. But I do remember his name, and thinking about how much I hated that type of “conservative” – the one who won’t face sociobiological realities.
From what I gather, Tucker is not one of us, unless he’s “grown” in the intervening three decades. But I think he can smell hypocrisy, and unlike most newsmen, isn’t afraid to call it out. He seems to be less prowhite than simply not-antiwhite, which I guess these days is infraction enough for the PTB.
I would love to see Tucker start his own media Imperium but would prefer that he run for president so we don’t have to choose between an orange NFT salesman and sanctimonious DeSantis who is signing a hate speech bill in Israel.
“My favorite thing about him is that face he makes when listening to someone on his show struggling to disagree with him”
Let’s see your war face! everyone has one!
I’m sure Jim could make reading the telephone directory sound weird and funny.
How’s this for a headline…
Ex-US Army Psyops Expert: Fox News Fired Carlson To Maintain “Semi Lobotomized Quasi Retarded Population”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ex-us-army-psyops-expert-fox-news-fired-carlson-maintain-semi-lobotomized-quasi-retarded
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