Tucker Carlson news – live: Fired Fox News host’s sexist comments about fans revealed as Newsmax ratings climb
Tucker Carlson broke his silence in a Twitter video message where he hinted that Americans will be seeing him soon
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Tucker Carlson’s sexist comments about fans have come to light after he was fired from Fox News this week.
The right-wing host was caught on video making inappropriate comments about women and his “postmenopausal fans”, according to The New York Times.
In one video, Carlson is heard off-camera talking about whether his “postmenopausal fans” would like how he looks on his primetime show while in a second he refers to a woman as “yummy”.
This comes amid reports that the discovery of offensive and crude text messages sent by Carlson played a key factor in his sudden ousting.
Meanwhile, former producer Abby Grossberg’s lawsuit – alleging Carlson’s “derogatory comments towards women” and “misogyny” – is also said to have contributed to a “crisis” at the network.
However, Fox News’ ratings have plunged since Carlson’s exit while smaller right-wing rival network Newsmax has seen a spike in primetime viewers.
The ratings come as Carlson broke his silence in a Twitter video on Wednesday night, making thinly veiled jabs at his former employer as well as media reports outlining the likely motivations behind his exit.
The filing by Abby Grossberg includes examples of the alleged misconduct, like producer Justin Wells asking her if then-Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo — who Ms Grossberg formerly worked for — has slept with House Majority Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
She said that people in Carlson’s shop made crude comments about women politicians’ looks and theorised on which had slept their way into their positions in government.
Ms Grossberg also said her direct supervisor, Alex McCaskill, mocked an Israeli colleague for taking off for Jewish holidays. He further suggested the colleague’s visit to a “Jew bakery” was for him “to see his people.”
Further building the case of rampant misogyny in Carlson’s orbit are allegations that the anchor — allegations he seemingly confirmed during a deposition with Dominion’s lawyers — that he frequently called MAGA conspiracy theorist and infamous “kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell a “c***”, according to The Daily Beast.
What’s most compelling about this theory is that Mr Wells — who is a prominent figure in Ms Grossberg’s lawsuit — was fired alongside Carlson on Monday.
He weirded out Rupert Murdoch with religious rhetoric
Carlson often blended nationalism, white supremacist conspiracy theories, and conservative Christian persecution paranoia into a turgid slurry of fear-mongering and hate, and he did so again during the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala on Friday.
He may have gone too far.
A source claiming familiarity with Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch’s decision to can Carlson told Vanity Fair that the religious nature of the anchor’s comments made the boss-man uncomfortable and prompted the firing.
Carlson spoke in absolutist terms, about good and evil, and suggested that individuals who support trans existence are simply incapable of being reasoned with. He told the crowd to pray for them.
He also likened abortions to child sacrafice.
“That stuff freaks Rupert out. He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk,” the source told the publication.
Mr Murdoch reportedly was similarly freaked out after his now-ex fiance whipped out a Bible during a dinner party and began reading passages out loud from the Book of Exodus, according to Vanity Fair.
The source theorised that Carlson’ eschatological musings reminded Mr Murdoch of the incident and left him feeling uneasy about keeping the anchor on the air.
Carlson's criticisms of Fox News leadership
Another leading theory is that Carlson was dropped in the wake of the Dominion lawsuit due to his sharp criticism of Fox News’ leadership. Those comments were made public by reporters who obtained court filings related to Dominion’s lawsuit.
A person familiar with the company’s rationale told The Washington Post that higher-ups at Fox News did not take his comments lightly, and that they “played a role” in his firing.
“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson wrote in a message the day after Fox News called the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
He later said “those f****** are destroying our credibility,” and complained that there was a “combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down” causing problems at the network.
Further complicating Carlson’s role as Fox News’ top anchor were texts revealing that he secretly loathed Donald Trump, and looked forward to a time when the network could ignore the former president.
A section of redacted texts exists that could contain more — and more damning — comments from Carlson. Those texts are only known to Fox News, Dominion’s lawyers, and the individuals who sent the messages, according to Vanity Fair. It is unclear — and may never be clear — if those messages played any part in Carlson’s downfall.
Both of those explanations suggest that Carlson dug his own grave with Fox News. He has his own theory about why he was axed — one which leaves him less culpable — that suggests Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch‘s children want to sanitize the network for prepare it for a sale once their father passes.
The Murdoch children theory
In a theory that could easily serve as a story arc on HBO’s Succession, Carlson reportedly believes he was removed from the network because Mr Murdoch’s children are planning to sell the company, according to Vanity Fair.
It’s no secret that Carlson is divisive to advertisers. He is frequently dogged with claims that he is misogynist, transphobic, racist, and offers up apologetic defenses of nefarious actors like the Capitol riot defendants and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Advertisers stopped buying airtime on Fox News in 2018 after Carlson said immigration makes the US “dirtier,” and periodic calls for advertiser boycotts by the public have caused his sponsors to dwindle since.
“The show has almost no big-name advertisers left right now,” Kara Alaimo, a public-relations expert who teaches at Hofstra University, told the New York Times in 2020. “This is just not an issue you want to be on the wrong side of, if you’re a mainstream brand.”
Under Carlson’s theory, if the Murdoch children want to sell Fox News for the maximum possible profit, the brand needs to become less toxic to big name advertisers. That means he needed to go.
There is currently no public indication that the Murdoch children plan to sell the company.
Possible Ray Epps defamation lawsuit
The night before Carlson was let go, Ray Epps — a 66-year-old man who attended Donald Trump’s rally that preceded the Capitol riot and who later became the focus of a conservative conspiracy theory that upended his life — told 60 Minutes that the former Fox News anchor was “obsessed” with him and was trying to “destroy” his life.
In short, the conspiracy theory alleges that Mr Epps is actually a federal plant who was sent to the march to incite the Capitol riot, painting Trump supporters in a bad light and justifying the mass arrests and prosecutions that followed.
Mr Epps, a Trump supporter, was captured on video the day of the march telling other Trump loyalists that the police were not their enemies and cautioning against escalation.
That has not stopped him from being subjected to near-constant harassment and death threats from conservatives, some of which likely only know about him thanks to Carlson’s regular boosting of the conspiracy theory on his show.
Fox News already paid out the largest settlement for defamation in US history to Dominion Voting Systems. If Mr Epps were to sue Carlson and Fox News for defamation, it could force the company into another massive payout to avoid further public embarrassment similar to what it experienced in the Dominion case.
Tucker Carlson receives a job offer from Russian state TV after Fox News firing
It didn’t take long for Tucker Carlson to land a job offer after losing his primetime slot on the most-watched cable news network in the country.
Within hours after Fox News announced that the network agreed to “part ways” with the far-right nationalist pundit on Monday morning, Russian state media personalities and propaganda outlets opened their doors.
RT – the Russian state broadcaster formerly known as Russia Today, which is banned in dozens of countries, inducing across Europe – offered him a platform. “Hey @TuckerCarlson, you can always question more with @RT_com,” the outlet wrote on Twitter.
Vladimir Solovyov, a propagandist whose channels were blocked by YouTube last year for violating the platform’s policies against inciting violence, said he sent an email to Carlson, calling him “the last remaining voice of reason.”
“You have our admiration and support in any endeavor you choose yourself next, be it running for president of the United States (which you should totally do, by the way) or making an independent media project,” Solovyov wrote, according to a screenshot of the message he shared to Telegram on 24 April.
Read more:
Russian state-owned media offers Tucker Carlson a job
Putin-linked propagandists troll American media with their bid for the ousted far-right pundit’s attention
Will other Fox News stars face Tucker Carlson’s fate?
A flood of reporting in the aftermath of Tucker Carlson’s abrupt exit from Fox News suggested that allegations outlined in lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems and a former producer who worked for his most-watched programme likely played a role in a decision to “part ways” with the host, as the network described it.
Now, speculation about the future of other Fox stars has been growing among pundits and media reporters after his apparent firing and the massive $787m settlement with Dominion, announced after a jury was already sworn in for what would have been a blockbuster trial against the right-wing media behemoth.
If that litigation played a role in Carlson’s exit from Fox News, analysts and pundits are left questioning how other figures who were central to the Dominion case have thus far avoided similar fates. The Daily Beast flatly asked in its headline, “How Does Maria Bartiromo Still Work at Fox News?”
Read more:
Will other Fox News stars face Tucker Carlson’s fate?
Speculation about the future of other network personalities has been growing in the aftermath of the far-right host’s apparent firing, a massive defamation settlement, and more damaging litigation
Megyn Kelly says Carlson’s firing is ‘a massive misjudgment of what their audience wants'
Former Fox host Megyn Kelly said on her radio programme that Carlson’s firing is “a massive misjudgment of what their audience wants.”
“If … this is a reaction to the Dominion lawsuit, why is Maria Bartiromo there? Why is Jeanine Pirro still there? Why is Suzanne Scott still there?” she said.
Bartiromo and Pirro were key boosters of Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election and Dominion; filings in the case showed that Pirro planned an opening monologue full of baseless statements about the company, called “rife with conspiracy theories and BS” and “another example why this woman should never be on live television” by another Fox producer, according to court documents.
Fox also removed Pirro from airwaves after the election because leadership did not believe she could be honest about the outcome, according to Dominion’s filings.
Bartiromo is also among defendants in a separate defamation lawsuit from voting technology company Smartmatic, and she is captured on recordings made by Abby Grossberg, a former producer on programmes hosted by Bartiromo and Carlson.
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