Fox News Fires Its Biggest Star (2023)

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From New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

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We have some news from within our Fox family.

Less than a week after Fox News reached a historic settlement in a defamation lawsuit —

— the network has abruptly fired Tucker Carlson, an anchor at the center of that case.

Today, my colleague Jeremy Peters on exactly why Fox is cutting ties with its biggest star and what Fox will be without him.

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It’s Tuesday, April 25.

Jeremy, you’re back very soon — sooner than perhaps you expected, sooner than perhaps you wanted.

Sooner than I think anyone might have expected.

So it is 6:26 PM on Monday night. And four blocks away from here, Jeremy, over at the headquarters of Fox News, there is a mad scramble going on right now because there will be no “Tucker Carlson Tonight” at 8:00 PM as it has always aired because Tucker Carlson has been fired. And I just want to begin by having you put that piece of news into perspective for us — as somebody who covers Fox, covers the entire conservative media world, how big a moment this is.

It’s an earthquake. Tucker Carlson was one of these rare media figures whose power transcended what he could say to his audience because he not only spoke to them. He could speak to the people in power in the highest places of American government. And that included for a time, the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

Right, they corresponded meaningfully and regularly.

And Tucker could have an influence on the President. When he wanted his ear, he could have it because Tucker Carlson spoke the language of Trump supporters more intuitively than almost anyone in conservative media. And that allowed him to become one of the most powerful if not the most powerful host on television.

And now, he’s gone. And we’re going to get to why he’s gone in just a moment, or why we think he is gone. But talk to us about how, once he had this show, Tucker Carlson became this powerful force that you’re describing and that has made his departure the earthquake that you just called it.

Before Donald Trump bursts on to the political scene, Tucker Carlson is not a terribly influential person in conservative politics. I mean, he’s the weekend anchor at Fox.

Oh wow, which is, we should say, for those who don’t obsess about ratings on cable news, not at all prestigious. It’s kind of a oblivion role.

Yeah, I believe there’s a “Simpson” joke about this where Kent Brockman the anchor gets upset one day and storms off and says, I don’t care! Call the weekend guy.

OK, so he’s not yet Tucker Carlson as we know him.

Right, but the Trump presidency proved to be the biggest stroke of luck in his career yet. His ability to speak to the Trump voter, to their grievances, their anxieties about the way they see their purchase on power in American society slipping away, that is what his gift is. And that allows him to connect with the audience in a way that Fox says, OK, wow, we’re going to give you an 8:00 PM slot. Now —

Very prestigious.

It’s the marquee slot. It was the slot that Bill O’Reilly used to hold when he was at Fox News and was their number one host before he got fired.

Got it. And once Tucker Carlson has this prestigious platform of 8:00 PM Fox News, what does he do with it? And what makes that formula work so well?

It’s one of displacement. The theme is - and this is especially resonant with a lot of the older white male parts of Tucker Carlson’s audience. You are not wrong to feel aggrieved.

You’re not wrong to think that there is an elite-driven plot to replace you.

And replace your standing in society with people who do not look like you.

People who are Brown, who are coming across the border —

Or people who are Black who are marching in the streets, demanding social justice and racial justice reform.

The Black Lives Matter movement.

Exactly. It’s very much rooted in a sense of loss, this loss that many Americans felt in their own prestige in American society.

Right, this has a name. It’s called the Great Replacement theory.

Yes, and it’s been around forever. Tucker Carlson isn’t the first to come up with it and to fan fears over it. But he is the most prominent figure in American media to do so to this date. No one had gone up to this line and crossed it the way Tucker Carlson did.

But he’s not just talking about how people of color are a threat to white men. He’s obsessed with this threat that he sees coming from within, this idea that American men in general are becoming weak and soft.

He describes this, quote, “total collapse of testosterone levels in American men.”

And he does an entire special on this supposed assault on masculinity in this country. I think the solutions are actually pretty simple. Expose yourself to red light therapy.

He even talks to an expert who recommended getting your testicles tanned in order to boost testosterone levels.

So Jeremy, this framework, as oddball and at times racist as it may seem, is powerfully resonating with Fox viewers. Can you quantify just how powerfully it’s connecting with them?

So Carlson quickly becomes the most watched host on the network.

Which is the most watched news network in the country.

That’s exactly right. At times, it’s even the most watched cable network period. So he gets an average of three million viewers a night, sometimes more, sometimes less, kind of depending on the news cycle at the time. Now, when you compare to the competition, this is leaps and bounds ahead. Over on CNN, Anderson Cooper is getting maybe around a million viewers a night.

About a third of what Tucker Carlson is getting.

Yes, and this is why Tucker Carlson starts to amass incredible power and influence, not just with President Trump, but with governors and state legislators all across the country.

And what are some examples of that power?

He basically uses his show to browbeat these elected officials into doing and enacting the policies that he wants to see.

So take Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for example.

One night, Carlson goes on his show and grills Abbott.

Why haven’t you used the states National Guard to stop all these migrants from crossing the border? Well, lo and behold —

Abbott later says he’ll do just that. He sends in the Texas National Guard to the border.

I just want to pause. We’ve talked about that incident on the show. We actually spoke to a member of the National Guard in Texas about what a big deal it is to mobilize your National Guard — I mean, in this case, mobilize your National Guard to act as a kind of border patrol. And that is being prompted not by an outcry from voters or an order from the president, but by a cable news anchor suggesting it. That’s power.

Indeed it is. Here’s another.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sends migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in this stunt to say, OK, blue states, see, this is what it’s like. You deal with these people.

That was Tucker Carlson’s idea.

Earlier on his show, he said that residents of Martha’s Vineyard who are almost all Democrats are, quote, “begging for more diversity. Why not send migrants there?” Well, that’s what DeSantis did.

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So over and over again, the words come out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth. And these powerful governors obediently do what he’s asking for, which is, I suppose, a measure of their fear that if they don’t, his audience will come and punish them at the polls.

That’s exactly right. They know to be on the wrong side of Tucker Carlson and one of his issues is to risk incurring the wrath of the Conservative voter. No one knows this better than Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, who almost wasn’t the Speaker of the House because conservatives like Tucker Carlson told their followers that he was too cozy with the elite ruling class in business and politics. So to placate Carlson, McCarthy gives him 40,000 hours of previously unseen footage from the security tapes that were running on January 6.

Right, a kind of unprecedented disclosure to a single journalist.

And one that many Democrats pointed out risked a real security breach by disclosing certain aspects of Capitol security that weren’t known to the public.

Right.

And Carlson takes this footage and edits it down to a handful of incidents where you can see the people who had illegally broken into the Capitol walking around peacefully, looking as if they might be on just a leisurely tour. And he says, see, they told you that this was a violent mob. But it’s not.

And in fact, many of these people just kind of innocently ambled into the Capitol. And in a trick that he has tried time and time again on his show, he says, I’m telling you the truth about what happened here. The mainstream liberal media are the ones who are lying to you. And you can’t believe them. Here, see it for yourself.

Right, which is not accurate in this case. But the scale of influence we’re talking about here is the envy of the cable news industry. I mean, other hosts at other networks, they might not like what Tucker Carlson is doing. But they no doubt wish they had that kind of influence.

They wish they had his ratings. And by all accounts, Fox had no problem with what Tucker Carlson was doing for years and years and years, even when advertisers would get upset, which they sometimes did. They would boycott the show. It was all OK, right? Correct me if I’m wrong — until now.

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. [MUSIC PLAYING]

They knew they had the number one prime-time show in cable news. They had a reliable revenue stream, not just from advertisers, though, as you correctly point out. A lot of them boycotted — but from the enormous fees that Fox News is able to generate from subscribers to cable. The breaking point seems to come this year as Fox News is defending itself against lawsuits where Tucker Carlson’s conduct off air is far more problematic for the network than what he said on the air. And that’s what we think pushed his bosses to pull the trigger on his firing so suddenly this week.

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We’ll be right back.

So Jeremy, describe this off air conduct that’s revealed in these lawsuits that appears to have contributed to Tucker Carlson’s firing.

So as of 6:00 PM tonight, there’s still a lot we don’t know about why he got fired. We do know that it was ordered from the highest levels of Fox and that Lachlan Murdoch, who’s the C.E.O of Fox Corporation, and Suzanne Scott, the C.E.O of Fox News, decided that they were going to do this on Friday night. They inform Tucker of it on Monday morning, telling him, you’re not on the air tonight.

Right. No chance to say goodbye. It’s over.

In fact, in their news release announcing this, Fox says his last show —

Was Friday. His last show was in the past.

It’s pretty unsentimental.

OK, so back to the lawsuits and the off air comments that have perhaps led us to this point.

Well, first, let’s start with the Dominion case. The biggest revelation about Tucker Carlson to come out of the Dominion case is that he reveals himself to be something of a political performance artist. He’s telling his audience one thing. But because of the emails and texts that Dominion is able to get as part of the case, we know he doesn’t believe some of the stuff that he’s allowing on his air or telling his viewers that they’re right to believe about voter fraud.

Right — much of it relating to the claims that there’s election fraud or that Dominion’s voting machines played a role in election fraud.

We know he didn’t believe any of it. We also know from the Dominion suit that he loathes former President Trump. He calls him all sorts of names, questions his judgment, says he can’t wait for the day when they no longer have to talk about Trump and can ignore him. And this is the president Tucker Carlson has spent years elevating, promoting, and cheering on.

Right, and the president who, from what you’re saying, is responsible for his success as a TV anchor.

Exactly. So that, I think, kind of points to his disingenuousness, that he’s going to tell his audience what he thinks they want to hear. And it paid off because he’s the most popular prime-time host on all of Fox News.

Right, but these emails and texts suddenly shake the foundation of that success.

They shatter the premise for those who were paying attention — and we’re not sure many Fox viewers were, that he is this pro-working class champion of President Trump.

Right, but we can assume that the people who run Fox News were paying attention to this lawsuit and to the emails.

They were. And I’m told that they were also paying attention to some of the text messages between Tucker and his producers in which they make fun of their colleagues. And they even question the judgment of their bosses.

What’s an example of that from the Dominion lawsuit, where Tucker Carlson and his producers are challenging their superiors?

They really take issue with the Arizona call. This is when the decision desk at Fox News got out of the gates earlier than any other news organization to say President Biden is going to win Arizona.

Right.

And that was a huge moment because after that, it became very, very difficult to see how Trump could win a second term. Carlson says effectively, I can’t believe these people. Don’t they understand the damage that they’re doing to this brand we spent years building? And he accuses some of them of being liberal sellouts, people who hate us, he says.

Even though they are his colleagues and bosses?

That is correct. The lawsuit from Dominion also opens a window into another aspect of his behavior that is alarming to many at Fox —

Which is?

His misogynistic, especially the vulgar way in which he uses misogynistic language. He says some words I won’t repeat here referring to Sidney Powell, one of President Trump’s legal advisors, that made people shudder once they saw them. That leads to a second lawsuit that unfolds as the Dominion case is getting ready to go to trial.

A producer at Fox News sues Fox and Carlson, alleging that he has created, presided over this incredibly toxic workplace.

Where discrimination, sexism, anti-Semitism is all tolerated and a part of the everyday culture at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

She talks about a photo pinned up to a wall in the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” offices of Nancy Pelosi in this plunging bathing suit. This producer also alleges that right before Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, is set to come on Tucker Carlson’s show, they have a mock debate about whether they would prefer to have sex with her, Dixon, or her Democratic opponent, Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

So with this second lawsuit, we’re talking about some very serious allegations, some very detailed allegations of basically a sexist, hostile workplace. And the kind of claim that I have to imagine in a post-Roger Ailes Fox News, one where the company has already fired a senior executive for sexual harassment, that this stuff gets taken pretty seriously.

It does. And part of Suzanne Scott’s mission once she took the helm of Fox News from Roger Ailes was to make it a more friendly place for women to work. So it’s not exactly a good look for her to have her star host and his staff behaving really horribly toward women.

Right, so Jeremy, how, based on all your reporting, does everything we’re describing here come together in the minds of Fox leadership in their decision to get rid of Tucker Carlson? Because there’s a lot here in the mix. So how do you see it?

If you look at the history of recent high profile firings at Fox News — Roger Ailes, as you just talked about. He was fired after being exposed as a serial predator of women. Bill O’Reilly, its number one host, fired after multiple women accused him of egregious sexual misconduct. Their firings didn’t have anything to do with what was said on the air, what they allowed on their shows.

And I think that’s important in putting into context what happened to Tucker Carlson. For four years during Trump’s presidency and for two years after, Tucker Carlson said some outrageously inflammatory, racially insensitive, outright, at times, racist things. And he still had a job, even when the Dominion lawsuit is unfolding.

And we see how he privately talked about President Trump and insulted his colleagues at Fox. Fox doesn’t fire him then. They fire him after we learn that the workplace he was in charge of was a human resources nightmare and had already spawned one lawsuit and very well could have led to more that we just don’t know about.

Interesting. So if I can summarize what you’re saying here, what gets you in trouble at a place like Fox, which is so fixated on its ratings and its audience, is always at the end of the day not going too far with that pursuit of ratings and that pursuit of audience, but with plain old human resource violations of the most basic kind.

That’s exactly right.

But the big question around firing Tucker Carlson is, is it going to hurt Fox? And maybe their rationale makes total sense. Maybe their lawyers advised them that they needed to do it. But as Tucker Carlson said in one of the text messages that you’ve talked to me about on this show, when you’re Fox, you cannot alienate your viewers. That relationship is sacrosanct. And it is delicate. In firing Tucker, is Fox at all risking disrupting that bond with its viewers?

They are. But at the same time, they’re making a gamble that has paid off for them in the past. Tucker Carlson isn’t the first high profile figure at Fox who’s been fired.

Right, Bill O’Reilly.

Glenn Beck, the Tea Party star. And Glenn Beck’s sin, along with Sarah Palin’s, who was also fired by Fox —

As a contributor, right.

Their sins were that they thought they were bigger than Fox. Fox wants these hosts to know that no one is ever bigger than the network itself. Tucker Carlson thought he was bigger than the network. This is a guy, remember, who was floated as a possible presidential contender. He’s quoted on the record saying that no one tells him what to do, that he can put whatever he wants essentially into his scripts. Well, what Fox News said on Monday is no, you’re not bigger than Fox.

Here’s the door. And by the way, you are only who you are because we gave you that 8:00 PM time slot. I’m pretty confident, and history has shown, that they can put a relatively unknown, untested person into that very highly-rated slot. And it’ll probably do well because there’s just so many people who watch Fox. And Fox is so good at giving its audience what it wants. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Tucker Carlson in the anchor chair doing that.

Right, the lesson here being, from Fox, we can make you. And we can break you. And then we can replace you and do the whole thing all over again.

And that is something that the Murdoch’s have always shown they are not afraid of doing.

So if we know that there’s a Fox without Tucker Carlson, I guess the question becomes, is there a Tucker Carlson without Fox?

Well, as is usually the case with multi-million dollar contracts like he has, there’s a non-compete. So he will have restrictions on what he is able to do. And it may preclude any type of television for quite some time.

That doesn’t mean that he’s done. But in the case of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, you don’t really hear much about them anymore. I mean, yes, they have shows. They have followings — the loyal die-hards who always tuned in when they were on Fox. But that’s a much smaller audience now.

Right, it’s a good lesson for every journalist out there. I mean, what are you without the platform of your news organization? That’s the lesson here.

It’s very humbling.

Well, Jeremy, once again in a very short week, thank you for your time. We appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

We’ll be right back.

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Here’s what else you need to know today. On Monday, the Republican governor of North Dakota signed a law that will ban almost all abortions after the state’s highest court blocked a previous ban from going into effect there last month. The law makes North Dakota the 14th state where abortion is currently banned or nearly banned. And in yet another major media firing, CNN has pushed out Don Lemon, a star anchor and co-host of the network’s flagship morning show following on-air comments he made in February that were widely criticized as sexist.

Lemon had claimed that women like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley were no longer in their prime after their 20s and 30s. He later apologized. But The Times reports that Lemon’s standing fell with both CNN’s audience and potential guests, leading to his ouster.

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Today’s episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Nina Feldman, Rob Szypko, Stella Tan, and Alex Stern. It was edited by M.J Davis Lin, Michael Benoist, and Lisa Chow. Contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

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That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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