Fox News announced Monday in a four-sentence statement that prime-time star Tucker Carlson is leaving the network immediately.
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” a spokesperson for 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.”
Fox announced that Carlson’s last day hosting his program was April 21. A knowledgeable source told NPR that Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, the respective chief executives of Fox News and Fox Corp., had decided Carlson’s fate on Friday.
Even after Fox issued its statement on Monday morning, the network continued to promote an interview between Tucker Carlson and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that was scheduled to broadcast that evening.
Carlson concluded Friday’s program by bidding viewers the “best weekend” and announcing his return on Monday. He failed to respond to NPR’s request for comment.
The dismissal of Fox’s most prominent opinion host comes less than a week after the network settled a colossal defamation lawsuit with an election technology company for over $787 million.
Dominion Voting Systems filed a lawsuit over segments that promoted false claims that election fraud deprived then-President Donald Trump of the 2020 election.
The lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems included Carlson. His former senior scheduling producer, Abby Grossberg filed two separate lawsuits against him.
A producer who sued Carlson for sexual discrimination rejoices in his departure. Grossberg accused Carlson and Fox of chauvinism and harassment in a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, alleging that his show’s workplace was rife with instances of misogyny.
Her lawsuit alleges, among other things, that mock-up photographs depicted then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “in a bathing suit revealing her cleavage” and that staffers were surveyed on two separate occasions regarding which of two female candidates for Michigan governor they would prefer to have sex with.
“Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client,” said one of Grossberg’s attorneys, Tanvir Rahman, in a statement released Monday afternoon.
“Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the S.D.N.Y. case, and we anticipate taking their sworn depositions in the near future.”
Fox also fired the senior executive producer of Carlson’s program, Justin Wells, who is also named in the lawsuit as a defendant.
The other lawsuit filed by Grossberg in Delaware focuses on Fox’s legal team. She claims the attorneys pressured her to lie about what she witnessed at the network in her certified statements for the defamation case.
Fox vehemently denied the allegations made against its attorneys. It terminated Grossberg after she filed her lawsuits, alleging that she disclosed confidential information during the defamation litigation that she was not authorized to disclose.
Grossberg said in a statement about Carlson’s dismissal,
“This is a step towards accountability for the election lies and baseless conspiracy theories spread by Fox News, which I witnessed firsthand.”
The American people and Fox News viewers have been manipulated and misled for years in an effort to increase the channel’s ratings and revenue.
Documents released prior to the settlement with Dominion Voting Systems disclose a stark contrast between what Carlson said on-air and behind the scenes. On his program, he expressed skepticism regarding the lack of evidence for Sidney Powell’s claims, a key Trump ally.
In January 2021, however, he hosted a prominent advertiser, Mike Lindell, the proprietor of My Pillow, who repeated the false claims. In his private communications with a colleague, Carlson referred to Powell using a particularly vulgar and derogatory epithet.
Fox says that a rotating cast of personalities will occupy the prime-time slot until a permanent replacement is named.
A celebrity who has weathered controversy after controversy
Carlson was by far the most prominent personality on the network, replacing former star anchor Bill O’Reilly in a seamless manner after sexual harassment allegations forced his departure. O’Reilly has denied the charges.
Carlson has also established a significant presence on Fox Nation, the network’s streaming website that caters to an even more extreme right-wing sensibility.
Carlson had endured more controversies than most cable news stars could expect to endure professionally despite his shocking departure. His top writer was fired in July 2020 after it was discovered that he had posted bigoted, sexist, and homophobic comments.
The Daily Dot found last month that one of Carlson’s staffers had a propensity to “liking” posts from the white nationalist website VDare.
Civil rights leaders have condemned his program for disseminating racist, antisemitic, and anti-immigrant ideology.
His work on his show, which was bolstered by specials on the streaming service, also ignited a firestorm by attempting to exonerate those who participated in the siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as civic-minded individuals who were being politically persecuted.
Several prominent Fox figures, including Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace and conservative commentators Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, decided to leave.
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