Thomas Watkins is Washington bureau chief at The National
April 25, 2023
Just like that, the loudest voice on the American right has gone quiet.
No, not Donald Trump. Rather, someone with even greater influence when it comes to defining the conservative agenda: Tucker Carlson.
Fox News on Monday announced it had parted ways with Carlson, the network's most popular host whose racist paranoia and dystopian vision of America proved a ratings bonanza and saw him become a kingmaker in Republican circles, with would-be presidential candidates including Mr Trump supplicating before him.
The announcement – delivered in a terse statement from Fox – caught Americans by surprise and sent shockwaves through Republican media circles. It leaves a large hole in Fox's frontline political coverage at a critical time ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Carlson, whose last show was on Friday, apparently had no idea what was coming and did not get a chance to say farewell to his viewers.
Gone was the man and his primetime show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, whichfor six years fed on and fuelled America's culture wars and came to define the Republican Party's talking points.
Donald Trump Jr described Carlson's ouster as "mind-blowing" and lamented the loss of a "thought leader" in conservatism.
Carlson's tirades against "woke" America and his bleak depictions of what he saw as a country crumbling under uncontrolled immigration and a radical leftist ideology struck a chord with conservative viewers, and his was the highest-rated cable news programme in the 25-to-54 age demographic on the most-watched US cable news network.
As of this writing, the reasons for Carlson's departure from Fox had not been made public, but it appears Rupert Murdoch and his heir apparent, Lachlan Murdoch, who run Fox's parent company News Corp, were clearing house after a catastrophic lawsuit that featured Carlson.
Carlson's last show was on Friday, just three days after Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million in damages to a voting machine company in a humiliating debacle for the cable news network.
As part of that case, a trove of internal Fox documents including private messages from Carlson were handed over to the court.
In some of the messages, Carlson denigrated colleagues and in one text conversation two days before the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, Carlson said he “passionately” hated Mr Trump and said he “truly can't wait” to no longer listen to him.
Yet on the air, Carlson vigorously defended the former president and allowed his false claims of election interference to proliferate.
Such claims were regular fodder for Carlson. He went on to try to rewrite the narrative of January 6 by airing alternative footage from the day of the insurrection, and he frequently touted conspiracy theories including the "Great Replacement" theory that posits non-white people are being brought into the US to eventually outnumber the white population.
In 2018, he sparked outrage when he said immigrants made the US "poorer and dirtier".
Carlson also dismissed any argument for gun control and blamed mass shootings on mental illness or drug abuse, rather than the ready availability of assault weapons across the US.
And he has been a constant critic of US support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion, parroting lines that appeared pro-Kremlin.
The Dominion settlement precluded one trial but Fox faces additional legal battles, including a $2.7 billion suit from voting technology company SmartMatic and a lawsuit filed by former producer Abby Grossberg, who said Fox coerced her testimony in the Dominion case.
"Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client," Tanvir Rahman, one of Ms Grossberg's lawyers, said in a statement.
Fox has called the lawsuit “baseless".
It's not the first time Rupert Murdoch has presided over a high-level cull at Fox.
Roger Ailes, who created the Fox News Channel and ran it for nearly two decades, was dismissed in 2016 following allegations that he forced out a former anchor who rejected his sexual advances. He died in 2017.
That same year, Bill O'Reilly, the combative Fox News star, was forced out over harassment allegations that he denies.
Mr Murdoch also famously shuttered the British News of the World newspaper in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that saw journalists from his tabloid tapping into private voicemails.
Fox News has yet to announce a replacement for Carlson. His show is being replaced by Fox News Tonight that will feature a roster of Fox personalities until a permanent successor is chosen.
What's next for Carlson, 53, is anyone's guess, but several observers have suggested he could get into politics himself.
Carlson knew the claims against Dominion were false, according to court documents. Getty / AFP
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