Controversial Fox News host Tucker Carlson is leaving the channel, the network abruptly announced on Monday, less than a week after it settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion voting systems for $787.5 million.
“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” the company said in a statement. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
The statement added that the last episode of Carlson’s programme was Friday. Beginning Monday night, the slot which was Carlson’s would be hosted by a rotation of personalities until the selection of a new permanent host, according to the network.
Carlson’s departure from Fox News appeared to be sudden. As of Monday morning, Fox was still previewing his show that evening, where he was set to interview Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.
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Carlson’s last show on Friday ended with the host eating pizza and saying “we’ll be back on Monday”.
[ Why Fox had to settle the case brought by Dominion Voting SystemsOpens in new window ]
Fox host Harris Faulkner addressed Carlson’s departure on air Monday morning, saying the network and Carlson had “mutually” agreed to separate. “We want to thank Tucker Carlson for his service to the network,” she said.
Filings in the Dominion case featured scores of vulgar text messages from Carlson in which he said he “hated [Donald] Trump passionately” and called Sidney Powell, a lawyer for the former president who was spreading false election information, a liar.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait,” he wrote in one text message in January 2021.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” he wrote in another text message in 2020.
Fox also faces a similar $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting equipment company.
Carlson faces a lawsuit from Abby Grossberg, a former senior booking producer on his show, who claims she faced sexism and a hostile work environment. On her first day of work, Ms Grossberg, said, revealing pictures of Nancy Pelosi in a plunging bathing suit were placed on her computer screen and around her workspace, according to the lawsuit. In another instance, there was a newsroom-wide discussion over whether Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, or her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, were more attractive and whom staffers would rather have sex with.
Ms Grossberg also alleged she was coerced into giving misleading testimony as part of the Dominion lawsuit. She also released evidence she said Fox had to turn over in the discovery process. Fox has denied Ms Grossberg’s allegations.
Carlson joined Fox as a contributor in 2009 and had become one of the network’s biggest stars after getting his own show in primetime, Tucker Carlson Tonight, in 2016. Last year, he became the network’s most-watched host, averaging 3.32 million in total viewers, according to the Washington Post. He also had the most viewers in the sought after 25-54 demographic, the Post reported.
Carlson relied on xenophobia and stoked white fears about America’s changing demographics in his climb to the top of the Fox ratings.
On his show, he has embraced the “great replacement theory” – the idea that Jews and Democrats want to replace white people with non-white voters to bring about political change. After George Floyd’s murder by police officers in 2020, he belittled the Black Lives Matter movement, calling those protesting “criminal mobs”.
He has also downplayed the attack at the deadly US capitol on January 6th, 2021, recently airing selectively edited footage as he tried to frame the insurrection as peaceful. He has also decried a so-called crisis of manliness, airing a special earlier this year that promoted using tanning therapy on testicles.
“Mr Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and also, by some measures, the most successful,” the New York Times wrote as part of a deep analysis of his show last year. “Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice ... his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilisation under siege.”
– Guardian