It was a mundane Monday morning—April 24th to be exact—when I heard the greatest news of my life: Tucker Carlson had been fired from Fox News. To be more specific, they had “mutually parted ways."
If you don’t know who Carlson is, click off this article right now. For your own sake, turn off your phone and go on a walk outside. Remain blissfully ignorant and unaware of the political hellfire that burns behind your back door. I promise it will be better for your mental health in the long run, even if your heart burns with curiosity right now.
No? Still here? Alright, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let’s unpack what Fox News is (it has nothing to do with actual foxes), who this Tucker guy is , why he’s so important (why does power always belong to the corrupt), and why he got kicked out (spoiler: it's a lot).
If you’ve been living under a rock your whole life, Fox News is a popular American far-right news channel. And when I say popular and far-right, I mean popular and far-right. It is the most watched news network in the United States by a huge margin, with more monthly views than the next two runner ups combined. It is so popular that former president Donald Trump (yes, him) quotes it like it's the gospel, thus rendering the channel a powerful propellant of Republican narratives. Fox News also infamously claimed that the votes from the 2020 federal election were rigged, which blew up on social media and fueled the pro-Trump voters. The news network is also notorious for lying and has severe reliability and bias issues.
The TLDR? Fox News sucks. But what does this have to do with Tucker Carlson?
Carlson is—was—their top news anchor. He’s rather infamous for a variety of things: being in love with the green M&M, being upset that the green M&M is a lesbian, and grieving that the green M&M is now less sexy, and I quote, calling her a “turn-off” because she had ditched the high boots.
Don’t you love it when news channels only cover pressing and important topics?
Among other things, he's racist, anti-vaccination, a conspiracist, misogynistic, pro-rapist, anti-abortion, and transphobic: all ideas that he promoted on Fox News with little to no consequence. So Carlson’s a bit of a controversial nutcase and the news channel has only served to elevate that. At its core, Fox News has made Carlson the face that represents their beliefs.
So for him, the literal figurehead and godfather of Fox News, to have screwed up badly enough to be removed, is on a whole new level. Imagine if Mickey Mouse suddenly died and was replaced with Remy from Ratatouille as the new Disney mascot. Or if Malala Yousafzai suddenly announced she was going to quit fighting for women’s education rights. That’s how shocking it was.
If being a bigot wasn’t enough to get the boot, what did he do that was so bad?
The answer is, rather unsatisfyingly, unclear. Neither Tucker Carlson or Fox News have given public official statements regarding the situation. But we can draw some logical conclusions based on the information available, and hopefully deduce an answer.
Carlson was fired less than a week after Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million dollars to Dominion Voting Systems (who tabulate American federal votes) over a defamation lawsuit over false election claims. Some of Carlson’s texts—in which he admitted that he knew that Fox News was purposely lying about the election—were submitted as evidence and were instrumental in proving Dominion’s case. The exact civil and legal logistics are a bit confusing, so if you want an in-depth analysis, I would check out this video here (a lawyer explains everything!). The most important thing to know is that as the body suing, Dominion had to prove their case on a “balance of probabilities” (when what they were arguing was 50% or more likely to be correct) in order to make Fox News pay up. Carlson’s personal communications were used as evidence for that.
So that’s one popular theory as to why he was kicked out: that he was partially responsible for costing Fox News hundreds of millions of dollars. Another one is that his bigotry finally caught up with him and that it wouldn’t be profitable for the company to keep someone with such outrageous conduct anymore—especially after using vulgar language to describe a powerful female executive. At some point, being too polarizing and extreme can stab you in the back, and that’s what they realized. And while they may have lost the symbol of their company, Fox News is on the search for a better replacement to make up for it (which shouldn’t be too hard since the bar is below sea level).
Either way, he’s gone and he’s gone for good. Except no, I lied, this isn’t the last you’re going to see of this annoyingly tenacious man. Carlson recently posted on his Twitter some ominous messages about the “stupidity of American discourse” and that he would “see you soon.” Very Trump-esque behavior.
Whatever the case, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens…
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