When Fox Information Media CEO Suzanne Scott known as Tucker Carlson round 11:15 a.m. on Monday, April 24, and mentioned, “We’re taking you off the air,” she didn’t give him a cause. To Carlson, cancellation was unthinkable. He was the highest-rated host throughout all of cable information—and he was all of a sudden sentenced to execution. It was like anyone canceling Taylor Swift mid-tour or eradicating Stranger Issues from Netflix earlier than anybody might stream the ending. It made no sense.
Carlson wasn’t given a path to log off and faux that it was on his phrases, however Scott did supply him one factor—the possibility to incorporate his personal remark within the press launch. For a second, he thought of saying sure; perhaps he did need the breakup to sound mutually useful. However he shortly snapped out of that. He was being dumped, and he needed everybody else to realize it too. He tapped out a farewell e-mail to his workers, often known as the Tuckertroop, earlier than his Fox e-mail account was disabled. “I’ve by no means labored with higher folks in my life, and I don’t anticipate I ever will,” he wrote, including: “I’m a little bit unclear on what’s occurring proper now, however at this level it appears to be like unexpectedly dangerous.”
Then the information erupted in public. “Fox Information Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to half methods,” the announcement mentioned, abusing the phrase agreed and manifestly missing any quote from the host. His manufacturing group was not given a heads-up, so that they discovered that Carlson was gone the identical manner as everybody else, by way of smartphone information alerts or texts from mates. The present’s senior government producer Justin Wells was additionally sacked, however the remainder of the workers was nonetheless on the clock. They had been supposed to remain at their keyboards and whip up a alternative present that very night time. As an alternative, they swapped theories in regards to the canceling. Considered one of his producers thought it was tied to Fox’s blockbuster $787.5 million settlement of the Dominion Voting Programs case, which was struck just some days earlier. One other producer thought it was triggered by ex-producer Abby Grossberg’s lawsuits alleging a poisonous office. A 3rd questioned if it was by some means associated to January 6 protester Ray Epps’s interview on 60 Minutes the night time earlier than, when Epps mentioned Carlson was “going to any means doable to destroy my life.” Epps was believed to be getting ready a lawsuit in opposition to Fox, which he would file in July.
The explanation Carlson’s group couldn’t instantly decide on one easy clarification is as a result of there wasn’t one. Although Carlson would later recommend his ouster was a “situation” of the Dominion go well with, there’s no proof to help that idea, and each events deny it. In response to my reporting, many components contributed to the defenestration of Carlson, which ranks among the many largest bombshells in cable information historical past, not solely due to what his exit meant for Fox, but in addition what it meant for the Republican Social gathering.
Carlson was believed to have Trump-like hypnotic energy over the GOP base. He was believed to be irreplaceable. However that impression was, largely, a creation of Carlson’s. In reality, Carlson had alienated so many individuals, instigated so many inside and exterior scandals, fanned so many flames of ugliness, that his firing was inevitable. In spite of everything, he’d been fired from CNN and MSNBC earlier in his profession. That’s why, at Fox, he puffed out his chest and pretended to be resistant to assault. His lengthy relationship with profession vulnerability brought about him to foster a picture of untouchability. And it labored so effectively that even now, greater than six months after his exit, persons are questioning why it occurred.
The truth that Fox had no agency plan for its marquee 8 p.m. time slot—no splashy outdoors rent, no new graphics, no progressive new format—speaks to how all of a sudden and sloppily Carlson had been terminated. However a few of Carlson’s staffers weren’t completely shocked. They knew they pushed the envelope far previous the purpose of a paper lower. “It was all the time going to finish badly,” one Carlson producer mentioned. “We knew we had been burning too vibrant.” The royal we was one thing Carlson all the time used. He portrayed his manufacturing group—and solely his group—as a pressure for good within the battle in opposition to the evils he presumed nightly. His complete present was about us versus them, and this strategy prolonged to the remainder of Fox, the place Tucker Carlson Tonight had the looks of a rogue unit. In response to a Grossberg lawsuit, Carlson’s “bro-fest” setting was antagonistic towards different Fox reveals, together with Maria Bartiromo’s, the place she had labored earlier than. Grossberg mentioned she was hauled into Wells’s workplace in her first week on the job and requested, “Is Maria Bartiromo fucking Kevin McCarthy?” (No, she mentioned.)
By means of interviews for my guide, Community of Lies, I discovered that Carlson’s producers and writers had been extra loyal to him than to Fox as a community. They had been a saboteur squad of true believers, relating to the mom ship as nearly enemy territory, since as a Fortune 500 firm, Fox Corp had insurance policies in place selling variety and supporting transgender workers—the very kinds of issues Carlson railed in opposition to on air. In fact, Carlson all the time genuflected to Fox in public, praising the community for letting him “say what we predict is true.” However his expressions of gratitude to Fox didn’t idiot administration as a result of they knew how he acted in non-public. Six years in prime time had reshaped Carlson, darkened his coronary heart, pushed him to the sting. He berated Fox Information executives in New York. He belittled folks (like me) who scrutinized him. Within the view of a few of his personal colleagues, he turned unglued.
Whereas at Fox, Carlson all the time specified that he labored for the Murdochs, which was a solution to elevate his standing and diminish what the org chart mentioned: that his opinion present, like all of the others, reported by way of government vp Meade Cooper to Scott, who was a uncommon feminine CEO within the male-dominated TV enterprise. In response to sources on the workers, Carlson shit-talked each girls in addition to his primary enemy inside Fox Information, the entrenched public relations boss Irena Briganti, whom he known as a cunt.
Carlson’s inside critics, of whom there have been many, considered his remedy of the feminine executives as half and parcel with the misogyny displayed on his present. Greater than a dozen present and former Fox staffers introduced this downside as much as me, unprompted. “Tucker could be very titillated by misogyny,” a bunch mentioned. Among the staffers theorized that his mom’s mistreatment—she deserted the household when Carlson was six—engendered a negativity towards girls.
The counterpoint I heard from a Fox lifer was that “Tucker didn’t respect anybody of any gender.” Carlson hit males with the identical C-word too, so, based on Fox’s boys-will-be-boys etiquette, he was apparently an equal-opportunity basher. (Bear in mind, this was purported to be a protection of him.)
Carlson instructed a good friend that the phrase fuck “is so overused it’s misplaced all its energy and that means,” so cunt was simpler: “It’s tremendous naughty, however it’s to the purpose.” His model, bizarre because it was, revolved round the concept he might name anybody the C-word, or anything, at any time. He might say something, do something, and by no means be held accountable, as long as he commanded the eye and affection of tens of millions. On the within, that was partially true. Scott, for instance, was personally disgusted by a few of Carlson’s on-air feedback and off-air conduct however felt hemmed in by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. She was in cost—besides when she wasn’t.
