Was he fired or did he quit?
Maybe it doesn’t make a difference. Maybe it was even a long time coming.
In the world of nondisclosure agreements, we may never know, but, in an act that can only be seen as corporate suicide, Fox News let Tucker Carlson go on April 24.
Fox News’ allied companies the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal are taking a hit as well. Do the owners—Rupert Murdoch and sons Lachlan and James—care?
They must have known what everyone knows—that Tucker wasn’t only the most important broadcaster on the network, arguably in the country, but also arguably the next to the most powerful figure in the American conservative movement, second only to Donald Trump.
I would go so far as to guess that in a national Republican presidential primary at this moment, Carlson would come in second to Trump and ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Evidently, Murdoch and his sons couldn’t care less. They appear to no longer be interested in serving their viewers or the bottom line. As of this writing, their stock is down by 3.5 percent since Carlson’s departure.
So something else is afoot—and that thing is surely politics.
Since the death of founder Roger Ailes, Fox News has become less and less what it was intended to be.
In its present form, it’s something of a scam. It panders to an audience desperate for respite from the mainstream corporate media, but it’s really just a lite (as in beer) version of the original.
(Note to Ronna McDaniel: It would be wise to reconsider Fox’s running the Republican primary debates in August.)
It’s hard not to have sympathy for the good people on Fox who had to wake up to news of the defenestration of Carlson. I'll specially mention Maria Bartiromo, Steve Hilton, Jesse Waters, and my old friend Tammy Bruce, as well as some of the more rational people on Fox Business, such as Larry Kudlow.
Speaking of friends, I’ve known Carlson off and on for many years, since the days when he was founding the Daily Caller and I was starting PJ Media (then Pajamas Media). I’ve always found him to be what’s referred to as a “stand-up guy.” Even when I had lunch with him more than a decade later, in a clandestine location for his safety, after he had become the tremendous success that he is, he was the same stand-up, friendly person, devoid of the arrogance that so often comes with fame.
Speculation abounds about what he'll do next. Will he go to Newsmax? Will he start a podcast like Joe Rogan? (Hope not.) Or will he start a company of his own, taking with him some of the better people from Fox and gathering others from elsewhere?
That last option—the one I would hope for, unless he wants to come aboard The Epoch Times, the best place I’ve worked—may be forbidden to him because of a noncompete clause in his contract.
What has been hidden in the uproar that now dominates the airwaves at present, along with CNN’s long-overdue firing of the tedious Don Lemon, is the sudden resignation of Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy adviser, she of the serial Benghazi lies.
Whoa.
“Already, some are wondering on Twitter if Rice’s move is related to Biden’s determination to run again.
“‘Even Susan Rice is running for the hills and abandoning the crashing Biden ship,’ stated conservative congressional candidate Lavern Spicer. ‘When you lose Susan Rice, you’re really losing!’”
More than anyone’s I can think of, we'll be missing Carlson’s reaction to all of this.
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