Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News, network says
Carlson, with Fox for 14 years, previously criticized by even some Republicans for conspiratorial views
Fox News said in a statement on Monday that it had parted ways with controversial host Tucker Carlson.
"We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor," the network said in a statement.
Carlson, after appearing on CNN's Crossfire and on PBS and MSNBC programs, joined Fox News in 2009. His Tucker Carlson Tonight show took an increasingly provocative turn.
Fox last week settled a defamation lawsuit with Toronto-founded Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million US. It faces a similar lawsuit from voting technology company Smartmatic, for $2.7 billion US in damages.
During the discovery phase of the Dominion trial, Carlson was among the Fox News personalities privately expressing doubts about voting machine fraud claims made by then-U.S. president Donald Trump and his allies.
"We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait," he texted to an unidentified person in early 2021. "I hate him passionately.... I can't handle much more of this."
But Carlson's on-air shows gave no hint of such skepticism in the weeks after the contentious 2020 election.
Just this month Carlson sat down for what was widely viewed as a friendly, non-confrontational interview with Trump, days after the Fox host blasted the decision by the Manhattan District Attorney's office to indict the former president.
'Non-literal commentary'
Handed some 41,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage, Carlson last month launched an impassioned new effort to explain away the deadly Capitol Riot attack, linking the Republican Party ever more closely to pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the event. The effort dovetails with the work of Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who turned over the security footage to Fox.
"These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers," Carlson said during a March broadcast.
Carlson's previous defence of those at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, led to paid Fox contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes resigning in protest months later. Both had contributed to Fox since 2009.
Goldberg and Hayes called Carlson's Patriot Purge documentary a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, which is "riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery and damning omissions."
"If a person with such a platform shares such misinformation loud enough and long enough, there are Americans who will believe — and act upon — it," they wrote. "This isn't theoretical. This is what actually happened on January 6, 2021."
Carlson in his show has also expressed alarm at migrants amassing at the southern U.S. border and has made crime stories in cities run by Democratic officials a regular feature of his program.
Carlson also expressed doubts about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, though refusing to divulge if he had been vaccinated. The pandemic allowed Carlson to deliver monologues on one of his favourite themes — unelected bureaucrats whose decisions affect millions of American lives.
Carlson, who turns 54 next month, also regularly featured the missteps and questionable business deals of Hunter Biden, the current president's son.
Defending Carlson from a defamation lawsuit brought by former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who alleges an affair with Trump — Fox's lawyers once argued that Carlson engaged in "exaggeration" and "non-literal commentary."
"Given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism," the judge ruled while tossing the lawsuit.
There was no immediate explanation on Monday from Fox about why Carlson is leaving, even as it comes just days after the Dominion settlement.
Carlson was recently named in a lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a Fox News producer fired after claiming that Fox lawyers had pressured her to give misleading testimony in the Dominion lawsuit. Grossberg had gone to work for Carlson after leaving Maria Bartiromo's Fox show.
Her lawsuit says that Grossberg learned "she had merely traded in one overtly misogynistic work environment for an even crueler one — this time, one where unprofessionalism reigned supreme, and the staff's distaste and disdain for women infiltrated almost every workday decision."
Just last week, Carlson promoted an upcoming documentary highlighting what was described as the Canadian government's increasingly authoritarian turn. Carlson in 2022 on his program expressed support for the Freedom Convoy protesters across Canada. The fate of that program was not clear.
Not the first controversial host
Dominion in 2021 sued Fox Corp. and Fox News, contending that its business was ruined by the false vote-rigging claims that were aired by the influential American cable news outlet and its conservative commentators. One of those commentators, Lou Dobbs, departed the network that same year.
Based on a slew of internal communications, Dominion alleged that Fox staff, from newsroom employees all the way up to Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, knew the statements were false but continued to air them out of fear of losing viewers to media competitors on the right.
Carlson became Fox's most popular personality after replacing Bill O'Reilly in Fox's prime-time lineup. O'Reilly left in early 2017 after 20 years at the network and multiple sexual harassment lawsuits.
Carlson's departure drew predictably divergent views from Congress members on Twitter. Democratic congressman Ted Lieu of California blasted "the incessant lies and the racist stuff that Tucker Carlson kept spewing," while Colorado Republican Lauren Bobert declared: "I stand with Tucker Carlson!"
Fox said rotating hosts would helm Fox News Tonight at 8 p.m. ET on an interim basis.
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With files from The Associated Press