Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have mutually agreed to part ways.
Tucker's last show was this past Friday.
>> Tucker Carlson has been fired from Fox News.
>> Down goes Tucker Carlson.
Down goes Tucker Carlson.
>> Ladies and gentlemen.
We got him.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Down goes Tucker Carlson.
>> Okay, now.
>> He's gonna ba all right.
>> Okay.
>> I like all of the celebratory nonsense.
Listen, he's gonna be all right.
>> [LAUGH] >> This isn't the last of Tucker that's
why it's hard for me to feel joyous about the day.
>> No, not only that, there's actually, instead of a silver lining,
there's the opposite in this story.
There's something that you should be really worried about in this story, but
for the moment being, Tucker Carlson is off Fox News.
I'm gonna celebrate that, but we'll give you the details now.
>> Well, the details are still a little bit murky.
There's a lot of speculation going on, but here's what we know so far.
Now, according to the New York Times and they're reporting on this, they write
about the statement that Fox News put out, which was pretty vague, right?
They say Fox News media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways.
We thank him for his service to the network as a host and
prior to that, as a contributor.
Now, a number of different things have happened in recent weeks.
Of course, there was that massive $787.5 million
settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.
And of course, this had to do with the defamation lawsuit that
Dominion had brought forward against Fox as a result of Fox's election lies.
So there was that.
Also, according to Hollywood reporter, Carlson was also cited in a lawsuit from
a former Fox producer, Abby Grossberg, who said the network environment was sexist.
Grossberg worked as a senior producer on Carlson's show.
Now, the Los Angeles Times also spoke to some inside sources over at Fox
who claimed that Grossberg's lawsuit actually had a lot to do with Fox's
decision to fire Tucker Carlson.
Grossberg was moved off of Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo and
onto Tucker Carlson Tonight, where she alleged she was bullied and
subjected to antisemitic comments.
According to a lawsuit in New York, Tucker's top producer was also let go,
and reports indicate that Tucker Carlson was shocked and surprised about this.
The last episode that aired featuring Tucker Carlson as the host was on Friday,
and it seemed like business as usual.
There was no indication that they were gonna part ways.
Now, Genk, I'm curious what you think about all of this,
because while Tucker Carlson was certainly a financial liability for Fox and
could potentially be even more of a financial liability in the future,
he was the top rated host in the network.
>> Yeah, which, of course, means that he also helped them financially.
And in fact, this is a tiny indication, but last I checked Fox stock was down 4%,
but that's worth about $700 close to what they paid Dominion.
So all of these are factors, there's never one oftentimes not one simple answer.
So let me give you a rundown of the possible reasons and
what I think is most likely including fun speculation, okay?
Okay, so one thing that is the most clear to me is this is Rupert Murdoch
reasserting control in Fox News.
And Murdoch wants to be old school right wingers, establishment right wingers.
So do we lie to help establishment Republicans win?
Of course, that's the whole point of Fox News.
That's why they were created in the first place.
And they did it most spectacularly in the 2000 election for George W Bush.
But Tucker was going beyond, pushing the envelope past that.
He was doing populist stuff, some of which, look,
I love populism when it's directed in the right direction against the establishment.
He was against the establishment, but
of course he would then misdirect it to immigrants are bad,
people who aren't in our race are bad, the ugly form of populism.
Now, it's not like Fox News minded racism overall, but
they preferred the dog whistle.
And so when Tucker Carlson was doing ridiculous segments about how sun tanning
your crotch is gonna make you smarter or something, he's just going so
far beyond what the olds guard of the Murdochs feel comfortable with.
>> Right, I mean, as soon as Rupert Murdoch saw the sun tanning
your testes content, he thought, UV, no.
>> Okay, she's here all week.
Okay, but listen, so that's the most likely.
He's bringing everybody back in line.
Plus he's saying the machine is more important than any one host,
even if it's our number one rated host.
Remember we got rid of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and
everything was perfectly fine.
This is a giant memo to the rest of the host.
When I tell you to support DeSantis and cut the populace crap out and
cut the Trump crap out, I mean it.
If I fire Tucker Carlson, I could fire any of you.
So that's a Logan Roy like move from Murdoch.
So that part is clear to me.
The rest is interesting.
>> I don't know if I necessarily agree with you on that because what was
clear to me based on the text exchanges that we saw through the whole
Dominion discovery process, was that Fox News was not driving or
controlling the Republican Party, right.
The Republican Party was really controlling Fox News,
and the Republican Party has become the party of Trump.
>> Yeah. >> Do you get what I'm saying?
I do, Anna, and I think that's exactly what Murdoch is trying to fight against.
He doesn't like that.
He's not shy about wanting power.
That's has been his Mo, obviously, for the last 50 years as he's dominated media.
And he does not, like anyone disagreeing with him, including political parties.
And so this is him saying,
no, we're getting back to what I want, not this out of control freight train,
which by the way is not getting us tax cuts for the rich that we wanted.
Trump got it in the first term, but now he's losing and he keeps on losing, and
all his candidates keep on losing.
Where's my goddamn tax cuts?
So that's part of the issue here, too, is same reassertion of power, but again,
there's more to it.
>> So I wanna go back to the Los Angeles Times's reporting on this.
They claim to have spoken to some insiders over at Fox, and
apparently there were other issues that Rupert Murdoch had with Tucker Carlson and
some of the stuff that he was saying on his show.
So let's go to graphic five here.
Murdoch was also said to be concerned about Carlson's coverage of
the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
Carlson has promoted the conspiracy theory that it was provoked by
government agents and has called Ray Epps,
a Texas man who participated in the storming of the capitol but
did not enter the building an FBI plant without presenting any evidence.
Now, of course, Epps denies that he's an FBI plant.
He was recently just this past weekend, interviewed by 60 minutes, and
he called out Tucker Carlson.
So I think you might be onto something in regard to Murdoch not liking
the fact that things were kinda out of his control.
But I also think that this was a business decision,
because while Tucker Carlson was bringing in money through his high ratings,
at the end of the day, the financial liability associated with someone like
Tucker Carlson was too much of a risk.
>> So that brings me to a popular theory about why he was fired,
which I think is slightly off.
So the first thing that sprung up was, my god, the dominion lawsuit, I wonder if
this was part of the settlement, they just didn't say it out loud.
No, they've asked the dominion lawyers, but
that's not part of the settlement at all, okay.
And I never believed that for a second, so Smartmatic is coming next, by the way.
They're suing for even more.
They're suing for $2.7 billion.
But to me, that's not the deal breaker because they already survived the dominion
lawsuit, which means they've already taken into account how much they're gonna pay
Smartmatic, roughly.
They have a range that's just the normal business proceedings, okay?
So the two things that I think are more interesting are the Grossberg lawsuit
that Anna told you about his producer, and the Epps potential lawsuit.
Because I remember and we covered on the air, he would say certain things,
including what he said about Epps, where I would say, see that one right there,
that's so out of bounds.
Because he has no evidence he's saying it on national TV,
he's inviting a massive defamation lawsuit.
And I could pinpoint the several areas where he went clearly out of bounds and
was a tremendous liability to Fox News legally, right?
And Tucker Carlson is not a dummy, he knows that he was pushing their buttons,
pushing their buttons, daring them to fire him,
which is gonna get back to the last theory in a second.
But guys, number one, Fox News might be firing him because to reassert control,
for sure, but secondly, because they could then say, if Epps in the Grossberg
lawsuit, we already fired them, what else do you want from us?
And that at a minimum, massively limits their liability, okay.
>> That's a really good point.
>> So that could save them a couple of hundred million dollars right there, so
we'll see how that goes.
But guys there's one thing mentioned in that LA times story about Grossberg that
for me triggered something that I already know.
My theory based on having talked to Turk Carlson several times off air,
is that he's deeply anti-semiti, and Grossberg alleges anti-semitism.
If she's got any of that on tape and she's got a lot of tapes, it could be damning.
And they have said crazy stuff behind the scenes and
now we're seeing the text, the recordings, etc.
So would they be willing to say it in front of Abby Grossberg knowing that she's
Jewish?
It's Fox News, they might be willing to say anything.
>> I mean, we are privy to some of the abusive comments that were
made at Fox News toward female employees, like right to their faces.
So I wouldn't be surprised, we'll see how that plays out.
Obviously, we're speculating on that angle.
But I do wanna go to one other theory that is floating around the internet right now
in regard to what Tucker Carlson is planning to do next.
Now Genk, you actually predicted some of this, and
I wanna go to that prediction from 2021 and then discuss it, let's watch.
>> Does Tucker know he's crossing a line?
Absolutely, what he's doing is, he's first of all, he's seeing how
far he can go on Fox News because he knows the right wing audience loves it.
Remember, Tucker Carlson used to be honestly a ratings failure at CNN,
MSNBC, and everywhere that he went,
he had like twelve TV shows all across cable news, and every one of them failed.
But when he started egging on the right wing to get angrier and
angrier and more violent, that worked and he became number one.
So he's doing that for money and fame and power, but
then the second reason is he thinks this is now my conjecture, all that was facts.
My conjecture is he thinks, I'm gonna go so far until even Fox News has to fire me
because I'm gonna break laws, and when I do,
they're gonna get sued just like happened with Dominion on the voting stuff.
And when they fire me, perfect, then I'm the ultimate victim.
I was number one on cable, most popular, and then I became a victim, and
then you run for office.
So there have been some theories about him potentially wanting to run for office.
He has been interviewed and asked about that question before, so
I wanna just quickly bring that up.
This is from July 7 of last year where he said, quote,
I'm not running, I'm a talk show host and I enjoy my job by the way,
what a blessing it is to say what you really think.
Only women can get pregnant, I dare you to say that,
that is what he said in the context of this interview.
>> Yeah, okay, so of course Tuck Carlson is a giant liar.
I don't believe anything he says.
And how do I know he was still pushing buttons?
Well, after the Dominion lawsuit, he came out and did a segment implying that
January that the 2020 election was stolen, the same exact thing they got sued for.
So that's like taking like a banana cream pine splashing or splattering Murdoch's
face with it and going, yeah, I just cost you $787,000,000 and
I'm gonna do it again, what are you gonna do about a tough guy?
Well, he just got his answer.
Look, guys, Murdoch is a very, very conservative person and very old school.
He's not a soft corporate Democrat.
He's like, what am I gonna do about it?
I'm gonna fire you ass and explain to you who the hell is boss.
That's what I'm gonna do.
But, unfortunately, everybody on their side could be a winner here.
Now, that's deeply ironic, and
this is the opposite of the silver lining that I was talking about.
I think Tucker wants to run for president.
I'm not sure that he had made up his mind between 24 and 28.
This pushes him more towards 24, but it is tough sledding in 24 with Trump and
DeSantis in there.
Be curious to see what he does.
He would have almost definitely run in 28 almost no matter what happens,
in my opinion.
But 24 now becomes super interesting.
So maybe he's thrilled.
He hired a top lawyer to go and get a gazillion dollars from Fox News.
He doesn't have to do the show anymore.
He's a populist martyr for the right wing.
It's kind of a win win for him.
And then for Murdoch, he reasserts control,
he's gonna take his company wherever he wants.
It's kinda win for him, and
it's not like he's gonna get replaced by a progressive or anyone sane, right.
He's gonna get replaced by an establishment right wing robot.
Even if it's somebody like Greg Gutfeld or
Jesse Waters who's already in the house and who's already relatively insane,
they're gonna reel it all the way back into exactly what Rupert Murdoch wants,
because they didn't have anywhere near the leverage Tucker Carlson had and
he just got fired.
>> Yeah, and it sends a message for anyone else who might think about saying things
that are out of line and could be a financial liability to the network.