Journalist Tucker Carlson–the prime-time host of politically Republican, right-wing Fox News, by far the largest cable network on television–was fired yesterday with no reason given. His program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, had existed at the 8 PM ET prime time slot for the past seven years. Speculation has been swirling about why his firing.
HuffPost reported yesterday that Carlson’s firing was connected to 92-year old Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News and board chairman of its parent organization–Fox Corp. It may be somewhat connected to the elder Murdoch having recently become engaged to 66-year old Anne Lesley Smith.
HuffPost reports that Anne, Rupert, and Tucker had dinner together in Los Angeles two weeks ago in which Ms. White showed she was enamored with Tucker’s political acumen and more. Ms. White is an outspoken evangelical Christian. She and Tucker then discussed Bible eschatology, and she declared Tucker “a messenger from God.”
The HuffPost also reported that a source told Vanity Fair, “that stuff freaks Rupert out. He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk.” After that dinner, Rupert Murdoch quickly ended his less than three-week engagement to Ms. Smith.
And last Friday, Carlson gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala in Maryland. In it he called abortion “child sacrifice.” He also framed the toxic political situation in the U.S. as “good and evil,” apparently representing Republicans as “good” and Democrats as “evil.” Carlson suggested that to solve this dilemma people should take “10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it.” It has been reported that these remarks also upset Rupert Murdoch.
Mr. Murdoch also had previously become irritated with Carlson’s isolationist and pro-Russia stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Carlson expressed on air. Also on his program he approvingly showed a graphic that identified Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy most derogatorily as a “Ukrainian pimp” even though Zelenskyy, a Jew, has become a world-class hero in the Western world for his bravery in resisting the Russian war on Ukraine and defending democracy. Such pro-Putin people in the West, such as Tucker Carlson, appear to be against democracy and for governing authoritarians such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who alone has caused this worst European war since WWII. Yet Zelenskyy and Ukraine have bipartisan political support in the U.S. including in its Congress. Proof is that the Biden administration has been giving so many billions of dollars in military aid, especially weaponry, to Ukraine, along with other European nations, in defending itself against this outrageous Russian aggression that was totally unprovoked by Ukraine.
But the worst remarks by Carlson that angered Murdoch may have been his vulgar criticisms of the Fox News colleagues that came out in mostly emails and cell phone text messages in the discovery phase of the defamation lawsuit Dominion v. Fox which Fox just settled out-of-court last week paying over 3/4’s of a billion dollars to Dominion Voting Systems for the many Fox lies against Dominion.
So, it appears that Rupert Murdoch’s disgust for remarks made by his prime time Fox host was building over recent weeks and perhaps months until Murdoch made the final decision to fire Tucker Carlson without Murdoch himself even telling Carlson about it.
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