The network says Tucker Carlson works on Fox News

Fox News said in a statement Monday that he and controversial co-host Tucker Carlson have separated.

“We thank him for his service to the network as a host and, before that, as a contributor,” the network said in a statement.

Carlson, after appearing on CNN shoot and on PBS and MSNBC, he joined Fox News in 2009. His Tucker Carlson tonight The show took an increasingly provocative turn.

Last week, Fox settled a defamation lawsuit with Toronto-based Dominion Voting Systems for US$787 million. He faces a similar lawsuit from voting technology company Smartmatic, with damages of US$2.7 billion.

During the discovery phase of the Dominion suit, Carlson was among the Fox News personalities who privately expressed skepticism about allegations of voting machine fraud made by then-US President Donald Trump and his colleagues.

We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I’m really looking forward to it, ”he wrote to an anonymous person in early 2021. Who is he. »

But Carlson’s live performance did not suggest such doubts in the weeks after the contentious 2020 election.

Just this month, Carlson sat down for what was widely seen as a friendly, non-confrontational interview with Trump, days after the Fox host previously criticized the decision. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is going to indict the former president.

“non-verbatim comment”

Carlson released about 41,000 hours of security footage on Jan. 6. Last month, Carlson launched an impassioned new effort to explain the deadly attack on Capitol Hill, linking the GOP more closely with pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the event. The effort matches the work of Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who turned the security footage over to Fox.

“They weren’t rebellious,” Carlson said at a show in March. They were spectators. »

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Carlson’s previous defense of those on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 prompted Fox contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes to resign in protest months later. Both have contributed to Fox since 2009.

Goldberg and Hayes called the restaurant Carlson national cleansing Documentary A collection of incoherent plots, which are “full of inaccurate facts, half-truths, misleading images, and unpleasant omissions”.

“If someone with such a platform shared such misinformation loudly enough and for long enough, there are Americans who will believe it — and act on it,” they wrote. “It is not a theory. This is what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

hour | Democrats and some Republicans criticize Carlson’s Jan. 6 documentary:

On his show, Carlson also expressed concern about immigrants massing at the southern border of the United States and made stories of crime in cities run by Democratic officials a regular feature of his show.

Carlson also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine, although he declined to say whether he had been vaccinated. The pandemic has allowed Carlson to deliver monologues on one of his favorite topics — the unelected bureaucrats whose decisions affect the lives of millions of Americans.

Carlson, who turns 54 next month, also showed the blunders and dodgy business deals of Hunter Biden, the son of the incumbent president.

Defending Carlson against a defamation lawsuit brought by former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who alleges an affair with Trump — Fox lawyers once alleged that Carlson engaged in “exaggerations” and “inadvertent comments.”

Given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, no reasonable spectator would arrive[s] With a healthy dose of skepticism, the judge ruled while disposing of the suit.

There was no immediate explanation Monday from Fox as to why Carlson was leaving, even just days after the Dominion settlement.

Carlson was recently named in a lawsuit brought by Abby Grosberg, a Fox News producer who was fired after allegations that Fox attorneys pressured her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion lawsuit. Grossberg went on to work with Carlson after leaving Fox’s Maria Bartiromo Show.

Her suit says Grossberg learned “only that she’s traded an overtly misogynistic work environment for an even harsher work environment—this time, where unprofessionalism prevailed, and employee disgust and disdain for women permeated nearly every decision in the workday.”

Just last week, Carlson promoted an upcoming documentary highlighting what has been described as the increasingly authoritarian turn of the Canadian government. In 2022, on his show, Carlson expressed his support for the Freedom Caravan protesters across Canada. The fate of this program was unclear.

Not the first controversial host

In 2021, Dominion filed a lawsuit against Fox Corp. and Fox News, which claimed its business had been ruined by false allegations of voter fraud aired by the influential American news channel and its conservative commentators. One of those commentators, Lou Dobbs, left the network that same year.

Based on a slew of internal communications, Dominion alleged that Fox employees, from newsroom staff to Fox chief Rupert Murdoch, knew the remarks were untrue but continued to air them out of fear of losing business and viewers to the site’s media competitors. straight.

Carlson became Fox’s most popular character after replacing Bill O’Reilly on Fox’s prime-time lineup. O’Reilly left in early 2017 after 20 years with the network and numerous sexual harassment lawsuits.

Carlson’s departure was met with mixed comments from members of Congress on Twitter. Democratic Congressman Ted Liu of California criticized the “constant lies and racist things that Tucker Carlson kept talking,” while Republican Representative from Colorado Lauren Boppert said: “I support Tucker Carlson!”

Fox said the rotating hosts will temporarily run Fox News Tonight at 8 p.m. ET.