No One Did This to Tucker Carlson

By Noah Rothman

Monday, April 24, 2023

 

On March 22, 2022, the New York Times Magazine published a deep dive into what it called the “rise of the Tucker Carlson politician.”

 

The piece took a despairing view of the curiosities emerging from the invisible primary within the New Right, in which aspiring nationalist Republicans compete for the support of broadcasters like Carlson and quixotic investors like Peter Thiel. One of the two Carlson-style candidates profiled, Blake Masters, lost his bid for U.S. Senate. But to hear his boosters tell it, Masters was a pawn in a larger game and a victim of forces beyond his control.

 

In his exit interview on Carlson’s Fox News Channel program, Masters left it up to the viewers to decide whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell withheld financial support from that race out of either “malice” or “gross incompetence.” It could not have been that the polling of that race leading up to the week before the election found that the incumbent Democrat, Senator Mark Kelly, was much better positioned to win his reelection. It could not have been that the Senate landscape in 2022 was littered with similar charity cases, and Republican leaders and donor groups were forced to triage resources. No, this had to have been done to a figure Carlson had deemed “the future of the Republican Party.”

 

For his part, the former Fox host implied that, between the institutional GOP’s behind-the-scenes incompetence and the liberal establishment’s equally unseen command of the levers of control in this country, the obstacles to his preferred political outcomes are difficult to anticipate because they are so clandestine.

 

Given the extent to which he has primed his audience to believe in the omnipotence of the ill-defined forces arrayed against them, Carlson’s viewers might be tempted to chalk up the summary cancellation of his show to those same forces. But the sequence of events that produced this outcome was at least as transparent as the last time a prime-time Fox host lost his No. 1–rated program following a costly settlement.

 

Last week, Fox was ordered to fork over the astronomical sum of $787 million to just one of the firms suing the outlet over allegedly defamatory statements on-air talent made in support of the dubious election-fraud claims proffered by Donald Trump in 2020. Carlson’s name was all over the embarrassing documents that Dominion Voting Systems’ lawyers uncovered during the discovery process. You can read all about it if you’re so inclined.

 

According to the Los Angeles Times, News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch had become increasingly discomfited by Carlson’s flirtation with the claim that the January 6 riots were “provoked by government agents” and his veiled allegation that one of the rioters was an FBI plant. But the final straw was a conventional one:

 

Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, the producer fired by the network last month, the people said. Carlson’s senior executive producer Justin Wells has also been terminated, according to people familiar with the matter. A Fox News representative would not comment.

 

“People familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch,” the L.A. Times added.

 

Fox’s decision to cut its losses might have happened behind closed doors, but the conduct that necessitated that decision was entirely out in the open. Moreover, as keen observers like Commentary editor John Podhoretz observed, Murdoch has a habit of pruning even profitable enterprises within his business empire when they become legal liabilities.

 

No shadowy cabal did this. This outcome didn’t occur as a result of the machinations of some establishmentarian sect or well-heeled lobbying outfit. These are the consequences that Carlson’s own actions inspired, and they are owed only to best business practices. That might be a bitter pill to swallow for those on the right who have recently become besotted with conspiratorial thinking, but tough medicine is salutary, nonetheless.