The Untold Story of Tucker Carlson's Ugly Exit From Fox News (Vanity Fair)

[ItsjustMe]

“It Was Always Going to End Badly”: The Untold Story of Tucker Carlson’s Ugly Exit From Fox News

When Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott called Tucker Carlson around 11:15 a.m. on Monday, April 24, and said, “We’re taking you off the air,” she didn’t give him a reason. To Carlson, cancellation was unthinkable. He was the highest-rated host across all of cable news—and he was suddenly sentenced to execution. It was like somebody canceling Taylor Swift mid-tour or removing Stranger Things from Netflix before anyone could stream the ending. It made no sense.

Carlson wasn’t given a path to sign off and pretend that it was on his terms, but Scott did offer him one thing—the chance to include his own comment in the press release. For a moment, he thought about saying yes; maybe he did want the breakup to sound mutually beneficial. But he quickly snapped out of that. He was being dumped, and he wanted everyone else to know it too. He tapped out a farewell email to his staff, known as the Tuckertroop, before his Fox email account was disabled. “I’ve never worked with better people in my life, and I don’t expect I ever will,” he wrote, adding: “I’m a little unclear on what’s going on right now, but at this point it looks unexpectedly bad.”

Then the news erupted in public. “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” the announcement said, abusing the word agreed and glaringly lacking any quote from the host. His production team was not given a heads-up, so they found out that Carlson was gone the same way as everyone else, through smartphone news alerts or texts from friends. The show’s senior executive producer Justin Wells was also sacked, but the rest of the staff was still on the clock. They were supposed to stay at their keyboards and whip up a replacement show that very night. Instead, they swapped theories about the canceling. One of his producers thought it was tied to Fox’s blockbuster $787.5 million settlement of the Dominion Voting Systems case, which was struck just a few days earlier. Another producer thought it was triggered by ex-producer Abby Grossberg’s lawsuits alleging a toxic workplace. A third wondered if it was somehow related to January 6 protester Ray Epps’s interview on 60 Minutes the night before, when Epps said Carlson was “going to any means possible to destroy my life.” Epps was believed to be preparing a lawsuit against Fox, which he would file in July.

[NCIndie]

1. Shockingly, the average IQ at Fox News actually dropped with Carlson's departure.

As long as idiots like Hannity and Doocy are on the air, Fox will rank at the bottom of the "smart news" pile.