Before he was fired by Fox News, rightwing TV host Tucker Carlson said the Fox Nation streaming service for which he produced content “sucks”, leaked video showed on Monday.
The news follows widespread reporting that comments about his employer, including “highly offensive” remarks about executives, contributed to Carlson’s shock firing last week.
In the new footage published by Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, Carlson discussed an interview with the controversial rightwing social media star Andrew Tate.
Carlson spoke to Tate in August 2022. Some of the footage was shown on Fox News, trailing a longer broadcast on Fox Nation.
In December 2022, Tate was arrested in Romania over allegations of rape, people trafficking and organised crime, which he denies.
In the leaked video, Carlson sat on his Fox News set, talking by phone to an unidentified male Briton and gave an unflattering opinion of the Fox Nation website and the size of its audience.
“I don’t want to be a slave to Fox Nation, which I don’t think that people watch anyway,” Carlson said.
Discussing what he would wear for the interview, Carlson said: “I want it to look official. I don’t want it to be like bro talk … But nobody’s going to watch it on Fox Nation. Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks. So I’d really like to just … dump the whole thing on YouTube.
“But anyway, that’s just my view. OK. I’m just frustrated with it. It’s hard to use that site. I don’t know why they’re not fixing it. It’s driving me insane. And they’re like making, like, Lifetime movies but they don’t … work on the infrastructure of the site.
“Like what? It’s crazy. And it drives me crazy because it’s like we’re doing all this extra work and no one can find it. It’s unbelievable, actually.”
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Content produced by Carlson for Fox Nation included Patriot Purge, a conspiracy-laced documentary series about the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and The End of Men, which included a discussion of testicle tanning.
On the footage leaked to Media Matters, Carlson said: “We’re like working like animals to produce all this content, and the people in charge of [Fox Nation] … like, they’re ignoring the fact that the site doesn’t work. And I think it’s like a betrayal of our efforts. That’s how I feel. So I, of course, I resent it.”
Fox News declined to comment. It has been bullish about its streaming service.
The New York Times has also said it obtained video of Carlson speaking off-air.
In its footage, the paper said, Carlson discusses “‘postmenopausal fans’ and whether they will approve of how he looks on the air. In another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds ‘yummy’.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
