Fox News

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      As one door opens for Biden, another shuts on Carlson – podcast

      by

      Joe Biden finally launched his much anticipated re-election bid for 2024 this week. For the next year, news networks will cover extensively his campaign, and those of candidates running against him, but there will be an interesting shift in who exactly will be leading that coverage. In surprise news anchor exits, Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News and Don Lemon from CNN, and there are rumours that Carlson might even run for president himself.
      Jonathan Freedland is joined by the political analyst and pollster Cornell Belcher to discuss the headlines from a big week in US politics

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Worst-case scenario’: Rick Wilson on Tucker Carlson, presidential nominee

      by

      The most irresponsible thing you can do these days is look away from the worst-case scenario.” So says Rick Wilson. In the week Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, Wilson’s worst-case scenario is this: a successful Carlson campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.Wilson is a longtime Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a media company, Resolute Square, for which he hosts the Enemies List podcast.He says: “Tucker is one of the very small number of political celebrities in this country who has the name ID, the personal wealth, the stature to actually declare and run for president and in a Republican primary run in the same track Donald Trump did: the transgressive, bad boy candidate, the one who lets you say what you want to say, think what you want to think, act how you want to act, no matter how grotesque it is.“Among Republicans, he’s a beloved figure. He’s right now in the Republican universe a martyr – and there ain’t nothing they want more than a martyr.”Carlson’s martyrdom came suddenly on Monday, in the aftermath of the settled Dominion Voter Systems defamation suit over Trump’s election lies and their broadcast by Fox News. The primetime host, a ratings juggernaut, was gone.On Wednesday night, the New York Times reported that Carlson’s dismissal involved “highly offensive and crude remarks” in messages included in the Dominion suit, if redacted in court filings. Carlson, 53, released a cryptic video in which he said: “Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some … see you soon.”Other than that, he has not hinted what’s next. To many, a presidential campaign may seem unthinkable. To Wilson, that is precisely the reason to think it.Before Trump launched in 2016, “people used to say, ‘Trump? There’s no way he’ll run. He’s a clown. He’s a reality TV guy. Nobody ever is gonna take that seriously’ … right up until he won the nomination. And then they said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it can’t be that bad. What could possibly be as bad as you think?’ Well, everything.“And so I think we live in a world where the most irresponsible thing you can do is look away from the worst-case scenario. I do believe that if Tucker ran for president, there is an argument to be made that he’s the one person who could beat Trump.”In the words of the New York Times, at Fox Carlson created “what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and also … the most successful”. Pursuing far-right talking points, he channelled the Republican base.Now he has lost that platform. Wilson discounts a move to another network or a start-up, like the Daily Caller Carlson co-founded in 2010, after leaving CNN and MSNBC. But to Wilson, Carlson has precious assets for any political campaign: “He has an understanding of the camera, he has an understanding of the news media, infrastructure and ecosystem. He can present. He can talk.”Which leads Wilson to Ron DeSantis, still Trump’s closest challenger in polling, though he has not declared a run. Carlson “is unlike Ron DeSantis. He can talk to people, you know? He is the guy who can engage people on a on a human basis. Ron is not that guy.”The Florida governor has fallen as Trump has surged, boosted by his own claimed martyrdom over his criminal indictment and other legal problems. DeSantis has also scored own-goals, from his fight with Disney to his failure to charm his own party, perceived personal failings prompting endorsements for Trump.Wilson thinks DeSantis’s decision to run in a “Tucker Carlson primary”, courting the far right, may now rebound.“DeSantis’s people had been bragging for a year. ‘Oh, we’re winning the Tucker primary. His audience loves us. We’re gonna be on Tucker.’ And it was an interesting dependency. It was an advantage that DeSantis was booked on Fox all the time and on Tucker, and mentioned on Tucker very frequently. But that has now disappeared. Fox is all back in on Trump.”Wilson knows a thing or two about Republican fundraising. If Carlson ran, he says, he would “absolutely destroy with small donors. He would raise uncounted millions. Mega-donors would would not go for it. The racial aspect of Tucker is not exactly hidden. I think that would be a disqualifier for a lot of wealthy donors. But Tucker could offset it. He would be a massive draw in that email fundraising hamster wheel.“Remember, in 2016 the large-donor money for Trump was very late in the game. Before that, they were all with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or Chris Christie.“I have very high confidence you’re gonna see another iteration of, you know, ‘We love you Ron, we’re never leaving you Ron,’ and then they’re gonna call him one day and say, ‘Hey, Ron, I love you, man. But you’re young. Try again next time.’ And they’ll hang up with Ron and go, ‘Mr Trump, where do I send my million dollars?’“I’ve been to that rodeo too many times now.”So if Carlson does enter the arena, and does buck DeSantis into the cheap seats, can he do the same to Trump?“This iteration of Trump’s campaign is a lot smarter than the last one. I predict they would say, ‘Let’s bring Tucker in as VP and stop all this chaos, be done with it. You know, there are very few good options [for Trump] if Tucker gets in the race.”Joe Biden and Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson? It seems outlandish.“Again, I think the worst thing we can do is imagine the worst-case scenario can never happen. Because the worst-case scenario has happened any number of times in the last eight years.” More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump and Tucker Carlson were codependent. Their venn diagram was one angry white circle

      by

      At an 18 February 2017 rally, Donald Trump railed against immigrants and violence. He was unusually focused on Sweden, warning the crowd about recent terrorist attacks in the country: “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” If a terrorist attack in Sweden seemed unbelievable, it’s because it was. There had been no attack by immigrants the night before Trump spoke. The most recent attacks on Sweden, at the time, were a series of bombings between November 2016 and January 2017 that were allegedly connected to the neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance.People in Sweden shared photographs of their very un-bombed houses. Reporters did their due diligence and wrote stories about how nothing at all had happened in Sweden the previous night. It was a news cycle of nothing. But all that nothing could not persuade the president he was wrong. Trump repeated the story over and over. He was right, he insisted in multiple interviews: Sweden had been bombed by immigrant terrorists and he knew because he’d seen it on Tucker Carlson Tonight.Trump and Carlson were locked in a folie à deux that made each other’s careers. As Trump demanded a wall between Mexico and the United States, Carlson aired show after show cherry-picking stories to inflate the dangers of immigration. As Trump railed against Muslims, Carlson aired aggrieved segments about Macy’s selling hijabs. Together, they tapped into a nativist anger in America. Trump’s audience was Carlson’s audience. The Venn diagram was one big white angry circle. And Carlson even went further than Trump. While Trump encouraged his supporters to get vaccinated, Carlson likened the vaccine to Nazi experiments.There are still questions about exactly why Fox fired Carlson on Monday morning. But it’s clear that in his wake, he leaves wreckage. Not just from advising his elderly viewers that they didn’t need the vaccine. Not just from downplaying the insurrection as “mostly peaceful” and “embarrassingly tepid”. Not just for normalizing racist and neo-Nazi ideology or for the way he demonized individuals he disagreed with even if they weren’t public figures. But in the way he redefined truth and helped define the Trump presidency. He certainly wasn’t the first, or even the most eloquent, but Carlson was the loudest John the Baptist leading the way of the Trump era, evangelizing for a politics built on petty grievances and outrage.And the connection between Trump and Carlson wasn’t accidental. They often texted and conversed. Trump sought Carlson’s advice on his presidential run. And while past presidents have had close relationships with media figures, theirs was more transactional. Carlson’s disinformation informed Trump’s approach to his presidency and Trump capitalized on the anger Carlson incited.Richard West, professor of communications studies at Emerson College and author of a forthcoming book on the media, told me that Carlson elevated “factitis” to an art. Factitis, as West defines it, is “[an]irrational fear and avoidance of reporting facts”.“He ushered in this perception that whatever you think is OK, whatever you feel can be viewed as real and factual,” West says. “And it has to be because I’m on TV reading a teleprompter. Years ago, we used to call this blogging. Now it’s called TV anchorship on Fox.”West described the symbiosis of Carlson’s influence, which peaked under the Trump administration, as the “Tucker-Trump transactional threat”. He describes it as a feedback loop, “where one person reports something that’s not a fact. The other says, ‘That’s true.’ And the other one says, ‘Yes, I told you it was true.’ It’s just kind of an odd transactional aversion to truth.”The journalist Brian Stelter, former host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, described the cratering legacy of Carlson more succinctly. “Tucker Carlson made cable news cruder, uglier, more toxic. And as much as he turned on some fans, he also turned off a lot of people.”Trump and Carlson knew that one of the most powerful tools at their disposal was scapegoating individuals, often those not used to the media spotlight. The researcher Nina Jankowicz was targeted by Carlson after she was appointed to head the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board of the US Department of Homeland Security. The board was disbanded after it became the target of disinformation, and Jankowicz is still dealing with harassment. She told me in an interview that she could always tell when she’d been mentioned on Carlson’s show, by the fresh new wave of harassment. She doesn’t hold out hope that whoever replaces Carlson will be better: “And even if they replace Tucker with somebody who is more palatable, that legacy is one of lying for profit, lying for sport and lying without regard to the consequence of your lies. And that has really engendered this kind of normalization of political violence in America.”Jankowicz wasn’t the only woman Carlson targeted; it was regular feature on his show. The reporters Kim Kelly, Taylor Lorenz, and Lauren Duca all experienced Carlson’s ire. Sometimes they lost their jobs as a result, but they always received harassment from his fans, an army of angry viewers, ready to focus their vitriol on any target. The Trump-Carlson legacy is to transform both the right and the left into a nation of shitposters, a republic of dunk tweeters. A place where cruelty and disinformation is a bankable business model.I interviewed Carlson for a profile in the Columbia Journalism Reviewin 2018. I asked him if he felt responsible for the words he spoke, and the impact he had. I’d seen loved ones echo Carlson’s language about Black people and immigrants, in ways so nasty it left me devastated.My life and my community were cratered by Carlson’s rhetoric. He was dismissive and accused me of promoting censorship. But since the profile was published, it’s become clear that the lives of his viewers and the people he targeted where just rhetorical strategy to him. There was no care or concern over the damage he caused or the lives he ruined. And until his recent firing, there were very few consequences.At the time, people I talked to for the story insisted that Carlson didn’t believe what he said because it was just entertainment. And as his texts from the Dominion lawsuit show, he didn’t believe some of what he was claiming every night. But anyone who has read Hamlet knows that you become what you pretend you are. People die; a kingdom was ruined.Trump is running for re-election now without Carlson’s platform. What that does to his political power remains to be seen.But there’s no doubt that another of Murdoch’s apostles will take his place on Fox’s nightly lineup, just as Carlson replaced Bill O’Reilly. Maybe his replacement will be even more extreme, more willing to spin conspiracy theories for the Maga right. From O’Reilly to Glenn Beck to Carlson – that has tended to be the direction of travel.Like John the Baptist, despite having his head severed and delivered to Rupert Murdoch on a platter, Carlson’s gospel of hate will endure. It’s too embedded in the nature of American politics – both its tone and its language – to divest ourselves of it. And it’s too profitable. Carlson’s legacy is very real and we’re living in its ruins. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson breaks silence after abrupt departure from Fox News

      by

      Tucker Carlson has broken his silence for the first time since his abrupt departure from Fox News, posting a video to Twitter that did not directly address his reported firing.Carlson was one of the network’s biggest stars, and gained a large following while spouting xenophobic and racist rhetoric on his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight. He left Fox News without explanation on Monday. News outlets have reported that Carlson was fired on the personal order of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch for, among other things, using vulgar language to describe a female executive.On Wednesday, Carlson shared a cryptic two-minute video on his Twitter account that did not explain his exit, but offered sweeping complaints about the state of American discourse. He said what he noticed “when you step away from the noise for a few days,” is how nice some people are.“The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are,” he added. “They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years we won’t even remember we heard them. Trust me, as somebody who participated.”Fox hasn’t commented publicly on why it cut ties with Carlson, but it came after Fox News last week agreed to pay voting equipment company Dominion $787.5m to settle a high-profile defamation lawsuit.Carlson’s stunning departure is reportedly connected to a lawsuit filed by the his former senior booking producer Abby Grossberg, who claimed she faced sexism and a hostile work environment.Fox News said in an official statement that Carlson and the network had “mutually” agreed to separate.On Monday, Fox News immediately replaced Carlson’s slot with a rotating roster of hosts until a permanent replacement can be found, the network said. In his video on Wednesday, Carlson implied his fans had not seen the last of him.“Where can you still find Americans saying true things?” he said. “There aren’t many places left but there are some and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.”Associated Press contributed to this story More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson’s vulgar language in texts contributed to Fox News firing – report

      by

      Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News came after he used vulgar language to describe a network executive, the Wall Street Journal reported.Carlson described a senior Fox News executive as a C-word in a text message obtained by lawyers as part of a defamation lawsuit between the network and Dominion Voting Systems, according to the Journal, which like Fox is part of the Murdoch media empire.In a case settled last week for $787.5m, Fox lawyers reportedly convinced the Delaware judge to redact the message from public filings. Carlson, however, was still reportedly furious the network was not doing enough to protect him.Other messages in which he called the Donald Trump adviser and attorney Sidney Powell attorney a C-word and a “bitch” were made public as part of the lawsuit.The primetime host’s internal messages were among the most embarrassing for Fox, as he said he “passionately hated” Trump, called for a colleague to be fired for accurately fact-checking claims about voting machines, and bluntly criticized Powell.More embarrassing information about Carlson may yet come to light. Rolling Stone reported on Tuesday that the network has a dossier of damaging information about him.The thrust of Dominion’s defamation claims involved other anchors: Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs. Dobbs’s show was cancelled in 2021 but Bartiromo and Pirro remain.Carlson was one of Fox’s biggest stars before he was abruptly fired on Monday, reportedly learning of his fate 10 minutes before it was announced.The Fox executives Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch reportedly made the decision on Friday. The Los Angeles Times reported that Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old patriarch of the owning family, decided to fire Carlson with input from top officials.Carlson faces a separate lawsuit from Abby Grossberg, a former senior booking producer who claims there was a sexist and hostile working environment on his show.Staffers sat around joking about which female politicians they would rather sleep with, Grossberg alleges.She also claims she was encouraged to lie when Dominion’s lawyers presented her with the message in which Carlson called Powell the C-word and a “bitch”.Grossberg told lawyers it did not make her feel uncomfortable and she did not know how she would react if that type of language was used by Carlson and those around him. In reality, she said in a court filing, she knew Carlson was capable of using that language and felt “terrible” each time she heard it in the office.Some at Fox had become concerned that Carlson, the network’s most-watched anchor, had begun to go too far in racist themes on his show, got the network in too much trouble with advertisers, and was operating as if he was bigger than the network, the Journal reported.Carlson broadcast his show from a private studio in Maine. He has not commented on his firing.Approached by Daily Mail reporters in Florida on Tuesday, the 53-year-old said: “Retirement is going great so far” and added: “I haven’t eaten dinner with my wife on a weeknight in seven years.”Asked about future plans, he “flashed a broad smile and joked, ‘Appetizers plus entree,’” the tabloid website reported.Announcing his departure on Monday, Fox News said: “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”It is not the first time Carlson has come under fire regarding vulgar language. In 2015, his brother Buckley Carlson sent an email to Carlson and Amy Spitalnick, then a spokesperson for the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, calling her a “whiny bitch”.“Whiny little self-righteous bitch … and with such an ironic name, too … Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don’t think so. More like LabiaFace,” Buckley Carlson wrote.Carlson did not seem to have any issue with the language, telling BuzzFeed News, which obtained the email: “I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way.”On Wednesday, Spitalnick told the Guardian in an email: “Fox News knew exactly who Tucker Carlson was when they handed him a primetime show in 2016 – and they saw his misogyny and white supremacy as an asset, at least until they faced legal liability.“We should be clear: it’s not just his vulgar comments about women. Like with so many extremists, that misogyny was an early warning sign as he quickly became a fan favorite among avowed neo-Nazis – who saw him as their most effective vehicle to normalize their violent hate.” More

    • 263 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson has lost his job – but the far right has won the battle for the mainstream | Owen Jones

      by

      It is difficult to begrudge anyone for celebrating the downfall of far-right provocateur Tucker Carlson, ignominiously ejected from Fox News. Slack-jawed, spitting rage, his tirades were calculated at stirring the resentment of angry white America: from declaring that immigrants made the US dirtier and poorer to embracing the “great replacement theory”, which spreads the noxious lie that the authorities were deliberately “undermining democracy” by replacing US-born Americans with immigrants.Fox staff were reportedly jubilant at his departure. Perhaps this quote from a Fox reporter, in which they celebrate seeing the back of the network’s premier conspiracy theorist, will give you pause: “It’s a great day for America, and for the real journalists who work hard every day to deliver the news at Fox.”Oh, really? Were they the journalists who prompted a potential lawsuit from the city of Paris after falsely claiming the French capital had “no-go zones” for non-Muslims? Or aired many negative and sceptical statements about Covid vaccines at a critical point in the pandemic? Or indeed aired the false claims that voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 presidential contest, leading to Fox News’ $787m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems? With journalistic standards like these, Carlson will no doubt be replaced by another demagogue committed to stoking the same fear and rage. The focus on specific bogeymen such as him stops us from understanding the real problem.Carlson is merely one figurehead of a misinformation industry that has dramatically reshaped rightwing politics across the world. Defined by conspiratorial thinking, often crude racism and bigotry, and calculated deception, it has succeeded in destroying whatever barrier existed between the traditional centre right and what lies beyond. Carlson – or indeed the modern godfather of this movement, Donald Trump – are easy to single out on account of their vulgarity and open repudiation of respectability. This allows the mainstream right that originally courted and enabled this extremism to evade responsibility.Consider the case study of Liz Cheney, the three-term representative for Wyoming, celebrated as a principled leader of the besieged moderate Republicans for her opposition to Trump. This was the same Cheney who, when offered the opportunity to eschew the conspiracy that Barack Obama was foreign-born, responded: “People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas.” Here was a climate denier who almost always voted with the Trump administration. Difficult, then, not to conclude that it was the style, rather than substance, of Trumpism that the likes of Cheney found so objectionable. Cheney was crushed in her Republican primary at the hands of a Trump-backed candidate – consumed by a monster she helped create.It was the “moderate” Republican pinup John McCain who selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. It was the former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney who suggested wiretapping mosques and placing foreign students under surveillance. It was the presidential candidate Ted Cruz who called on law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods”. And a previous generation of rightwing zealot pundits walked so Carlson could run: like the late Rush Limbaugh who identified the “four corners of deceit”: government, academia, science and the media.It was, in sum, a collective effort on the US right to promote bigoted and conspiratorial modes of thinking that radicalised the base of the Republicans and transformed a rightwing capitalist party into a more conventionally far-right movement that increasingly rejects democratic norms. It’s why Trump’s main Republican rival is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a rightwing authoritarian who has suggested the Federal Reserve will seek to prevent Americans buying guns and fuel, and who has shared a platform with people who appear to echo QAnon and other conspiracy theories.This is a tendency long ago identified by the US historian Richard Hofstadter, who unpacked the “paranoid style in American politics” in a 1964 article. This was a mechanism, he believed, for remoulding society: that by identifying a menace to society – be it Muslims, trans people, or anti-fascists – you could marshal support for radical right causes.It is a phenomenon well beyond the United States. It was the Vote Leave faction that took over the Tories who spread the deception about Turkey joining the EU; Michael Gove who denounced “experts”; and Boris Johnson’s ugly rhetoric around surrender, betrayal and traitors that attracted the support of far-right extremists. It was Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro who synthesised bigotry towards Brazilian minorities and disinformation about Covid and stolen elections. And it is Hungary’s far-right regime that spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish businessman George Soros, and implies that outside forces will force children to have gender-affirming surgery.Indeed, Hungary itself is a striking case study about what has happened to the modern right globally. The ruling party, Fidesz, was long considered a conventional centre-right party until it radicalised in power, hollowing out the substance of Hungarian democracy. Misinformation, bigotry and conspiracism acted as battering rams, radically reshaping rightwing politics.Carlson may well have been booted from Fox News, but what victory does it represent? The brand of conspiratorial demagoguery he belongs to has succeeded in drastically reshaping rightwing politics. The “paranoid style” that was once identified as a dangerous trend in conservatism is now its main operating system. The consequence? Democracy as we understand it is imperilled in the US and beyond. The likes of Carlson played their role, but this political catastrophe would never have happened without those who retained ill-deserved reputations for moderation while throwing open the door for the most radical extremism.
      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Wow’ and ‘OMG’: shock after Fox News announces Tucker Carlson departure

      by

      Shocked reactions are pouring in across social media on the abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, with the network announcing that the prominent far-right television host is leaving the channel.Many were surprised by the announcement given the popularity that Carlson enjoyed at Fox as well as the highest-rated host on cable television.“Wow,” tweeted the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who accused Carlson and other Fox pundits of inciting violence during an MSNBC interview that aired on Sunday.Some remained skeptical that Carlson’s departure from Fox would be the end of his career despite critics who called out his show as racist and inaccurate.“I’d like to think Tucker Carlson’s departure is the end of an era, but I’m quite certain it’s the beginning of his political career,” the founder of gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, Shannon Watts, tweeted.Several conservative pundits took to social media to express their displeasure at the announcement.“I STAND WITH TUCKER CARLSON!”,” the far-right Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert tweeted.Donald Trump Jr, the son of former president Donald Trump, tweeted his reaction to Carlson’s departure news. The tweet read, “Confirmed: Tucker Carlson out at Fox News. OMG.”Carlson’s departure from Fox has already been acknowledged on air by the network.Shortly after the news broke, the Fox anchor Harris Faulkner shared the channel’s statement, adding: “We want to thank Tucker Carlson for his service to the network as a host, and prior to that, as a long-term contributor.”In a statement published early on Monday, Fox News announced that Carlson and the network agreed to part ways and that his last show was last Friday.“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” Fox’s statement said. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”It appears that many at Fox – including Carlson himself – had no inclination that Friday would be his last show.Fox was still previewing Carlson’s show Monday morning, with the network teasing an interview between the departed host and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and 2024 US presidential candidate.For what will be his last show with Fox, Carlson hosted Tyler Morrell from Cocco’s Pizza in Pennsylvania for his show last Friday. Morrell went viral after doorbell camera video showed him helping police catch a suspected car thief while on a delivery.While chowing down on pizza pies delivered to him by Morrell, Carlson wished viewers a happy weekend before signing off.“We’ll be back on Monday,” Carlson said. More