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Tucker Carlson has been fired from Fox News. If Fox News was a normal network, this would be deeply unsurprising. Any talking head who spread racist conspiracy theories, parroted Russian propaganda, embroiled his network in multiple lawsuits, ran an office in which sexism and antisemitism were rampant, and was publicly known to have criticized the network chiefs would be out the door quickly. But Fox News isn’t a normal network, and Carlson isn’t a normal anchor. He’s a force of nature in right-wing news. He’s the guy with the largest ratings on cable television. He’s someone so big that there is a serious chance his fans might declare Fox cancelled and follow him wherever he goes.
We don’t yet know exactly why Carlson has been fired, but it’s clear that in doing so the Murdochs have taken a big risk. They must have had pretty compelling reasons for doing it. And by that I don’t mean the compelling reasons that would make sense to you or I - the racism, for example - but rather ones that speak to the profitability of their business.
I don’t really buy the idea that they just got fed up of the controversies surrounding Carlson. Tucker was getting high ratings despite all of the controversy because his fans don’t care. It’s true that it was hard to get advertisers to appear on his show, but that problem pales in comparison to the risk that firing him causes a serious rupture with the conservative base. There are alternatives to Fox out there like Newsmax or the One America Network, and if Carlson jumped ship to one of these rivals then it would give them some serious MAGA credibility and allow them to compete with Fox more effectively.
There’s a lot of speculation in media circles about the upcoming trial involving Abby Grossberg, a former booker on Carlson’s show who is suing Fox. Grossberg says that she was subject to “vile sexist stereotypes” and that there was a toxic work environment on Carlson’s show. It’s not exactly news that Carlson’s staff is toxic - one of his employees was found to have been active on white nationalist messages boards in 2020 - but perhaps something even worse is going to come out in that trial. But given everything else we know about Fox and the fact that its fans dismiss all criticism of it as a liberal conspiracy, I don’t think this is a satisfactory explanation either.
There must be something pretty big that persuaded the Murdochs that Carlson is a bigger threat on the inside than on the outside. And I don’t think we have the full story yet. The fact that Fox’s share price tumbled to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars after Carlson’s firing was announced shows that the markets don’t really get it either.
The big question for me is who Fox replaces Carlson with. But here we have to remember the Iron Law of Murdoch which I mentioned above: they’re looking for the profitability and success of their brand, not to make America’s public debate less toxic. In recent years Fox has seen the steady departure of the few relatively non-partisan talking heads it had left and has doubled down on the decision to become solidly associated with the right. That decision is irreversible - it’s not like liberals will suddenly start watching Fox if they hire someone less toxic than Carlson. So of course they’re going to hire someone who fits their brand, and that person might be better than Carlson in some ways and worse in others, but they’re still going to be performing basically the same function of doing far-right fan service.
Is he running?
So what about another question: will Carlson run for president? I severely doubt it, and especially not now. An iron rule of conservative politics is that you can amass more money and power as a superstar media figure than you can as a politician. That’s why there’s a well-established presidential-campaign-to-pundit pipeline but not really one that works in reverse. Carlson gets to be stinking rich without ever having to make hard choices, doesn’t have to tell people things they don’t want to hear, and doesn’t have to pretend he cares what voters in Iowa think. I’d expect him to look for another media perch, not an elected office. Stepping into the ring against Trump and contesting ownership of the MAGA movement would be an enormously risky proposition that might destroy his brand and harm his ability to monetize later on.
For me, this is the ultimate lesson of the whole affair. Right-wing media has a power over the Republican Party, and hence the country, which is unheard of on the left. If Rachel Maddow left MSNBC, nobody would be writing takes about how it alters an upcoming Democratic primary or creates a rift in the liberal movement. So much of what Republicans do is pander to a base which has been told what to think by a constellation of conservative news outlets, at the center of which sits Fox News. Carlson was a singular figure in this galaxy but he was just one figure, and he’s replaceable - whoever Fox puts into the slot will serve the same function of pushing the Republican Party ever further to the right. The machine remains unbroken, and that’s why the left can allow itself only a brief period of schadenfreude at Carlson’s departure before returning to the fight.