Cable news went through a major shakeup this week due to the firing of former Fox News mainstay Tucker Carlson. The longtime Fox News fixture was cut from the network on April 24, just days after a pricy lawsuit settlement between the network and Dominion Voting Systems. While details are few and far between other than a bare bones statement about Fox News and Carlson agreeing to part ways, the former host of Tucker Carlson Tonight has now broken his silence with a video that goes in some... unexpected directions.
Tucker Carlson took to Twitter just after 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, April 26 with a video that runs just over two minutes, doesn't directly address his departure from Fox News, and goes on about "unbelievably stupid" debates and "true things." The timing may be no coincidence, as Tucker Carlson Tonight previously aired nightly in the same 8 p.m. ET hour on Fox News. He started his video with "Good evening" and "It's Tucker Carlson" before continuing:
One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country. Kind and decent people. People who really care about what's true, and a bunch of hilarious people also. A lot of those. It's got to be the majority of the population, even now, so that's heartening. 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. They're completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won't even remember that we had them. Trust me, as someone who's participated.
"Step outside the noise" is presumably a reference to Tucker Carlson being cut from Fox News, but he doesn't get any more specific in the video. According to the former cable news host now, most TV debates are "unbelievably stupid" and "completely irrelevant," which... well, as he said, he's certainly someone who has participated in TV debates over the years. He continued:
And yet at the same time – and this is the amazing thing – the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War. Civil liberties. Emerging science. Demographic change. Corporate power. Natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It's been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media.
Fox News has been popular within its demographic for years, and Carlson doesn't seem to be omitting his former network from his critiques of "American media." Interestingly, his exit is already causing ratings issues for Fox News, which was almost certainly unavoidable. Carlson was all but the face of Fox News by the time of his departure, and even former colleagues like Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly don't seem to know the story behind what happened. Carlson went on in his video:
When honest people say what's true calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who've been trying to silence them shrink and they become weaker. That's the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? 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.
Tucker Carlson signed off his message with "See you soon," which suggests that he has a plan to start reaching his audience again. It's hard not to compare his situation to that of former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who was ousted from the network (with a significant severance package) in 2017and planned a TV return later that year. Carlson actually inherited O'Reilly's former 8 p.m. ET time slot upon The O'Reilly Factor host's dismissal. Check out Carlson's full statement below:
Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCEApril 27, 2023
Whether or not he does have a plan in place to return to television remains to be seen, and time will tell if he more directly addresses his firing in the days to come. At the time of writing, just two hours after Tucker Carlson tweeted the video, it has been retweeted more than 85,000 times and received more than 300,000 likes.
