Newsmax's Dick Morris says “Newsmax is the big winner” of Tucker Carlson's Fox ouster
Morris: “I think our audience is going to double in size is a result of this because nobody will trust Fox”
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From the April 24, 2023, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight
ROB SCHMITT (HOST): Why do you think this happened?
DICK MORRIS (NEWSMAX CONTRIBUTOR): Well it's very deep in the relationship between Murdoch and Trump. When Trump first burst on the scene, Murdoch liked him because he was conservative. And -- but then, when Trump was elected, it became clear that he can't control him and he would be sending in orders and nothing happened. Trump wasn't going to take dictation from anybody. And he probably at some point told Murdoch to stuff it. Murdoch literally thought that he was a puppet he could control. And the – Murdoch's been frustrated with that from the very beginning. And he was determined after the 2020 election and after Biden's election, to stop Trump from coming back to the White House. And he's determined to use his properties, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News to stop Trump from winning.
So, he went into Fox News – and the other organs were pretty complicit – but Fox News he had a tough time because he had to line up – while the news network, the news part of the Fox was willing to play ball and go after Trump and cut him out, the prime time commentators were not, led by Tucker Carlson. And Carlson just wouldn't play ball with that. And he realized that it's a lot easier to replace him than to retrofit him and try and get him to sing a new song.
SCHMITT: It seemed like Tucker had, you know, carte blanche over there to do, kind of, whatever he wanted –
MORRIS: Yeah.
SCHMITT: It seemed like he was the managing editor of the show –
MORRIS: Yes, but --
SCHMITT: I know there was a lot of stuff he covered that made the network itself, I think, very uncomfortable. It seemed obvious.
MORRIS: Yes and those days and now over because Murdoch was determined to exert control. But what this means is enormous. It means first of all that Newsmax is the big winner. I think our audience is going to double in size as a result of this because nobody will trust Fox there and they're gonna see it move to the left.
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I think it's the first of a whole series of dismissals.
SCHMITT: But I would say you think there's going to be more to come. I mean, I look back and I remember I remember when they threw out O'Reilly and I had never heard I mean, the viewers went insane over that. Yeah, they got it back.
MORRIS: But that was different because that was a personal fight and included a scandal. This is a situation where it's a desire to control costs and did nothing wrong. It's just that he wouldn't be Murdoch's puppet. And Murdoch wants a puppet because he wants to move the whole network to the left because he wants to defeat Trump. And to do that, he's got to undertake a radical surgery of the network, and that's what he's doing.
SCHMITT: Why? Why would – you say he wants to move the entire network to the left – just that if I mean, this is somebody that created an entire conservative brand. Yeah, he's been the bane of liberal existence in this country for, I don't even, 25 years.
MORRIS: He's competitive for that brand is Donald Trump who created his own Republican Party, really. And there's not room in the world for both Trump and Murdoch. And this was, I think, Murdoch's assertion of power. And I think he's going to follow it by making Fox into a moderate left-wing organ.
SCHMITT: When you say that more heads will roll. That was the first thing that I thought. When they threw out. Tucker Carlson, the first thing I thought was this – this can't be it. Because you're not going to kill the most successful thing you have all by himself.
MORRIS: I'm not going to comment on who else it might be, but it's obvious. And I think that that could well happen. I think we have to understand that this is a subset of the fight between Trump and Murdoch, which is based on Murdoch's desire to control Trump and Trump's refusal to be controlled by anybody.
SCHMITT: Do you think this shakes up 2024 in any big way?
MORRIS: Huge way, because Fox was never covering Trump. They never had him on. When they had him on, they limited it and they bracketed it with all kinds of negatives. They didn't cover Trump's rallies. And Newsmax covered them all. And I think that the Newsmax will become the network for conservatives and the only place that they can hear Donald Trump, because MSNBC and CNN and Fox will become increasingly indistinguishable.