Fox News released a statement this morning saying that the network and white nationalist prime-time host Tucker Carlson have “agreed to part ways,” effective immediately. The statement noted that Carlson’s final program aired Friday, April 21, indicating that the former host will not be allowed to air a final goodbye to his audience.
Since the November 2016 launch of his prime-time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson has been a hero to hardcore racists and extremists for championing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, repeatedly hosting guests with ties to white nationalism, and defending the QAnon conspiracy theory. He has also been the vanguard of January 6 conspiracy theories on the network.
Fox News has long been a home for extremism and bigotry, since well before Tucker Carlson’s meteoric rise. The network was the driving force that mainstreamed the “birther” conspiracy theory (which falsely claimed then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was not born in the United States), and former President Donald Trump’s weekly call-ins to Fox & Friends became the launching point for his 2016 campaign for president. Until he was forced to step down, Bill O’Reilly spouted a constant stream of sexism and bigotry on his prime-time show, and host Sean Hannity pushed a conspiracy theory about the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer that tormented his surviving family.
Carlson simply super-charged the already bigoted Fox News model. In fact, only Fox’s toxic ethos and disregard for the truth could have supported the past 15 years of Carlson’s career -— he was previously fired from gigs at both CNN and MSNBC. Going forward, his influence will likely remain strong at Fox, because since his prime-time show launched in 2016, his extremism has metastasized throughout the network, with individual hosts and entire shows copying his talking points in hopes of recreating his success.
Below is a list of examples from the last few months of the extremism that will continue to plague Fox News in Carlson’s absence.