Tucker Carlson’s Departure Means Fox News Doomed to Irrelevance

by Roger L. Simon

Was he fired or did he quit?

Maybe it doesn’t make a difference. Maybe, in fact, it was likely a long time coming.

We may never know in the world of nondisclosure agreements, but, in an act that can only be seen as corporate suicide, Fox News has let Tucker Carlson go, on April 24, 2023.

This was a form of corporate suicide for Fox News, with its allied companies The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal taking a hit as well.

Do the owners—Rupert Murdoch and sons Lachlan and James—care?

They must have known what everyone knows—that Tucker wasn’t only the most important broadcaster on the network, arguably in the country, and also arguably the next to the most powerful figure in the American conservative movement, second only to Donald Trump.

I would go so far as to guess that in a national Republican presidential primary at this moment, Carlson would come in second to Trump and ahead of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Evidently, Murdoch and sons couldn’t care less. They appear to no longer be interested in serving their viewers or the bottom line. As of this writing, their stock is down 3.5 percent on Carlson’s departure.

So something else is afoot—and that thing is surely politics.

Since the death of founder Roger Ailes, Fox News was less and less what it was intended to be.

In its present form, it was something of a scam, pandering to an audience desperate for respite from the mainstream corporate media but was really just a lite (as in beer) version of the original.

(NOTE to Ronna McDaniel: It would be wise to reconsider Fox running the Republican primary debates in August.)

It’s hard not to have sympathy for the good people on Fox who had to wake up today to news of the defenestration of Carlson. I would specially mention Maria Bartiromo, Steve Hilton, Jesse Waters, and my old friend Tammy Bruce, as well as some of the more rational people on Fox Business such as Larry Kudlow.

Speaking of friends, I have known Carlson off and on for many years, since the days when he was founding the Daily Caller and I was starting PJ Media (then Pajamas Media). I have always found him to be what is referred to as a “stand-up guy.” Even when I had lunch with him more than a decade later, in a clandestine location for his safety, after he had become the tremendous success he is, he was the same “stand-up” friendly person, devoid of the arrogance that so often comes with fame.

Speculation abounds about what he will do next. Will he go to Newsmax? Will he open a podcast like Joe Rogan? (Hope not). Or will he start a company of his own, taking with him some of the better people from Fox and gathering others from elsewhere?

The latter—the choice I would hope for, unless he wants to come aboard The Epoch Times, the best place I have worked—may be forbidden to him because of a noncompete clause in his contract.

What has been hidden in the uproar that now dominates the airwaves at present, along with CNN’s long-overdue firing of the tedious Don Lemon, is the sudden resignation of Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy adviser, she of the serial Benghazi lies.

Whoa.

As Melissa Fine notes on BizPac Review, “Remarkably, the news of Rice’s departure comes one day before, according to reports, Biden will officially declare his 2024 candidacy for reelection.”

“Already, some are wondering on Twitter if Rice’s move is related to Biden’s determination to run again.

“‘Even Susan Rice is running for the hills and abandoning the crashing Biden ship,’ stated conservative congressional candidate Lavern Spicer. ‘When you lose Susan Rice, you’re really losing!’”

More than anyone I can think of, we will be missing Carlson’s reaction to all of this.