Tucker Carlson broke his silence on Wednesday two days after he was fired from Fox News, releasing a video on his Twitter account.
Carlson, 53, hosted Fox News’s flagship primetime cable program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” since 2016. The show was consistently ranked as one of the top cable news shows on the air, reaching nearly 4.2 million viewers in the week ending April 2, according to the Nielsen ratings.
In his video, which ran slightly more than two minutes, Carlson did not address his firing or say what his next move might be, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Carlson spoke about “genuinely nice people” and “a bunch of hilarious people,” according to his video.
“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,” Carlson said. “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.”
Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCE
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2023
Carlson’s departure from Fox News comes less than a week after the company announced it had reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which had sued for defamation. The voting technology firm alleged that Fox News hurt its business by airing baseless accusations that it rigged voting machines against former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, according to The Associated Press.
The $787.5 million settlement is one of the largest ever reached in a defamation case, The New York Times reported.
Carlson is also facing a lawsuit from Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News producer and head of booking for “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Grossberg’s lawsuit, filed last month in a New York federal court, alleged that she faced sexism and anti-Semitism in the workplace. Also named in the lawsuit are the Fox Corporation, Fox News Network and company executives.
Carlson joined the network as a contributor in 2009. His departure came on the same day that CNN fired Don Lemon, who had been with the cable news network as a reporter, anchor and commentator for 17 years.
Neither Lemon nor Carlson have said they intend to file a lawsuit over their departures, but both men have retained attorney Bryan Freedman, according to Forbes. Freedman has a record of helping those who have been terminated from their jobs secure settlements that have run into the millions, the magazine said.
Carlson added in his video that most of the debates viewers watch on television are “unbelievably stupid.”
“They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t even remember that we had them,” Carlson said. “Trust me, as someone who has participated. And then 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.”
Carlson ended his video by stating that America’s “current orthodoxies won’t last” and that there were not many places left where one can find “Americans saying true things.”
“Both political parties, and their donors, have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That’s a depressing realization, but it’s not permanent,” Carlson said. “Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue. And so it won’t.”
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