Myriad reports in the leftist Mainstream Media tried to explain why Fox News fired top draw Tucker Carlson last week, and yesterday The New York Times offered another reason. In a text to a producer, Carlson expressed “inflammatory views about violence and race.”
Carlson used the words “white men,” which supposedly pulled his dark views about “racial superiority” out of the closet. But the text says nothing about “racial superiority.”
When top Fox execs found out about it, the Times claimed, they panicked, wondering whether they might have given a platform to a more palatable, gussied-up version of Bull Connor or Pitchfork Ben Tilman. Thus did they pink-slip the one man who provided a reason to watch the neoconservative-controlled network.
“White Men” Don’t Fight That Way
The text in question is exhibit 276 in the Dominion Voting Systems case, which Fox settled for $787.5 million.
It “set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial [and] showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race,” the Times averred. Another lie in the story was this: “For years, Mr. Carlson espoused views on his show that amplified the ideology of white nationalism. But the text message revealed more about his views on racial superiority.”
But Carlson has never expressed “inflammatory views about violence and race,” and the text said nothing about “racial superiority.”
“A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington,” Carlson wrote on January 7, 2021. That was a day after the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol, during which a Capitol Hill cop shot unarmed Air Force vet Ashli Babbitt to death.
Carlson described a gang of MAGA men and their attack on an “Antifa kid.”
“They started pounding the living sh*t out of him,” Carlson continued:
It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
Whatever Carlson meant by his “not how white men fight” line, the Deep State’s well-trained poodles at Fox jumped through all the right hoops.
“The text message came to the attention of Fox’s board of directors and even some senior executives only last month, on the Sunday before the trial was set to begin, according to two people with knowledge of Fox’s internal deliberations,” the Times reported. “At the time, Fox’s negotiators were entering discussions about an out-of-court settlement ahead of the swearing in of what was shaping up to be a diverse jury.”
Message: A “diverse” jury would not decide for Fox:
The next day, the board told Fox’s leadership about its plan to have the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz investigate Mr. Carlson. That disclosure set up the possibility that there could be a continuing investigation into what was behind Mr. Carlson’s messages at the same time as a trial, and as he was serving as its top host in prime time.…
It was not guaranteed that the text would have been revealed in open court. Dominion’s lawyers had still not decided whether they would introduce the text in front of the jury, according to people with knowledge of their plans. The two sides disagreed on whether the Dominion lawyers could have presented such a redacted message at trial if they had decided to do so, a decision that would have ultimately fallen to the judge. The difference became moot after Fox struck an 11th-hour deal on April 18 to pay Dominion $787.5 million and avoid trial.
Fox fired Carlson on April 24, three days after his last show.
Other Texts
Before the latest text surfaced, other of Carlson’s words and views supposedly explained why he and Fox “agreed to part ways” — corporate code for booting an important employee without using the word “fired.”
Some of them appear in a sex-harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by a disgruntled woman former employee, who sued Fox and Carlson, although she never met him. But that lawsuit wasn’t just about “sexist” or “chauvinist” texts and remarks. The plaintiff didn’t like Carlson’s social views.
Another possible reason Fox fired Carlson: his J6 coverage, which promoted the “conspiracy theory” that violence at the protest was FBI-inspired.
Vanity Fair reported that Fox chieftain Rupert Murdoch snapped and ordered Carlson fired after his speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala. Carlson discussed the importance of prayer. That’s a no-no for the nonagenarian media tycoon.
But Carlson also said modern political debate is absurd because it so often involves preposterous topics such as “transgenderism.” Carlson reprised that idea in his one public statement since he departed Fox.
Neither Fox nor Carlson have discussed why they “agreed to part ways.”
Fox’s investigators did not, apparently, search two homes for copies of the Southern Manifesto or signed photographs of David Duke.
