A sexual harassment lawsuit, not the massive settlement that Fox News will pay to Dominion Voting Systems, explains Tucker Carlson’s ouster from the network.
If the leftist Mainstream Media is to be believed, then Dominion’s defamation lawsuit, and the ensuing settlement worth almost $800 million, weren’t the main reasons Fox fired the most popular talker on cable TV.
Rather, it was yet another lawsuit that accused Carlson and others of being bad boys who used ungentlemanly language. Add to that Carlson’s coverage of the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Rude, Crude, and Politically Incorrect
Carlson got the pink slip on Monday, after which Fox said it appreciated his many years of service. Carlson has not said anything publicly.
But “according to one person familiar with the discussions, Murdoch’s son Lachlan, executive chairman of Fox Corp., and Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, decided late Friday that Carlson had to go,” the Los Angeles Times reported:
Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a producer fired by the network last month, the sources said. Carlson’s senior executive producer, Justin Wells, has also been terminated, according to insiders.
Grossberg was moved off “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” and onto “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” where she alleged she was bullied and subjected to antisemitic comments, according to a lawsuit in New York.
In deposition testimony, the former Fox News producer also said she was coerced by company lawyers to give misleading answers in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against the network. Fox News denied the claim and said she was terminated for disclosing privileged company information.
Grossberg’s attorney claims that her lawsuit prompted the network to boot the highest-rated cable television star:
“Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client, former top producer Abby Grossberg,” said Tanvir Rahman, one of Grossberg’s attorneys. “Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the [Southern District of New York] case, and we look forward to taking their depositions under oath in the very near term.”
Beyond that, though, the Times reported, Fox, part of Rupert Murdoch’s planetary news empire that includes The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, was perturbed by Carlson’s coverage of the J6 protests. The Murdochs and Fox board members were also upset that Carlson “promoted the conspiracy theory” that the protest was a false flag operation coordinated by the FBI.
Why anyone would think ill of the FBI, which was involved in a coup attempt to overthrow President Donald Trump, is a mystery.
Though Lachlan Murdoch pulled the trigger, the top man himself, the Times reported, ordered the hit.
“It’s about time,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL:
For far too long, Tucker Carlson has used his primetime show to spew antisemitic, racist, xenophobic and anti-LGBTQ hate to millions.
@ADL has long called for his firing for this and many other offenses, including spreading the Great Replacement Theory.
The Lawsuit
As for Grossberg’s 79-page lawsuit, filed March 20, it contains damaging allegations about Carlson in its litany of complaints against Fox and its executives.
The lawsuit cites “an audio clip of Mr. Carlson emerged in which he says: (a) arranged marriages between adults and children are not ‘the same thing exactly as pulling a child from a bus stop and sexually assaulting that child…. The rapist in this case has made a lifelong commitment to live and take care of the person, so it is a little different.’”
Carlson also said prostitutes are “slutty and pathetic,” and that women in general are “extremely primitive, they’re basic, they’re not that hard to understand.”
Another incendiary allegation:
In response to a story about girls at his fourteen-year-old daughter’s boarding school experimenting sexually with each other, Mr. Carlson opined: “If it weren’t my daughter, I would love that scenario.”
The lawsuit also complains that Carlson called Trump attorney Sidney Powell a “b*tch” and a “c**t.”
But some of the “allegations” are mere complaints that show Grossberg, a leftist major media veteran, simply didn’t like Carlson’s political views:
Days after a 21-year-old white man killed 22 people at an El Paso, Texas Walmart to “protest” what he called the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” Mr. Carlson declared on the air that white supremacy was largely a “hoax.” In response, Cristina Corbin, a Fox News Producer, tweeted an indirect rejoinder to the prime-time star: “White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact.” Several hours later, Mr. Carlson reportedly called Ms. Corbin from a blocked number and told her in front of her coworkers to: “Shut your mouth.”
The lawsuit says that Carlson ridiculed the idea of women in combat by saying, correctly, that “pregnant women are going to fight our wars.… It’s a mockery of the U.S. military.”
Dominion Voting Settlement
But none of that means the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit played no role in Carlson’s ouster, although Carlson’s coverage of election fraud wouldn’t be Fox’s main concern. As leftist CNN reported, just one of the 20 broadcasts cited in Dominion’s lawsuit was Carlson’s.
Rather, subpoenaed text messages and emails show that Carlson and other Fox talkers didn’t believe the fraud claims. Yet their coverage suggested mischief might have indeed been afoot.
As well, Carlson roasted Fox News personnel and said that “I hate him [Trump] passionately.”
