It Could Happen Here - What Tucker Carlson's Firing Means For Us All

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Robert, James, Gare, and Mia discuss Fox News axing Tucker Carlson, where he might go next, and the impact it would have on the media and political ecosystemSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. It could happen here. It, in today's parlance, meaning Tucker Carlson getting fired, because that's what we're talking about. Today is one of our classic timely reaction episodes to the firing of Fox News fascist and popular anti-Semite Tucker Carlson. Fox News fascist and popular anti-Semite Tucker Carlson.

Today on the show to chat about all of this, I've got Garrison Davis, James Stout, Mia Wong, and Sophie Lichterman. Hi, everybody. Wow, when was the last time we got like the whole crew together? A long time. This is the bulk of us. Yeah. Yeah. Even Sophie wasn't here for the Come episode. No, Sophie refused to be on for the Come episode, threatening to quit.

No Shireen, sadly. Yeah. Yeah, but so, you know, today is a couple of days since we all got the surprising news that Tucker has been let go at Fox. This was news that was surprising to Tucker. There's a couple of things that are funny about the announcement itself, namely that he signed off his last episode saying, see you guys next week. Fox, in the messaging they've put out, was like, you know, we both agreed that he needed to leave the network, that this is an amicable split. The Brian Kilmeade who replaced him the next episode with Fox News Tonight was like, Tucker and I are still good friends.

He's just decided mutually to take a leave from the company. This is definitely not true. We'll talk a little bit about all of this, but the gist of, I think it's kind of worth talking about like why this happened as far as we know. There's not, you know, objective kind of confirmation about why specifically he got fired. But the broad speculation, some articles have like quoted a Fox News insider who says that it was due to something. Either he said in a recorded but unaired episode of the show

or that it was something that was found in the emails that were revealed during discovery that was profoundly anti-Semitic. I've heard in one source, at least, said that it was anti-Semitic enough that it might have been legally actionable. That's obviously like, what the fuck? I would love to know what that specifically means. But what we do know is that a former producer for the Tucker Carlson show, who was booking for him, is currently suing the network both for a hostile work environment. She claims that she was exposed to intense anti-Semitism while working there. And she alleges that she was

basically threatened into changing her deposition. So the lawsuit came alongside her, like issuing a correction to her deposition and saying that she had basically lied in order, like because she was being threatened by people at Fox, which is like, so there's, there's a lot going on here.

So that's kind of the gist of what we know right now as to like why he got shit canned. Yeah, that's the basics. which is extremely funny um he i i saw one report that i don't i don't know how accurate it is i saw one report that says he found out 10 minutes before fox like released the statement yeah he was in contract negotiations so he was in the middle of of presumably getting fox to agree to pay him a shitload more money yeah and now he has no money which is very funny well yeah he'll he'll still probably get a lot of money somehow yeah yeah i'd be interested to see if he like pivots to something like uh like oann or newsmax i don't know if they have the means to pay him what he would probably yeah no i mean this is this is one of the questions kind of following this and how this decision's going to affect politics going forward,

especially with 2024. Two big questions being, where is Tucker going to go? And who is going to take his place? For the next few weeks, Fox is probably just going to be doing a rotating selection of hosts until they make a final

decision. So, you know, a lot of people could, could end up, end up with that job, but in terms of where he's going, there's, there's a few interesting options. Now it kind of does come down to who's going to be willing to pay the probably pretty high price or if he's just going to try to stay independent. But I think something like Newsmax isn't, isn't out of the question. I think this is just like a guess, but I think there's a decent chance that the Daily Wire is going to go after him really hard.

He's already pretty friendly with a lot of the people there. They've been willing to dish out a lot of money for someone like Steven Crowder. Now Tucker will be undoubtedly more, but also he's going to be more of a pull. And that is something that's entirely possible i mean the daily wire already produces like usually two of the most popular podcasts in the world like in like the top 10 they already have a they have a lot of web traffic um they don't have like cable but they get a lot of like other other ways to to to spread their work they have a paid of like other, other ways to, to,

to, to spread their work. They have a paid streaming service, don't they? Yes. Yes. They, they also have the daily plus. Yep.

They are. I think they're probably the only people on the right that can offer Tucker both money. That's broadly in line with what Fox could and an audience that's, that's a sizable potentially even an audience that's larger. One of the things to kind of keep in mind is that Tucker was going to get out three and a half million viewers a night somewhere around there, which made him the most popular host on cable news, but also is minuscule based on historical, number one, minuscule based on the kind of audiences that you can get on streaming platforms today, which are much larger than cable audiences, and is minuscule based on like, I mean, it was like 10 years ago that three and a half million

viewers on a night 10, 15 years ago would have been like an unsuccessful show on NBC, right? For some perspective, the most successful TV finale of all time was the MASH finale, which had like 105 million viewers. Like cable don't, or television period does not get the kind of viewership that it does anymore. And I i think when you're looking at tucker he is the i the main draw for him has to be the audience he's not i mean he's the heir to the camp or to the uh the swanson you know dinner fortune he cannot be motivated primarily by the paycheck right that that that there's he simply like it just that can't be the reason he's doing it. It has to be the fame, you know? And so Daily Wire, I think, is a likely place for him as a result of that. Yeah.

Another thing that's interesting, I thought, is like Mia mentioned that he hasn't said anything yet. And he's probably taken advice from his lawyer, Brian Friedman, who incidentally is the same dude who's representing Don Lemon, who lost his job on the same day. Great. Which is just a magical illustration.

Good year for that guy. It is a good year for this guy. This is the guy who gets a shit ton of money from networks when people get fired from networks. Like he has represented like Megyn Kelly before. Like when you hear of a famous person getting let go by a network, it's probably this guy who's representing them. And I thought it was utterly hilarious that both of them retained the same guy on the same day having been fired. Yeah, both of them retained the same guy on the same day, having been fired.

But thinking about lawyering up made me think about, and Sophie mentioned it, that Carlson defames people. He lies on an almost daily basis. We recently spoke about how he took the statistics of Russian deaths from those leaked documents. He used the blatantly altered version of those documents long after everyone knew they'd been altered right uh he needs serious legal clout to defend him from the fact that he lies and defames people every single day so like going even though he has a sizable fortune going out on his own would be costly in the sense of like he would almost have to be permanently defending himself yeah and i and i think i think this is one of the things where well i'm it's it's not clear to me what the impact is or the alex jones trial has been but this is one of those things where i think

the dominion people actually just nailing fox to the wall is going to be a sort of big factor here because it it makes it seem easier and more plausible and things that like lawyers are willing to risk getting in fights about for actually going after these people for just like defending people and so yeah it'll be it'll be interesting to see like how how long tucker can last on his own before he gets into a giant court battle with someone and whether he is i don't know attempts to be slightly more careful. Yeah, exactly. I don't think if he goes to YouTube or something,

he's not going to be spending his frozen dinner fortune on legal fees, I don't think. And he can't do what he does without spouting shit, right? Like his whole thing is just straight up lying and doing this sort of credulous fool routine that he does, which always results in these ridiculous conclusions that he comes to. So, like, I don't know. Maybe the Daily Wire can sustain that. I don't really have a good sense of sort of their clout.

If people aren't familiar, should we summarize the Dominion case? I know you'd spoken about it on Fast and Furious. Yeah, I did. I mean, you can listen to the two-parter I did with Katie and Cody on the Dominion lawsuit where we basically just go over the entire document that Dominion prepared for that. But the gist of it is that Tucker knowingly and knowingly – we know that he knew because the discovery process revealed a bunch of his text messages and emails where he talked about knowing that the election fraud conspiracy theory was bullshit. And he propagated it and attacks against Dominion and another company, Smartmatic, in order to keep his audience on board, which is a criminal defamation,

or not criminal, but at least like legally actionable. You can sue as Dominion did and won like 800 million bucks. And I do think that's really worth – that is kind of pertinent when we're talking about who's going to take him next. Because like obviously the Daily Wire would want a guy like Tucker except for the fact that he could cost them another $800 million, which has to be part of the calculus of any company looking at taking him on. And I think is something none of us, nobody really knows what's going to happen with this, but I think there is a good chance he is permanently marginalized in terms of audience, just because of how much like $800 million is not enough to sink Fox on its own, but it is enough to make anybody looking at bringing Tucker on board second guess themselves.

Yeah, I saw some numbers that were, I think they were saying he was bringing in the highest amount of revenue of any Kibble News anchor, but it was like $78 million a year. So he lost 10 years of of his income he basically lost it lost everything he'd made fox during the time when he was the number one yeah yeah and that has to be that has to be a huge part of the calculus of like okay you know these these people like as as as as much as the right is ideological it is also capitalist and the risk reward on that is terrifying.

Yeah. And especially when it comes to the daily wire, a cost like that would just probably make their entire company fold. They don't have Murdoch behind them. They're not that big of a company. They just have a disproportionate amount of influence because their hosts are really good at like marketing and social media manipulation yeah yeah yeah for ad revenue now would be a great time for us to pivot to and for some gold or coins with ronald reagan oh yeah yeah you can hear the ads

for the new podcast that our future colleague tucker carlson's gonna be doing yeah yeah it's where him and don lemon just have it debate. Yeah, him and Don Lemon. We're calling it, I don't know. There's a good joke with their two names somewhere. I haven't figured it out yet, though. So you do that for yourselves, audience. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.

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So yeah, we're looking at, I think kind of when we're talking about what's possible here, daily YRA agree is kind of the most likely thing. If you look at what leaked recently during their drama with Steven Crowder, the contract they were offering Crowder was somewhere around $30 million, which from everything people have said is a big deal for them. That's one of the bigger offerings they're capable of doing. That is probably the most Tucker is realistically going to be able to get, but also one of the things that kind of is noteworthy about the contract they were offering Crowder is that it included clauses where like Crowder's take home

could be reduced significantly if he got kicked off of platforms. And fucking Tucker Carlson is not going to keep it a YouTube account. I mean, it is, it is interesting in that sense of like they were, they, I mean, it is interesting in that sense of like, all of his content was able to be kept up when he was under Fox. Like on YouTube, you can find all of his segments.

And it'd be interesting to see how the content moderation differs if like he starts his own channel and how comparatively what things would be counted as community guideline strikes. But yeah, I mean, just I think like last week, Matt Walsh's show got demonetized on YouTube, which if his contract is anything like Crowder's, means that he is going to be suffering up like a personal financial hit. Yeah, they're taking probably, you know, in the millions that he's losing. Yeah, and there's something, I think this is an interesting thing that's been happening in the last, maybe like six months, has been there's been sort of increasing tension

between sort of the far right that's basically seized control of the Republican Party and like the money. And they keep running into these issues where in order to keep their base going, they need to say stuff that like, they're sort of like corporate backers are like, this is either losing us money or is so far out there that like it's,

it's, you know, it's, it's either directly losing us money from lawsuits or it's lose, it's losing us elections or it's losing us like business. And now I'm never going to claim that like Murdoch is not the far right because he is. But it's it's interesting that we've gotten to a point where people like Murdoch are getting more gun shy about what they can put on air because it's finally like the money is finally starting to see actual consequences and they're starting to pull back from this stuff a little bit. Well, see, that's part of what I'm questioning is I'm sure that that is something that's entering his calculus more now since the settlement. But at least the early reporting suggests that's not really why or at least not most of the reason why Tucker got shit canned.

It's a bunch of shit like stuff that is not revealed yet in the deposition that he was saying in email i mean one of the things came out that woman who was accusing him of of creating a sexist and anti-semitic work environment is that he like when she got hired he plastered swimsuit photos of nancy pelosi over her office. And that's what we've heard. Like the shit that like, I think it's possible that what actually got Murdoch to make the call to can him is that he Murdoch himself found out through discovery that he was saying shit in emails that would sink the company.

Like if he's saying full-on Nazi shit, and there's documentation of that, which I don't think is unlikely. He had ye on. Like, there's no limit at that point. Yeah, no, clearly that shit aligns with his views, and he's made a concerted effort to mainstream more and more outright fascist, eugenicist, white supremacist talking points every year that he's had that show so it would not

especially when they got his text messages like he might be smart enough not to like maybe use his work email but uh i think that the fact that his there were some things in his text messages um yeah that wouldn't surprise me it's either that or he said something personal about one of the murdochs and they well he did he did talk shit about fox executives uh which some people have suggested as like part of why they made the decision to can him that he actually just pissed off uh the money men too and this was kind of an excuse to to take more action um yeah again like it's it's it's kind of unclear exactly what happened i think it's probably worth talking about in the last portion of this what impact because it is likely that whatever happens

he's he's going to have less reach um in a at least less reach in like a practical way. Because if Tucker starts a podcast, even if the podcast has kind of more, you know, through Daily Wire or whatever, even if it's got on paper more listeners than Fox, I think there's something about cable news where you're reaching an audience that's different with the ideas that he was. When he was on Fox, he was hitting people who would never have encountered some of this fascist shit, this great replacement stuff. Whereas if he's saying the same thing on a Daily Wire podcast,

he's probably talking more to people who are already pilled, so to speak. So I do think there's a good chance that overall this kind of tanks his ability to actually like influence culture in meaningful ways.

Radicalized boomers. Like everyone listening can probably think of a person who they know or is in their sort of greatest circle of people who their friends know

who is an older person who is very much offline and has encountered these great replacement ideas through Tucker Carlson and become a significantly worse person because of Tucker Carlson's program. Yeah. I mean, and you can see how all of the Daily Wire guys like Walsh and Michael Knowles

and even someone like Andy Ngo, they suck up to Carlson so much and have been for the past few years because they realized that that actually gives them cultural access to be on his show, on that platform in a way that they're much more like- Peterson too. Peterson, sure. I think Peterson's broken into the mainstream, I think a bit more, but all of these other guys like Andy Ngo, Walsh, Knowles, they're all heavily internet people.

And they influence internet shit. And sometimes that can start crossing over. But in general, the cable news platform kind of reifies things into a broader culture in a way that someone like Walsh just doesn't. Because most people don't know who Walsh is, but most people do know who Tucker is. And that is an interesting dynamic. My dad is like a lifelong Republican voter.

And when I talked to him complaining about shit Matt Walsh is doing, like the first thing he said was like, I've never heard of this guy. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, because he's a fucking internet weirdo. And my dad doesn't, you know know he knows ben shapiro because ben breaks through to the mainstream but he knows ben shapiro from like catching clips of him randomly being shared on facebook by other people in his age group as opposed to like seeking this shit out and that's that's kind of the power of tucker and i think one of the things you've seen gare that you were kind of talking at which, which is the thing that is maybe most hopeful

to me, is how scared people like Andy Ngo, Glenn Greenwald, flip the fuck out when this got announced because they see this is a major threat to their reach and to their earning potential. Yeah. If Tucker can't host them anymore, that's potentially disastrous for them. And the fact that that's happening right as we're gearing up for 2024 is something I'm hopeful about, at least I'll say. I mean, it is a massive like rejection of of that platform to people like that, like this type of like rhetoric that Tucker is doing, having this be like publicly rejected in this way will make all these people that are more on the fringes probably make it harder for them to break through in little ways like they used to try to by being on Tucker's show.

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where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so there's one other thing that I, we've quite a bit touching on it, but I think it's really interesting is that Tucker, Tucker basically has a sort of media ecosystem that revolves around him. There's a very established pathway for how you can become a sort of like a successful and profitable

right-wing grifter, which goes through, you know, you sort of go viral on Twitter, you go viral on TikTok, and then you go on to Tucker. And, you know, people like lives at TikTok, right? I think there's a specific kind of media campaign that even even with whoever like whatever absolute asshole that like fox puts in that slot after tucker's you know whatever they sort of figure out who that's going to be like there's still i think going to be sort of a hole

there yep where i think it gets harder to run the kinds the very very specific kinds of campaigns like lib to tiktok like uh the sort of moms for liberty shit that that's been just making the country unfathomably awful for the past few years with like that i've been kind of working on writing something scripted about this trans panic that happened in a town very near me in santee right which like was an extremely clear like uh like that was the goal right like like do the speech go go viral go on tucker create you know then go on the speaking circuit make money like to me at least it seems very clear that that was that was the goal and and i yeah he's he's a weapon system that they they have learned like has become kind of the center of right-wing uh strategy really is like get on tucker cause

you know moral panic culture war shit yep yeah and and you know and like obviously like other foxhows do this stuff it doesn't work anywhere anywhere near as well and no i think it's on the person the person that gets the closest is probably laura ingram but i think she she kind of suffers from the glass ceiling problem yeah she actually cannot hold a girl boss down yeah i mean but comrade misogyny i stand with laura ingram robert you bigot specifically viewing tucker as this thing that was like a targeted weapon i think it's a really good way to look at this and specifically now that that weapon no longer can like actually aim correctly because it does or at least may not be able to right i

mean maybe he'll come back somewhere and we're wrong but i i i am optimistic i think i'll say yeah it puts a spanner in the works of the hate machine that he built and that Fox built, and that's a good thing. But Mia, you were saying before I rudely interrupted you. You asshole. You love to hold a girl bus down. I cannot remember what I was going to say. You're talking about how other hosts kind of do the thing,

but not quite really. Yeah, well, I mean, part of it also is just, you know, part of the power of Tucker is just the time slot that he's in. Yeah. Which is, you know, that's the one where, like, all of the people who've gotten off of work or who are, like, turning on the television at night get to.

But yeah, like, Tucker was, I think, was really in the entirety of the sort of tv and media sphere was uniquely good at that stuff and no one else no one else can do it like that and you know like the like the fox people will create someone else but until they fill that spot a there's a gap and b it really remains to be seen whether they're going to sort of pick someone who is as embedded in like that part of the sort of fascist right as tucker is or if they're gonna find someone who's like i mean still really really right-wing and sucks but isn't like having ye on yeah yeah and it's i mean i am kind of curious slash worried uh about who's gonna follow him into that time slot.

Folks, real old heads will know. Tucker got his job after Bill O'Reilly, who was the Fox News fascist of my childhood, got shit canned for sexual harassment on an industrial scale. And so that's why Tucker is in. And obviously, as bad as Bill was, Tucker was worse. And maybe the person who follows Tucker will be worse than Tucker. I do have trouble imagining what that could be because, my God, he really – he went right up to the edge of putting on a fucking swastika armband. Yeah.

Yeah. I will say about the Bill O'Reilly thing. People have been like, oh, like Tucker's going to disappear in the way Bill O'Reilly did. I don i don't think that's i think he's gonna be a bigger like but assuming he winds up somewhere i think he'll be still be a bigger influence than like bill o'reilly was after he got fired but yeah i mean bill was also a lot older right yeah yeah no i think that is that is an accurate assessment well i'm excited excited to get my new rumble subscription so i can watch oh yeah all of all of tucker and graham together yeah no it's going to be uh glorious to see him finally uh pair up with tim pool uh the two the two of them carrying ak-47s and doing field journalism in

2024 yeah yeah tucker carl for those who are not familiar, carried a gun when reporting in Iraq, which for many reasons is a fucking terrible idea, including putting everyone else doing your job in danger. But it is really funny. It is very funny. I will say that. It is funny.

I genuinely, like, part of me does hope he decides to do a thing where he's like, I'm going to go do field journalism in Ukraine and just immediately get shamed. So funny. I will run into him immediately. He just gets fucking murked by a goddamn, like, hemorrhage. You know what happens?

No, no, no. You know what happens? He embeds with the Aesop battalion. Yeah, there you go. And they all get taken out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they create this act of human kindness. But I think one thing I was definitely thinking about,

like the past few years, less so this past year specifically, but for a while, it was a quite frightening prospect to think about what if Tucker was going to run for president? And I don't think he is not going to do that in 2024. Absolutely, that's not happening. But I mean, it's still possible he could in the future.

2028 is likely if he wants. But I think the loss of this position at this point in time will probably affect that decision because it's something he's certainly been thinking about considering he's one of the most influential conservative people on the yeah like on the planet um he determines policy or did in it he did yeah and and and now it's interesting with him with him uh leaving his job in this way it'll be interesting to see if how that how that affects any kind of potential uh for him running for office.

My big question around all that, and this is kind of unanswerable, is like does Tucker have any appeal outside of the right-wing base? Three and a half million cable news viewers is not evidence of the kind of broad-based appeal that can draw on independence and win an election. can draw an independence and win an election. And Tucker has never, you know, the one, the closest thing he's been to a political candidate is when he went up against Jon Stewart and that didn't go great for him. No. And he moved after Jon Stewart kind of destroyed his Crossfire career, he moved to a situation where he was, he had unprecedented control over his show. It was almost entirely recorded and stuff out of a studio in Maine that he set up. He built everything he was doing around being able to totally control how he was seen, what was shown, what of his was put out to the public. And you simply can't do that as a

presidential candidate. You have to accept and be able to make work for you the fact that every eye is on you and you you do not have total control over what about you is put out and published among other things you're going to be repeatedly questioned uh in situations where you can't edit the footage or stop things from going out afterwards and i don't know that tucker has what it takes to succeed in that kind of environment. Yeah. Inshallah, he fucking never succeeds again and we never have to hear about him. Yeah. We should shout out this lady, Kat Abu Ghazaleh, the person who had to watch Tucker Carlson for years and years and years and then explain it to people.

She works at Media Matters for America, but she is taking the biggest victory lap that anyone has ever taken right now and it's it's kind of glorious to watch doing the lord's work truly yeah taking on trauma for all of us but her stuff was quite good like she she did a good job explaining how toxic tucker was to people who might not have been aware of it yeah yeah anyway in conclusion tucker uh we would love to have you on at cool zone uh totally welcome to come host uh your own podcast we'll bring you on it could happen here you could do a bastard's guest appearance yeah um just miyama he can uh right into the jungle. We'll drop him directly.

Come on, Tucker. We'd love to have you. Anyway, I think that's a soad. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

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