You know Tucker Carlson, right? That guy on Fox News who seems like he’s always one sentence away from saying something completely outrageous? Well, it turns out he’s no longer going to be gracing our screens with his presence. And apparently, he’s not even a fan of the guy he’s been hyping up all this time: Donald Trump. In fact, he hates the guy passionately, according to some private texts that were leaked. Talk about double standards, am I right?
But hey, the guy knew how to play the game. Carlson embraced Trumpism without actually embracing Trump himself, because who needs to be associated with a guy who constantly says ludicrous things? This helps Carlson stand out from his fellow Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who were all up in Trump’s business. And let’s be real, that probably saved them from having to constantly defend his nonsense. Carlson, on the other hand, could focus on the underlying message and let someone else deal with the craziness.
And boy, did his predominantly white audience eat it up like it was their favorite bowl of vanilla ice cream. Carlson was pulling in over three million viewers a night, which is a lot of people. I mean, sure, some advertisers were like, “nah, we don’t want our stuff associated with this guy,” but other advertisers were all like, “Who cares, let’s make it rain!” Because hello, three million viewers is three million potential new customers. It’s simple math, really.
But with Carlson out of the picture, what’s going to happen next? Who will take his place and try to weave their own magic Trump-free spell? Fox News says they’re going to rotate hosts until they find a permanent replacement, but that just seems like a fancy way of saying, “We don’t really know what to do, so let’s just shuffle the deck and hope for the best.” And honestly, with all the bad publicity they’ve been getting lately, they could probably use a little hope.
But hey, Fox has been through this before. Remember when Tucker Carlson replaced Bill O’Reilly, who was basically Fox News royalty? Carlson not only maintained O’Reilly’s ratings, but sometimes even beat them. So maybe Fox News is all like, “Eh, individual hosts come and go, but our viewers will always be loyal to the network.” Or maybe they’re just trying to convince themselves of that, who knows. All we know is that the future is uncertain, and for Carlson, it’s probably a lot less influential.

Serious News: nytimes