OUTFOXED

Rupert Murdoch dumping Tucker Carlson wasn’t about one thing. It was everything

-  Brian Stelter

WHEN FOX NEWS Media CEO Suzanne Scott called Tucker Carlson around 11:15 a.m. on Monday, April 24, and said, “We’re taking you off the air,” she didn’t give him a reason. To Carlson, cancellation was unthinkable. He was the highest-rated host across all of cable news—and he was suddenly sentenced to execution. It was like somebody canceling Taylor Swift mid-tour or removing Stranger Things from Netflix before anyone could stream the ending. It made no sense.

Carlson wasn’t given a path to sign off and pretend that it was on his terms, but Scott did offer him one thing—the chance to include his own comment in the press release. For a moment, he thought about saying yes; maybe he did want the breakup to sound mutually beneficial. But he quickly snapped out of that. He was being dumped, and he wanted everyone else to know it too. He tapped out a farewell email to his staff, known as the Tuckertroop, before his Fox email account was disabled. “I’ve never worked with better people in my life, and I don’t expect I ever will,” he wrote, adding: “I’m a little unclear on what’s going on right now, but at this point it looks unexpectedly bad.”