Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has weighed in on Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News, and the “Morning Joe” team on MSNBC was left scratching their heads in concern, recounting Carlson’s habit of echoing some of the Russian government’s rhetoric.
“I’ve heard that Tucker Carlson has left Fox News. It’s curious news,” Lavrov said during a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday. “What is this related to? One can only guess, but clearly the wealth of views in the American information space has suffered as a result.”
The comment left the hosts of “Morning Joe” visibly baffled on Wednesday.
“I can’t underline this enough. There was a host on an American network who constantly attacked the United States military and told millions of Americans that the United States military was going to bring helicopters that they used in war in Afghanistan to kill Americans in the United States who voted for Donald Trump,” co-host Joe Scarborough said. “That was the dark overture — that along with law enforcement officers from the FBI were going to kick down doors to go after people who voted for Donald Trump. Lavrov and the Russians could not have had a better, more propaganda points from a guy who said ‘why wouldn’t I support Vladimir Putin the invasion of Ukraine?’”
Vanity Fair special reporter Molly Jong-Fast joined the “Morning Joe” panel, noting there were “so many times where what Tucker Carlson was saying was what you were seeing on Russian TV.”
“I would say if you’re an American cable news host, you’d want to live your life so that Sergey Lavrov is not upset when you get fired and not working it into the conversation,” she added. “Obviously, Tucker Carlson looms large for these people, and that’s not a good sign.”
Scarborough pointed out how troubling it is that Fox News is owned by the same company that owns the Wall Street Journal, which has a reporter “rotting in Russian jail right now.”
“Talk about a house divided against itself,” Scarborough continued. “I’m not exactly sure why he was fired, but he certainly wasn’t fired for saying things that played right into Russian television’s propaganda every night, he wasn’t fired for that. But you actually have a Wall Street reporter rotting in jail right now, kidnaped by the same Russian government that Tucker Carlson was saying, ‘I have nothing against them. Why wouldn’t I be for Vladimir Putin?’ I think at one point he may have said he was cheering for Russia.”
Co-host Jonathan Lemire added that the Russians “clearly thought that Tucker Carlson was useful” and “spreading a message they wanted to get out there.”
“They were happy to amplify him on their own air waves and their state television has already offered him a job were he to take it,” Lemire noted.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the decision to fire Carlson was Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch’s and was related to a discrimination lawsuit filed by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg.
In her lawsuit, in which she also accuses the network of setting her up to take the fall in its defamation case against Dominion Voting Systems, Grossberg said that as a producer on Carlson’s show, she witnessed sexist jokes and was asked about host Maria Bartiromo’s sex life after moving over from Bartiromo’s show in 2022. Grossberg also said that Carlson’s staff frequently made sexist and antisemitic jokes.
An individual with knowledge of the matter told TheWrap that Carlson has “no clue” why he was fired Monday from his top-rated Fox News show and suggested it may not have much to do with the Grossberg lawsuit.
“She was only in our office for several months. If [Carlson and Grossberg] spoke by phone I don’t remember it,” the individual said. “I’d be shocked if it was anything newsworthy.”
The news of Carlson’s departure also came in aftershocks of Fox News’ parent company settling with Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million.
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
