Tucker Carlson and Fox News are parting ways, effective immediately, the network announced Monday.
“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” read a statement from Fox News Media, obtained by TheWrap. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
The release confirmed that Carlson’s last program aired on Friday. “Fox News Tonight” will air live at 8 p.m. ET beginning Monday “as an interim show helmed by rotating Fox News personalities until a new host is named.”
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.
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.
“Tucker Carlson Tonight” remained for its run one of the network’s top-rated programs. There was no indication with Friday night’s episode that it would be his last — the host signed off saying, “We’ll be back on Monday.”
Carlson came under particular scrutiny in recent months as Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News progressed. He was among the several network hosts who were questioned as part of the lawsuit’s proceedings, a list that also included Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and former host Lou Dobbs.
In that process, a number of emails and text messages between Carlson and his colleagues were made public in March. Some of those exchanges put him in hot water for disparaging remarks made against former President Donald Trump.
Carlson expressed disdain for the former president, saying, among other things, “I hate him passionately.” The messages were later brushed aside when Carlson claimed to “love Trump,” and while interviewing the former president in his high-profile sit-down on April 11, the two did not address the matter.
Still, Carlson has commonly been accused of spreading misinformation about the 2020 presidential election, among other conspiracy theories, and stoking extremist ideology that paved the way for the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol. In spring 2022, the New York Times determined that his eponymous news hour “may be the most racist show in the history of cable news.”
Democratic politicians, meanwhile, have long bemoaned the ratings behemoth’s controversial rhetoric, with New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying as recently as Sunday that Carlson is guilty of inciting violence.
Carlson has yet to make a statement on his Fox News exit.
