by Tom Luongo, Tom Luongo:
The big news this week was Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious firing by Fox News. The reasons for Tucker’s firing are still unclear. And even Tucker’s emergence from his man cave on Tuesday for two minutes did nothing to quell the speculation.
What it did do was underscore just how much real power he amassed during his time in the prime time slot anchoring Fox’s entire evening.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCE
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2023
I’m not the first to point out to you just how many views this thing has gotten, dwarfing his Neilson Ratings.
This was a serious needle scratch. Something changed behind the scenes. Within an hour Don Lemon was dumped by CNN. Susan Rice left the Biden Administration that morning. Nate Silver was let go from ABC News.
Both Carlson and Lemon had stories planted about them harboring ‘toxic workplace environments’ to set the scene.
Nuts and Sluts is a time-tested method of invalidating a public figure.
It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to play. Even if only for a day or two *cough* Abby Grossman *cough*
There is every theory imaginable about what happened here and all of them have a nugget of truth to them. Dexter White and I recorded a podcast covering what we think is the beginning of the Death of the Time Slot.
And while the court politics of this are interesting, they almost feel like discussing 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination at this point. Does it matter who was behind or why Carlson was ousted from Fox? Could we not see this coming the further he went off the reservation?
In fact, I was amazed he was still on the air after all this time. I don’t think this is a Tucker-as-Icarus proxy story no matter which way you cut it. It was always about something far bigger than Tucker Carlson.
The confluence of major media and political figures leaving their posts, including now the head of the BBC Richard Sharp, over literal ancient conflict of interest issues that looks more like something taken off the shelf for the proverbial rainy day rather than some new, disturbing thing.