By Tara Setmayer / Bloomberg Opinion
It was the firing heard around the world, literally.
Thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s global empire, Tucker Carlson’s influence and ilk were far-reaching. So was the reaction to his abrupt departure from Fox News just days after the network’s $787 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems Inc.
Donald Trump expressed shock and called Carlson “terrific.” Right-wing extremists on social media were apoplectic over the loss of their loudest voice. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., claimed that “everyone” she talked to was boycotting the station. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a former TV host, congratulated Carlson for now being “free and uncensored.” Even Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister and Vladimir Putin lackey, weighed in audaciously, claiming Carlson’s removal was an affront to press freedom.
“The First Amendment of the United States Constitution apparently means nothing in practice,” Lavrov said. Seriously? (Of course the Russians are upset. No more clips of their most popular pro-Russian propagandist to post regularly on their state-run media channels.)
It all points to the fact that while Fox News is trying to do crisis management by giving Carlson the boot, it would be political suicide for Republican leaders to follow suit because of how deeply the TV personality has influenced their talking points, policies and voters. Even with the revelation of his despicable “it’s not how white men fight” text, the GOP won’t be able to fire Carlson. If you are in doubt, consider that The Washington Post recently reported that Carlson is considering a plan to host an alternative GOP debate. That’s someone who knows he has a wide reach.
At the height of “Tucker Carlson Tonight’s” popularity in October 2020, it drew an average of 5.36 million viewers, shattering cable news records. Carlson’s numbers continued to dominate cable news well into President Biden’s first term; all the way up to the day Fox executives abruptly dismissed him April 24.
In what turned out to be his last week on the air, Carlson averaged more than 3 million viewers a night in his 8 p.m. time slot. MSNBC had 1.33 million and CNN had 703,000.
This is not to say that the GOP-Fox News relationship is new. Since the advent of Fox News in 1996, there’s been a symbiotic relationship between the channel and elected Republicans. Fox needs conservative supporters to boost its viewership. Republicans need the votes of Fox’s audience. The network’s influence among GOP voters, particularly primary voters, was unrivaled by any platform except for conservative talk radio. The titans of talk radio, like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, could make or break a GOP candidate at any level. Soon that power carried over to cable news.
However, Carlson feels like new territory. He curries such favor within the party and has accumulated such a loyal following that after Fox News fired him, the network’s most loyal viewers now eye it with suspicion. The first night without him on air, the network saw a 21 percent dip from Carlson’s recent average viewership, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The more MAGA was mainstreamed at Fox, the more popular Carlson became. It didn’t take long for ambitious Republicans to notice. Remember last year when Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas apologized to Carlson for calling the Jan. 6 attack an act of terrorism?
“Tucker Carlson was basically controlling the Republican Party,” media analyst Brian Stelter recently told “PBS NewsHour.” “Whatever he wanted, he got.” One recent example: Kevin McCarthy’s speakership. He owes it to Carlson, and he knows it.
As part of his Faustian bargain with the MAGA wing of the GOP to become speaker, he had to meet their demands and placate Carlson. Following one of McCarthy’s failures to get the votes he needed to secure the speakership, Carlson was on air saying, “If Kevin McCarthy wants to be the speaker, he is going to have to do things he would never do otherwise.” Then he rattled off two ideas: Release all of the Jan. 6 files to the public and create a Frank Church-style committee, led by Rep. Thomas Massie, to investigate the FBI.
And that’s exactly what McCarthy announced he would do. It’s no accident that Carlson was the only member of the media to receive previously unreleased Jan. 6 footage as one of McCarthy’s first acts as House speaker earlier this year.
With 40,000 new hours of footage in hand, he decided to cherry-pick and air the parts that showed the least mayhem and lionized the Capitol attackers, calling them mostly peaceful. It was business as usual for Carlson, who disgracefully mocked police officers who testified before Congress in 2021 about their harrowing experiences on Jan. 6.
When Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Carlson out on his Jan. 6 work of fiction, the host attacked him and called for new Senate leadership. It empowered MAGA acolytes like Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to challenge McConnell for his job. He ultimately lost, but the anti-McConnell sentiment among the MAGA faithful is alive and well.
On the foreign-policy front, Carlson’s anti-Ukraine rantings not only ingratiated him to Putin. They also permeated the Republican Party so deeply that it’s no longer outside the mainstream to question support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. Today’s GOP platform is a far cry from the Reagan Doctrine.
Furthermore, racist concepts and terminology like the great replacement theory, “legacy Americans,” and what some Fox employees nicknamed the “brown menace” (nonstop coverage of undocumented immigrants and non-white people committing crimes) were taken straight from the darkest right-wing extremist corners and given a platform almost nightly by Carlson.
There was a time when the GOP establishment would’ve outwardly shunned such divisive, inflammatory rhetoric. Now they cloak themselves in it for political expediency.
In Trump, the GOP embraced a white supremacist sympathizer, misogynist, malignant narcissist and know-nothing reality TV show host as their leader. Of course they’d be all in for a cable news host with similar attributes. The dynamic between Republicans and Carlson is similar to their relationship with Trump. Privately, they acknowledge the men are poison, but they can’t cross either one publicly for fear of a backlash from their base. Given the craven debasement of today’s Republican Party, Carlson’s job as the top purveyor of propaganda is secure.
When things seemingly got too hot for Fox, the network made a choice. It offloaded the golden goose. To what end? We don’t yet know. I wouldn’t count on a course correction. Fox didn’t suddenly become a born-again network, repenting for the error of its ways. Plenty of Carlson wannabes like Jesse Watters and others still gainfully employed by the network are eagerly waiting in the wings to get their chance.
Yes, Fox fired Tucker Carlson. And the American people fired Donald Trump. But the Republican Party remains firmly reliant on both for fear of their voters firing it. A classic case of can’t live with them, can’t live without them; power over principle.
Like any toxic relationship, the hope is that, at some point, it will end. When it does, the country will be better for it. But the question remains: How much more damage will our democracy have to endure in the meantime?
Tara Setmayer is a resident scholar at the University of Virginia Center for Politics and a senior adviser at the Lincoln Project. She is a former GOP congressional communications director.
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