Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson apparently recorded some remarks for a conservative gathering in Hungary that look pretty awkward in the wake of his firing from a primetime slot at the conservative network.
The remarks, a greeting for attendees of CPAC Hungary, expressed Carlson’s regret that he could not attend the convention in person. And he followed that opening line with a promise: That were he “ever [to] get fired and have some time”, he’d make the journey.
Carlson likely recorded the greeting weeks ago; they were posted online by CPAC Hungary staffers on Thursday as the conference began, and it seems like the fired Fox host never bothered to record an updated message for his allies across the pond.
The video was first noticed by Aaron Blake, a reporter for The Washington Post:
Carlson released a short video message after his firing in which he derided the supposedly “stupid” debates that he himself admitted to taking part in across cable news. The video did not address any of the text messages surfaced as part of the discovery phase of Dominion Voting Systems’s $787m lawsuit against his former network, which are widely reported to have led to his firing. In one, he made an overtly racist comment as he expressed disgust in reaction to a video of several Trump supporters attacking an Antifa member, remarking that the act of ganging up on one person in a brawl was “not how white men fight”.
During his time at Fox, Carlson was frequently accused of playing the role of a pipeline which brought extreme far-right views into the mainstream, including white nationalism. Carlson often denied this, though his embrace of language and rhetoric aligning with the “Great Replacement” theory diminished the credibility of those denials.
He has not addressed this latest example of his use of brazenly racist rhetoric, preferring instead to remain out of the spotlight as much as possible as Fox severs all ties — potentially with the motive of avoiding Fox’s famously vindictive comms team.
