So far, little is known about why, exactly, Tucker Carlson left his hosting gig at Fox News, except that the Monday morning announcement was startlingly abrupt. Not only was no mention made of it Friday, when Carlson hosted his last show at Fox, but the network was still promoting the scheduled guest line-up for this week's "Tucker Carlson Tonight" right up until the news broke. Most commentators assumed the parting-of-ways is related to the recent settlement of $787 million that Fox News had to pay Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation case where damning texts from Carlson were a central factor. But, to be clear, there's no confirmation of that, just speculation.
Some theorized that Carlson was a sacrificial lamb to improve Fox's leverage in a similar lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, which was also falsely accused by multiple Fox guests of stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Some hypothesized that Carlson quit rather than be constrained by Fox lawyers from airing some of his more outlandish lies and bigoted fear-mongering. Some said it's simply that Fox management is angry over private comments Carlson made that were revealed during the lawsuit. Some say it's because he called Trump's coup-era lawyer Sidney Powell the c-word. In the spirit of some of Carlson's affection for conspiracy theories, I'm hoping to get a rumor started that President Joe Biden did this in order to shut down the boring cable news "debate" about whether he should run again. (Just kidding! Fox would never do what Biden wants them to do.)
