UPDATE: Carlson broke his silence Thursday for the first time since being fired by Fox News with a tweet saying “See you soon,” The Hill reports. In a two-minute-plus message, he said that after “stepping outside the noise for a few days” he is gratified by how many “genuinely nice people there are in this country.”
Tucker Carlson Tonight's eponymous host has left the building. Fox News Monday in a statement said that Carlson and the network have mutually agreed to part ways. Carlson's ultimate Tonight broadcast was last Friday night, though the host leaves behind a sort of director's cut of the January 6 Capitol insurrection video recordings after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed him previously unseen footage, as well as fawning interviews with Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orbån.
The network will air an interim program creatively titled, Fox News Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern Time weekdays, with interim personalities until a replacement host is named.
Carlson’s departure comes less than a week after Fox News’ $787.5-million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Evidence for Dominion’s lawsuit included emails by Carlson saying he was “fed up” with Donald J. Trump after losing re-election in 2020.
“I hate him passionately,” one of Carlson’s emails said.
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Russian, Chinese and Iranian Tweets (Oh My) --
Twitter has lifted “shadow bans” on the government accounts of Russia, China and Iran, NPR reported last week. All Things Considered confirmed Twitter’s “stance of allowing the Russian government posts to pop up freely” on users’ feeds “and has now become company procedure.”
NPR reported the policy change days after the public radio outlet, along with the BBC and others left Twitter after owner/CEO Elon Musk falsely accused these media outlets of being “government funded.”
Musk defended anti-Ukrainian rhetoric posted by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Twitter, responding; “All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves.”
Irony alert: Twitter is not allowed in Russia, China and Iran, according to the NPR report.
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