According to a new report from The Daily Beast, both current and former staffers of Fox News Network have called on the Conservative cable news channel to fire primetime host Tucker Carlson after a horrific segment in which he called on his viewers to harass adults and children alike for wearing a mask out in public amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the report notes that the network has a bit of a “dirty little secret” that has allegedly allowed Carlson to remain “invincible,” no matter how insane he gets on the air.
Both current and former employees of Fox News, much like the rest of the nation, found themselves absolutely horrified, humiliated, and outraged when Carlson proudly called on his viewers to not only openly harass mask wearers but to call the police and/or child protective services on the parents of children who were seen masking up outdoors. Ultimately, the cable news host likened a child wearing a mask outside to a child being beaten in a Walmart, and encouraged his viewers to respond accordingly. However, they told the Beast that the host is “untouchable” and will never “suffer any repercussions” for any of his numerous disgusting remarks on live tv, including calls to harassment and white nationalist comments.
“He’s a good example of how much you can get away with at Fox if your ratings are high,” one staffer currently employed with Fox News Network said. “Aside from that, he just perpetuates the right’s catastrophe platform. They cannot win with their supposed limited government, fiscal conservatism, because not even they really believe in it. So all they do is fearmonger.”
On the heels of Tucker’s endorsement of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” on-air, The Anti-Defamation League had called for the network to terminate Carlson’s employment with them. However, much to the dismay of staffers, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch only defended his high-rating primetime host, much to the dismay of many of the rest of the network’s employees.
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One former Fox personality said, “The Murdochs love him. Like them, he is a rich, prep school kid born with a silver spoon who traffics in populism while living in an expensive ivory tower and never meeting in real life the people he gins up for ratings.”
Even if advertisers were to boycott the right-wing network, it frankly wouldn’t put a dent in the Murdochs’ support for their golden pony Tucker Carlson, because they don’t actually need advertisers at all. Thanks to their base of rabidly loyal viewers, the network doesn’t actually rely very heavily at all on advertising revenue as their viewers and other cable customers actually pay carriers to make sure their favorite right-wing network remains on the air.
Another former Fox News employee weighed in, saying, “He’s the new Bill O’Reilly. The dirty little secret is that FNC doesn’t care about losing advertisers. They make their money via cable conglomerates that pay them much money so that dumb f*cks who worship FNC can continue being told what, in their heart of hearts, they want to believe — and that’s a lot of people.”
The report claims that Fox News staffers are growing frustrated that their concerns and calls to action are repeatedly falling on deaf ears, with one current Fox employee saying that Tucker’s ability to skirt any consequences for his horrifying actions reminds them of another individual that Fox News helped to turn into a political superstar.
“If Tucker left, his fans would follow him wherever he went and would turn Fox off for scorning their leader,” the current employee explained. “If Trump is the most dangerous person in the country, Tucker is a close second behind him.”
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
