Let’s be clear. Fox News — the formerly “fair and balanced” media outlet —wants far more than to simply avoid competing with Tucker Carlson. On the contrary, Fox honchos are aggressively attempting to erase their former number-one host from the consciousness of America. Sound a bit hyperbolic? Read on.
Fox is not only refusing to run political ads if Carlson shows up for even a few seconds of footage; the network is now censoring ads that feature the violence taking place in the streets of Joe Biden’s America, and that’s just the beginning. In a word, Fox News wants to “scrub” Carlson from public exposure.
‘Tucker Is Voldemort!’
Newsmax host Eric Bolling, formerly with Fox, spoke with Chapin Fay of SOS America PAC on Friday’s “The Balance” after Fox informed the PAC that changes would have to be to an advertisement for Republican presidential hopeful and Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez before the network would run it. Fox demanded that “all images and video of Tucker Carlson,” had to be removed along with “violent crime scene footage that included guns or shootings.” Fay further told Bolling:
We revised it and sent them a new ad so we wouldn’t be off the air there.
Fay was particularly upset that Fox required the PAC to eliminate the crime scene footage from the ad, telling Bolling it amounted to more than erasing Tucker Carlson, but also erasing the out-of-control violence that untold numbers of Americans must live with, day in and day out.
Next up, Bolling spoke with Carlson biographer Chadwick Moore, who promptly called Fox’s actions against Carlson “Stalinesque.” Bolling began with reference to his unceremonious ouster from Fox.
A little history here: I — Fox tends to do that. If they bounce someone, if they fire someone or get rid of someone, they scrub them from as many aspects of Fox as they can. Off their website. Are you shocked that they did this? I was shocked that they did this. You know, it seems like they, they want to double and triple down on this firing of Tucker.
Moore agreed, calling Fox’s aggressive actions against Carlson “bizarre” and saying he was “surprised they were so direct” with the PAC about removing Carlson from the ad.
It’s Stalinesque! Didn’t he have people removed [from] photos when he didn’t want them pictured anymore? Tucker is Voldemort! It Is he who shall not be named.
Bolling then recounted the 10th-anniversary episode of “The Five,” referring to himself in the third person.
I was there for six and a half, almost seven years. On the 10-year anniversary of the show, they did some look-backs of the first few days and Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Bolling were edited out of all of those look-backs. It just seems so mean-spirited.
“It’s so nasty,” Moore agreed. “Their default setting seems to be maximum aggression.”
Moore’s sources said Carlson’s team wanted to make the split with Fox as “amicable as possible, but that’s not the direction Fox chose.”
In another example of Fox’s “Stalinesque” tactics, the embattled network in May sent a cease-and-desist letter to left-wing Media Matters demanding that it take down behind-the-scenes videos of Carlson attacking Fox’s streaming service Fox Nation, in which made crude remarks and ridiculed the network, as gleefully reported by CNN.
The sternly worded letter from Fox Corporation lawyers said the “unaired footage” is its “confidential intellectual property” and demanded Media Matters “cease and desist from distribution, publication, and misuse of Fox’s misappropriated proprietary footage, which you are now on notice was unlawfully obtained.”
Reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism,” Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said in response to Fox’s demand. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation.
Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns.
Oopsie, Fox News.
The Bottom Line
The vengeful, hell-bent efforts by Fox News to erase Tucker Carlson are not dissimilar to those of the Democrat Party — aided by its boot-licking lapdog media sock puppets — to destroy former President Donald probefore the 2024 presidential election.
Like Trump, Carlson not only exposes Fox’s desperate efforts to destroy his relevancy; he also has a big microphone with which to turn the tables on those who fear broad-based dissemination of his message.
