What's Behind Tucker Carlson's Ouster From Fox News?

The much-talked-about news of Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News has made a splash in the US and beyond. The decision to part ways with the 53-year-old was reportedly made on Friday evening by Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch. Tucker himself has yet to comment on his exit from the news network.

“What's the benefit for Fox here? The Dominion lawsuit is over. Tucker was not a big pusher of the election conspiracy theory. So what's the gain? If you're Fox News and the only [thing] that I could think of is there's a clip from last week where Tucker Carlson just tears the doors off of Big Pharma. And then a week later, he's fired,” Sabia said.

He added that he subscribes to the view that Tucker’s departure could be due to his purported support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), who last week launched his 2024 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Separately, Sabia underscored that he had “never heard a negative thing” about the now-former Fox News host, who the journalist said played a role of a propagandist. “[I’ve] never heard of him being a jerk,” Sabia added.

Carlson's ouster comes less than a week after Fox agreed to pay $787 million in settlement money to Dominion Voting Systems as part of a defamation suit brought by the company in connection with former US President Donald Trump’s claims about the "rigged" 2020 election and the system's software.

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As for RFK Jr., he tweeted on Monday that Carlson’s exit took place because of the 53-year-old’s intrepid monologue about pharmaceutical companies earlier this month.

The nephew of late President John F. Kennedy then went further, arguing that Carlson had been "fired" by Fox News, despite the network saying in a statement the two parties had "agreed to part ways."

"Fox fires Carlson five days after he crosses the red line by acknowledging that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers. His breathtakingly courageous April 19 monologue broke TV's two biggest rules: Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting [COVID vaccine] jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless," RFK added.

While RFK Jr.'s previous anti-vaccine remarks have stirred up some backlash, even among his relatives, Carlson embraced Kennedy's statements, even echoing them sometimes.

During an episode of his show earlier this year, the now former Fox News anchor compared the vaccination campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic to "what the imperial Japanese army and the Nazis did in their medical experiments."