Fox News parted ways with Tucker Carlson a year ago. Here's what's changed (and what hasn't)

Remember Tucker Carlson?

You know, smarmy guy, big bully vibes with white nationalist leanings? Hosted a Fox News show long on conspiracy theories but short on reality? Until he didn’t?

Didn’t he used to be somebody?

Indeed he did. Just not somebody good. Carlson’s show ended abruptly a year ago, on April 24, 2023, when Fox News cut him loose. There was a release about a mutual parting of ways, but no, the network dumped him — their most popular host, the most popular host in all of cable TV news, just like that.

Well, sort of just like that. I once saw an album review that began, “I don’t know how much you have to drink to get kicked out of the Pogues, but Shane MacGowan managed to.” That’s sort of what this was like, with the difference being the late, great MacGowan was a genius. Tucker Carlson is just kind of a jerk.

Why Fox News cut Tucker Carlson loose

Exactly how much is too much at Fox News?

To hit a few of the lowlights: Carlson falsely claimed that George Floyd died of a drug overdose after autopsies ruled Floyd’s death a homicide. He said there was “meaningful voter fraud” in Georgia during the 2020 election. He said that maybe the COVID-19 vaccine “doesn’t work, and they’re simply not telling you that.”

His absurd ravings led to advertiser boycotts. The texts that were revealed as part of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit, which Fox News settled for $787.5 million less than a week before kicking Carlson to the curb, revealed some pretty awful things he said about other network employees. It’s hard to believe anyone was sad to see him go.

Although maybe they were. The Fox News primetime lineup basically stumps for Trump on a regular basis. Not that much has changed, really. The network replaced Carlson with Jesse Watters, a sort of junior-varsity Carlson, not quite skilled enough to connect all the right-wing conspiracy dots all the time, so he goes in for things like going after jurors in Donald Trump’s criminal trial and absurdly portraying the former president as a martyr.

It’s a living.

Where is Tucker Carlson now?

So what has Carlson done since? Moved to X — always a good career move, just ask Don Lemon, who got fired from CNN the same day Carlson was fired by Fox News — and immediately became irrelevant to all but his most loyal followers. Which, to be fair, he still has a lot of.

Carlson interviewed Republican presidential wannabes in July at something called the Family Leadership Summit, practicing the interview skills he would put to good use when he interviewed Trump as counter-programming when Trump skipped out on a Republican presidential debate, and then when Carlson traveled to Russia for a much-ballyhooed sit-down with Vladimir Putin.

Kidding. The interviews were a disaster. Putin in particular made Carlson look weak and out of his depth, mostly because he was, and even made fun of his "soft" approach. Although Carlson did cut some pretty funny spots extolling the virtues of shopping carts in Russian supermarkets.

Tucker Carlson was a Republican kingmaker. Now, not so much

Carlson was once something of a kingmaker among Republicans. His approval was essential. Now he’s denying evolution and talking about "spiritual entities" on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Even Republicans have ditched him, it seems.

Yet Carlson manages to stay in the news, for reasons other than ridicule. At a press conference on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell brought Carlson up.

“The demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin,” McConnell said. “And so he had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake.”

Note the tense. Had an enormous audience. Yes, he’s got nearly 13 million followers on X, which is basically a large-scale echo chamber. But candidates no longer clamor for his blessing.

He’s just a guy. Like he always was. Only a year ago he lost a lot of his influence. And we’re all better off for it.

Tucker Carlson is leaving Fox News: Good riddance

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fox News fired Tucker Carlson a year ago. Here's what's happened since