Calling your bosses really bad words is a big no for even the most famous of employees, as Tucker Carlson has learned.
A Wall Street Journal report found that the recently fired Fox News host called a senior executive a “cunt” in a private message that was turned up during discovery in the defamation case filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which was settled for $787 million last week. The report does not state which executive Carlson was referring to and the message was redacted in the ocean of correspondence that was released through court filings.
Carlson did not want the damning message redacted from the lawsuit. “He told his colleagues that he wanted the world to know what he had said about the executive in a private message,” the report states. He compared it to his “I hate him passionately” comment about Trump. While that was said amid a short burst of anger, his resentment toward the executive was “deep and enduring,” per the Journal, which is owned by News Corp., the sister company of Fox’s parent.
Since Carlson’s surprise departure on Monday, reporters have been piecing together why the network’s top prime-time host was let go. Carlson was reportedly informed of the decision just ten minutes before it was made public. According to multiple accounts confirmed by the Journal, the decision to cut him was made directly by the Murdoch family and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. Carlson had reportedly grown disdainful of his bosses at Fox News, believing that his star outshone the network itself.
The New York Times reports that one of the reasons the matter came to a head was that Fox’s board of directors and top executives only learned about the contents of the redacted messages the day before the Dominion trial was supposed to begin. If the lawsuit had gone to trial, Dominion lawyers were apparently going to push to be able to use the contents of the redacted messages during their questioning of Carlson, “and they planned to pin him down on the ones that were most demeaning toward women,” per the Times.
According to a lawsuit filed by his producer Abby Grossberg, Carlson oversaw a toxic environment on his show in which misogyny, including the use of the C-word by men on the team, and antisemitism were rampant. (In an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, Grossberg said Carlson made her life a “living hell.”)
According to a Washington Post report, Rupert Murdoch had also become concerned with Carlson’s presentation of the Ukraine war — like one onscreen graphic of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “Ukrainian pimp.” After one segment in March, Murdoch went into the newsroom to “loudly challenge Carlson’s message,” according to the Post.
This post has been updated.
