‘Did They Ever Watch His Show?’ Media Reacts to ‘Racist’ Tucker Carlson Text Message That Reportedly Led to Ouster at Fox

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

A previously non-public text from former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that reportedly “set off a panic” among network executives was published by the New York Times on Tuesday night.

“The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson’s firing,” the Times said.

Fox fired Carlson last week after a series of communications from him were included in court filings by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against the network’s parent company. Several of those messages were from Carlson. The text published by the Times was not included in any of the filings – at least not in unredacted form.

Carlson sent the text to one of his producers on Jan. 7, 2021, one day after the Capitol insurrection. In it, he confesses to having had a brief desire to see a group of Donald Trump supporters kill “an Antifa kid” in a separate incident two weeks prior. He also said of the attackers, “It’s not how white men fight”:

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

Last week, the Times said in another text, Carlson reportedly referred to a senior Fox communications executive as a “cunt,” which may have factored into the decision to fire him.

Reactions from journalists and other media personalities was swift, if not relatively homogenous, with the main responses being cracks about whether Fox executives actually ever watched Carlson’s show. His program was the most controversial program on cable news, with regular segments pushing the idea that elites in the U.S. want to replace White Americans with immigrants.