Tag: Fox News

Fox News Staffers Laugh at Calls for Tucker Carlson to Be Fired: Don’t Hold Your Breath!

Daily Beast Logo

Another week, another #TuckerMustGo social-media trend. But as Fox insiders told The Daily Beast, Carlson is “untouchable” and not going anywhere.

It’s a scenario that has become all too familiar for media watchers: Fox News star Tucker Carlson is once again under fire for his offensive and inflammatory comments, sparking widespread backlash and calls for advertisers to drop his show and for Fox to fire him.

And the expected outcome is also all too familiar, as current and former Fox News staffers told The Daily Beast this week: The network does not care and nothing will happen to Carlson.

Earlier last week, the far-right, proudly nationalist host once again drove an entire news cycle with his trollish remarks, this time by calling on his millions of viewers to publicly harass people wearing masks outside and to call child protective services on parents of mask-wearing kids. Naturally, due to the potentially violent consequences of his commentary, the clip immediately went viral on social media and the hashtag #TuckerMustGo began trending on Twitter. Continue reading.

Fox News Parts Ways With Anchor Leland Vittert, Off Air Since Just After Covering Capitol Riots

Vittert was notable in 2020 for pushing back against Trump’s false claims of voter fraud

Fox News has “mutually and amicably parted ways” with reporter Leland Vittert, the network told TheWrap Friday. The network confirms what has been the de facto state of affairs for months; Vittert has not appeared on the network or posted from his Twitter account since January.

“We have mutually and amicably parted ways with Leland Vittert,” a Fox News spokesperson told TheWrap.

Vittert had been with Fox News since 2010, and Fox has declined to explain why he has left the network after a decade. But it’s notable that Vittert was one of the few Fox reporters who contested the Trump campaign’s lies about election fraud during the 2020 election, including an interview with Trump’s communications director Erin Perrine that descended into a shouting match. Continue reading.

‘That’s called socialism!’ Fox & Friends host freaks out after learning raising taxes on rich people is popular

Raw Story Logo

“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade went on an angry tirade on Wednesday after his co-hosts acknowledged that polls show it’s popular to raise taxes on wealthy Americans.

During a discussion on potentially raising income taxes and capital gains taxes on high-income earners, Kilmeade claimed that these plans would backfire because the majority of Americans don’t want their taxes to go up.

“No, no,” interjected co-host Steve Doocy. “They’re okay with raising taxes on the rich.” Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson Tells Fox Viewers to Call the Cops if They See Kids Wearing Masks Outdoors

The Fox News star implored his loyal viewers to openly harass and mock anyone they see wearing a face mask outdoors because “it’s repulsive.”

Raging against face masks on Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told his viewers they should openly harass anyone they see wearing masks outside and go so far as to call the police or social services on the parents of any children with masks on.

Carlson, who was a proponent of mask-wearing to help stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic as recently as last March, has since become a fierce critic of face masks and other COVID-19 restrictions, guidelines, and mitigation efforts.

In this vein, and with the Biden administration set to further relax guidance on mask-wearing as coronavirus cases and deaths decrease nationwide as more Americans get vaccinated, Carlson opened up his top-rated Fox News primetime show on Monday night by blasting “neurotic” liberals who have been faithfully wearing face masks amid a deadly pandemic. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson’s College Yearbook Entry Goes Viral, And It’s A Doozy

Huff Post logo

The Fox News host affiliated himself with some eyebrow-raising groups.

Tucker Carlson’s college yearbook seemed to foretell plenty about the man whose bigotry would later fill the prime time airwaves on Fox News.

In a 1991 Trinity College yearbook entry now making the rounds on social media, Carlson wrote that he was part of the “Dan White Society.” News outlets presumed he was referring to the man who in 1978 murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city Supervisor Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay elected official.

Carlson also affiliated himself with the Jesse Helms Foundation, named after North Carolina’s longtime anti-gay and anti-civil rights senator. Continue reading.

Terrified Fox News viewers sent cops on wild-goose chases against nonexistent antifa threats: report

Raw Story Logo

Police chased down ridiculous tips about Antifa and Black Lives Matter called in by panicky conservatives all over the Pacific Northwest.

Fox News helped inflame fears of leftist protesters last summer, as demonstrators marched all over the country against police brutality and racism, and calls came pouring in about suspicious individuals and implausible plots, reported The Daily Beast.

“There was a young man with very short bleached blond hair who walked around in the street right in front of us and read every one of our signs,” said one woman from Anacortes, Washington, notified police via the NextDoor social network. “Paticularly [sic] the Support your Local Police. He had a mean look on his face and looked inside my Jeep where the tail gate was up and he could see more of our signs and American Flags.” Continue reading.

The anatomy of a spin job: How Fox News tried to smear George Floyd protesters after a peaceful night

AlterNet Logo

Despite the fact that Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd was captured on film and widely denounced even by fellow police officers, right-wing commentators had a bizarre collection of reactions to the jury’s finding on Tuesday that the former cop was guilty of the three charges against him. One common theme was to suggest that despite the guilty verdict in the trial, Black Lives Matter protesters who were outraged by the murder would still not be satisfied and would riot in response.

For example:

As it happened, the response to the verdict from protesters featured a mix of emotions, some celebrating, some still grieving. As the Associated Press reported: Continue reading.

Trump praises Putin on Fox News — after Alexei Navalny hospitalized in prison

Raw Story Logo

Former President Donald Trump on Monday praised his relationship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

The statements came after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was transferred to a prison hospital and the Pentagon warned about Russia’s troop build-up along the border with Ukraine.

Fox News personality Sean Hannity asked Trump what he would do differently if he were to run again in 2024 and win. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson villainizes journalists on his top-rated show. Then the threats pour in.

Washington Post logo

As the Fox host’s popularity grows, he has found fodder in lesser-known media figures whom he presents as symbols of liberalism-run-amok.

Brandy Zadrozny, a reporter for NBC News who covers online extremism, was working on a story last fall about the right-wing websites that had promoted conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden. One of her queries was to Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who allegedly wrote for one of those sites.

But instead of answering her questions, Beattie lashed out at Zadrozny in a blog post calling her an “ideologically-motivated hit-man” with a practice of “targeting Trump supporters for doxing, censorship and harassment.”

It might have remained a small, nasty online grudge. But Beattie soon got an opportunity to bring his views to a much-larger platform: that night’s episode of Tucker Carlson’s prime-time Fox News show, which was watched by more than 5.3 million people. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson’s toxic ‘replacement’ rhetoric gets picked up in the House

Washington Post logo

From the moment Fox News’s Tucker Carlson explicitly advocated the idea that immigrants are “replacing” real Americans — a rhetorical construct popular among self-proclaimed white nationalists — the danger was obvious. Carlson and allies such as author J.D. Vance like to position the outcry over his comments as being centered on his purported willingness to speak truth to power. The reality, though, is that Carlson is espousing an obviously false line in an effort to both denigrate Democrats as desperate and to cast immigrants as a dangerous force aimed at toppling America as we know it. The more this dishonest rhetoric spreads, the more risk it poses.

On Wednesday morning, it was offered by a sitting member of the House.

A subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was meeting to examine the root causes of migration from Central American countries that make up a disproportionate portion of migrants seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The State Department’s envoy to the region, Ricardo Zúniga, was offering testimony on the subject when Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was given the floor. Continue reading.