Brian Stelter: Tucker Thought He Was Invincible

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is April twenty fifth two thousand twenty three in the day after wow, the firing of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon. Who better to talk about this with than Brian Stelter, longtime media critic and not a contributor to Vanity Fair. So first of all, Brian, good morning.

Hey, I don’t know.

Is it a good morning, but it’s a morning.

It is a morning. Okay? First question, where were you when you heard, mister Carlson? Had been thrown over the ramparts. I

was actually in bed. This was eleven thirty AM eastern time, and I was in desperate need of a nap, which I even more desperately need now. My kids had kept me up the night before. So I’d gotten them off to school and got to my wife home from work, and I was just desperate for an hour of shut eye. But then when Dylan Byers tweet popped up and listen if anybody else had tweeted it, I wouldn’t have believed it, but I knew Dylan would know I jumped up out of the head and been running ever since.

When

I first saw it, I I didn’t see it from tweet. I I saw it something on Slack. And to admit to you, I thought it was a spoof. There’s no way. And, you know, and I’m in a table with people and we’re all looking like that.

You know, that can’t possibly have happened. I mean, it was so abrupt. It was so shocking. There were no good buys. I mean, no real attempts to make it look amicable or negotiated.

Tucker Carlson obviously did not see it coming. And on Friday, signed up, we’ll be back on Monday. And they were still promoting Monday’s episode yesterday morning, And as far as I can tell, he was told he was fired ten minutes before. It was announced, you write in vanity fair. It felt like an execution.

So talk to me about this. It was brutal. It

was. And I think that was probably, you know, on purpose by by the Fox management. I think there are some bosses at Fox that wanted to do this for a long time. But, you know, let let’s roll back a day and or two days and think, I, like, most people thought Carlson was immensible. Right?

I have fallen for it just like pretty much everybody else, you know? Yes. And he thought so that that he was bigger than Fox. That he was bigger than managed,

but

that it did not matter what Fox News media CEO Suzanne Scott said or did or wanted. And it didn’t even really matter what the Murdoch’s wanted that he thought he was the boss. And, you know, gravity re asserted itself. The bosses made themselves know. And I think there are some bosses there that wanted this to happen a long time ago and, you know, and and couldn’t pull it off until now.

And that’s you know, that’s a remarkable thing. And what an incredible reminder of who has the power here, who really has the power, the network, not the star.

So when do you think they decided to fire him? Because, I mean, the first reaction that people had was this is, like, right after the dominion lawsuit is settled? Did they wait until after that had been settled? Is this a fallout from the dominion lawsuit? So talk to me about the timing of this.

Nobody woke up on Monday morning and said, hey, we should put Tucker Carlson’s head on a spike.

Yeah. That’s true. I the reporting so far from the Times and other outlets, I I believe Oliver Darcy, my former colleague at CNN, has said this was decided on Friday. So that would make a lot of sense. The settlement was on Tuesday.

You know, the trial was about to happen. And if it is true that the main reason why Carlson was wasted overboard is is because of what he and those private emails and texts that Fox was able to read. I mean, think about this. Right? Like, all of a sudden, you’re boss is allowed to see your private text and emails, at least the ones you think are private.

And in those messages, you probably disparaging your boss. That’s essentially what happened here because of the Dominion discovery process. Dominion was able to obtain Tucker’s phone, basically obtain his messages. And that means Fox executives were able to see those messages. But I think it stands to reason that Fox could not take this action while heading into a trial.

They could not take this action during a trial. But once there was a settlement, then this could happen. And I remember I wrote last week for Vanity Fair, I said, I expect one or more Fox personalities to leave in the coming months. I did not think it was gonna be one month out there, but I did not think it was gonna be that soon. But when I wrote that sentence, it it was informed by sources at Fox.

It was and is clear to me that there are gonna be shakeups. Ongoing at Fox News as a not always literally as a result of dominion, but in the domino effect that’s happening right now. You know what I mean? One

of the questions that somebody asked yesterday was, how does Maria Bartoromo survive and Tucker Carlson doesn’t? You you just think it’s like, just give it a couple of weeks?

Give it a couple weeks may be part of the answer, but it also may be complicated by the smart medic lawsuit that’s still pending. There may be some other factors that that we can’t appreciate Let’s also keep in mind that she has a lot more airtime there, Carlson. She’s on three hours every morning, on Fox Business. Then again, Don Lemmon was on for three hours every morning on CNN until yesterday today. We

can get to him. So I wrote in my newsletter this morning that, you know, I I would like to think that this was a pivot to decency. You know, I I would like to think he was fired because of his open bigotry, you know, the great replacement theory or because they were revolted by his, you know, shameless shilling for Vladimir Putin or or maybe, you know, the belated recognition of the human cost of his vaccine denialism. I mean, I would love to thank that Paul Ryan rolled out a bed and said, okay, rubric. I can’t do this anymore.

This is just too much. But apparently, none of that seems to have happened. It seemed and and I’m sorry to use the language here, but I think it’s the technical term. It seems as if Tucker Carlson wasn’t fired for anything he said on the air, it was his cumulative assholery. It was the hubris, the arrogance, that sense that I am bigger, as you said before, I am bigger than Fox.

And you wouldn’t have thought that the Fox executives would be so thin skinned that learning that he misses them behind their backs would be that big a deal. But is that what’s going on here?

The short answer to your question is, yes, I I believe that is what’s going on here. As a as a student of Fox News, someone who’s spent almost twenty years writing about it, blogging about it, talking to sources there. Yeah. I do. And I think there were other factors as well though.

This Abi Grossberg lawsuit was certainly a factor. And and that was signaled to me by sources before we knew that Carlson was out. That

— Yeah. — that this

lawsuit was a problem for Carlson. What she has claimed so far and maybe what evidence she has is she has not shared publicly is and and and was a problem. I think if you take those two together, right, his is not just insulting his bosses, but probably disparage. I mean, where we see these messages, this will be much more clear right now. But knowing Tucker Carlson the way I do, I can very clearly imagine the kind of language he was using against his female boss.

The c word stuff.

Listen, he I don’t wanna say a sailor’s mouth. That’s that’s mean to sailors, you know. This this is a guy who thought he could say and do anything. And suddenly that has been disproving at least for a little bit. I am very curious where he’s gonna reemerge and how he’s gonna reemerge.

So strange he’s been quiet for a full day

I’m sitting here looking at that picture. I’m sure you remember this after the New York Times did that deep dive into how, you know, his was the most, you know, racist show in the history of of cable television. And he’s holding the newspaper, this front page story that goes into all the details of his the fear and loathing and the bullying he’d engage in. And he’s got this big shaded and grin on his face, like, isn’t this a big joke? It was a joke.

That picture just tells me that he just thought that he was above it all, that he was untouchable, that he was a stride, the the cultural zeitgeist, and that no one could touch him. And there was badge of power. So this must have been a cumulate. I mean, over a long period of time that we didn’t see that the people in the Swedes were going, man, this guy is just he’s a jerk, and he’s too big for his bridges. Well,

two thoughts on that. The first is The reports about Tucker having a close relationship with Loth and Murdoch were true. Yeah. And that that is true. I know that from my own reporting.

There was a kinship friendship there, you know, they would see each other basically whenever they were in the same city, which sometimes was not that often, but they were certainly in close communication. There was a real relationship there. That actually rarely exists in television news. Rarely does one of the stars have a kind of close relationship with know, he’s the CEO of all Fox Corporation. Mhmm.

So what I wanna know and then this is the mystery to me today is what broke down did it break down? Why did it break down? Why did it break down? How did it break down with Walkland? Yeah.

Or was this something where, you know, they They were friends, they were buddies right up until Friday, but, you know, this was just straight out succession, just a very clear business decision. Sometimes you push your friends overboard for business reasons. That’s what I’m really curious about today. Now, I will say, I have had a sense from insiders of Fox that we should think about what’s happening to Tucker here as the accumulation of several months worth of information and several months worth of news. So I would add to the pie.

We’ve talked about Epi Grossberg. We’ve talked about the Dominion case. But also what was redacted in the messages that we haven’t seen or the boxes seen. And let’s add one more element here, which is January sixth, and Karlsson’s to excusting attempt to try to rewrite history and downplay the the riot. You think that might have been a factor?

You’re making me nervous just to just say that to admit that. But, yes, I I do. And and that’s partly based on what I’ve heard from insiders there. It’s also recognizing what we saw on the air, which was when Carlson was given those tapes like Kevin McCarthy and when he distorted what actually happened, you know, that bullshit. Right?

The rest of Fox News did not follow him. The other opinion shows didn’t follow him. They did not follow it’s really kind of crazy and cookie how you had this guy running his own show. Basically, I feel like he was had his own Bulwark. And then the other opinion shows did not follow through.

If he had actually had the scoopy claim to have, then the Fox News cast should have led with it the next morning, and they didn’t. And I think when we look back, we’re gonna look at that as a sign that the split was happening, that the rupture was already underway. Carlson and Fox were moving apart already at that point. And it only became more clear in April. So

when I get back to the substance in the future, we know what happens to Fox, what happens to Carlson in a moment, but you and I both have something in common that I wanna bring to the table here. Okay? You and I have both been fired. It is a uniquely unpleasant experience. In this particular case, Tucker did not see it coming.

It must have been a complete shock. And for anyone who’s ever gone through this, there is that moment where you feel you’ve just been killed. Right? I mean, it’s just I mean, there’s there’s the emotional thing. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because unlike Don Lemon, type of Carlton has not said anything.

As of right now. Now by the time people listen to this, he might have issued a statement, but my guess is that he was just in a state of shock. It’s kind of like a little death. You know, you’re called in, you’re told, you’re fired.

I don’t

know. You might have had an inkling that it might happen But Tucker, he didn’t see it coming into league sat down to that chair. Tim,

Charlie Sykes, you’re trying to make me feel sympathy with Trevor Charlie Sykes?

Well, no. I’m just I’m just trying to get people to understand the the level of I don’t care whether you make twenty million dollars a year or you’re famous, you sit down and share and somebody says, you’re done. Yeah. Among the life things that happened to you, you know, there are deaths, there are divorces, but being fired is right up. There isn’t a Brian.

I mean, it is. It was for me. Yeah. I’ll I’ll tell

you about my version. Really, honestly, I you know, mine was a little different because there had been stories out in the press suggesting that maybe I was on thin ice. Also, by the way, suggesting Don Lemmon was on thin ice. And and I didn’t believe the stories. I really didn’t believe the stories.

Mhmm. But I was given a heads up by the CEO of CNN, Chris Lake, that my show might get canceled. And, you know, that was a really gracious thing he did to give me a a preview of coming attractions. To give me, you know, a a look down the road of what might happen. To be quite honest, you know, when you’re told that you you might get canceled, you assume you’re getting canceled.

Right? You assume you’re getting fired. So I walked out of the office I usually Uber at home. I I walked all the way home. I I stopped at my local bar, threw back a beer, walked the rest of the way home.

And I needed that walk. You know, I needed that hour to get my head straight. To feel better. And frankly, after that hour, I felt pretty good. Then, of course, you know, later on, weeks later, the show actually was canceled.

For me, it actually was not as unpleasant as your fire. I wanna hear about your fire For me, it wasn’t as unpleasant, but it was a it was a calculus about what kind of person do I wanna be in this moment? What kind of television host do I wanna be? What kind of dad do I wanna be? You know?

And I think that’s probably what Carlson is thinking a little bit is when he does speak, when he does say something, who’s he gonna be? And and what paths are gonna

be open for him as a result? Right? The word you used though was it was gracious. So they they gave you a gracious heads up. This strikes me as pure humiliation.

So I used to be editor of a magazine and I had to speak with the owner about an article that he did not want us to run and he wanted me to kill it and I would not kill the article. Which wasn’t that great, but it was a matter of principle. And so, you know, he called me into his office and said, I don’t like you anymore. You’re fired. I mean, did it just, like like, burn your face off?

Mhmm. So are different ways of doing it. There’s the gracious way of giving you the heads up, and then there is the humiliating execution. In

television especially, you can see the difference. So, you know, not only was I given that, you know, heads up that, hey, this this might happen. Right? And, you know, again, once once you told you might get canceled or you assume you are gonna get canceled, But then when they actually came, I was given the chance to sign off to have one final show. And again, that’s a sign of mutual respect, I think.

It means a lot to host, but a sign off. It means a lot to the audience too because the audience has developed a relationship with with the person. And we’ve seen it across television. Yeah. Forget about me.

There are other examples of hosts being able to sign off on their own terms. Frankly, that’s the clean way to do it when possible. Now the the thing about Howard Carlson is, Fox maybe didn’t trust him to do it —

Yeah. — to sign

off. Right? It’s also possible that he chose not to say goodbye. I don’t believe that’s the case here. But, you know, technically, I guess, it’s possible that he chose not to sign off, forget to sign off on his own terms.

But it does emphasize the embarrassment of this that There is no goodbye moment. There is no hey. Go sign up for my sub stack. I mean, that’s what Sean Spice here did when he left news, Max a few moments ago. He he said, go follow me on YouTube.

Well, there’s going to be another chapter for Tucker

Cross unless something comes out that we don’t know about yet. I mean, you know that there’s going to be something. We can talk about that in a moment.

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So

and it’s a step back because I think there are probably some people who are going to say, well, alright. You know, Tucker Carlson was bad, but, you know, all of Fox is particularly malign. I guess the point that I wanna make and I wanted to bounce off you is other Fox News House, you know, hardly ornaments of American journalism, but Tucker Carlson was a uniquely malign and toxic figure. He was worse because he was smarter. He was more dangerous because he knew what he was doing.

And you could make the case that you have. You know, that over the last few years, he’s arguably done more than anybody else in the media to bring, you know, grievance, lightened conspiracy theories, white nationalism from the poisonous edges of the fever slump into the political mainstream. So, you know, I mean, we could talk about Laura Ingram and all the things that Sean and Hannity did, but I guess the point is this is a BFT. This is a big deal because Tucker Carlson was a uniquely malicious player. That had tremendous damage, not just an American politics, but to American culture.

So give me your take on all of this, you know, that think that there might be a tendency of some people just to lump him in with everybody else at Fox. And I’m not trying to defend anybody else at Fox, but saying that Tucker Carlson firing is a much bigger deal than anyone else’s. Do you agree to disagree?

I do agree because I felt this. I experienced it for hand, you know, in in the Trump era that someone who like, I’ve I’ve known Tucker almost twenty years. I’ve known on Hannity almost twenty years. Both men used to be rather friendly with me. Hundred thousand once donated a hundred dollars to my blog, kinda weird — Mhmm.

— days before subscriptions. Right? You remember, like, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, you know, Sean Hannity was the number one star on Fox, and then you felt Carlson take over. You felt Carlson become the big gorilla. And actually, it happened for me.

I was I wrote the hardcover edition of Pokes. And then when it was time to to do the paper back, I felt like things have really changed. And I added all this material about Tucker because Tucker by was the biggest star. It’s because Carlson, you know, he spoke MAGA more fluently than Hannity. He exemplified Fox’s increasing the extremist vent.

And really the way identity politics of Fox were led by Carlson. To me, probably the way I think about Fox now is, well, reasonably yesterday. Was that it’s these three different things in one, and they all live really uncomfortably in the same house. You know, there’s this small news operation that struggles, you know, up against this really big opinion operation. But then there’s also a third thing and that’s Tucker.

And to me Tucker is distinct and separate and apart from the rest of the opinion operation. He is not like Hannity or Law Ingram. Right. And that’s what you’re getting at. He is uniquely malicious.

He’s different from the rest of the figures there. And maybe this is relevant to the future. Not as if there’s a Tucker junior. I mean, there’s some people who would like to be, but it’s not like, you know, remember Bill O’Reilly was, like, kind of grooming Jesse Waters. There’s not a figure like that who who I can say Tucker was preparing to be a successor or anything like that.

No. And and again, whoever the successor will be will probably be not be as smart in talent it as he was. So, you know, in the last few months, the thoughts keeps coming back to us as I’m watching, you know, the latest thing that Tucker is doing, you know, the Putinism, you know, the pro russianism, you know, the the various conspiracy theories, you know, the the way that, he’ll have the show sound, you know, like a smoking four chan episode. And I was thinking, what was he doing? It was felt like he was, like, testing the limits all the time that there was part of him saying, what can I get away with?

How can I push the envelope further? What can I say today that’s more outrageous than I said last week? Did you sense any of that that there was something going on with him?

Well, we don’t know, but maybe he did see this coming. Maybe there’s a part of him that didn’t know this was gonna come to this point.

Or he thought he was completely immune that he could just keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it to make himself this third thing, to create an independent identity where he was on touch that he would have his own lane?

His own lane, his conspiracy lane, his paranoia lane. I mean, it was about two years ago that I looked at Darcy and I went on CNN and said, Tucker Carlson is the new Alex Jones. He is

the new

Star Wars: On Fox. And we felt like we were kind of out on a little bit of a limit at that point. Like, we had the video evidence, we had the clips, we had the proof, you know, we aired it all. But, like, when I wrote that banner, you know, for that segment, I was, like, oh, four tip total up to our line right here, you know. And, yeah, two years later, I think that’s not a controversial statement.

Then Collins at NBC made the argument that, like, Tucker was going further than Alex Jones. Like, So the question becomes why was he pushing? Why was he going further and further

into

his Tennessee land or his nightmare land? And I think he has a lot to of the ratings. I think the conference stories reporting in the New York Times last year in that article that Tucker presented in Grand. And the conference story writes about Tucker’s use of the minute by minute ratings to see what made the audience the most addicted to what he was doing. And it it was the white identity politics type of stuff.

So to the extent a tucker was chasing that high and trying to get that high again and again and again that ratings high. I do wonder if that’s a part of the story here.

Okay. So since we’re out way over our skis here, alright. And we’re admittedly speculating, what impact did it have that Tucker Carlson wasn’t actually around that he was holed up in Maine in this remote studio.

On an island. Yeah. Well, now he lives on the island, then he goes to he takes the boat to the studio in the mainland. Right? And, you know, he’s got the main property, and and also, sometimes in the year of Florida, you know, on the on the Gulf Coast.

Your your point, I think, is well taken. He’s not in the office. He’s not

at Foxy Techstars in New York for the most part. It was more and more isolated.

More and more isolated. I haven’t thought about what impact that has. So

the other thing that’s interesting, I wanna talk about the impact on Fox. I saw a tweet from Brent O’Rell who said, you know, an underappreciated aspect of this is by getting rid of Tucker a whole circus gets derailed. I mean, you have people, you know, the the Glen Green Walls, you know, the gays against rumors and the kind of people that he would bring on that not even Laura and her entity would bring on. So I guess the question is, what does this mean for Fox? I mean, I I suppose my cynical default setting is nothing ever changes.

You know, Bill O’Reilly leaves and doesn’t affect the the ratings. You just swap in somebody else. But what does it mean for Fox? If we accept the premise that there was something uniquely malicious and malign about Tucker Carlson, then his departure will make a difference of some kind, but what kind do you think?

I think it does make a big difference. And I hadn’t seen that tweet until I read your newsletter, but that tweet was really interesting that there are certain figures that are only on Fox because they’re on Tucker’s show. Right. It’s not like those folks were always getting booked on other shows, and so I do it to for the most part. The network will look different.

I mean, it will be automatically different as a result of this. Maybe I’m a little more optimistic than you. Maybe maybe or maybe that means I’m still more naive. But I had a sore say to me last night talking about who’s filling in this week. Brian killed me to fill in last night, and I believe he’s gonna fill in all week long, although Fox has not confirmed that.

A source said to me, Fox feels like Brian Killamme knows where the line is. Mhmm. I thought that’s really interesting. That’s kind of the whole story right there. The line has continued to move further to the right.

It’s continued to move, as Jay Rosen would say, further away from the truth, further away from reality. But there is a line and pretty much everybody else at Fox kinda knows that, expects that, goes along with it. Tucker, of course, as we all know, didn’t give a damn. So if his replacement or a successor is someone who at least knows where the line is. Right?

That’s a change for Fox. Right? That’s a positive.

Yeah. No. I don’t disagree. I I took a rather darker you want all of this. But I think if you accept the principle that he really was this sort of, you know, third independent malicious wheel, then it is hard to imagine anyone doing what he did.

Oh,

Riley’s old famous say on the show. Remember, they always say, who’s looking out for you? And that was the brand. It was that Bill O’Reilly was looking out for you. Right?

Tucker Carlson’s message was so different. Tucker’s message was no one is looking out for you. We’re fucked. Right? Like, we’re doomed.

No one’s looking out for you. Right. Now I think the next person is gonna have a different message. It’s not gonna be the O’Reilly message, but it’s not gonna be the Tucker message either. And I would like to believe, again, this is me being an optimist.

I’m I’m embarrassed, this is gonna be recorded. Gonna be used against me for years to come. I I would like to believe that maybe Rupert Murdoch wants to drag his network back to a more reality based place. We’re gonna look back and say, firing Tucker, it was Rupert reasserting control. After being humiliated in twenty twenty and being humiliated by the Dominican lawsuit, and revealed to be this passive guy who just sat on the sidelines and let the democracy burn.

Maybe, you know, in his final act, He’s trying to drag it back to reality.

Well, and also that he just wants to remind everybody that there’s only one boss at a time and that he — Mhmm. — doesn’t need to sit around and worry about being dissed or line sided by would it Dylan Byers who call him this you know, narcissist born on third base. You know, you just have to worry about that sort of thing. I mean, that’s certainly possible. So in other words, this is, in some way, in the Penumbra, of the Dominion lawsuit that that was a sobering experience, that it wasn’t just something where they wrote a check and they just blindly went on, that perhaps this has had a longer term impact on on the culture and the size of Fox.

That’s an interesting point.

Look, there’s so many people of Fox who despise the Tucker Carlson. So I I know some folks don’t believe it when I say it, but it’s it’s true. He didn’t even have a lot of allies internally. And as I said, he was a third thing. He was part of news.

He was not part of opinion. He was his third thing. And now without that third thing — Mhmm. —

it

may make Fox a little more stable. It might yeah. I don’t

know. So did you believe that reporting in in Rolling Stone that people reacted with pure joy who is firing? You

know, I’m such a nerd about these things. I read those quotes, and I try to guess who the sources are, who the people are. And I I turned around to think I can guess, guess who they are. Yes. I I do think there was some of that.

Interesting. But let’s also recognize, you know, some of the real skeptics and dissenters have left. You know, more every year, more of the folks at Fox who tried to keep the place tethered to truth. Have left. And so there there are also, you know, some very lumpy true believers there as well.

Yeah. By the

way, the reporting about Tucker’s top producer also being canned. I have a suspicion there’s maybe other producers also leaving. I mean, that’s another thing about how this is gonna reshape Fox is if you have all the same producers, putting on the same conspiracy show. It doesn’t really matter who the host is. But if they replace the producers and I think that’s what we’re seeing, then that does signal real change.

So listen about politics. You wrote that one of the biggest baddest loud mouths in television history is suddenlies. Silent and you you were on PBS and said, you know, Tucker Carlson was basically controlling the Republican party with whatever he wanted he got. I mean, you know, famously Kevin McCarthy, you know, gave him that January six surveillance tapes. He’s the one that sent out the survey to all of the potential presidential candidates, you know, asking them, you know, tell me what you think about Ukraine and everything.

So do we have any idea what this means for Republican politics leaving aside the future of Fox? Because Tucker Carlson was clearly thinking of himself either as a kingmaker or a potential wanna be king killer. What happens now?

Now it’s like the energy disperses. Right? And there was already within Foxy on competition about getting certain candidates at certain time slots. Right? Now Tucker, you know, with with all of his power is gone and and maybe that opens up opportunities for others.

Certainly, candidates are gonna wanna be on at eight PM, so whether it’s Brian Kilmett or or others gets highest ratings. But I think, yeah, it’s like that energy and that power, like, disperses, you know, like, it blows off in ten different directions maybe. Is that is that right?

Yeah. I mean, this does change the power dynamic. So what do you think Tucker Carlson’s next play is? Where does he go?

I wish I had a really smart answer to that. He’s

gonna be Donald Trump’s vice president. No. I’m just kidding. I’m just making

this There’s no way he would ever be vice president.

Nothing. No. See, I was thinking about that. People’s always gonna go to NewsMax or OA, and this is a guy that’s been fired from all three major networks. He’s got the trifecta, he does not want to step down to another network.

So what does he do? What is the play? I think that’s probably what

he’s working on as we speak. I don’t see him stepping down to a news max or o a m. I would only see him trying to take over a network like o a n. Right? You know, remember the Oprah model where she took over a small cable channel and and tried to do something new with it.

But he also might look at this world and say, cables the past, I wanna be the future. If he launched a sub stack right now or something like it, how many people do they think would pay today? Half a million? Three quarters a million? A hundred

dollars a year. Do the math. You

know, you need to have to pay staff and all that, but that is a really interesting business question. Mhmm. And

of course, you know, he’s got the studio. Right? I mean, he’s still unless they come and take back all of his equipment. Do they come and take back all of his equipment. What do they do with that?

I mean, he’s got all that shit up in Maine. Are they gonna come with with trucks and say, turn in your badge tucker and we want that camera? That

is so interesting. I’m gonna go out back on the speculative limb here. Yes. I I think they will. I I mean, just thinking about, you know, what I know of television news, yeah, I mean, Fox’s stickers and labels should be all over that equipment.

That’s all coming on to New York, unless he had some unique relationship where he worked out, where he owns it somehow. But Oh, I think that’s all going back to New York. I think Tucker can do whatever he wants in the right wing mean universe but only in the right wing media universe, you know. It’s —

Yeah. — he

exists on an entirely different planet than Don Lemmon. And, you know, ten years ago, right, fifteen, twenty years ago, when Tucker was on MSNBC, he was able to cross over. Right? He was he was able to have what we would call mass appeal. But now there’s no going back.

Right? Now he only can speak to a radicalized audience. And that’s why I say, could he get a million paying subscribers? Could he get a million and a half? Glenbeck made that work for a while, but, you know, do we talk about Glenbeck?

Do we have each other talking ourselves? No. We do not.

No. We don’t. Okay. So you and I assume that we were gonna be talking today. About the Dominion settlement, what’s going on there.

And obviously Right. Remember that? That feels so different right now. So Let’s talk a little bit about the state of play for Fox because you have this massive settlement with Dominion. But then you have the Smart Magic lawsuit, which is just hanging out there.

You have the Ebby Grossberg lawsuit. So what is the state of play? If you’re in the Murdoch and you’re looking at this litigation landscape, What are you thinking? Do you think?

Just make it go away. That’s that’s what you’re thinking. Just make it go away. You know? It’s gonna cost a lot of money.

Yeah. Four billion in cash just make it go away. You know, I think we will see a smart magic settlement in the weeks or months to come. It might take longer than people expect but there’s no reason why Fox is gonna let this drag out till twenty twenty five end up in trial in New York. Again, if if you believe that Rupert Murdoch might in his file a year, we maybe trying to drag Fox back to the to write up center as opposed to, you know, writing crazy.

Then, you know, he might be thinking, where where did I go wrong here? How did this happen? How did I let this happen? How did Suzanne Scott let this happen? How did we get to the point where all these liars on my Sarah Longwell about Trump maybe winning an election he actually lost.

How did this happen? Yeah. Clean it up, make it go away. That’s very much the vibe

that I’m getting. I see this is so interesting. Because, you know, part of me last week was thinking, okay, they’ve avoided the trial. You don’t have to test to buy. You’ve written it off.

And they’re probably opening up champagne over at Fox. But today, in in our conversation. I’m thinking that’s completely wrong. What’s happening is the group of Murdoch is sitting in a darkened room saying, fuck, I never wanna go through that again. You know, I have to clean up this mess.

This was not fun. This was humiliating. And it feels as if something was broken. We were talking about, you know, what broke the relationship with under Carlson and his, you know, buddy, you know, Lockwood and Murdoch. Well, obvious sleeve from the point of view of the Murdochs.

This dominion lawsuit was a nightmare. It was a traumatic experience and it changed a lot.

This is reminding me of what Gabriel Sherman wrote in entity fair. This may cover story about the Murdoch. Here’s his kicker. He says, Murdoch seemed trapped by the people he radicalized Like an aging despot hiding in his palace while the streets filled with insirectionous. That’s good.

That feels like the story here to me. You know, Gabe had that detail about the the woman that Murdoch was briefly engaged with and then he broke off the engagement. And a source told Gabe, yeah, she said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said, nope. Right? With this idea that you know, he falls in love.

He falls for this woman who is the Fox viewer. She’s the Fox audience. She’s the one that’s a true believer in Tucker. And Rupert knows better. And Rupert Uber knows Tucker’s on a messenger from God.

And even if she meant that as a metaphor, you know, we can understand that sense of radicalization among the part of the Fox base. And Rupert said in back in the game, what have I done? What is this?

What have I done?

That’s what somebody at Fox said to me the night of the riot, late in the day January sixth, a text message from us. Staffer. And it said, what have we done? And I ended up leading the paper recognition of hoax with that because that’s the question. Like, what have we done?

And is there any Can it be changed? Right? Can it be moderated? In

the twilight of his life, whether he’s thinking about all of this. So I feel like we’ve even short shrift to your former colleague, Don Lemon. That would normally be the biggest media story of the year. If anything, that was a Gleeer than even the Tucker thing. I mean, it blew up very, very quickly.

So give me your insight into that because I have none. Well,

well, number one, I had to figure out, yes, today. Were were these somehow linked? Did — Yeah. — did one Bulwark, you know, the other was about to do it. And I called around, and and I swear everyone came back and said the same thing.

Fox had no idea. CNN was about to fire that lemon. CNN had no idea. Fox was about to fire that Carlson. This was just a crazy coincidence.

It is a crazy coincidence. It’s

amazing.

I I think when it comes to Don, I I have not figured out why it happened on Monday, but I do think it was inevitable. You know, I mentioned that the reports last year that Don and I were both on thin ice. CNN. Clearly, the ice was melting underneath his feet. And I don’t know why Monday as opposed to last Friday, that part doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

But when he was told by his agent that they were gonna go ahead and deliver him the noods, Don decided to put out a statement instead of actually having to sit down meeting. You know, they gotta give him credit for transparency. I guess, you know, he went out there and said, I’ve just been terminated and they didn’t have the decency to tell me to my face. CNN says, well, we would have told you your face if you wanted to. And then just guessing here, but, you know, I’m trying to make an educated guess.

I think things had gone so downhill. Things had kind of corroded so much between lemon and CNN that it was probably gonna end like this. You know, it’s the opposite of what I experienced and what I described, which was a really mutually

respectful

you know, a gracious goodbye. I think it’s possible that, you know, this is going on for months. Things were not going well. There were controversies, you know, there were self

inflicted wounds. And so it was gonna end in an ugly way. And it did. So you’re working on a new book about this. Right?

I am. I’m doing a book all about Fox in the post Trump years called Bulwark of what? So,

man, you’re gonna have to do, like, revision, mister Till, thank God for, you know, word processing. Thank

God, I hadn’t really started writing yet. Okay. Although we are gonna come out fast, we’re gonna come out in November. We we don’t wanna waste any time. It’s it’s called network of lies.

I’m doing it because I feel like I wrote hoax too soon. I ended hoax in September of twenty twenty, like, right before the story got great. You know, right before the big lie, right before the riot, right before the dominion in the smart matter case is so bigger lie. Basically, exactly. What I’m gonna use is wanna use all the material in the Dominican Rico filings to tell the the back story.

Tell the story. You know how the media world works? I don’t mean this is a criticism of my colleagues. I love all those media reporters out there, but when these legal filings are come out, there’ll be thousands of pages dumped on us on an afternoon. Right.

And, you know, most of the stories would would hone in on the same few quotes, you know. Tyler Carlson says, Trump’s a demonic force. Right? We we all know a few of those folks that became headline news, but the truth is there are tens of thousands of pages of filings that I’m gonna use as the raw material for the book. Oh, that’s gonna I’m just gonna go mining for gold.

And, you know, and begin and and find the rest of the story.

Brian Stelter is currently a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, and he was, of course, media reporter from New York times, the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide, the Anchor of Reliable Sources. He’s also the author of Top of the Morning, and hoax Donald Trump Fox News in the dangers distortion of truth. And as he just told you of the forthcoming network of lies. Brian, it is great to reconnect and talk with you today especially. Thanks so much.

I’m gonna go start writing and thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we’ll do this all over again. Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Dissecting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary and humor, useful idiots. With Katie Halper and Aaron Mate. Check out this story that comes via wedding planner, Georgia Mitchell. I’d say that’s a deal breaker if you were to catch your partner being breastfed by their mother. The thing is she’s here in the second hand.

So

Right. Really The responsible journalist didn’t you, Erin. It’s just an allegation. Yeah.

None of my sources have confirmed this story. Right. So Terrible if true. Definitely a deal breaker. Useful idiots.

Wherever you listen.