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George Orwell said, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” So we learned this past week that Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino are no longer at Fox News.
Without forewarning, Fox News banished Tucker Carlson from their 8:00 P.M. prime-time programming on April 24, 2023. The reason for this immediate divorce remains unclear. Nevertheless, with this senseless amputation, Fox News launched an all-comers rush to capture Tucker’s abandoned, heavily conservative audience. And a sizable audience it was.
As for star Dan Bongino, the word is that neither party could come to a contract agreement. Despite Fox News’s signals that they wished Bongino to say with the network, Dan said no thanks.
The reason(s) for Fox News’s firing of Tucker range from his extreme on-air rhetoric, edgy show topics, increasing disputes with management, and off-air use of foul, uncouth language, mostly in his internal correspondence. But the more significant concern was likely Tucker’s increasing political power, and with that power came that he was growing more important than the network and, therefore, essentially untouchable.
I do not believe this to be the case. Tucker was running as fast as he could toward the light and the truth as he saw it, knowing the day of his firing would come. You cannot challenge radical Progressives and expect to remain on air. Dishearteningly, too many anchors and commentators at Fox News, Newsmax, and other conservative-leaning networks snipe at the bully dragon of Progressivism. But they never attempt a head-on battle with the dragon driving toward the totalitarian dominion over Americans.
Unquestionably, Tucker Carlson is Fox’s loss. Tucker had built the leading cable news and commentary program at Fox News and, importantly, across all cable news. His show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” captured an average of 3.2 million viewers and an impressive 18-54 age demographic following.
Mr. Carlson remains under contract with Fox and will remain so until sometime in December of 2024. Unless Mr. Carlson can negotiate a release from this contract, he will stay (unwillingly?) off the broadcast air for the next 20 months. Again, the consequence of this abrupt and final cleavage means Tucker’s audience is up for grabs.
Adrift after six years of a steady diet of edgy, contrarian, and argumentative topics, Tucker’s audience has no appetite for milquetoast commentary. The more informative and controversial the issue is, the better this audience responded. Tucker said out loud nightly what most of his audience was thinking but would not dare express these thoughts and feelings among so-called polite company. They did not have to; Tucker validated their suspicions and worries on air every night at 8:00 P.M.
Tucker spoke on political and cultural subjects no one else in the news, be it cable or broadcast news, had the intestinal fortitude to bring up.
One fact is clear. Fox News is experiencing a seismic blowback from this firing, as evidenced by a 60 percent drop in their 8:00 P.M. ratings.
As expected, legacy media and Democrats are beyond delighted that Tucker is gone from the airwaves at least until December of next year. The New York Times and the Washington Post have issued scathing, derogatory articles about the Tucker Carlson Show on Fox News.
On April 26, two days after Tucker’s firing, he released a 2-minute and 15-second Video on his Twitter account. So far, the video has drawn over 80 million views and has been retweeted over 203,000 times on Twitter alone. I encourage you to dial it in and see for yourself.
Tucker says, “The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant they are. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t even remember we had them.”
He says, “The undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all: War, Civil Liberties, Emerging Science, Demographic Changes, Corporate Power, and Natural Resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American Media.”
“Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. No one actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won’t.”
“When honest people say what’s true, commonly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars, who’ve been trying to silence them, shrink and become weaker. This is the Iron law of the universe. True things prevail.”
I would like to believe these final two sentences above. I used to think these sentences represented universal truths. But frankly, I am far more cautious and skeptical of this approach. Too many voters today are one-issue voters. For them, it is either abortion, parental rights in education and school choice, transgender women in women’s sports, climate change, illegal immigration, or devastating inflationary economics driving most voters. I find few people look at the big picture. Tucker saw the big picture and delivered it nightly, one piece at a time.
In this podcast, I speak to the issues Tucker Carlson mentioned in the now famous 2-minute and 15-second Twitter video — War, Civil Liberties, Emerging Science, Changing Demographics, Corporate Power, and Natural Resources. I also review the case of the Department of Homeland Security’s failed attempt to censor American free speech through their proposed Disinformation Governance Board.
The Frankly Daniel Show with Daniel Baranowski on America Out Loud Talk Radio can be heard Saturday and Sunday at 9 am ET. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free apps on Apple, Android, or Alexa. Listen to other episodes of The Frankly Daniel Show, available on podcast.
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