Tucker Carlson breaks silence for the first time since his shock firing from Fox News as he responds to claims Pentagon officials are celebrating his departure after he tore into military top brass
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Pentagon officials are reportedly cheering the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox.
Carlson was let go on Monday, days after the channel agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787mn for airing false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election. It is not clear why Carlson was pushed out of his slot after 14 years with the channel.
But one senior Department of Defense official said: ‘We’re a better country without him bagging on our military every night in front of hundreds of thousands of people.’
Breaking his silence for the first time since he was let go, Carlson told Politico in response to the news officials were pleased with him leaving: ‘Ha! I’m sure.’
During his time on air for Fox, Carlson, 53, spoke out against policy – alleging officials were more concerned with race, gender and sexuality than protecting the safety of the American people – and individual high-ranking officials.
‘Good riddance!’ said a second military official. Both remained anonymous.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson discusses ‘Populism and the Right’ during the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on 29 March, 2019
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Muskö naval base in Stockholm, Sweden, 19 April 2023. Unnamed DoD officials said ‘good riddance’ to Carlson’s departure from Fox on Monday
During his time on air with Fox, Tucker Carlson rallied against decisions made by the military.
In March 2021, two months after he took on the role, he laid into Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who had said he would ‘fight hard to stamp out sexual assault and to rid our ranks of racists and extremists’.
READ MORE: Why was Tucker Carlson forced out of Fox News after 14 years at the network? And who can replace the highest rated host in all of cable news?
Carlson alleged that Austin never defined what he meant by ‘extremism’, meaning that it could be used as a way to silence conservatives.
‘Lloyd Austin believes the real threat to America is not the Chinese government or paralyzed global trade. The real threat is people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden,’ Carlson claimed.
‘What you’re seeing is not an attempt to make the military better. What you’re seeing is a political purge of the military.’
He also slammed ‘woke generals’ who ‘couldn’t defeat the Taliban’ after the Pentagon criticized his claims that hiring pregnant soldiers was a ‘mockery’ of the military.
Carlson took aim at a number of individual high-ranking officials while on air, including calling for Biden to sack General Mark Milley.
Tucker Carlson was let go from Fox on Monday after seven years of hosting talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight. He had worked for the company since 2009.
Carlson was said to be stunned by the decision. A Fox News told DailyMail.com ‘Tucker still hasn’t been given any indication of why he was taken off the air.’
‘We believe Rupert [Murdoch] wants to sell the company and it’s harder to find an institutional buyer with Tucker as the main star.
‘Tucker gone makes it more of an appealing media company to buy.’
Until a new host is named, Fox News plans to replace the segment with an interim show that will be helmed by a rotating set of personalities from the network.
Star host Tucker Carlson’s abrupt exit from Fox News is likely to hit short-term ratings but could nudge more mainstream advertisers to consider a network they have snubbed for being too partisan, investors and analysts said.
News of his departure on Monday wiped nearly $1 billion from the market valuation of the network’s parent company, Rupert Murdoch-controlled Fox Corp.
The stock also closed lower on Tuesday.
‘It’s a huge deal,’ said Matthew Tuttle, head of Tuttle Capital Management, an investment firm that is betting against Fox shares.
‘The 8pm slot is important and they will lose viewers in that spot.
‘They need to find another Carlson, that is going to be the problem. They need to pull a rabbit out of the hat.’
Tucker Carlson Tonight ran from 2016 until 2023, when Carlson was ousted on Monday
Carlson’s wife Susan Andrews was seen walking the family dogs on 25 April, the day after Tucker Carlson was let go from the news network
The conservative-leaning Carlson’s prime-time show was the highest-rated cable news program in the key 25-to-54 age demographic on Fox News.
It was the most-watched U.S. cable news network.
It averaged nightly viewers of around 3.4 million in March, according to Nielsen.
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