The news exploded like a bomb in the American press that America's most watched TV commentator, Tucker Carlson, hosted a show on Fox for the last time on Friday, and now he is suddenly parting ways with the right-wing channel.

Speculations have already started regarding the departure of the presenter, who stands out as a supporter of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán: Mandiner gathered these as well, and, of course, why Carlson is a thorn in the eyes of some.

Naturally, after the brief announcement about the "separation of ways", the usual speculations at this time began.

Born in 1969, originally from San Francisco, Carlson first tried his hand at conservative magazines (Policy Review, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Weekly Standard), but he worked for Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, but then he found television for himself: worked for CNN, but had a career at NBC TV, and in the meantime switched to Fox News.

Here he hosted the Tucker Carlson Tonight program, followed by three million people night after night, which became the channel's most successful program and one of the most watched news programs in the United States. He worked for the channel from 2009 to the present, that is, he strengthened the medium for 14 years. During this time, he became an iconic presenter, one of the embodiments of the conservative voice, millions followed his work.

According to his critics, he brought "extreme right-wing" points of view into the mainstream media as a presenter, primarily, but not exclusively, because of his criticisms of the black extremist movement called Black Lives Matter, and his stance as a critic of immigration was also often targeted by representatives of the opposing media. He did not share the mainstream media's usual criticisms of former President Donald Trump either. Moreover, Politico described him as the biggest advocate of "Trumpism" - we can add, however, that according to the information that came to light later, his fandom was far from unconditional and undivided.

As for the Hungarian thread: the fact that he interviewed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and was also reluctant to join the ranks of critics of the Hungarian Prime Minister could also be considered a capital crime. In 2021, he traveled to Budapest, where he defended Orbán against criticism of authoritarianism, and in January 2022, Carlson presented Hungary vs. Soros on Fox Nation.

Carlson was a star performer at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium summer festival, where he declared: "America could take Hungary as an example!"

Tucker Carlson gave no sign of his departure, at least according to The Washington Post, on his last show, but it is telling that the "divorce" took place shortly after Carlson was subpoenaed as a witness in the lawsuits filed by Dominion Voting, the operator of American election machines. Systems sued Fox News to defend its own polling system.

After his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Trump and the Republicans who supported him accused the Democrats of electoral fraud, and Carlson argued in agreement. However, they could not prove the fraud allegations against Dominion. A few days before the presenter's departure, Dominion made a separate agreement with Fox: on April 18, the right-wing channel agreed to pay 778.5 million dollars (about HUF 280 billion!) in damages to the company that operates the electronic voting system.

The well-known presenter also claimed that the "Capitol siege" that took place on January 6, 2021 was not a self-organized revolution by the Republicans, but a "false flag operation" by the FBI, meaning that they just wanted to blame the whole thing on the "besiegers" - according to many and there is against the former president.

It is worth noting that, after the announcement of the famous presenter's departure, Fox Corporation lost almost 5 percent of its value on the stock market - while the market has never reacted so sharply to the payment of gigamoney to Dominion. This means 600 million dollars, almost 200 billion forints, in a few hours.

In any case, the first speculations led to this: the damages awarded in connection with Dominion may have dissuaded the channel from further employing Carlson. The company has repeatedly denied that it had anything to do with Carlson's departure.

, according to another picked up , it's not necessarily just that; the paper's sources said that the decision to fire Carlson was made by the chairman of the Fox Corporation, media mogul Rupert Murdoch himself.

Read the full Mandiner article

Author: Zoltán Veczán

Image: Facebook