You usually don’t expect the laughless, helpless far-leftists at activist watchdog Media Matters for America to be doing Tucker Carlson a favor. And, in all fairness, it wasn’t intentional.
But on Monday, MMFA released what writer Matt Gertz described as “a behind-the-scenes video” that has Carlson “lashing out at Fox” over Fox News’ streaming site, Fox Nation, “apparently while doing some image rehab for misogynistic social media influencer Andrew Tate.”
Now, the last part is more a matter of deduction, since Tate’s name is never actually used. The evidence of that seems to be that Carlson tells the person he’s talking to by phone on the set of “Tucker Carlson Today,” Carlson’s former Fox Nation show, that he’s acting as “a representative of the American media now, speaking to an exile in Romania and welcoming him back into the brotherhood of journalists.”
Carlson interviewed Tate in August of 2022 after Tate was kicked off of social media networks. Tate, a former mixed-martial-arts fighter, is now under house arrest on sex assault charges, according to the Spanish sports outlet MARCA. The Carlson interview took place before Tate’s arrest.
In the video, Carlson is speaking on the phone to a man who asked if Carlson could wear a sweater instead of a suit while conducting an upcoming interview. The unnamed subject of the interview was “panicky” about wearing a suit, the man on the phone said. In the Tate interview, Tate wore a T-shirt and Carlson a sweater.
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“This is airing on the night-time show, and I want it to look official,” Carlson said on the phone in the leaked video, not “like bro talk.”
As for putting the interview on Fox Nation: “But nobody’s going to watch it on Fox Nation,” Carlson said. “Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks. So I’d really just like to dump the whole thing on YouTube.”
FOXLEAKS: Tucker Carlson slammed Fox Nation in behind-the-scenes video https://t.co/XhQlKQVHJ1 pic.twitter.com/mKqJBuWzCw
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 1, 2023
“It’s hard to use that site. I don’t know why they’re not fixing it. It’s driving me insane,” Carlson continued. “And they’re like making, like, Lifetime movies. But they don’t, they don’t work on the infrastructure of the site. Like what? It’s crazy. And it drives me crazy because it’s like we’re doing all this extra work and no one can find it. It’s unbelievable, actually.”
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This isn’t the first strangely prosaic media leak that someone inside Fox News seems to have orchestrated in the wake of Carlson’s summary dismissal last Monday, as Michael Brendan Dougherty noted in a piece at National Review.
The first set went to The New York Times, which noted that, “[i]n video obtained by The Times, for instance, Mr. Carlson is shown off camera discussing his ‘postmenopausal fans’ and whether they will approve of how he looks on the air. In another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds ‘yummy.’”
“Are there just random videos of the off-air parts of Tucker Carlson Tonight just waiting to be discovered by the New York Times? Perhaps these tapes are under highway overpasses,” Dougherty wrote.
“No, the Times obviously got this from Fox’s PR people,” Dougherty wrote.
And now Media Matters for America is apparently hanging out under that storied highway overpass where secret videos of Tucker Carlson from behind the scenes just happen to be lurking. Except, as plenty of social media users noted, in this covertly obtained footage, Carlson was … more or less right?
This is perfectly legitimate criticism. Such conversations happen with talent all the time. https://t.co/2M5A5NL6ob
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 1, 2023
Is this supposed to paint TC in a bad light?? If so, swing and a miss. Looks completely rational to me.
— Scott Sanders (@ScottSa20301286) May 1, 2023
Is this supposed to make him look bad? 😂 keep digging. You can do better than this
— Kevin Lortz (@KevinLortz) May 1, 2023
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? He just says the website doesn’t function well.
— Sophia Benson (@SophiaB383) May 1, 2023
the user interface for fox nation does suck. so does media matters.
— joefis (@joefis) May 1, 2023
He’s right the site does suck to use.
— 🌿KJUNE (@kjune65) May 1, 2023
Tucker’s criticism of Fox Nation is accurate, and Media Matters sucks far worse than that across the board.
— Chris Chambers (@ChrisB_Chambers) May 1, 2023
How does this make Tucker look bad 🤔 Because I’m really confused 😕 nothing Tucker said was wrong
— arnetha7474 🇺🇸 🇺🇲 (@arnetha) May 1, 2023
In my short period of experience with Fox Nation, I don’t remember it being either stable or value for money; while hardly as bad as CNN’s cataclysmic short-lived foray into streaming, you would think that the most-watched cable news network would be able to come up with something a little better.
Furthermore, I doubt that one conversation about Fox Nation being unusable had any serious impact on Carlson’s tenure at the network. In fact, I would be more leery of any executive or top-level talent who, in conversations behind the scenes, thought the app was workable, stable and represented a good use of disposable income for subscribers.
Instead, Fox seems to be intent on diverting from substantive talk of what led to his sudden departure from the network, which doesn’t seem to be directly linked to his role in the lawsuit settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.
The latest theory comes from a Semafor article on Sunday, which revealed that Rupert Murdoch had a private phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a favorite target of Carlson’s — in the weeks before Tucker’s dismissal.
Another report from Vanity Fair cited Carlson’s faith and a powerful speech invoking God, prayer and the battle between good and evil in the public square that Carlson gave to the Heritage Foundation on the Friday before he was fired. Murdoch, a source said, “doesn’t like all the spiritual talk” — and other sources at the network noted the 92-year-old media baron has become increasingly erratic in his decision-making.
There’s other talk regarding separate lawsuits and Carlson’s general disregard for Fox News brass, none of which seem to add up to a conclusive reason why he would be canned — aside from the fact that Fox News positions itself as a platform for responsible, independent conservative thought and then cans responsible, conservative thinkers when they get a little too independent for the taste of the Murdochs.
Whatever the case, a) Fox Nation still isn’t that great and b) this video still isn’t a reason why Tucker Carlson got fired. It is, however, amusing and entertaining to see MMFA in the position of running interference for Fox News.
If the goal was making Carlson look bad, it backfired badly.
