Are We Supposed to Believe This Is the Text That Got Tucker Carlson Fired?

It seems we may finally have the text message that got Tucker Carlson fired and it’s … kind of a letdown.

The former Fox News host was abruptly let go last week, with no explanation given as to why. There has been plenty of speculation, including that Carlson’s private messages—many originally redacted in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit filings—had shown a side of him that even Fox executives couldn’t stomach. Now The New York Times reports that it has the exact text that got Carlson fired.

In a message to one of his producers, sent just hours after the January 6 insurrection, Carlson said he recently saw a video of three white Trump supporters attacking an “antifa kid.”

“Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob … hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him,” Carlson said. “Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be.”

“The Antifa creep is a human being,” Carlson continued. “I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”

The Times reported that this text “set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox” that ultimately contributed to Carlson’s downfall.

But the thing about the latest message is that Carlson isn’t saying anything that’s worse than what he said every night on his show—until the end. The only way it seems possible that this message doomed him is that he ends the note by expressing concern over his own extremist views.

If what the Times is reporting is true, then as Media Matters writer Ari Drennen pointed out, it may not have actually been Carlson’s vile views that got him canned.

“It was that he expressed concern about the impact of that hatred on his own brain,” she said.

Take this apparent change of heart with a grain of salt: In Carlson’s first appearance post-firing, he doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. It also was previously reported that he was fired due to misogynistic comments. But given Fox’s long history with sexual harassment in the workplace, it’s unlikely that would have swayed executives. And again, none of this is too different from what he’s said on air.

What’s more likely is that had all of Carlson’s comments come to light earlier, it would have dealt a huge blow to Fox as it tries to fend off multiple lawsuits. It’s harder to argue that you don’t spout hateful falsehoods or create a toxic work environment for women when your star anchor’s own words show otherwise.

“They believed that he could broker who was House speaker. He wanted to do that live on air.”

This is what Abby Grossberg, the former Fox producer currently suing Tucker Carlson for discrimination, said about the then–Fox host’s apparent plans to work with Republican leader Kevin McCarthy in his bid to secure the speaker’s gavel. Grossberg’s comments came during an interview with Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night.

“[Tucker’s] plan was to have Kevin McCarthy come on the show,” Grossberg began. “Tucker a few days earlier had sort of set some terms for McCarthy, which included this Church kind of committee.”

Grossberg was likely referring to demands Carlson had made on January 3, including putting Representative Thomas Massie in charge of a “new Frank Church Committee” to investigate the FBI and other intelligence agencies.

“So, fast-forward to January 5, they start asking me to book McCarthy on the show that night,” Grossberg continued. “That afternoon, Justin [Wells, former Tucker Carlson producer] came in, and he said, here’s the plan: ‘Tucker’s gonna first have Kevin on, hear him beg and grovel. Then we’ll bring in Matt Gaetz, and Matt Gaetz will then kind of set his terms. Then Tucker will set his terms that McCarthy has to agree to … and we’re going to make this whole thing happen on air and save the Republican Party.’”

And the timeline, from the initial demands made by Carlson on January 3 to what happened next with regard to this grand plan to “save the Republican Party,” indeed seems to check out.

“Fortunately, for McCarthy’s sake, he said no,” Grossberg said. “But he did call Tucker the next day from his office with Representative Thomas Massie and had agreed to some of Tucker’s terms, according to a text that Tucker had sent me, and he said that was a win.”

What affirms this timeline? Carlson’s own show. On January 6, the two-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, Carlson celebrated McCarthy’s announcement to create a new Frank Church Committee—headed by, yes, Representative Thomas Massie.

“Looks like he’s going to be speaker, and his plan, we have just learned, is to appoint really one of the most honest and dogged members of Congress—we’ll just say it—Thomas Massie of Kentucky, to head that committee,” Carlson said on air.

“MCCARTHY AGREES TO PUT MASSIE ON NEW FRANK CHURCH COMMITTEE,” the Fox chyron blared, hinting at the fact that this was not some surprise plan that Carlson “just learned.”

“We were working to make sure that this Church Committee—a suggestion that you’ve had, and thank you for suggesting that I should be on it, I don’t know if you’re clairvoyant or just made the future happen, but it’s happening,” Massie said to Carlson with a grin and eyebrow raise.

Carlson flashed a momentary tight-lipped smile.

A Florida Republican representative accidentally admitted that his party hates LGBTQ people, while expressing support for a bill that would take away LGBTQ rights.

Jeff Holcomb spoke on the House floor Monday in favor of a resolution that states “‘woke’ social engineering and experimentation practices … are eroding military effectiveness.” The resolution would ban policies in the military such as diversity recruitment, unconscious bias training, and the use of gender-neutral language—effectively questioning the presence of LGBTQ people in the military.

“I just can’t let our military be labeled as racist and discrimination without a response. ISIS, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda—those are the folks who discriminate,” Holcomb said. “Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.”

As he says the quiet part out loud, Democratic Representative Kelly Skidmore’s jaw drops in shock. She is seated behind him and clearly visible in the video frame. Next to her, someone whose face is just out of frame raises their hand to their face, also blown away by Holcomb’s words.

Republican-led states across the country have begun blatantly targeting LGBTQ people’s rights, and Florida seems to be leading the charge. The state legislature passed a bill in mid-April that is so extreme it could ban all Pride parades and festivals in the state. The bill’s sponsor said he would support the measure even if it meant “erasing a community.” Yet another bill would allow the state to remove trans kids from their families. Separately, another Republican representative compared transgender people to “mutants” and “demons.”

A man committed arson against two places of worship and vandalized the office of a sitting member of Congress, but you would not have been blamed for missing it.

Jackie Rahm Little, also known as Joel Arthur Tueting, has been arrested after allegedly committing arson at two mosques in Minneapolis last week. He also is allegedly guilty of shoplifting spray paint before proceeding to vandalize Representative Ilhan Omar’s office, a patrol vehicle assigned to a Somali Minneapolis police officer, and a marketplace locally known as the Somali Mall.

Little has a troubling history, and the latest incidents embody the exact kind of violence most of mainstream America purports to care about: attacks on houses of faith, law enforcement, and elected officials. As always, the point is not to ramp up carceral impulses but rather to confront the basic fact that acts of arson against mosques and threats to one of the first Muslim women, the first Somali American, and the first naturalized citizen of African birth elected to Congress are simply not garnering the national concern that any such attack should warrant.

Court documents from the Justice Department detail the exact alleged sequence of events. On December 30, 2022, Little, using the email address wewantjesusdead999@gmail.com, sent a message to a congressional email account (redacted in the documents, though Omar has confirmed that her office was the target of the harassment). The message depicted a Quran in a toilet being urinated on by a male subject. The following day, Little sent an image of a bloody ear.

Days later, Little was seen “shoplifting or attempting to shoplift spray paint from a Target store.” Hours later, he spray-painted the text “500” on the door of Representative Omar, photographing his handiwork once done. In the evening, he went on to spray-paint the same message onto the vehicle of the Somali police officer before doing the same at the Somali Mall.

Two days later, Little sent another message to Omar’s congressional email account, with an image titled, “Ready for rush n*****.png” (censored). The image was of Omar in the U.S. Capitol speaking with a colleague.

Finally, two months later, on March 6, Little sent another message with images—one of which was a picture of the “500” spray-painted on Omar’s door.

The following month, in late April, Little started a fire in the bathroom of the Masjid Omar Islamic Center, which is located in the same building as the Somali Mall.

The next day, Little allegedly started a fire at the Masjid Al Rahma Mosque, prompting the evacuation of an array of individuals, including some 40 children who were attending daycare at the center. The damage may have totaled tens of thousands of dollars, according to court documents.

Authorities from nearby Plymouth’s police department say the suspect has a history of suspected arson, including in May 2022 and December 2021; he also has numerous documented incidents of domestic assault and other violent incidents on his record from as recently as March 2023.

“We are witnessing an epidemic of hate against the Muslim community and other religious minorities in Minnesota and globally right now. This campaign of terror is designed to keep us fearful and divided,” Omar said in a statement after the news of Little’s arrest. “As Muslim-Americans and as Minnesotans, we will not be terrorized. We will continue to stand united against bigotry because love is stronger than hate.”

Erstwhile Fox News host Tucker Carlson was caught on camera making crude and misogynistic comments, which could have contributed to his firing.

Carlson was abruptly let go last week, with no explanation given as to why. The New York Times reported a few days later that some of Carlson’s private messages had come to light. Originally redacted in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit filings, the Times said the now-revealed messages showed Carlson making “highly offensive and crude remarks” that somehow went further than the “inflammatory, often racist comments” he made on his show. The Times also said it had obtained videos of Carlson making nasty comments about women.

Media Matters released those videos Tuesday, and they’re pretty vile. The videos show Carlson joking around after cameras started rolling but before that episode of his show began. In one, Carlson jokes about discussing his sex techniques on air with then–Fox Nation host Piers Morgan.

“If we’re going to talk about sex, I’d love to hit some of the fine points of technique, but, you know, but it’s your show. It’s totally up to you,” Carlson told Morgan.

In another video, Carlson says he thinks someone’s girlfriend is “yummy.” The third video shows Carlson saying he likes to “wait for my postmenopausal fans to weigh in” on his appearance.

​​Carlson was Fox’s most popular host, and he made a name for himself by spouting falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and a range of racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies. He was also the subject of one of the many lawsuits against Fox News.

Former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who worked on Carlson’s show, is suing the network, alleging that company lawyers coerced her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion lawsuit. The move, she argues, was due to a culture of “poisonous and entrenched patriarchy,” citing multiple examples from Carlson’s team in particular.

It’s unlikely that Carlson was actually fired for his misogyny, given Fox’s long history with sexual harassment in the workplace. But his dismissal could be part of an attempt to get out ahead of Grossberg’s lawsuit.