THE DESCENT OF DONALD TRUMP

Trump Loses Tucker as His Media Mouthpiece

Carlson gets the boot, and Trump’s media presence all but disappears

Editorial rights purchased from iStock. Image by unomat.

Okay, so FOX isn’t exactly mainstream, but it’s as close to it as Trump will ever get. And now that his champion, Tucker Carlson, has been unceremoniously fired from FOX, it’s hard to imagine Trump getting the kind of attention he is used to from any of the remaining FOX hosts— especially now that FOX has just settled a lawsuit with Dominion for repeating Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

Trump may still have Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Maria Bartiromo in his corner, but none of them wields the power that Carlson did. (I’m pretty sure nobody in Congress is shaking in their boots for fear of what Bartiromo et al. will say about them.)

Conversely, Carlson had tremendous power — at least as long as he was on FOX. As a result, many in the Republican Party were beholden to Carlson and terrified of what he might say about them. Some have even accused Carlson of using his power to effectively influence policy in the Republican Party.

As for Carlson, he must have been surprised when he found out just ten minutes before air time on Monday that he wasn’t going to be on the air. Even the pundits are scratching their heads over what exactly was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Was it the nasty and insulting comments Carlson made about the Murdochs? Was it the enormous check FOX had to write to Dominion, partly due to Carlson’s on-air lies and the texts/emails that proved he knew they were lies? Was it the upcoming lawsuit filed by his former producer, who has accused Carlson of creating a toxic work environment? Or was it his constant insistence that the United States should pull out of Ukraine and let Putin have his way?

The tail was wagging the dog so the dog had to go

I’m guessing it was all those things and something else: Carlson had too much power for too long. Like Trump, who thought he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes, Carlson seemed to believe he was the most important person at FOX and the only one who mattered. To his detriment, he…