AOC Celebrates Tucker Carlson Ouster: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could not contain her glee at Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News on Monday.
What AOC Said
“Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. Um, what I will say though is that while I am very glad that the person who is arguably responsible for some of the largest, driving some of the most amounts of death threats and not just violent threats to my office but to plenty of people across the country … deplatforming works and is important,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram.
It came a day after AOC told former White House press secretary Jen Psaki that government should get involved with removing him and those like him.
Connecting AOC the Dots?
Carlson friend and frequent guest on his show Glenn Greenwald wrote on Twitter, connecting the firing with her statement. Greenwald is hardly a man of the Right, having been a participant in Socialist conferences in the past as an opponent of the national-security state.
“Don’t forget: yesterday, AOC went on the show of Biden’s ex WH Press Secretary and demanded the Govt ban Tucker from being allowed on TV. Dems like AOC are utter authoritarians who crave state censorship. Independent platforms are immune from that,” Greenwald tweeted.
AOC told Psaki that Carlson’s commentaries and those of other Fox News hosts are “very clearly an incitement of violence.”
“There should be federal regulation in terms of what is allowed on-air and what isn’t,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
What Did Tucker Carlson Do?
Some have speculated that Carlson’s contrarian coverage of the January 6 Capitol riot led to his downfall.
News reports suggested that Carlson’s coverage of January 6 made Fox owner Rupert Murdoch uncomfortable. Murdoch ultimately decided along with his son, Lachlan, and the Fox board on Friday, to fire Carlson.
Carlson never explicitly defended violence and claimed that FBI informants may have stoked the violence at the U.S. Capitol created controversy. Ray Epps, an Arizona man, caught on camera explicitly inciting people to storm the Capitol on January 6, accused Carlson of being “obsessed” with him on 60 Minutes which aired Sunday night.
He, along with Republican members of Congress, have accused Epps of being a FBI agent provocateur, which the FBI denied in a statement to 60 Minutes, stating he had never worked for them as a source or in any capacity.
“Carlson … has relentlessly portrayed Epps as an FBI stooge who provoked the Jan. 6 rioters. In this alt-history of Jan. 6, the rioters are the persecuted victims of corrupt law enforcement institutions that were hijacked by elites to suppress a virtuous, if regrettably violent, uprising against an illegitimate order,” wrote Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent.
“The Epps conspiracy theory is based largely on video of him on Jan. 6 urging Donald Trump’s supporters to converge on the Capitol. Epps is seen whispering in the ear of one of them, after which the mob rushed police officers, supposedly showing he inspired that attack. After the FBI declined to prosecute Epps for his role on Jan. 6, the false-flag theory took hold.”
Unlike other hosts involved with the $787 million Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, Carlson expressed serious skepticism of the claim that the company’s software rigged the 2020 election, privately in internal emails.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Fox owner Murdoch to keep Carlson from going on air in the aftermath of the lawsuit.
Other Reasons?
Carlson’s politics might not have ultimately been the only reason why he was fired.
Abby Grossberg, a former producer on Carlson’s show, filed a lawsuit against Fox, listing Carlson as a defendant, in March claiming that Fox lawyers had coerced her testimony in the Dominion suit. Her suit listed a litany of examples of where Fox had been a toxic work environment for female employees.
She also claimed that sexist and anti-Semitic jokes had created a toxic work environment at the network while she worked on Carlson’s show. She claimed in her suit that Carlson used sexist language that was demeaning to women.
Carlson has been silent about what actually happened.
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John Rossomondo is a Contributing Writer for 19FortyFive and an award-winning journalist.
