Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon Fired: America Is Now In a Better Place – On Monday, CNN fired Don Lemon just hours after he ended his morning broadcast. The news caught many off guard – not the least of which was Lemon who tweeted a fiery post directed at his former bosses for lacking the “decency” to tell him directly.
Even more shocking was the fact that the news came mere hours after Fox News announced it had parted ways with Tucker Carlson, its top-rated prime-time host, effective immediately. As a result, Carlson’s final show was last Friday, even as he concluded the program, “We’ll be back on Monday.”
The announcement that Tucker Carlson would be departing the network came just a week after Fox News settled a monster defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over the network’s efforts to promote the 2020 election lies.
Lemon Squeezed Out – Not So Shocking
In the case of Lemon, he appeared to be the only person to be caught off guard by news of his termination. As TMZ reported in February, he was given a final warning after a lengthy history of behavior that would seem most people fired from their jobs.
Past colleagues have spoken out about his alleged misogyny, while it was last year, he asked CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp if she has “mommy brain.”
In 2014, he infamously offered advice to actress Joan Tarshis, who alleged sexual assault by Bill Cosby, during an interview about how she might’ve avoided being raped.
Carlson Lies for Ratings
Tucker Carlson’s firing was perhaps far less expected – but it really shouldn’t have been.
Carlson had proven to be a two-faced TV host, perhaps playing an onscreen persona that is little different from the “character” that Stephen Colbert embodied when he was on Comedy Central.
Carlson may have been much like the fictional Colbert, who was a brash and unapologetic conservative talk show host on the Colbert Report. The difference was that the audience was in on the joke of Colbert being a caricature of a televised political pundits.
Carlson always played it straight and made you believe that he believed what he said.
That included suggesting that the United States should have supported Russia’s takeover of Ukraine to win Moscow as ally against China. “Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?!” Carlson said back in 2019. “And I’m serious. Why do I care? Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am?”
He later claimed he was joking that he only roots for America. Yet, Carlson has repeatedly questioned why America should support Kyiv. Over the years, he also claimed he couldn’t find any evidence that there was a QAnon conspiracy, or that there was any evidence of a white supremacy element during the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
More recently, in March, Carlson attempted to use carefully curated and edited videos to suggest the January 6 protestors were essentially little more than peaceful tourists.
Tucker Carlson: Keep the Audience Engaged By Any Means Necessary
Tucker Carlson clearly understood that you need to keep an audience engaged, and by stating the outrageous and even outlandish, he always succeeded. However, the issue is that what Carlson said on the air often differed from what he said behind the scenes.
Along with other Fox News primetime stars, including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Carlson engaged with guests who pushed the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen – yet he told confidants that he “passionately” hated former President Donald Trump, while he further used misogynistic terms to criticize pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and reject her conspiracies about the 2020 election.
Elitist or Anti-Elitist?
Throughout his career, Carlson has carefully maintained an on-air personality that supports Trumpism to the extreme, yet we now know that is a lie.
So too is much of his background. He rallies against the Washington elite, even as he is has carefully edited his upbringing, which included attending a boarding school in Switzerland.
Carlson was free to say what he wanted on his show – and clearly viewers liked what he heard. The problem was that he was in all likelihood little more than a Colbert-like character. Yet, in this case, the audience just wasn’t in on the joke, or for that matter that the joke is on them.
America is Better Without the Hate and Anger
The firing of Lemon and Tucker Carlson should be seen as good news for America – but it doesn’t matter. CNN will find another angry liberal to rant about the evils of conservatives, and Fox News will almost certainly have someone ready to attack Biden and liberals.
What the viewers miss is that these shows aren’t about news in the least.
They’re echo chambers where minds are seldom changed, where there is little to no actual debate and where the viewers largely hear what they want to hear. Today’s news programs simply attack those on the other side of the aisle, but increasingly target rival news networks. That is unlikely to change.
Fox News will continue to call out the “craziness” on MSNBC, just as MSNBC will call out the “wing nut” theories from Fox.
The hosts may never see eye to eye, and that’s fine.
The problem is that the likes of Lemon and Tucker Carlson make it so that Americans don’t view those who live across the street with different political viewpoints as neighbors anymore; we’re being trained to see them only as the enemy!
We’re also told not to trust anything from the other party or from the other networks. Everything except what the respective host is saying is a lie or fake news.
As a nation we lose because of it.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
