High Shenanigans at Fox
Tucker Carlson
By Julie Lynch, LRWF Americanism Report, May 18, 2023
In one week’s time, Fox News settled a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems and then bade goodbye to its most popular cable news host, Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson Tonight was the highest rated show on all of cable news, consistently garnering around 31.2 million viewers per night. Aside from Donald Trump, Tucker has arguably been the most prominent conservative voice nationwide.
The Left sent up an enormous cheer at Tucker’s departure, calling him a racist, xenophobe, conspiracy theorist, and more. Of course that really means that Tucker was honest, insightful, compelling, and willing to tackle some topics that many would not. Both Axios News and Variety Magazine have reported that firing Tucker was part of the Fox News settlement with Dominion, although both Fox and Dominion deny this. Recently, however, an undercover journalist for James O’Keefe recorded a Fox producer confirming that yes, Dominion and Fox had an oral agreement to terminate Tucker.
Let us first address the conundrum of the Dominion lawsuit. Many Fox hosts, Tucker included, called into question the integrity of Dominion voting machines. These machines were used in 14 states plus Puerto Rico in 2020, including all swing states. Multiple discrepancies were noted at the time, although Dominion called them all “isolated incidents.” Texas twice rejected Dominion voting machines, in 2013 and 2019, stating that they had multiple hardware and software issues and didn’t meet certification requirements.
Do you remember the forensic audit of Dominion machines conducted in Michigan in 2020? The independent auditing firm found an error rate of 68% in one county and even more shocking, all the security logs for the Nov. 3 election had been removed. Log files for previous elections were still present, but someone had erased all the 2020 logs. These logs are the only way to conduct an audit trail because they contain all authentication failures, domain controls, error codes, information on network connections to file servers and to the internet. In Central Lake Township the audit team found that nearly all 1,474 votes in the precinct were altered. Votes for one candidate vanished, and then were added back to another. Clearly Dominion voting machines had problems.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that before 2020 Democrats loudly opposed voting machines. Kamala Harris stated in 2018, “We brought in folks who before our eyes hacked election machines.” Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar have all publicly denounced voting machines and demanded paper ballots. Boy, something has surely changed.
Why did Fox settle the Dominion lawsuit without even going to trial? Publicly, both Fox and Dominion agreed that neither wanted a multi-year trial with appeals. Clearly Fox wanted to minimize a large financial hit and Dominion didn’t want their systems examined too closely in multiple trials. Who knows, maybe Fox didn’t want that, either. So Fox paid $788 million to settle at the last minute and Dominion did not demand an on-air apology. Dominion walked away with
a generous sum of money, no close examination of their machines, and Tucker’s head on a platter.
Moreover, Fox primetime has gained nearly 40 new advertisers since Tucker’s departure - advertisers who didn’t like Tucker. With plenty of ad money and far fewer viewers Fox is looking more like CNN.
Dig deeper, though, and you will discover that while the Murdoch family owns 19% of Fox shares, Vanguard owns 11.4% of Fox shares and Blackrock Investment owns 15.4%, or $1.5 billion according to the Epoch Times. Since Vanguard technically owns Blackrock, together they really have 26.8% of shares, a controlling interest in the company. If the investors want Tucker gone, he’s gone.
Moreover, Fox corporation produces an ESG report every year. The ESG scores determine how much capital an investment firm can have in the company. In other words, if a company like Fox promotes social justice or environmental causes they get a good score and can attract more investment. Tucker Carlson definitely lowered Fox Corporation’s ESG score. Firing Tucker means higher ESG scores for Fox and more revenue for Blackrock.
You can imagine that Vanguard and Blackrock don’t give a rip about lost viewership and will happily rake in both the ad revenue and investment income. Most importantly, it is critical that Tucker be silenced through the 2024 election.
I don’t think Tucker will really be silenced, though, do you? He is already reportedly taking his show to Twitter. Yes, Tucker will survive this. The question is, will Fox?