More On The Tucker Carlson Crisis For Fox

It's important to repeat that neither Fox nor Tucker Carlson has said much of anything about exactly what happened with Mr Carlson or why. Fox's statement a week ago was, "FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor." But even this appears not to be fully accurate, since Carlson himself later texted, "I'm still employed by Fox."

On Sunday I posted the explantion that I've found most credible, though it's only one of many possible ones, that Rupert Murdoch, 92 years old and behaving erratically, fired Carlson impusively in a fit of pique over largely uncontroversial remarks he made at a Heritage Foundation gala. One factor that supports this surmise is that Fox has had so little else to say about the whole episode, which suggests that Murdoch, the big boss who can fire anyone, was behind it, but nobody who works for him has been able to come up with a credible alternative explanation, so nobody's tried.

Yesterday I ran across another explanation, which given the lack of any other data points that would confirm or refute it or any other, strikes me as equally credible:

Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch held a previously unreported call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this spring in which the two discussed the war and the anniversary of the deaths of Fox News journalists last March. The Ukrainian president had a similar conversation with Lachlan Murdoch on March 15, which Zelenskyy noted in a little-noticed aside during a national broadcast last month.

The conversations came weeks before the Murdochs fired their biggest star and most outspoken critic of American support for Ukraine, Tucker Carlson. Senior Ukrainian officials had made their objections to Carlson’s coverage known to Fox executives, but Zelenskyy did not raise it on the calls with the Murdochs, according to one person familiar with the details of the calls.

The piece goes on to comment,

The New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages, Murdoch family mouthpieces, have regularly criticized Republicans who oppose the war. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said DeSantis made his “first mistake” by characterizing the war as a “territorial dispute.”

Murdoch “was disturbed by Carlson’s stance on Ukraine. A graphic on Carlson’s show had referred to Volodymyr Zelensky, president of the besieged nation, as a ‘Ukrainian pimp,” the Washington Post reported.

But Tucker cuts both ways. He was the first to question Sidney Powell's narrative of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, which left him well outside the line of fire in the Dominion lawsuit, which Murdoch recently settled to the puzzlement of observers like Alan Dershowitz. And while, like many others, I found Carlson's view on the election a hard pill to swallow, he turned out to be right.

And while for much of last year I supported US policy in a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine, I've become more and more uneasy when, first, a predicted winter counteroffensive failed to materialize, and at least for now, a spring counteroffensive that seemed even more likely has not yet taken place, although it's early May. TIME said in January:

Time is not on Ukraine’s side. A strategy of maximum pressure may provide the only path to victory, requiring Ukraine and its allies to remain relentlessly on the offensive this winter. . . . A strategy of maximum pressure carries heightened risks, but the alternative is almost certain defeat.

If the efficacy of the Ukrainians’ September offensive is an indicator of their capability, there is reason to believe that subsequent offensives could lead to equally significant territorial gains. But success poses its own challenges. President Volodymyr Zelensky has maintained throughout the war that it will end in negotiations. Victory on the battlefield creates the route to the negotiating table[.]

But something has clearly changed. Although the US and NATO have continued to send billions in aid, there's been no continuing pressure and certainly no battlefield results equivalent, say, to Gettysburg or even Antietam for Lincoln. Nor has there been any acknowledgement or explanation of these changed expectations anywhere in received opinion. As recently as February of this year, there was happy talk about retaking Crimea:

Just over a year ago, most western commentators and policymakers had effectively written off Ukraine ever regaining control of Crimea. . .

That view is now changing. A year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his disastrous war — which not only saw Russia annex further chunks of Ukraine, but which has already cost Russia more casualties than the U.S. saw in Vietnam — the geopolitical tides have shifted measurably. And in the past few months, with Ukrainian forces continuing to reclaim regions from Russian forces, western voices have begun revisiting a topic they’d long brushed off: Crimea.

Rather than viewing the peninsula as a Russian appendage, an increasing number of experts and policymakers have begun arguing that restoring Ukrainian control of Crimea may be the key ingredient for any lasting peace — and that, increasingly, only Ukrainian sovereignty over the region will guarantee stability not only in Ukraine, but in Europe overall.

. . . Ukraine will need to reclaim significant holdings in places like Zaporizhzhia and even Donetsk before considering an assault on Crimea.

But as of now, there's been no push for even Zaporizhzhia or Donetsk that might signal progress toward reclaiming Crimea -- even though the reports are that Ukraine has received the modern battle tanks it had requested from the West. So what's the plan?

I never watched Carlson's show, but I have a feeling that if he'd asked these sorts of questions -- the Ukraine situation has pretty clearly changed, we haven't been seeing the counteroffensives we've been implicitly promised, yet nobody's explaining what's going on -- I think we'd hear about it, just as we heard about his views on Sidney Powell and the kraken without the need to tune in.

This analysis of Tucker carries a suggestion to me that whatever's happened between Tucker and Fox may have been based on more than just pique:

This was bound to happen eventually, as Carlson doubtless knows. The truth is that Fox News was always an awkward fit for a man of Carlson’s independent spirit. He had outgrown his employer’s cynical business model, which is to keep viewers captive with impotent rage. Carlson is too real for that.

There may have been more direct pressure on him not to cover issues like the January 6 films, when what was teased as a week-long series ended after just one night, or indeed to hold off on criticizing US and NATO strategy in Ukraine, which seems to have changed in recent months with no explanation.

The problem for Fox is that its silence in the face of an ongoing crisis -- the loss of roughly half its prime-time audience -- leaves it open to every possible adverse speculation, including the possibility that Murcoch capitulated not just to political pressure, but pressure from a foreign government. From just a corporate crisis management standpoint, leaving Carlson aside, this couldn't be a worse strategy.

But we do also have the less important question of what direction Carlson's career will take and what he'll do if he feels a continuing need to speak out -- that will depend ultimately on his character, and we'll just have to see how this plays out, but while I'm willing to be surprised, I've learned not to trust bow-tie Episcopalians. I got to know them a little too well.