OPINION
Tucker May Be Gone, but the Millions of Brains He Poisoned Remain
Tucker Carlson never truly believed the conspiracies he was selling—but that shouldn’t stop him from being held accountable for the deluge of fear and anger he unleashed.
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
"Tucker Carlson is gone from Fox News, but his many lies still poison the psyches of the millions who watched him every night.
“Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he said about Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election in one of the chain texts with other Fox News fixtures that came to light during the recent Dominion defamation lawsuit, which the network has since settled for $787.5 million.
The texts made clear that Carlson himself did not believe the former president. Carlson merely preached that lie, along with a host of others, as part of an actual conspiracy run by Rupert Murdoch to build a gullible Fox audience—and hoard the accompanying wealth and influence. Carlson voiced his priorities in another text after Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich suggested on air that there was nothing to indicate that Dominion had been party to voter fraud.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson texted. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Carlson was the one who got fired on Monday morning, perhaps for business reasons, but certainly not for telling the truth. He and Murdoch remain responsible for the damage they did no matter what they do in the future.
As Carlson’s I-know-the-real-truth voice and you-can-trust-me face beamed into viewers’ homes, the world outside them became an ever darker and more dangerous place. . ."
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