The Editorial Board April 24, 2023 Updated: April 24, 2023 2:21 p.m. Comments
Is that a sigh of relief we hear coming from the governor's mansion?
Less than a week after the $787.5 million settlement between voting machine company Dominion and Fox News, the conservative media outlet announced it was parting ways with its star personality and Gov. Greg Abbott bully, Tucker Carlson.
Abbott had shown again and again that he could be influenced by Carlson’s attacks, most recently with his preemptive request to pardon the murder conviction of Sgt. Daniel Perry. The governor apparently ignored the evidence that convinced a jury including disturbing statements and posts by Perry including: “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex.”
That was simply the “latest example of the influence” that the host appeared to “have on GOP politics in Texas,” according to Chronicle political writer Jeremy Wallace, citing Carlson’s criticism’s of Abbott’s handling of the border and his support for Ukraine. In September 2021, he skewered Abbott for only sending 2,000 National Guard and 1,000 DPS officers to the border. Two months later, Abbott committed to sending 10,000 National Guard. Carlson asked, why not 19,000?
In an interview with Abbott, Carlson also floated an idea picked up in the Legislature in House Bill 20, saying: “Why don’t you say, ‘any person with military or law enforcement experience can join up? We are starting our own force, it’s volunteer …’” Abbott offered tepid pushback in response noting the need for proper training.
With one month to go in the legislative session, the pressure is on for Abbott to draw his line in the sand on items such as House Bill 20 and other extreme bills. Without Carlson scolding the governor on primetime TV, that pressure eases ever so slightly, according to Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
“Abbott will be feeling pressure from Dan Patrick and many conservative activists but what might’ve pushed it over the top is an onslaught by Tucker Carlson on a Thursday or Friday evening that reaches a second layer of Texas Republicans who aren’t inside that activist network and weren’t thinking about that issue until they learned about it from Tucker Carlson,” Jones said.
Won’t Carlson, like the disgraced Alex Jones, just find another way to reach his audience? Undoubtedly but it seems likely he’ll have to do it without the built-in base of a network audience.
“One of the reasons he was the top-rated pundit was because he was on Fox News,” Mark Jones said, “It provided him with the base and the time slot. And that demographic watches a lot of TV…they don’t stream.”
For now, a rotating set of hosts on Fox News Tonight will fill the Carlson-sized hole at the network. Some have pondered whether the settlement, and now the change in lineup, might usher in a reformed Fox News. That hope is worth considering for a moment. Americans deserve media that represents a broad range of viewpoints including conservative ones based in facts. The leadership at Fox News could embrace a transition, in the wake of the Dominion settlement and the end of Carlson's show. They could focus on ideas for solving real problems instead of on hateful fear, grievance and cynical disinformation.
The likelihood of such a transformation at Fox News is small and we can only guess at the reasons behind Carlson's departure. It’s all amicable, according to the network statement but circumstances suggest otherwise. Carlson’s last day was Friday and the host wasn’t given a chance to sign off on his own terms.
He had already embarrassed the network enough it seems. The defamation lawsuit that avoided by mere hours heading into a courtroom and dragging Fox stars onto the witness stand still managed to reveal that in private messages, Carlson was skeptical about many of the 2020 election fraud claims he platformed on his primetime show. Washington Post reporting suggests the split also had to do with disparaging remarks Carlson made about higher ups. We don't know what's behind the personnel change but the network doesn’t seem to have taken kindly to a star who doubted, even if just privately, company branding or brass.
Fox News, with its uniquely dedicated conservative viewership, will live to fight another day. In 2017, Bill O'Reilly's reign atop cable news ranking came to an end and Carlson quickly filled the void. The same audience that propelled Carlson to fame will likely usher in the next pundit-slash-celebrity. But for now, perhaps just for a moment, Abbott won’t have to fight with Carlson.
Maybe then he’ll remember who he’s really supposed to be serving: the people of Texas.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/tucker-carlson-greg-abbott-politics-legislature-17915269.php