After being booted off the air by Fox News in April, Tucker Carlson has continued to assemble a new crew behind the scenes, and many of them, according to his biographer, are employed by the network. In a number of tweets over the weekend, Chadwick Moore asserted that at least nine members of the cable news king’s Fox team had defected to work for him.
“My sources have now told me *NINE* former Tucker Carlson Tonight staffers have left Fox News to join Tucker on his next venture. There are others who are waiting to leave as soon as a role opens up for them with Tucker. Each of the 9 approached Tucker, not the other way around,” he wrote on the platform.
“Also, quietly, many familiar faces from Tucker Carlson Tonight are refusing to appear on Fox News since Tucker was bizarrely pulled off the air—and not just the ones who got blacklisted for writing a book about him!” he added. “Tucker Carlson’s team at Fox was extremely close. Most of them were there from the launch of the show until it’s end, and they’ve stood by their boss in the aftermath.”
Moore’s statements coincide with fresh backlash against the network following the departure of a longtime producer who insulted President Joe Biden during a live broadcast.
Alex McCaskill, a 10-year Fox News veteran and key behind-the-scenes partner of Carlson’s, claimed he asked to be released from his contract after posting a chyron referring to Biden as a “wannabe dictator.”
The message appeared on a bottom-screen chyron for approximately 30 seconds before McCaskill took it down, according to The Associated Press. The message was shown while Biden spoke and a picture of former President Donald Trump addressing his supporters in New Jersey shortly after being indicted by Biden’s Justice Department earlier in the day was shown.
The most formidable Republican challenger against Biden for the White House in the upcoming election is Trump.
McCaskill responded on Instagram, saying he “loved” working for Fox News but requesting his firing.
“Today was my last day at Fox,” McCaskill wrote on the platform. “It’s been a wild 10 years and it was the best place I’ve ever worked because of the great people I met. But the time has come. I asked them to let me go, and they finally did. To all my friends there: I will miss you forever.”
Carlson, for his part, addressed the circumstance in his most recent “Tucker on Twitter” rant, which was published on Wednesday:
On Tuesday afternoon, the Biden administration had Donald Trump arrested. It was a pretty big news story. You may have seen it. Just before 9 pm that night, as part of its coverage Fox News ran two live video feeds next to one another. On the right, Donald Trump addressed his supporters in New Jersey. On the left, Joe Biden spoke at an event for the Secretary General of NATO in Washington. Beneath those videos at the bottom of the screen, Fox’s Banner read this way “wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”
Those words are up for less than 30 seconds, but the effect was immediate. Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked. First, they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen. Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He’d been at Fox for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately.
Then the company issued a public apology for the 27-second long wannabe dictator Line the chyron was taken down immediately,” Fox’s PR department said and then added ominously it was “addressed.”
