Megyn Kelly said that Fox News made a “big mistake” by parting ways Monday with its top primetime host Tucker Carlson. Kelly added that she thinks Carlson will benefit from it.
Fox News abruptly ended Carlson’s eponymous show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” for reasons still not yet known. Kelly, who was fired from NBC News in 2018 for her comments on blackface, said Carlson was the most popular on the network, making his ousting a misjudgment of its audience.
“So what do they do now in the wake of that settlement? They get rid of Tucker? Talk about misjudging your audience yet again, because trust me, I still hear from the Fox audience all the time who I still have great relationships,” Kelly said on Sirius XM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show.” “Many, many, many viewers are now my fans on this show and he’s the only reason they watch — a lot of them — he’s the only reason a lot of people still watch Fox News. Out of respect to my other colleagues there, I’m saying he’s their favorite.”
Kelly said she believes management made the decision to “part ways” with Carlson because he had believed he would return to his program Monday. When she previously left the network, she said Fox News granted her with a final primetime episode. (RELATED: Conservatives Outraged By Tucker Carlson Leaving Fox News, Cancel Fox Nation Subscriptions)
Kelly then said Carlson did not get the network into any trouble regarding the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, in which Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million in an April 18 settlement over its claims that Dominion assisted President Joe Biden in winning the election. Carlson was one of the first at the network to publicly discredit claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.
“I think this is a massive error,” Kelly said. “I think this is a misjudgment of what their audience wants,” Kelly continued.
“If this is a reaction to the Dominion lawsuit, why is Maria Bartiromo there, why is Jeanine Pirro still there? Why is Suzanne Scott still there? The CEO of Fox News. She got them in far more trouble with her executive emails about Dominion and the audience than anything Tucker did behind the scenes.”
“I realize that the left hates Tucker’s guts, I get that this is a joyful day for them, but internally at Fox, they always had that gauge, at least under Roger Ailes, of how to ignore those critics and do what was right for its critics and the audience, and the truth,” she continued.
She ended by saying Fox News made a “bizarre move” for a network that is “concerned about its audience.”