Tucker Carlson’s time as a host at Fox News is finished.
Fox News Media announced in a statement this morning that the company has “agreed to part ways” with the controversial host.
“We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” the statement said.
Carlson last appeared on air Friday night and ended his show by telling viewers to have a good weekend and “we’ll be back on Monday.”
Tucker Carlson Tonight was a highly-rated primetime show for Fox News, regularly attracting more than three-million nightly viewers.
It will continue to air as Fox News Tonight on an interim basis, the company said, with a rotating group of Fox News personalities at the helm until a new permanent host is named.
There was no immediate explanation from Fox News as to why Carlson was leaving, although the decision came less than a week after the network settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for over $787 million.
Dominion sued Fox News in 2021 for pushing a false narrative about the company’s involvement in rigging the vote during the 2020 US presidential election.
It was alleged that statements made on Carlson’s show after the election were defamatory and he had been expected to testify in the trial if it had reached that point.
Carlson, who started at Fox News as a contributor in 2009, had been hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight since November 2016.
The shakeup at Fox News wasn’t the only one this morning, as Don Lemon took to social media shortly after the Carlson news broke to share that he had been fired by CNN after 17 years.
Don Lemon On Twitter:
“I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN, I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly,” Lemon wrote, noting that the news was broken to him by his agent.
“At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network. It is clear that there are some larger issues at play.”
The news anchor’s firing comes after Variety published a story in early April with allegations that he mistreated female colleagues over the course of his career at CNN.
Lemon had been with CNN since 2006 and was a central figure of the network’s prime time coverage for nearly a decade.
