OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Tucker Carlson is continuing to build a new team behind the scenes after being taken off the air by Fox News in April, and according to his biographer, many of them are coming from the network. Chadwick Moore, in several tweets over the weekend, claimed that at least nine members of the cable news king’s former Fox team have left to join 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 tweets come amid new fallout from the network after a long-time producer who took a potshot at President Joe Biden during a live segment has left.
Alex McCaskill, a 10-yet Fox News vet and a major behind-the-scenes collaborator with Carlson, said he requested to be let out of his contract with the network after he posted a chyron referring to Biden as a “wannabe dictator.”
According to The Associated Press, McCaskill ran the message in a bottom-screen chyron for about 30 seconds before it was taken down. The message ran concurrently with Biden speaking alongside a shot of former President Donald Trump giving a speech to supporters in New Jersey after he was indicted earlier in the day by Biden’s Justice Department.
Trump is Biden’s most formidable Republican opponent for the White House, thus far, in next year’s election.
McCaskill took to Instagram to respond in a message that claimed he “loved” working at Fox News but asked to be dismissed.
“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.”
For his part, Carlson addressed the situation in his latest “Tucker on Twitter” monologue, which was posted 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.”
