After Fox News curtly announced on April 24 that it was parting ways with its most popular host, Tucker Carlson, speculation immediately began over what prompted the shocking development. Did it relate to Fox's recent $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over defamation charges? While the company's attorneys denied it, telling Axios that Dominion "did not insist" on Carlson's firing, a recent undercover video from O'Keefe Media Group raised questions about that claim, with a "Fox News at Night" producer claiming "Tucker getting fired was part of [the settlement]."
That producer, former primetime host at the network, Bill O’Reilly, and many others have also pointed to what Carlson planned to discuss that Monday evening as another possible reason. The star host was reportedly set to respond to a "60 Minutes" interview with Ray Epps about his alleged role on Jan. 6 and "the Murdochs were like not too happy about it," the producer told the undercover OMG journalist. Carlson biographer Chadwick Moore also confirmed that his last monologue did, in fact, center on Jan. 6 and Ray Epps, which O'Reilly claimed "was setting Epps up for a massive lawsuit against Fox News and Tucker Carlson."
So what, exactly, did he plan to say? Independent journalist Emerald Robinson claims to have text from that monologue, which she posted on her Substack. Carlson starts by discussing how Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki repeatedly called for him to be canceled.
(Here’s the lead I’m envisioning. Sandy Cortes just did an interview with Jen Psaki in which she demands that authorities pull our show off the air. )
Members of Congress aren’t allowed to talk like this. The Constitution of the United States prohibits it. American citizens have an inalienable right to critique and criticize their political leaders. Our politicians are not gods. They’re instruments of the public’s will. They serve the rest of us, not the other way around. For that obvious reason, politicians can never censor our speech or try to control what we think. That unchanging fact is the basis of our founding documents, of our political system and our personal freedoms. As a former government official who claims now to be a journalist, Jen Psaki should know this, and defend America’s foundational principle. She refuses. Instead, Psaki nods along like a fan as Sandy Cortez calls for law enforcement to shut down news programming. The White House Correspondents Association and various other self-described advocates of press freedom stay silent too. Apparently they agree with Ocasio-Cortes, or they’re too afraid to say otherwise.
It’s distressing to watch this. The last thing America needs is more public figures saying radical things. What if we came on the air five nights a week and called for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes to be handcuffed and carted away because we don’t like her political views? We could certainly do that. We never would, because it would be terrible for our country. Extremism is self-perpetuating — the more you encourage, the more you get, exponentially. We don’t want that. We want to live in the United States we had a few years ago, where people who disagreed with one another were willing to debate directly, using facts and reason, and didn’t call for their opponents’ imprisonment. We’ll do whatever we can to return to that standard, including giving Sandy Cortez airtime. She is welcome on this show any time. We’ll travel to meet her anywhere, and give her the full hour. We’ll be civil and rational, and let those watching decide who’s got a more appealing vision for America’s future. We’ve asked her to come on this show many times. We’ll continue to do that.
That's not the section that likely irked higher-ups at Fox, however. He also addresses "the question of Ray Epps."
And where, we wonder, is Ocasio-Cortez on the question of Ray Epps? January 6th was a violent insurrection they tell us — and on the basis of that claim, they’ve turned the war on terror against America’s own citizens. We believe that is a false characterization. As we’ve said many times January 6th was not an insurrection, which is why no one has been charged for that crime. No guns were brought into the Capitol. No plans to overthrow the government have ever been found. It was not an insurrection. But there was violence. A Capitol police officer called Michael Byrd executed Ashli Babbit, an unarmed protestor, and was praised for doing it by politicians in both parties. Outside the building, a riot broke out. Windows were smashed; cops were assaulted. We were offended by this on the day it happened, and we said so. We still are. We’re against violence, whether it’s in Chicago, Ferguson, downtown Kenosha or on the west steps of the Capitol building in Washington. The main question from January 6th is, how did the violence start? Nearly two and a half years later, we still can’t say with certainty, but there are clues in the contemporaneous video tape. The night before the riot, for example, a man called Ray Epps was caught on camera encouraging protestors to breach the capitol.
The next day, as the violence began, Epps was filmed again doing the same.
Was that legal? We can’t say. We do know that any fair person would define what Ray Epps said to the crowd on January 6th as inciting violence. Epps encouraged those around him to break through a cordon of armed police officers and breach a federal building. What Epps told the crowd to do could only lead to physical conflict. By Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes’ standard, Ray Epps should be punished for inciting violence. But Epps hasn’t been punished. Unlike more than a 1,000 other Americans who were not caught on camera encouraging crimes, Ray Epps has never even been arrested.
Since releasing the "forbidden transcript," Robinson highlighted some shenanigans taking place on Twitter over her report:
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Hey @elonmusk why is Twitter removing view numbers from my exclusive on @TuckerCarlson unaired last monologue? pic.twitter.com/pVOqdmqTZG
— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) June 8, 2023