A Timeline Of The Controversies

Carlson joined Fox News as a contributor before gaining his prime-time slot seven years later, as Bill O’Reilly’s show was winding down amid sexual misconduct allegations.

By the end of 2018, Carlson’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight was the second highest-rated cable news show in prime time, but it was being boycotted by at least 20 advertisers because Carlson said “unregulated” immigration made the U.S. “poorer and dirtier and more divided.”

In March 2019, the boycotts continued and were joined by calls to fire Carlson after Media Matters resurfaced audio from a radio program in which Carlson likened women to dogs and defended statutory rape—Carlson did not apologize and his ratings increased 8% that week.

In December 2019, Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News after Carlson accused her in a 2018 episode of extorting Donald Trump—the lawsuit was dismissed in September 2020 with the judge ruling the extortion claims were opinion-based and reasonable viewers would have “skepticism” about the allegations.

In the weeks following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in May 2020, Carlson said the nationwide protests and calls to defund police departments were “definitely not about black lives” and critiqued a mob mentality among protestors—the comments cost him major advertisers like The Walt Disney Co. and T-Mobile, but his show became the most-watched cable news program ever in early June.

In July 2020, Carlson’s head writer, Blake Neff, resigned after CNN Business reported he had been posting offensive remarks under a pseudonym on the message board AutoAdmit, which Carlson condemned.

Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which Carlson controversially aired, the host has theorized the riots were a “false flag” FBI operation intended to make the right look bad, and most recently said the protesters were “right” to believe the election was “unfairly conducted”—-despite the fact his network was facing a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems about their coverage of the 2020 election that ultimately ended in a $787.5 million settlement.

Although Carlson condemned Putin for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he has supported some pro-Russia arguments, including the theory that the U.S. and Ukraine were developing biological weapons together, and many of his broadcasts have been used by Russian state television to support their messaging, according to reports by Mother Jones.

In March, former Tucker Carlson Tonight senior producer Abby Grossberg sued Carlson and Fox News for allegedly forcing her into giving misleading testimony in Dominion’s defamation suit, which she escalated last week to include Fox’s CEO Suzanne Scott and accuse Fox’s lawyers of deleting messages off her phone.

Following the announcement of Carlson’s departure on Monday, Grossberg released a statement saying it was “a step towards accountability” for Fox’s coverage of the 2020 election and for “the abuse and harassment” she allegedly endured during her time as a producer.