Tucker Carlson began to see himself as a viable option for Donald Trump as the Republican Party presidential nominee earlier this year – in part because his job options were limited after he was dumped by Fox News.
The prime-time host had resisted quiet pressure from Fox brass to promote Ron DeSantis as the GOP favorite, and a disastrous meeting involving the Florida governor and Carlson's wife opened his eyes further to the possibility that he might have a path to the White House, according to excerpts from Michael Wolff's new book, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, excerpts of which have been published by New York Magazine.
"The question of whom he could fully support as a conservative candidate for president was a more complicated one — and had started to feel personal," Wolff wrote. "Carlson regarded himself as being in a small circle of clear-eyed people who knew Trump well and knew exactly who and what he was. If the field was Trump, DeSantis, and various hopeful brand builders and gadflies, then Carlson, the second-most-famous person on the right — with that new political X factor, a television persona — might realistically become a true MAGA-friendly Trump alternative himself. Once you saw it, the logic was undeniable."
Carlson suspected that his star might be dimming within the network after Trump's election loss, and he felt like Rupert Murdoch and other Fox bosses might be scapegoating him for the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, so he started looking toward the exit, according to Wolff's book.
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"He was also aware that voices in the Murdoch family were relentlessly campaigning to have him fired — and that there was a not-small chance he would be" Wolff wrote. "If that came to pass, Carlson’s transformative, cometlike success would abruptly, and ignominiously, end. That had always been part of the strange alchemy of Fox News. It made you — gave you a singular name: Tucker, Hannity, O’Reilly, Megyn — but somehow did not give you a star’s independent life. Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Paula Zahn, Fox superstars, had tried to go somewhere else and quickly faded away. It was a fate that weighed heavily on Carlson."
"His only alternative … might be to run for president. The White House. There it was, absent a note of irony: He could be unemployable but for the presidency," Wolff added.
Carlson decided that he would position himself as the antiwar candidate by questioning why support for Ukraine had become seen as a form of civic virtue, but the Fox News boss wasn't pleased when he learned of his interest in the presidency and blamed his son Lachlan Murdoch for risking the introduction of another network-backed conspiratorial candidate.
“My son wants his own president," Murdoch said, according to Wolff.