In the wake of Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News, a speech that he gave after his final show aired drew attention on social media.
“You look around and you see so many people break under the strain under the downward of whatever this is that we are going through. And you look with disdain and sadness as you see people you know become quislings. You see them revealed as cowards. You see them going along with the new, new thing which is clearly a poisonous thing, a silly thing,“ he stated. ”You know, saying things you know they don’t believe because they want to keep their jobs. If there’s a single person in this room who hasn’t seen that through George Floyd, COVID, and the Ukraine war, raise your hand? Oh nobody? Right. You all know what I’m talking about.”
Carlson added to the audience: “And you’re so disappointed in people. You are. And you realize that the herd instinct is maybe the strongest instinct. I mean, it may be stronger than the hunger and sex instincts, actually. The instinct, which again, is inherent to be like everybody else and not to be cast out of the group, not to be shunned.”
His speech to the conservative organization came just a day after his final Fox News show aired. Toward the end of the program, Carlson told his viewers that he would be back on Monday, suggesting that the decision for him to leave may have been initiated by Fox.
“But you look around and you see these people and some of them really have paid a heavy price for telling the truth and they are cast out of their groups whatever those groups are but they do it,” he said later in his speech. “Anyway, I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration,“ Carlson said. ”I’m paid to do that. I face no penalty. Someone came up to me, ‘You’re so brave.’ Really?!?! I’m a talk show host.”
“It’s like I can’t have any opinion I want. That’s my job. That’s why they pay me. It’s not brave to tell the truth on a cable news show and if you’re not doing that you’re really an idiot, you’re really craven. You’re lying on television? Why would you do that? You’re literally making a living to say what you think and you can’t even do that, please.”
On Monday, Fox News released a statement saying it parted ways with Carlson, and another anchor, Harris Faulkner, said the two parties came to a “mutual” agreement. Carlson hasn’t issued a public statement about the matter.
“You’ve saved me before,” Carlson laughed. “We do that for a lot of people, very happily,” Roberts said.
Before his departure, Carlson was the highest-rated Fox News personality, and at times, the No. 1-rated show in cable news. In recent days, he interviewed Tesla founder Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump, and broadcast never-before-seen Jan. 6 footage on his show months before that.
On Monday evening, morning host Brian Kilmeade was tapped to a new Fox News show broadcast during Carlson’s old timeslot.
