Tucker Carlson, a source of repeated controversies, is leaving Fox News

Fox News said Monday that it had dismissed Tucker Carlson, its most popular prime-time host and one of the most influential voices on the American right.

Carlson’s departure stunned people inside Fox News and the larger conservative media world, where he has had power like few others to elevate candidates and controversies on his 8 p.m. show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

His last program was Friday, Fox News said. Two people briefed on his departure said Carlson was only informed Monday morning that he was gone from the network.

The program became a must-watch for conservatives during the presidency of Donald Trump, an ideological ally and occasional confidant of Carlson’s. Both men helped push hard-right positions on issues like immigration reform and race relations into the Republican mainstream, and both relished ways to antagonize their political opponents with audacious and often untrue attacks.

In recent weeks, however, it was tumult unfolding off the air that consumed Carlson and his program. He was set to be a star witness in the trial over Dominion Voting Systems’ billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News until the network last week abruptly settled for $787.5 million.

Fox News offered a terse statement of gratitude in making the announcement late Monday morning. “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” the network statement said.

Carlson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

His position at the network appeared to grow untenable quickly. Fox News had been promoting an interview Carlson was set to do on Monday with Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate for president in 2024.

Fox News host Harris Faulkner said on air Monday that starting that evening, an interim show, “Fox News Tonight,” would fill the 5 p.m. hour “with rotating Fox News personalities until a new host is named.”

It wasn’t just Carlson’s words on the air that got him in trouble. His private messages with producers – in which they denigrated Trump and his legal advisers after the 2020 election in vulgar and sexist terms – were disclosed as part of the defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems. In one exchange with staff, Carlson texted about Trump: “I hate him passionately.” In another, he labeled Trump – whom he often praised on his show – “a demonic force, a destroyer.”

And late last month, one of his former producers filed a lawsuit against Fox News, claiming that Carlson ran a toxic workplace.

His departure brings to an end a rapid and controversial rise at the conservative news and opinion channel, where Carlson was promoted to the prime-time lineup in late 2016 and quickly emerged as one of the major media stars of the Trump era.

More than any other Fox News host, Carlson drew in viewers by harnessing the cultural anxieties and racial grievances of the former president’s political base. He warned his viewers that they were under assault from liberal elites and unchecked immigration, borrowing some of his central themes from the white nationalist and far-right web and polishing them up for a more mainstream audience.

When Fox launched a streaming network, Fox Nation, to draw more revenue from its most loyal fans, it was Carlson who became the new platform’s top personality, with a thrice-weekly talk show and periodic documentaries that doubled down on his themes of duplicitous elites and race-obsessed liberals.

At his height within Fox News, he defied the network’s senior leadership while cultivating the impression among colleagues that he was cozy with the Murdoch family, particularly Fox chief Lachlan Murdoch. Though in his sworn deposition as part of the Dominion suit, Carlson said the two men were not especially close. Asked how often he communicated with Lachlan Murdoch, Carlson replied, “Rarely.” He added, “It’s not on a weekly basis or even a monthly basis.”

He also wielded his stature to bully and pressure more junior colleagues on the news side when they challenged the show’s powerful opinion hosts or reported – accurately – on the 2020 election results.

In the recent lawsuit filed by one of his former Fox News producers, Abby Grossberg, she accuses Carlson of presiding over a misogynistic and discriminatory workplace culture. Grossberg said in the lawsuit, which was filed in March, that on her first day working for Carlson, she discovered the workspace was decorated with large pictures of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wearing a plunging swimsuit.

Grossberg said Carlson’s staff frequently used vulgar terms for women, and that she was once called into the top producer’s office to be asked whether Maria Bartiromo, a Fox Business host for whom she previously worked, was having a sexual relationship with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy.

Grossberg also claimed that after she was coerced by Fox News’ lawyers into providing a misleading deposition in the Dominion case and defending an offensive text from Carlson, his producers emailed the rest of the staff in recognition of “Abby Day” and suggested ordering a staff lunch to celebrate.

Fox News has disputed Grossberg’s claims. She was fired after filing the suit. A spokesperson said in a recent statement: “We will continue to vigorously defend Fox against Grossberg’s unmeritorious legal claims, which are riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees.”

Justin Wells, senior executive producer of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” is also no longer employed by Fox News, according to two people with knowledge of the decision inside the network. Wells had worked closely alongside Carlson since his prime-time show began in 2016.

In recent years, Carlson, 53, has grown his platform and reach inside the network, and left people to believe that he was untouchable in a sense.

He signed a new deal with Fox News in 2021, expanding into podcasts and a series called “Tucker Carlson Originals” for the streaming service Fox Nation.

In 2022, he gave an interview with upstart media outlet Semafor in which he boasted how he operated with virtual autonomy at Fox News. “I don’t clear anything with anybody. I file my script late,” Carlson said.

He is not the first star Fox News personality to leave the network after developing a huge following – and leaving fans with the impression that they were simply too big to fail. In 2011, the network pushed out Glenn Beck, the Tea Party megastar whose anti-Barack Obama rants made his show one of the most popular in Fox News history. Two years later, Fox News parted ways with Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor.

Fox executives said at the time that one factor more than anything else led to the departures: No one person is bigger than the network.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.