Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson was photographed speaking on Aug. 7, 2021 at a conservative political festival in Esztergom, Hungary. (Photo by Janos Kummer/Getty Images.)
Fox News has accused its former top-rated host Tucker Carlson of breaching his contract by launching a new show on Twitter, multiple news outlets have reported.
The network declined to comment on the matter.
Carlson's attorney Bryan Freedman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but he told Deadline in a statement: "Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds. Now they want to take Tucker Carlson's right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events. That's not going to happen. Not in the United States of America."
Earlier this week, Carlson launched his new show "Tucker on Twitter" under a shroud of controversy, both legal and otherwise. Having hosted a nightly program branded as the "most racist show in the history of cable news" before going independent, Carlson opened his debut Twitter show with a cascade of antisemitic tropes against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish. He called Zelensky "sweaty and rat-like," "a persecutor of Christians," and "a friend" to U.S. investment bankers.
Deadline's source told the publication that Fox's letter "did not include threats or suggest recriminations" — but stated its belief that the show amounted to a contract violation.
Axios, who first obtained a copy of the letter, published portions of it on its website.
"Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, Mr. Carlson's 'services shall be completely exclusive to Fox,'" it states.
Fox reportedly told Carlson that his contract left him "prohibited from rendering services of any type whatsoever, whether 'over the internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution whether now known or hereafter devised.'"
It's the latest turn since Fox fired Carlson in the wake of a $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems and then released a statement saying the parties "parted ways." Speculation has raged as to the reasons for the termination, which occurred days after the deal was etched.
Some attributed it to the massive liabilities Fox incurred by disseminating false voter-fraud claims after the 2020 election.
The New York Times reported that the discovery of a text message set off panic among Fox executives. In the message, Carlson reportedly commented on a video showing a group of men attacking an "antifa kid" and was troubled the "three against one" melee.
"Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously," Carlson wrote, according to the paper. "It's not how white men fight."
Then, Carlson reportedly mused that he hoped the attackers would kill the kid.
"Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him," the message said. "I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being."
Antifa is short for anti-fascist.
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