The Fox News producer who authored the network’s chyron Tuesday night labeling President Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator” has parted ways with the company, two sources told The Daily Beast on Thursday.
Former Tucker Carlson Tonight managing editor Alexander McCaskill, who features prominently in a toxic work environment lawsuit by a former colleague, is no longer with the network.
McCaskill confirmed his exit in a private Instagram post reviewed by The Daily Beast, in which he said it was “the best place I’ve ever worked,” but “the time has come” and so he asked Fox “to let me go, and they finally did.” The image showed the ex-producer standing out front of Fox News’ New York headquarters carrying a box of his belongings. “To all my friends there: I will miss you forever,” he concluded.
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Carlson himself revealed the news without naming McCaskill in the latest episode of his “Tucker on Twitter” video series. The ousted Fox News host said that after the chyron ran, “the women who run the network panicked.”
“First they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen,” Carlson claimed. “Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He had been at Fox for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately.”
Carlson then turned to the network’s public statement about the chyron, which was shown on screen during the tail end of what had once been the time slot for Tucker Carlson Tonight. In a terse statement, Fox said the chyron “was taken down immediately and was addressed.”
“That was all true, but it was not enough to save Fox News from the ensuing scandal,” said Carlson, citing criticisms of the right-wing network’s programming decision from the likes of The Washington Post and actor John Cusack.
Carlson also complained about White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying Wednesday that Fox airing the chyron was “wrong.” Notably, Fox News cut away from Jean-Pierre’s response during its live broadcast of the press briefing.
The firebrand host then went on a sarcastic diatribe suggesting that his longtime producer’s chyron was, in fact, accurate.
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“Of course Joe Biden’s not a wannabe dictator. Just because he’s trying to put the other candidate in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he himself committed doesn’t mean he has a totalitarian impulse. That’s absurd! It takes a lot more than jailing your political rivals to earn the title of ‘wannabe dictator,’” Carlson said sarcastically.
Carlson went on to portray Biden as a dictator by pointing to how the mother of deceased Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt was arrested—after allegedly striking someone in Washington, D.C., in May.
Shortly after Carlson posted his video, Donald Trump thanked him for it, saying it was “very insightful.”
Neither McCaskill nor Fox News responded to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
Though his years of service earned McCaskill some kind words from Carlson, a lawsuit filed by his former colleague, Abby Grossberg, paints a different picture.
Grossberg, a former producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight who was fired by Fox in March, has alleged that there was a misogynistic culture at Carlson’s show—naming McCaskill repeatedly as a ringleader among staff.
According to her lawsuit, her complaints about sexual harassment by two male producers went unheeded—and she also claimed that McCaskill discriminated against her because she was Jewish, and that she felt “constantly gaslit and belittled by” him.
McCaskill once commented that Fox News’ “mothers’ room,” where employees could pump breast milk, was a “waste of space,” according to the lawsuit. Grossberg also alleges that he once mocked the appearance of Rep. Kathryn Cammack (R-FL) as “fat like Kelly Clarkson,” and even engaged in a conversation suggesting that a booker on Carlson’s show should “sleep with Elon Musk to get [an] interview.”
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