Tucker Carlson may have been the most interesting part of his Thursday interview with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy.
The former Fox News host and current Twitter podcaster revealed previously unknown details of his split with the right-wing conservative broadcaster and continued criticizing former colleagues, telling Portnoy that his one-time employer is “run by fearful women” and that he was surrounded by “incompetent” people running the business.
While making sure to note that he has no qualms with Fox owner Rupert Murdoch and his son, Fox Corp. chief Lachlan, who “were always nice” and “never got in my way at all,” Carlson took a shot at female executives at the company without naming names. “It’s a company run by fearful women,” said Carlson, who once called a senior executive a “cunt,” The Wall Street Journal reported back in April.
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In the 50-minute interview, which is part of Carlson’s “Tucker on X” video series that he launched soon after his dismissal from Fox, he told Portnoy that in regards to his shocking firing, he wasn’t “exactly sure what I said that was bad,” adding that over the course of his 14-year career at the right-wing media company, he was given plenty of latitude.
“They let me say whatever I want—whatever I wanted, really—for 14 years, and I’ll never stop being grateful for that,” he said. “And I even told them as they were firing me, like, ‘It’s your business.’ But I made a mental note: never work for anyone else again, and I never will. But I can’t be mad about it.”
“No one ever called me,” he added.
Carlson further explained to Portnoy that ultimately his firing was beneficial.
“Being humiliated in public, being fired….is totally good for you in the end,” he said. “It keeps you from thinking you’re Jesus.”
Shortly after Fox fired Carlson, the company also booted his senior executive producer, Justin Wells, who was named in a toxic work environment lawsuit that former producer Abby Grossberg filed earlier this year. Carlson recalled that it didn’t take long for an interested party to reach out to Wells.
“Within an hour of that happening, Elon [Musk] called him and said, ‘You should come to Twitter,’” Carlson said. “So I’ll never stop being grateful for that. We don’t work for Elon or anything, but we’re using the site just like everyone else is using it, which is a platform that is not censored.”
In May, Musk welcomed Carlson’s video series to Twitter while adding that there was no deal between the pair and that “Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators.”
