Fox News announced on Monday that it had “severed ties” with top-rated presenter Tucker Carlson, sparking a social media firestorm.

During a segment of “The Five,” co-host Greg Gutfeld joked that Carlson will now run for president, and many of the other presenters remained silent.

Dana Perino took a sip of her beverage, Jason Chaffetz laughed, and Jeanine Pirro promptly transitioned to a new segment on a different subject. No one seemed interested in discussing Carlson or the explosive news, which suggests that on-air presenters may have been instructed not to discuss the situation.

However, Gutfeld had no qualms about mentioning Carlson and appeared defiant.

The conversation at the table began when they discussed the re-election prospects of President Joe Biden. Chaffetz predicted that despite Biden’s probable decision to announce his candidacy for re-election, he will ultimately not run. Biden did declare his candidacy for a second term early Tuesday morning.

“I think she actually might be a candidate,” Chaffetz said. “I don’t think Joe Biden – even though he may announce tomorrow – I don’t think by the time he gets to the end of the year he’s actually going to run.”

Gutfeld quipped about Carlson as the segment neared its conclusion: “And so in 2024, it will be Susan Rice versus Tucker Carlson.”

Okay, said Pirro before previewing the next segment and transitioning to a commercial break.

WATCH:

Gutfeld Jokes Tucker Carlson Will Run for President After Getting Fired by Fox Newspic.twitter.com/CDcbMfpdZP

— Patriot Alerts (@alerts___) April 25, 2023

Immediately following the announcement of Carlson’s dismissal, a new report sheds light on who made the final decision to sever ties with Carlson.

Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corporation, and Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox News Media, decided to terminate Tucker Carlson on Friday night, according to a new report. Scott then apprised Carlson of the decision on Monday morning.

“The power that Mr. Carlson, 53, wielded outside Fox News could not insulate him from a growing list of troubles inside the network related to his conduct on and off the air, some of which had been grating on Mr. Murdoch and his father, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, who co-founded the network in 1996, according to the two people with knowledge of the company’s decision,” the New York Times reported.

“The host, a polarizing and unpopular figure at the network outside of his own staff, was exposed as part of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems as a bully who denigrated colleagues and sources, often in profane and sexist language and called for the firing of Fox journalists whose coverage he disliked. He has also drawn condemnation from the right and left for his role in fostering a revisionist account of the assault on the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the outlet added.

The NYT report indicates that Carlson’s segment on the disturbance at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a “point of contention.”

“One early point of contention was Mr. Carlson’s 2021 documentary, ‘Patriot Purge,’ which advanced the conspiracy theory that the attack that day was a so-called false flag operation designed to discredit the former president and his political movement. Lachlan Murdoch was said to have been caught off guard by the program, which also led two conservative Fox News contributors to quit in protest, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes,” the NYT reported.

More on this story via Conservative Brief:

“In March, Mr. Carlson edited down tens of thousands of hours of footage from the attack given to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and used them to falsely portray the rioters as people Mr. Carlson called ‘mostly peaceful’ onlookers who had innocently ambled into the Capitol. The broadcast drew a rebuke from Senator Mitch McConnell, who is a friend of Rupert Murdoch’s and said Mr. Carlson had drawn ‘offensive and misleading conclusions,’” the outlet continued. CONTINUE READING…