Fox News Channel is waging war on Tucker Carlson.
But the network is going to live to regret this fight.
And now Fox News hit Tucker Carlson with a threat that turned into one giant mistake.
Tucker Carlson made good on his word and debuted his new show on Twitter.
The two, 10-minute monologues posted on Carlson’s account garnered a whopping 169 million views.
Fox News reacted by trying to censor Carlson.
The network’s legal counsel dispatched a cease-and-desist letter demanding Carlson stop posting new episodes of his show to Twitter or face legal consequences.
“Fox News has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tucker Carlson as he ramps up a competing series on Twitter that drew a combined 169 million views for its first two episodes,” Axios exclusively reported.
Carlson’s lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, fired back and slammed Fox News for trying to muzzle the network’s number-one star.
Dhillon warned Fox News that continuing to pull dirty tricks to keep Carlson on ice would backfire financially and not serve the interests of viewers or shareholders.
“Fox News continues to ignore the interests of its viewers, not to mention its shareholder obligations,” a statement from Dhillon read.
Fox News wants to block Carlson from broadcasting through the rest of his contract – which runs through the 2024 election – as management now sees the real threat to Fox News’s livelihood in the aftermath of yanking Carlson off the air.
Dhillon alluded to the fact that Fox News lost more than 30 percent of its primetime audience following the fateful decision to bench Carlson.
“Doubling down on the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news industry, Fox is now demanding that Tucker Carlson be silent until after the 2024 election,” Dhillon added.
But Dhillon also warned Fox News that baseless legal threats would not bully Carlson into acquiescing to the network’s irrational scheme to silence his voice.
“Tucker will not be silenced by anyone,” Dhillon concluded. “He is a singularly important voice on matters of public interest in our country, and will remain so.”
Fox News executives thought getting rid of Carlson would be no different than firing Bill O’Reilly or when Megyn Kelly left.
Both Kelly and O’Reilly were positioned as the faces of Fox News, but ratings did not dip when they left.
That lulled executives into the delusion that the real star was Fox News’s brand itself.
But the overnight plunge in ratings following Carlson’s sacking painted a painful reality.
And now Fox News is fighting dirty using every trick in the book to try and punish Carlson.
But this scheme could backfire should Fox News’s vindictive streak end up obliterating whatever confidence its remaining viewers still have left in the outlet.