Tucker Carlson news – live: Fired Fox News host’s sexist comments about fans revealed as Newsmax ratings climb

Abby Grossberg, the former Fox News producer who is suing the network, said Tuesday that Tucker Carlson and his executive producer were responsible making her life a “living hell” when she worked for them.

Ms Grossberg, who was fired by Fox shortly after filing a pair of lawsuits against the network earlier this year, said during an appearance on MSNBC that Carlson’s sudden termination by Fox on Monday left her with mixed emotions.

“There were feelings first of ‘Yes!’ and then also the reality that you don’t want anything bad to happen to anybody,” Ms Grossberg said. “But at the same time, Tucker and his executive producer, Justin Wells, who was also fired, really were responsible for breaking me and making my life a living hell. So there is a feeling of justice, but it’s only partial.”

A recording of Ted Cruz speaking with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo in the days surrounding January 6 has shed more light on the senator’s intentions to assist Donald Trump in overturning the 2020 election.

The recording, made by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg and published by MSNBC and The Washington Post, reveals Mr Cruz’s support for an appointed electoral commission that would deny election certification relying on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

The Independent’s Ariana Baio has more:

Tucker Carlson was caught on video making inappropriate comments about women and his “postmenopausal fans” before he was fired from Fox News, according to a report.

In the video, obtained by The New York Times, Carlson is heard off-camera talking about whether his “postmenopausal fans” would like how he looks on his primetime show.

In a second video, Carlson is said to be heard referring to a woman as “yummy”.

The video has come to light as multiple reports have cited the discovery of offensive and crude text messages sent by Carlson as a key factor in his sudden ousting.

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith – who is investigating the events surrounging January 6 and Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election – are interested in former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg’s recordings of Fox stars during off-air conversations with elected officials and members of Trump’s team.

Ms Grossberg attorney’s Gerry Filippatos told CNN on Wednesday he provided Mr Smith’s team with a spreadsheet outlining the contents of the 90 tapes, some of which have been aired or published in recent days.

Talks are reportedly underway for a subpoena so Ms Grossberg can provide federal prosecutors with more information.

“We’re in the process of negotiating a targeted subpoena for Abby’s electronic data, so they can have what they want,” Mr Filippatos said.

Tucker Carlson's Twitter video breaking his silence after his firing from Fox News has gotten more views than his primetime show did at the right-wing network.

The views on his video – in which he continued to push conspiracies and made a thinly-veiled dig at his former employer – topped more than 1.8 million views in less than an hour after its release on Wednesday night, Twitter statistics show.

More than 5 million Twitter users saw the post on their timeline, statistics show.

This compares to the 1.7 million viewers who tuned in to watch Fox News Tonight on Tuesday, which replaced hisTucker Carlson Tonight show.

The Independent’s Richard Hall, who profiled Tucker Carlson in the months leading up to the 2020 election, at a critical juncture for the most-watched cable news personality in America, reflects on his departure from the network:

Fox News agreed Wednesday to hand over thousands of documents to voting machine company Smartmatic, which is suing the network for defamation in a case similar to Dominion Voting Machines’ just-settled lawsuit.

Smartmatic says Fox bears financial responsibility for airing false allegations that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election against former President Donald Trump.

Last week, Fox agreed to pay Dominion nearly $800m to avert a trial, although the ultimate cost to the media company is likely to be much lower.

Smartmatic wants a $2.7bn judgment, which far exceeds the $1.6bn Dominion sought in its suit. No date has been set, and the case might not go to court for a couple of years.

Smartmatic said in court filings that Fox “slow-rolled its production” of transcripts and other material that were created during the Dominion suit, and that Smartmatic had received just a small fraction of the more than 52,000 documents it requested as part of the discovery process.

Among the documents Smartmatic hopes will bolster its case are deposition transcripts for Fox founder Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, as well as documents related to company executive Raj Shah and lawyer Viet Dinh.

In a statement, Fox News said it was ready to defend itself in “this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events.”

Tucker Carlson Tonight was a hotbed of fossil-fuel industry talking points, wackadoo conspiracy theories and monologues interwoven with racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and homophobic material,The Independent’s senior climate correspondent Louise Boyle writes.

He claimed that the “existence of winter disproves the science of climate change”; called climate science a “state religion”; said scientists and activists “bully” people like him and “hate the Earth... hate nature.”

As The New York Times noted, his most reliable framing was “you vs them,” which he also applied to the climate crisis and the environment.

Good morning in America.

Hundreds of court filings and anonymously sourced reports from inside Fox News have stitched together a picture of a looming human resources nightmare inside the right-wing media behemoth, with a federal lawsuit from a now-former producer putting Tucker Carlson at the centre of allegations.

Overlapping accounts across multiple news outlets allege that the decision to fire him from the network may have stemmed from Abby Grossberg’s lawsuit, a “crisis” surrounding redacted vulgar messages aimed at other Fox News employees, and Rupert Murdoch’s allegedly growing impatience with the host of the network’s most-watched programme, among other factors.

A series of redacted messages discovered just days before what was set to become a closely watched defamation trial in Delaware allegedly sparked panic among Fox leadership that ultimately led to Carlson’s exit.

Private messages in legal filings reportedly include crude and offensive remarks from Carlson that, coupled with embarrassing behind-the-scenes revelations included with Dominion’s case against the company, prompted Fox leadership to take action, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported.

Tucker Carlson broke his silence following his abrupt exit from Fox News in a defiant and conspiracy-laced video he posted to Twitter on Wednesday night.

Carlson said in the video – which dropped at 8pm ET, his previous starting time in his Fox News slot – that after being “outside the noise for a few days” he realised how “unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are,” calling them “completely irrelevant” and insisting that they “mean nothing.”