Tucker Carlson cuts and runs

Resident Fox News white supremacist Tucker Carlson suffered an ugly scandal over the weekend when one of his show’s top writers was caught posting a long series of horrific sexist and racist remarks under a fake name. That writer has since resigned, and tonight Carlson addressed the controversy on air. Then he conveniently announced that he was cutting and running.

Tucker Carlson announced on the air tonight that he’s going on a vacation. He claims it’s long been planned and has nothing to do with the scandal. Fine, that could well be the case. But Fox News hosts have a long and consistent history of suddenly going on “vacation” whenever they get into particularly ugly scandals. Sometimes they return from those vacations, and as in the case of Bill O’Reilly, sometimes they don’t.

We’ll see if Tucker Carlson still has a show when he’s done going on a “vacation” in the middle of a pandemic. We know that Fox News doesn’t care how racist he is. But his racism keeps causing him to lose advertisers, making his show a problem in the profit-and-loss column. If he loses any more advertisers as a result of his latest scandal, he’s in real danger of losing his show.