When Tucker Carlson was unceremoniously dumped by Fox News on Monday, the general feeling floating around was, “Oh, woe is he.”
But former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly, who was also fired by the network but for a real reason, said Fox did Carlson “a favor.”
“He’ll make a lot of clams,” O’Reilly said Wednesday on WMAL, a Washington, D.C., radio station.
And he offered some speculation on what prompted Carlson’s firing.
“Litigation was the reason,” he said. “There are a number of lawsuits pending and then more coming, where Mr. Carlson is going to be involved, particularly the one where he had a spy in his organization and she taped him and his staff and filed a suit in Manhattan. And the lawyer representing her, I understand, is, you know, saying, ‘Well, if you don’t pay us a lot of money, we’re gonna’ release the tapes,’” he said.
Former senior booking producer Abby Grossberg has reportedly filed two separate suits, accusing Carlson and Fox of sexism and harassment and alleging that his show’s workplace was rife with misogyny.
The suits come after Fox settled a defamation lawsuit by an election technology company for more than $787 million. Dominion Voting Systems sued over segments promoting bogus claims that election fraud cheated then-President Donald Trump of victory in 2020.
O’Reilly said workplace lawsuits are now commonplace.
“It’s an industry now,” he said. “What happens is you’re an employee, you don’t like where you’re working, you set up a taping apparatus to try to get anything, and then you hire a lawyer, and they come in and claim whatever they want to claim. So this is happening every hour on the hour all across the United States.”
“There are lawyers lined up to do this. Most of these cases are settled and nobody even knows about them. But this one is very high profile,” he said. And the accuser often comes out on top. O’Reilly predicts Grossberg could receive “between $10 and $15 million.”
O’Reilly’s career as the top-rated host in cable news came to a humiliating end in 2017 as Fox News fired him following the disclosure of a series of sexual harassment allegations against him. An internal probe turned up more problems.
But since then, he has built a successful independent career, running a daily podcast on Apple — Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis — and penning books. He reportedly makes $30 million a year.
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O’Reilly said Carlson, who reportedly earned up to $20 million a year at Fox, is poised to create his own independent operation.
“Carlson is a talented broadcaster. He’s got a big following. He’ll go into the independent news or analysis industry, of which I started six years ago. Ironically, it was to the week six years ago that I left Fox News. And he’ll make a bloody fortune. Because he’s interesting to listen to,” O’Reilly said.
“They did him a favor. I mean, my life is so much better now than it was six years ago when I had to deal with all this stuff. They did him a favor. He’s gonna make a lot of money,” O’Reilly said.
“Look, billoreilly.com is the most successful independent news agency in the world. Now, you’ll never see that written in the Washington Post or anything like that because they despise me. But we built this from nothing into this colossus, this worldwide news organization. And I’ve never, you know, I would have people ask, ‘Would you go back?’ No, no. I don’t want to work for anybody anymore. I don’t want to put up with all the corporate BS, which is like up to your eyebrows.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.