GOP should fire Tucker Carlson

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Pairing "News" with "Fox" has been questioned for some time, especially after the network allowed lies about the 2020 election to fester on its air. Now the cable channel is front-page news again after it "parted ways" with top-rated host Tucker Carlson on Monday.

The reasons for what is clearly a dismissal are many, not least Carlson's duplicity in what he said (or left unchallenged) on air compared to what he really thought of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" about losing his re-election bid. Carlson's reckless texts on the matter were just some of the overwhelming evidence that led Fox News to settle a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million last week.

That evidence evidently included other discoveries that finally became untenable for Fox brass, including denigrating the company's management and another lawsuit over alleged harassment of a female employee, suggesting that Carlson's caustic, toxic takes extended beyond politics.

While not as highly rated or sought after by politicians as Carlson was, another prominent cable news personality, CNN's Don Lemon, was also dismissed on Monday. As with Carlson's case, there appear to be many reasons why CNN jettisoned Lemon, but among them were controversial comments he said on-air about when women were "in their prime," as well as having challenging workplace relations. (In another unrelated Monday firing, NBCUniversal let go of CEO Jeff Shell after a CNBC anchor filed a sexual harassment complaint against him.)

For the most part, journalists shouldn't become news. But then again, Lemon had long ago begun to blur journalism and commentary. Carlson wasn't a journalist and had gone beyond opining to operating the levers of Republican politics, including with Trump himself.

And yet Carlson's grip on the GOP not only continued but extended to the top of Congress and his relationship with House Speaker McCarthy, who gave the TV host exclusive access to thousands of hours of surveillance footage of the Jan. 6, 2001, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That assault put McCarthy's colleagues' lives in jeopardy.

True to form, Carlson cherry-picked footage to fit into his lie that the attack was more peaceful than the reality. He called the MAGA mob assaulting police officers "mostly peaceful," a description rightly derided by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as "offensive and misleading."

This manipulation shouldn't have been surprising, considering Carlson's discredited documentary, "Patriot Purge," which suggested the lethal attack was a false-flag operation by the U.S. government. Carlson also distorted many viewers' — and sadly, lawmakers' — views of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose enduring courage would have been championed as Churchillian in the Reagan-era GOP. Instead, Carlson often seemed disgracefully sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who justifiably has been accused of war crimes.

Fox News has parted ways with wayward hosts before, including Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, only to replace them with hosts like Carlson, suggesting the brand may indeed be bigger than the stars. But it's likely that the country hasn't heard the last of Carlson, although he now is the only host to have been canceled by CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

That's show business. But this is the news business, and it should include objective reporting and clearly labeled opinion and commentary. (The "PBS NewsHour" is a good example.) Ideally, audiences and advertisers will take Monday's abrupt dismissals as a cue to reexamine their news-viewing habits.

When asked on "The Charlie Kirk Show" about Carlson's Monday exit, the host's friend and supporter Donald Trump Jr. said, "I think it changes things permanently."