Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson trashed the network's Fox Nation streaming service prior to his firing, according to a leaked video obtained by Media Matters.
Carlson in the recording criticized Fox over its "failings" and called the Fox Nation streaming push "a betrayal of our efforts." Carlson said that rather than post his interviews to the service, he would rather "dump the whole thing on YouTube."
Carlson in the video is seen talking on the phone on the set of his show, discussing preparations for an upcoming interview with Andrew Tate, a British-American misogynist and far-right media personality who Carlson had previously interviewed on his segment in August of 2022. Carlson said he would serve as "a representative of the American media now, speaking to an exile in Romania and welcoming him back into the brotherhood of journalists."
Tate was arrested in December of 2022 by Romanian authorities under suspicion of human trafficking and forming an organized crime group.
Speaking to an unknown person, Carlson in the video says, "I don't want to be a slave to Fox Nation, which I don't think that people watch anyway."
"Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks," he said. "So I'd really like to just put the — dump the whole thing on YouTube. But anyway, that's just my view. OK. I'm just frustrated with it. It's hard to use that site. I don't know why they're not fixing it. It's driving me insane. And they're like making, like, Lifetime movies. But they don't, they don't work on the infrastructure of the site. Like what? It's crazy. And it drives me crazy because it's like we're doing all this extra work and no one can find it. It's unbelievable, actually."
"We're like working like animals to produce all this content," Carlson added, "and the people in charge of it, whoever that guy's, whatever his name is, like, they're ignoring the fact that the site doesn't work. And I think it's like a betrayal of our efforts. That's how I feel. So I, of course, I resent it."
Though the reason for Carlson's split with the network remains unclear, Abby Grossberg, a former producer on his show, recently filed a lawsuit against Fox, alleging a culture of misogyny at the network.
Watch the video below via Media Matters:
