Tucker Carlson has broken his silence after his sudden departure from Fox News but has not addressed rumours of being fired.
The controversial shock jock host gained a huge following for the network with Tucker Carlson Tonight, which often deployed xenophobic rhetoric.
But on Monday, he suddenly left the network, with reports suggesting he may have been dismissed on the orders of Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch.
In a cryptic video posted on social media, Carlson did not directly address the reasons behind his alleged firing.
Instead, he took aim at the US political system.
“Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it," Carlson said.
“Suddenly the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That’s a depressing realisation, but it’s not permanent," he said.
He said one of the things he noticed, “when you step away from the noise for a few days," is how nice some people are, and how hilarious some are.
“The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are," he said.
“They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years we won’t even remember we heard them. Trust me, as somebody who participated.”
Despite signing off the roughly two-minute clip with “see you soon," Carlson did not give any hints of his next move.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that a tipping point for Fox executives may have been private messages containing what the paper called “highly offensive and crude remarks” by Carlson.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Carlson called a senior executive the “c-word.”
The right-wing anchor’s departure came less than a week after parent company Fox Corp settled a defamation suit for $787.5 million (£631m) in which Carlson played a large role.
Dominion Voting Systems said in its lawsuit that Carlson allowed debunked election-fraud claims about the voting-technology firm to air on his show, while casting doubts on the plausibility of those claims in some of the private messages.
