It was the bombshell media story of the year when Fox News unceremoniously fired top-rated host Tucker Carlson in April. Making that Monday morning even nuttier was the fact that CNN’s Don Lemon was also shown the door after annoying virtually everyone–staff, executives, co-hosts, and even every woman over 40.
Lemon’s firing was predictable, but Tucker’s came as a surprise, and speculation has abounded since on what caused the abrupt termination: was it part of the Dominion settlement? Was it related to a harassment suit (since dropped) by a former booker for the show? Was it because Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch was ticked off at Carlson because he wasn’t suitably critical of the January 6 protesters? The New York Times meanwhile theorized that it was because of an internal email where Tucker was watching a clip of Trump supporters surrounding an Antifa thug and commented, “It’s not how white men fight.”
But many have also thought that it was the contents of his planned monologue that evening that was the final nail in the coffin and that he specifically wanted to talk about Ray Epps. Author Chadwick Moore, who recently penned “Tucker: The Biography,” made essentially that argument in a recent video. Network brass tried to force Carlson to change the opening, the story goes, but Tucker was insistent that he be allowed to deliver it–and boom, he was done.
Now Emerald Robinson, an independent journalist who has had stints as White House correspondent for Newsmax and One American News, says she has the scoop. In an exclusive post Thursday on her Substack, Robinson claims the following is the (abridged) text of what Tucker was going to say. He starts by pillorying Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and former Press Secretary Jen Psaki, both of who have repeatedly called for Carlson to be canceled:
Members of Congress aren’t allowed to talk like this. The Constitution of the United States prohibits it. American citizens have an inalienable right to critique and criticize their political leaders. Our politicians are not gods. They’re instruments of the public’s will. They serve the rest of us, not the other way around. For that obvious reason, politicians can never censor our speech or try to control what we think. That unchanging fact is the basis of our founding documents, of our political system and our personal freedoms. As a former government official who claims now to be a journalist, Jen Psaki should know this, and defend America’s foundational principle. She refuses. Instead, Psaki nods along like a fan as Sandy Cortez calls for law enforcement to shut down news programming. The White House Correspondents Association and various other self-described advocates of press freedom stay silent too. Apparently they agree with Ocasio-Cortes [sic], or they’re too afraid to say otherwise.
He says more on the subject, but I don’t think this is what the higher-ups objected to. It’s juicy stuff, but probably not enough to get him fired.
What really might have bent Murdoch’s nose out of shape is when Tucker talked about Ray Epps, a man who was filmed at the Jan. 6 riots apparently egging on the crowd but has inexplicably not suffered the wrath of the corrupt Department of Justice as have so many other J6 participants.
(Read: 60 Minutes Basically Screams, ‘Leave Ray Epps Alone!’)
Tucker wondered what AOC would say about Ray Epps. He pointed out that Epps was caught on camera encouraging protestors to breach the capitol. Tucker also pointed out that those on the left keep saying it was an “insurrection”:
January 6th was a violent insurrection they tell us — and on the basis of that claim, they’ve turned the war on terror against America’s own citizens. We believe that is a false characterization.
We saw similar violence in cities like Kenosha, Chicago, and Ferguson, he added, and yet nobody calls those events “insurrections.”
The next day, as the violence began, Epps was filmed again doing the same.
Was that legal? We can’t say. We do know that any fair person would define what Ray Epps said to the crowd on January 6th as inciting violence. Epps encouraged those around him to break through a cordon of armed police officers and breach a federal building. What Epps told the crowd to do could only lead to physical conflict. By Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes’ standard, Ray Epps should be punished for inciting violence. But Epps hasn’t been punished. Unlike more than a 1,000 other Americans who were not caught on camera encouraging crimes, Ray Epps has never even been arrested.
I know it would be much more interesting to watch Tucker deliver these words than it is to pore over them on a computer screen. I wish I had video to include, but alas, this monologue was never taped as we all know. Tucker is back though, and his brand new Twitter show is receiving massive numbers of views:
WATCH: Episode 2 of Tucker Carlson on Twitter
Tucker Carlson’s First Episode Melts Twitter, Here’s What He Said That Will Have Heads Exploding
If this was indeed the last straw for Carlson, it shows that there are fewer and fewer places where free speech is allowed. You must not ask why Ray Epps was not charged and left to rot in a D.C. prison like so many others who were there that day. You must call Jan. 6 a “violent insurrection,” or you will pay a price, even if the events of that day do not live up to the definition of “insurrection.”
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This article was amended to remove material that was behind a paywall. Read the full monologue here.