HBO's 'Succession' warned us about Tucker Carlson and why Fox News has to lie

This piece includes spoilers. There’s no pandemic, no January 6 insurrection, no Trump — just a weak-kneed conservative in the Oval Office nicknamed “the raisin.” But “Succession” captures Fox News’ business model in a way journalism can’t. That dynamic explains why the Murdochs backed Tucker as he turned his prime-time show into the “White Nationalist Power Hour.” His outrages made him stronger, saying immigrants made America “poorer and dirtier,” calling Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” echoing the Proud Boy creed that “white men” were responsible for “creating civilization,” spewing misogyny, covid denialism, election falsehoods, the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “false flag.” Even bellowing the neo-Nazi “great replacement theory” — that there is a secret plot by elites to replace whites with dark-skinned immigrants — in more than 400 episodes was enough to get him canned. One exec said Fox viewers felt “betrayed.” Another executive said of the fringe news channels, “They are just whacking us.” Like Logan Roy, Murdoch’s primary concern was the bottom line. According to the Wall Street Journal, he wrote to the Fox News CEO, “Everything at stake here,” and warning “against antagonizing Mr. Trump.” On-air, of course, Fox News was hyping election fraud stories around the clock: suitcases full of secret ballots; Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, fixed the election; Dominion software shaved votes from Trump and added them to Biden; Dominion voting machines could be hacked; 35,000 votes illegally cast in Georgia; George Soros stole the election, and many more.