Before firing Tucker Carlson last week, Fox News had parted with many big-name hosts over the years, including Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Shepard Smith, and Greta Van Susteren, now with Newsmax.
Each time, Fox was able to regain the audience it lost and remain the ratings juggernaut of cable news. But Victor Davis Hanson told Newsmax on Tuesday that Fox might be overestimating its ability to do it again after abruptly firing Carlson, who had the highest-rated show in cable news after moving into O'Reilly's prime 8 p.m. time slot in 2016.
"I think there's a tendency to think that because Bill O'Reilly led to Tucker in kind of a paradoxical fashion that Tucker is going to lead to 'Tucker 2,'" Hanson, a fellow at the Hoover Institute, told "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "But I think that the Republican conservative movement has changed radically since the Bill O'Reilly early Fox days.
"Whether you want to admit it or not. It's a populist, nationalist party. The days of John McCain and Mitt Romney and the Bushes are over with, and Tucker was the emblematic point man on that. And he was unorthodox, so I don't think that chemistry can be replicated, and I don't know if they understand that or not."
Hanson said the big question is whether Fox will let Carlson out of his contract so he can pursue work in another venue. Although Carlson's contract details are not known, Forbes reported he was making between $15 million and $20 million a year, and Vanity Fair reported Carlson was in the midst of negotiating the renewal of his contract through 2029 at the time of his firing.
"To what degree is he going to be liberated or not liberated to go out now and continue what he was doing in a different venue?" Hanson said. "… He had things on YouTube and all over social media and the Internet that want his voice, and I don't know what his status is. I don't think anybody knows.
"You hear all these rumors, but they're all waiting for the reappearance of Tucker Carlson to do what he does, maybe on a global, much bigger platform. I don't know to what degree Fox, or any other people can impede that. I don't see how they can."
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