Fox News on Saturday sent a memo to staff condemning the “horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior” of Tucker Carlson’s former top writer, Blake Neff.
Neff resigned on Friday after CNN Business discovered that he had been posting racist and sexist material in an online forum under a pseudonym.
“Neff’s abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation,” FOX News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and FOX News Media President & Executive Editor Jay Wallace wrote in the memo. “Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our work force.”
Neff disparaged Black and Asian people and derided a woman for being a “megashrew” in multiple pseudonymous posts. Comments include, “Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down,” which CNN said Neff wrote last month. In another post made this week, CNN reported that Neff said that he “wouldn’t get LASIK from an Asian for free” in response to an email thread with the subject line, “Would u let a JET BLACK congo n— do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?”
Scott and Wallace said that Carlson will address the controversy on his show Monday night.
Neff was asked to join “Tucker Carlson Tonight” as a writer in November 2016 from the Daily Caller, where he was an education correspondent, according to a recent profile published in Dartmouth University’s alumni magazine. In the profile, Neff also said he was responsible for the “first drafts” for “anything” that Carlson was reading off the teleprompter.
Read Fox’s full memo below:
Dear colleagues,
Yesterday we learned that now former employee Blake Neff, a writer on Tucker Carlson Tonight, made horrendous and deeply offensive racist, sexist and homophobic comments under a pseudonym on the forum AutoAdmit.
We want to make abundantly clear that FOX News Media strongly condemns this horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior. Neff’s abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation. Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our work force.
Tucker will be addressing this on his show on Monday night.
Thank you,
Suzanne & Jay