Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News shocked most everyone this week, including Carlson himself and his fellow hosts. According to Sean Hannity, he doesn’t “have a clue” about what led to the dismissal of his colleague — but “Late Night” host Seth Meyers suspects that that was an intentional move on Fox’s part.
The news of Carlson’s split from the network came on Monday morning and, in the days following, many have been trying to piece together what went down. During his radio show on Tuesday, Hannity said, “I guess people think that because I’ve been there the longest that I’d have some knowledge or understanding of what’s going on, but … I just don’t.”
During his show on Fox on Monday night, Hannity barely mentioned Carlson, except to claim that he was better than Don Lemon (who was also fired this week) because “he had a massive audience and has a huge following.”
“Yeah, Tucker has a huge following among racist lunatics and people who also want to f— the green M&M,” Meyers mocked on Wednesday.
During his show, Hannity also noted that he didn’t have “any details” on Carlson’s ouster, which Meyers found a bit hard to believe.
“You don’t have any details on it? His show was on right before yours,” Meyers said. “You chatted with, you texted with him. Is it possible they just didn’t tell Hannity the truth, you know, the way you lie to a five-year-old when their goldfish dies? ‘I don’t have any details about Tucker. All I know he is went to host a show on a farm upstate with a bunch of other racists — and I hear he’s real happy!’”
The “Late Night” host added that, in reality, he thinks Carlson’s former colleagues definitely do know what led to his ouster and have just been explicitly told not to say anything to the public. But, Meyers was pretty sure he could rule out one potential cause.
“Fox had no problem with his cruelty, racism and paranoid conspiracy theories, so I doubt he got fired for that,” Meyers said. “I mean, firing Tucker for racism now, after tolerating it for so long, would be like canceling ‘Sesame Street’ because you just found out they were puppets.”
You can watch Seth Meyers’ full “A Closer Look” segment in the video above.