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By Aleks Phillips
U.S. News Reporter
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Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson has taken aim at his former network after the removal of a producer over a chyron earlier this week that described Joe Biden as a "wannabe dictator."
In a lengthy speech on the fourth episode of his new Twitter show, which as of 4:20 a.m. ET on Friday had been viewed 11.7 million times, the conservative commentator critiqued the news channel's handling of the incident before insinuating that the president bore the hallmarks of a dictator.
On Tuesday evening, just before 9 p.m. ET, Fox News was reporting on Biden's speech at a Juneteenth concert at the White House following the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump.
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For less than a minute, it showed the president speaking at the event side-by-side with Trump giving an address in Bedminster, New Jersey. "Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested," the chyron read.
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At a White House press briefing the following day, when asked about the chyron, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there were "probably about 787 million things I can say about this," before adding that it was "wrong" and declining to comment further.
The Daily Beast later said sources inside the network had identified Alexander McCaskill, who previously worked on Carlson's primetime show, as the author of the chyron. In a short statement to the outlet, a Fox News spokesperson said the chyron "was taken down immediately" and had been "addressed."
"Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked," Carlson claimed. "First, they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen. Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned.
"He'd been at Fox for more than a decade. He was one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately."
The former Fox News anchor—who parted ways with the network in April—then went on a sarcastic diatribe in which Carlson enumerated various examples as to why Biden was not a "wannabe dictator," implying the opposite.
"Of course, Joe Biden's not a wannabe dictator," he said. "Just because he's trying to put the other candidate in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he himself committed doesn't mean he has a totalitarian impulse.
"C'mon, that's absurd! It takes a lot more than jailing your political rivals to earn the title of 'wannabe dictator.'"
While Trump and his allies have claimed that the federal case against him regarding classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, residence—in which he denies any wrongdoing—were a politically-motivated attempt to stop him running in the election, others have noted that Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the case, was an independent special counsel and that Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury of his peers.
Carlson went on to say that becoming a dictator was a "process" with "a lot of steps," including using the political apparatus to enrich themselves and their families—an apparent reference to the Republican-led House Oversight Committee investigation into the Biden family's financial dealings—and shooting citizens who gather to protest. He then mentioned Ashli Babbitt, a January 6, 2021 protester who was killed by Capitol Police during the uprising, before Biden was president.
"The main reason you know Joe Biden is not a wannabe dictator is because he just does not fit the profile as a man. Dictators have that look—you know one when you see one. Dictators build cults of personality around themselves, and they use those cults to deny the glaringly obvious," Carlson said, a statement he applied to no other presidential candidate.
He finished by turning to a recent message from the president regarding LGBTQ+ rights, in which Biden said: "They're all our kids."
"A nation is like a family," Carlson continued. "Every family has a head—a father; that's Joe Biden, our nation's father. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is now his fatherland. Just don't call it a dictatorship, or we'll have to issue a statement disavowing you."
Newsweek approached Fox News and the White House via email for comment on Friday.
The conservative news anchor, who is popular among MAGA Republicans, left Fox News after it settled a defamation case brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems over claims by Trump allies that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, Fox News announced on April 24.
In a statement, it said the two parties had "agreed to part ways" and thanked Carlson for "his service to the network."
The controversial figure was let go after a text message was uncovered during Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network, in which Carlson appeared to show support for a group of what he described as "Trump guys" beating a "kid" up.
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