Wow. Rob Schmitt on Newsmax last night night reported that Tucker Carlson's average audience nightly while on Fox News was between 3 million and 3.5 million viewers a night.
And in the same 8pm time-slot, Brian Kilmeade on Fox as his replacement averages 1.3 million. That is a huge exodus away from Fox, viewers clearly not sticking around after Fox's abrupt firing of Tucker Carlson.
Viewership on Newsmax is up an average of 175% across the board in the first week since Tucker Carlson's firing. It's clear that it's not just anger about Tucker Carlson being fired, but a loss of trust in those remaining at Fox News. In particular distrust in Fox's executive leadership, Suzanne Smith, the Murdochs, and Paul Ryan.
It began with the firing of Roger Ailes in 2016, and the gradual takeover of Rubert Murdoch's sons, particularly Lachlan Murdoch, who are ultra-Left, and have been pushing behind the scenes to turn Fox into another CNN.
The hiring of RINO Paul Ryan to Fox's board of directors was suspect, and Ryan's push to hire Donna Brazile as a commentator on The Five and other Fox shows was the first move that infuriated me.
I read an article in 2016, pointing out that despite Fox's audience (certainly including me) overwhelmingly supported Trump's 2016 campaign for president, but during 2016 the majority of opinions on Fox News, both anchors and interviewed pundit guests, were overwhelmingly never-Trumpers (such as Shepard Smith, Neil Cavuto, Jonah Goldberg, Guy Benson, etc.). That was the beginning of the period where I still watched Fox News, but with cautious skepticism, that they were on a number of issues not being as fair and balanced as they used to be, and drifting into unchallenged deceitful leftist narrative.
Fox, in 2016, for the first time would let Democrat propagandists Like Donna Brazile, Juan Williams, Chris Hahn, Richard Fowler and others rant their obviously lying talking points completely unchallenged, whereas they used to break in and point out where these Bolsheviks were undisputably factually wrong. For the first time, Fox anchors would let them go with "Okay, that's your opinion". NO, it is the job of the anchor to point out where the guest's "facts" are quantifiably untrue, and then present the true facts.
The great breaking point in trust was in Nov 2020, when Fox was the first network to declare Biden "won" the presidency on election night (actually, they officially declared it electorally on Saturday a few days after the election, but from election night Tuesday, Fox News already projected Biden was the winner, though still undecided. The very first network to do so. )
Then in the weeks after the election, Fox News hosts like Brian Kilmeade, and even for a few nights Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, were pushing their viewers to "just accept" that Biden was the winner. They openly aided a rigged election, by propping up the narrative, and for the first time were on the vanguard of selling that election narrative. No doubt with executive pressure on them to do so.
That, Nov 2020, is when I first abandoned Fox News for several months. And even then my loyalty to Fox News was still strong enough that I would still give them a chance every night. But when they would avoid the truly meaningful issues, avoid the election fraud issue, after 60 seconds of this each night , I'd flip over to Newsmax or OAN, where they WERE discussing the actual vital issues. Fox lost a huge share of their viewership in those first 6 months, and only when they started exploring the truly meaningful and important issues did I, and millions of other viewers, again begin to watch Fox News again.
But since Jan 2021, I've noticed that Fox News *NEVER* covers Trump speeches or rallies. Never even shows highlights or summaries, or the slightest mention of his speeches. Especially noticeable since Trump announced in Nov 2022, and immediately became by far the leading GOP candidate for 2024. And no mention of Trump, no coverage by Fox of Trump's speeches or core campaign issues. For all that time, you have to leave Fox to see Trump's speeches, go to Newsmax, or OAN, or Rumble.com .
You can't even find Trump's speeches using Google or DuckDuckgo.com, they are algorithm-ed out, invisible in online searches. The only way to see them is to watch them live on those channels (OAN, NEwsmax, or Rumble.com) or go directly to their websites to search for Trump's videotaped speeches there. And since Nov 2020, Fox News has joined George Orwell's liberal media in locking out access to the truth on a wide array of other issues.
For example, regarding January 6th for the most part, at least in the early months after those protests, propagandized by Democrats and the media as an "insurrection". Tucker Carlson went from selling that narrative in the early months, to becoming one of the most powerful proponents for revealing the truth, that what rioting there was on January 6th was done by FBI agents and an Antifa/John Earle Sullivan group, and a handful of dupes who stole a speaking podium, or propped their feet up on a desk in Nancy Pelosi's office (a pose suggested and photographed by two undercover FBI agents). The FBI and Antifa instigators, despite photos to identify them, were never identified and arrested.
But the PEACEFUL protesters, virtually all the 1,300 arrested, Trump supporter business owners, real estate agents and grandmas, cancer patents, remain in federal prison in inhuman conditions, held without trial for over 2 years now, FOR WHAT?
While the real plotters of January 6th violence, false-flag undercover FBI agents stoking violence such as Ray Epps and others clearly photographed and easily identifiable (if FBI wanted to identify them), go unpunished.
All except a few on Fox News avoid mentioning these things. Tucker Carlson developed the courage to use his visibility to do so, and was removed for it.
Likewise, for a long time Fox mostly didn't challenge the Covid-19 lockdown narrative and vaccines. It was only after Fox's audience was abandoning them in the first 6 months after Jan 2021 that they began to challenge that narrative, with guests like reporter Alex Berenson, MRNA vaccine technology inventor Robert Malone, and Dr. Scott Atlas, among other prominent virologists and researchers. But again, it took Fox a while to break away from the mainstream media narrative, and to earn back and regain lost viewers' trust.
And Tucker Carlson had his mojo back by the time Russia began the Ukraine invasion.
Carlson was the only anchor in the media I observed, for a very long time, who challenged the narrative that we had a duty to pour unlimited resources into Ukraine and risk a nuclear war with Russia. Tucker Carlson is portrayed by Democrats, by the mainstream media, and by a number of RINO war-rhetoric Republicans as a stooge of Russia for his opposition to escalating war in Ukraine. But all Tucker Carlson does is (rightly) point out that Biden began pushing for NATO membership for Ukraine, and weeks after, THAT was when Russia invaded.
THAT was Russia's clearly stated red line, a Russian security risk and humiliation that Russia has said, for at least 20 years, they would never tolerate and would go to total war to prevent. All this could have been avoided, if Democrat-Bolshevik chaos as enacted by the Biden puppet regime, were not the intended goal.
Tucker Carlson also pointed out that every day Russia was calling the White House, for a year, and Biden and his puppetmasters never returned their calls to potentially negotiate a solution. At many points over the last 12-plus months, the cities levelled, the hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, could have been avoided, lessened, or ended. With Tucker Carlson off the air, there is very little visibility left to those making that argument for negotiation and peace. Trump has said he could end the war in days if he were re-elected in 2024, and likewise negotiate to prevent war against China, North Korea and Iran.
In one program, Tucker Carlson talked about how many in Ukraine's government were traveling to Switzerland, pulling up in brand new Farrari's to real estate offices, to pay cash for castles that were previously being bought by Russian oligarchs.
How?
By siphoning off billions in U.S. foreign aid from the Biden administration, because there is no oversight and it is there for the taking, in a Ukraine that, before the war started, was one of the top 10 most corrupt governments of the 200 nations on earth. No Republican, not even Tucker Carlson, is saying don't militarily aid the Ukrainians to defend themselves, but only just to have reasonable oversight, and not make it a slush fund to enrich corrupt officials. And likewise, even tanks, planes, artillery and ammunition, without oversight, will just be sold on the black market for cash, and put those weapons in a position to hurt a lot of innocent people, or even (like those left in Afghanistan) be ultimately used on U.S. military forces and civilians.
I would love LOVE to see Tucker Carlson hired by Newsmax and put in the same time-slot as his former 8PM show on Fox News, to further move the exodus of viewers away from Fox, and to Newsmax. Hannity, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham, and other ACTUAL conservatives still there should realize their days at Fox News are numbered, as Rupert Murdoch's 2 sons prepare to turn it into another CNN. The writing is on the wall, they should be contemplating where to move to as soon as their contracts end, before they too are abruptly one day soon shown the door.
