Tucker Carlson’s suspiciously timed Fox News “vacation”

| 10:55 pm EDT March 12, 2019
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By now you’ve surely heard the remarks that Fox News host Tucker Carlson made in newly unearthed radio appearances from years ago. There’s the one where he appeared to endorse child rape. Then there’s the one where he used the worst of gender slurs and homophobic slurs. The question was whether mainstream Americans could convince enough of Carlson’s advertisers to bail, such that Fox would conclude he was no longer profitable to keep on the air.

We know this because it’s the calculus that was used when other Fox News hosts got into scandalous trouble. Laura Ingraham narrowly survived the loss of several advertisers, while Bill O’Reilly didn’t survive that math. Even as we wait for that process to play out with Tucker Carlson, he’s suddenly talking about “vacation.”

On Fox News tonight, Sean Hannity claimed that Tucker Carlson was supposed to be on vacation this week, and that Carlson only showed up to work this week in order to fight back against the haters. Hannity made it sound like Carlson was heading out on vacation tomorrow, but now Fox News is confirming that Carlson will be on the air all week. Wait, so where did his “vacation” go? Are we really supposed to believe Hannity’s story?

Here’s the thing. Back when Laura Ingraham attacked the Parkland school shooting survivors and started losing advertisers by the bucketload, she suddenly went on a supposed pre-planned “vacation” as well. Shortly after Megyn Kelly had her feud with Donald Trump, she suddenly went on “vacation.” And of course O’Reilly went on “vacation” just before he got fired. Funny how these Fox people are always going on vacation just as their scandals are exploding. We don’t know if Tucker Carlson is going on vacation or not, but the fact that he was supposedly supposed to be on vacation this week is, well, convenient.