Ben Smith Argues Tucker Carlson Is Replaceable: ‘The Power of Fox Is In That Seat’
Semafor founder Ben Smith joined CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday to discuss cable news’s shocking Monday in which both CNN’s Don Lemon and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson were unceremoniously fired.
Host Andrew Ross Sorkin began by summing up the news and asked Smith where they should begin. “Should we even try to connect Tucker and Don Lemon? Probably not.”
“Tucker’s a bigger story,” jumped in Smith – a former New York Times media columnist and editor in chief of Buzzfeed News.
“Let’s go. Let’s go. What do you think really happened here?” asked Ross Sorkin.
“You know, I guess I do not totally buy any of the existing explanations. We’ve been reporting on it. And clearly, he said a bunch of disgusting things about women in emails that have come out, in emails that come out through the years. So maybe there is a sexual discrimination lawsuit, plausible that they were just like one more lawsuit. This is going to be messy, fire the guy,” Smith replied.
“We don’t know what he said about the Murdochs because it’s all redacted, isn’t it?” followed up co-host Joe Kernen.
“A lot of it’s redacted. This stuff that they turned that the Murdochs that the company turned over months ago and that they’ve known for months. But maybe he said something really bad. Maybe he was saying bad things about his bosses. But that’s also a pretty widely known he does that,” Smith replied.
Smith has long covered Carlson and wrote in the past about using him as a source. The two media veterans sparred in a highly contentious interview last July at a pre-launch event for Semafor.
Ross Sorkin then asked, “Are you of the view, the stock falls 3% yesterday as if the world is falling, and I think to myself, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly. I mean, you can go, the list is very long of big talent that people thought were irreplaceable and they were replaced, by the way. It’s like 80% of the business is still the affiliate fees. It’s still the carriage fees relative to the advertising. So do you think this has a huge impact on Fox or not?”
“You know, I think the power of Fox to a degree more than the other networks, really, because its audience is older, is you know, is in that seat. And whoever is sitting in it, you know, there will be some bumps around it. But I don’t think it’s an audience that Tucker is going to be able to reach somewhere else to download my app and come with me over here,” Smith replied.
“I don’t know if Newsmax has the money to pay him, but you saw how what I think one night Newsmax beat Martha MacCallum’s show and all hell broke loose over there with Newsmax and they moved her and they tried something else. And if he were to go to Newsmax, I think that might hurt Fox primetime, don’t you think?” Kernen asked.
“Oh, for sure. But he, but the Newsmax problem is they are about to be owned,” Smith began as the hosts spoke over each other.
“Is he allowed to go?” asked one of the co-hosts, referring to Carlosn’s Fox News contract.
“Not only do they not have the money, they’re on the receiving end of another Dominion lawsuit, in which I think the entire dynamic is how can Dominion take as much money as possible from them without driving them into bankruptcy? I mean, it’s a yeah, I mean, I think I think it’s, maybe there’s some third place he could go, but I don’t know,” Smith conclude.
Watch the full clip above via CNBC
