Megyn Kelly spent a dozen years under the corporate thumb at Fox News and NBC News but left in 2018, created an independent media production company, Devil May Care Media, and started her own podcast "The Megyn Kelly Show" in September 2020.
Kelly told Newsmax on Monday night she expects Tucker Carlson to take the same independent route following his abrupt departure from Fox after having the highest-rated show on cable news.
"I think it's a sad day for Fox News, but I think it's a great day for Tucker because I think he will go independent," Kelly told "Eric Bolling The Balance." "This is just my supposition that he'll go independent like I have. He will no longer answer to a corporate master. He will be free to say whatever he wants to say, within the bounds of defamation law, of course, and he'll be totally unleashed.
"And he leaves directly from his prime-time post, so he will have a massive audience that will be looking to hear him and follow him. And I think if you look at what's happening online already, there are a lot of Fox News fans who say, 'He was the only reason I was still watching Fox, and now you've taken that away.'"
She said Fox probably does not see it as a bad move because the network still succeeded after losing such high-profile personalities as herself, Bill O'Reilly, Greta Van Susteren, now with Newsmax, and Shepherd Smith.
"I'm guessing that their calculation is, Kelly left. We fired O'Reilly, not to mention Greta. Shepherd left. We did just fine," Kelly said. "It's the Fox News juggernaut that puts points on the board and the audience will get over it. Maybe they can advertise that hour better."
Kelly said she is curious whether Fox's Board of Directors played a role in forcing Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, Fox's executive chairman and CEO, to fire Carlson, especially on the heels of a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems that was settled last week for $787.5 million. The network admitted "certain claims" it made during former President Donald Trump's 2020 election challenge were false.
"From that standpoint, they might want to cut ties with somebody like Tucker, who they think is too far to the right or too much of a populist or too much of a Trump defender," Kelly said. "But if that's true, why is Maria Bartiromo still employed? She was more of a Trump booster than anybody. She's been a lightning rod. And she, unlike Tucker, really did get them in trouble in this Dominion lawsuit. To me, so far, it doesn't make sense.
"The only thing that makes sense to me is dollars and cents. That's how they operate that channel and if there's pressure from the board, if they're worried about shareholder lawsuits, they think that the channel will do better, let's say in terms of a sale, if it returns to more of a center position like it once was, as opposed to somebody who defends Trump or somebody like Tucker, who questions the war in Ukraine and things like that, then I think they would be quick to fire him and they would have no loyalty to him. And to me, that's where the smart money is."
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