Tucker Carlson’s final Fox News show saw him debate the ‘+’ in LGBTQIA+
Right-wing broadcaster Tucker Carlson spent part of his final Fox News show debating the “+” in LGBTQIA+, sparked by a collection of queer Mother’s Day cards seen in a shop.
It was announced in a statement on Monday (24 April) that the network and Carlson had “agreed to part ways” and that his show three days earlier had been his last.
In his programme, which ended with Carlson eating takeaway pizza, the host said the show was “wondering who’s in the ‘plus category’ of LGBTQIA+”.
He claimed it was “the latest acronym” for the rainbow community, although the term has been used for years.
Gay conservative commentator Chadwick Moore, the guest on the matter, said he had been “lobbying big gay for a long time to get an ‘S’ in there”, for straight people, to which Carlson agreed.
Moore went on to say that “anyone can be ‘plus’ [and] the alphabet people… are kind of undefinable”.
The conversation, which was interspersed with laughter, ultimately started to spiral into madness with Tucker Carlson comparing people identifying under “+” to the Loch Ness monster, and the pair going on to question what the “Q” stood for.
“What’s a queer?” Moore asked before going on to explain he recognised the word to mean two things.
He said one was the “sort of run-of-the-mill gay man who lives in Brooklyn – you can probably spot him by having a dangly earring and some really bad eyewear – and he calls himself queer because he wants to be special, he wants to be unique”.
The other is “really just a straight woman who wants to add a little pizzazz to herself,” he added.
“She can now call herself queer or somewhere in the pluses.”
Carlson, who labelled himself “a believer in precision in language”, said he was grateful for Moore’s comments.
Carlson reportedly fired from Fox News
Since Fox News Media’s statement about Tucker Carlson’s abrupt departure, a number of US news outlets have reported that the decision was made on Friday evening by Fox Corp chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, and his Fox News counterpart, Suzanne Scott, with Fox Corp’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, making the final call.
The Los Angeles Times and Semafor reported that Carlson’s openly-gay executive producer, Justin Wells, is also leaving the network.
Carlson’s exit came days after Fox News settled a lawsuit over the station’s reporting of the 2020 US election, in which they claimed Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the vote.
Fox settled for $787.5 million (approximately £635.2 million) shortly before the defamation hearing was due to get under way.
