Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced on Monday that he would depart on vacation for a “long planned” trout-fishing trip, just days after Blake Neff, a top writer from his show, resigned after he was exposed for posting racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments on an online forum.
“What Blake wrote anonymously was wrong,” Carlson said in a brief statement near the end of his Monday night show. “We don’t endorse those words. They have no connection to the show.”
Neff who had previously also worked with Carlson at The Daily Caller, wrote the posts under a pseudonym. He resigned after a CNN report on Friday revealed that he wrote the posts.
Without formally naming the racist, misogynistic and homophobic nature of Neff’s posts Carlson was quick to name critics as “ghouls” slamming them for “beating their chests in triumph.”
“We are all human,” Carlson said. “When we pretend we are holy, we are lying.”
According to CNN, Neff made his posts under the pseudonym “CharlesXII” in the online forum AutoAdmit.
Fox News accepted Neff’s resignation on Friday after learning of his “horrific” behavior, according to a memo sent to employees on Saturday by Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace, the division’s president and executive editor.
“We want to make abundantly clear that Fox News Media strongly condemns this horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior,” Scott and Wallace wrote.
Carlson told viewers that he would be taking an immediate vacation and return to the show next week. The hurriedly announced hiatus has raised suspicion by some that what he called a “long planned” vacation might in fact be an attempt to duck out of the news cycle as his show faces a fresh wave of criticism for offensive remarks.
In 2018, some advertisers pulled their ads after Carlson said that some immigrants were making the United States “dirtier and more divided.”
Carlson took a similar hastily announced break last August, two days after he likened white supremacy to a “hoax,” saying it was “actually not a real problem in America.” Carlson has also criticized the Black Lives Matter movement.
