Exclusive: Tucker Carlson in 2020 went to the mat to try to get a top Fox executive fired, sources tell Rolling Stone. He never fully recovered
Carlson had grown so furious with Fox’s communications and PR chief, Irena Briganti, that he attempted to get her fired, people familiar with the matter tell. Briganti, formerly a key lieutenant to the late, disgraced Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, had been an influential figure in the cable-news industry for years, as an infamously aggressive enforcer within Fox’s public-relations apparatus.
But after years of mutual antipathy between the executive and the high-profile host, Carlson attempted to force her out. The sources say Carlson made his case to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Fox’s chief legal officer Viet Dinh, Murdoch family heir and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and even other Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity.
In pleading his case, Carlson argued Briganti spent too much time badgering on-air talent and the channel’s personnel; that she was generally incompetent and mean-spirited; and that she regularly engaged in dirty tricks against him and other hosts and contributors, when her job was ostensibly to protect them. One current Fox source with knowledge of the matter described the Carlson-Briganti feud as an intra-network “death match.
“I do know that he was telling [Fox executives] that [Briganti] should be fucking fired,” a former Fox News commentator tellsBut despite Carlson’s high ratings, influence in Republican political circles, and hyper-devoted fan base, he lacked the juice to oust Briganti. Her ties to other top executives were too tight for Carlson to overcome. In some cases, executives laughed off Carlson’s attempt to get Briganti fired, assuring him and others that Briganti was not going anywhere anytime soon.
Word of Carlson’s attempt to get her fired got back to Briganti, exacerbating an already terrible relationship. Briganti “hates all the talent,” the former Fox News commentator says. “She was so disgusted by the level of fucked up idiots who work there, in her opinion, and had to clean up their messes and their overblown egos.”
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