Fox News has been trying to play it at least a little cool since their pricey Dominion Voting Systems settlement. They even got rid of their biggest star. But they didn’t shake him off entirely. Indeed, the new Twitter guy is claiming that one of his producers is responsible for calling Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator” in a controversial chyron that briefly popped up last week.
Former Fox News producer Alexander McCaskill, who parted ways with the network for airing the “wannabe dictator” chyron, posted this photo of him leaving Fox offices on his Instagram.
McCaskill was also a longtime producer/editor for Tucker Carlson.https://t.co/MvJqRMiBOR pic.twitter.com/4ebvPhadsy
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) June 16, 2023
As per The Daily Beast, Fox News parted ways with Alexander McCaskill, a longtime producer at the network whose credits include working on Tucker Carlson Tonight. In a private Instagram post, McCaskill sounded bittersweet, calling it “the best place I’ve ever worked,” but saying “the time has come” for him to leave. He ended his message by telling “all my friends there” that he “will miss you forever.”
But as per sources — and as intimated by Carlson in one of his Twitter videos that may put him in legal jeopardy — McCaskill was the one who slipped the chyron, which accused Biden of “having his political rival arrested onto the network,” on Tuesday after Donald Trump was arraigned, again.
“First they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen,” Carlson said on his video, not naming McCaskill. “Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He had been at Fox for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately.”
Fox News honchos have been terse about the chyron, which immediately gained attention on social media. In a statement they said the message “was taken down immediately and was addressed.”
Carlson was clearly proud of his former producer. “Of course Joe Biden’s not a wannabe dictator,” Carlson sarcastically said. “Just because he’s trying to put the other candidate in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he himself committed doesn’t mean he has a totalitarian impulse. That’s absurd! It takes a lot more than jailing your political rivals to earn the title of ‘wannabe dictator.’”
Biden, meanwhile, has said he had nothing to do with the Department of Justice prosecuting a former president who allegedly broke the law.
(Via The Daily Beast)