Tucker Carlson Returns From His Racism Vacation With Far Fewer Advertisers

Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson claimed on air that the dangers of white supremacy are a “hoax,” a move that prompted quite a few of his advertisers to flee and coincidentally coincided with him taking a quick trip “to the wilderness”. On Monday night, he returned from his racism vacation, but unfortunately for him, it doesn’t seem like his erstwhile advertisers will be back.

According to Media Matters for America, Carlson’s lost more than 70 paid advertisers since last December (a 60 percent drop!) in large part because generally he keeps saying unhinged and racist shit. Five of those advertisers have departed in the 11 days since Carlson spewed his stupid thoughts on white supremacy, including HelloFresh and Nestlé, and Long John Silver’s dumped Fox News altogether.

Though Carlson was presumably sent to the woods to give advertisers time to come off, it looks like that’s not happening. In fact, according to Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, “advertisers have only increased the drop rate in order to get off the show.”

The drop-off is extensive. In October 2018, Carlson had a high of 36 paid ads per night; thus far in August, he’s averaged only 15 per night. Still, it doesn’t seem likely Fox will drop him as long as he still hangs onto at least some of his advertisers.

This is not the first time Carlson’s been put in a time-out after doing something too terrible even for Fox News—he went on another “vacation” in March, after Media Matters dug up years worth of recordings of his call-ins to Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show that included, among other things, some deeply icky references to underage girls and sexual experimentation. There is a 78 percent chance or so that he’ll be sent away again in the near future for saying something like “Hitler was fine,” or “Slavery, do we miss it?”