A now-former Fox News producer was been fired after taking a jab at President Joe Biden while on-air, referring to him as a “wannabe dictator”.
Alex McCaskill, a 10-year veteran of the network and major collaborator with Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air in late April.
According to The Associated Press, McCaskill ran the message in a bottom-screen chyron for about 30 seconds before it was taken down. The message ran concurrently with Biden speaking alongside a shot of former President Donald Trump giving a speech to supporters in New Jersey after he was indicted earlier in the day by Biden’s Justice Department.
McCaskill took to Instagram to respond in a message that claimed he “loved” working at Fox News but asked to be dismissed.
“Today was my last day at Fox,” McCaskill wrote on the platform. “It’s been a wild 10 years and it was the best place I’ve ever worked because of the great people I met. But the time has come. I asked them to let me go, and they finally did. To all my friends there: I will miss you forever.”
Tucker addressed this situation in his latest ‘Tucker on Twitter’ episode:
On Tuesday afternoon, the Biden administration had Donald Trump arrested. It was a pretty big news story. You may have seen it. Just before 9 pm that night, as part of its coverage Fox News ran two live video feeds next to one another. On the right, Donald Trump addressed his supporters in New Jersey. On the left, Joe Biden spoke at an event for the Secretary General of NATO in Washington. Beneath those videos at the bottom of the screen, Fox’s Banner read this way “wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”
Those words are up for less than 30 seconds, but the effect was immediate. Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked. First, they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen. Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He’d 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.
Then the company issued a public apology for the 27-second long wannabe dictator Line the chyron was taken down immediately,” Fox’s PR department said and then added ominously it was “addressed.”
That was all true, but it was not enough to save Fox News from the ensuing scandal.
For a time in the rest of the media, Fox’s assessment of Donald Trump’s arrest seemed to overshadow Trump’s arrest itself.
“Suggesting that Biden is a dictator,” declared the Washington Post quote, “crossed the line.”
Alexander Vindman agreed strongly. Vindman is the perennial MSNBC guest and full-time Ukraine promoter you may remember from Russiagate. On Twitter, he demanded that the Pentagon pulled Fox News from all military bases. It is “absolutely unacceptable for American Forces Network to carry programming that directly spuriously attacks the commander-in-chief of American armed forces.”
Vindman wrote, in other words, Joe Biden must ban all criticism of himself because that’s what non-dictators do.
John Cusack went further still “For the crime of calling Biden a dictator, Fox should be shut down,” wrote the 80s-era movie star. “The government has to take away their broadcasting license,” and so on was all over the Internet.
Democrats were very, very angry, but why were they angry if the banner on Fox was false? Why the hysteria? Lies don’t seem to bother anyone anymore.
If some cable news producer had called Joe Biden a genius or accused him of being secretly Sudanese, would anyone be yelling about it? Would Fox News have apologized for it? Probably not, but calling Joe Biden a wannabe dictator, that stung.
Ep. 4 Wannabe Dictator pic.twitter.com/MDcs5g0gxB
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 15, 2023
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.