2 prominent conservatives quit Fox News over Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 'incoherent conspiracy-mongering'

Tucker Carlson fan in Hungary
(Image credit: Janos Kummer/Getty Images)

Longtime conservative commentators Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes made a public break with Fox News on Sunday night, announcing their resignations as paid Fox News contributors and citing Tucker Carlson's online special Patriot Purge as the final straw. Hayes and Goldberg, top editors at The Weekly Standard and National Review, founded The Dispatch in 2019, largely in response to what they saw as the conservative media's sycophantic capitulation to former President Donald Trump and his "alternative facts."

When they joined Fox News in 2009, and for most of the next decade, "we were proud to be associated with the network" and believed it was necessary, Hayes and Goldberg explained at The Dispatch. But the decision to air and promote Carlson's dangerous "collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering" showed them that, despite assurances otherwise, Fox News is not clawing back any of its pre-Trump independence.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.