CNN has claimed that the top writer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted “horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic” comments online under a pseudonym.
Blake Neff, who joined Tucker Carlson Tonight in 2017, left the program 10th July – CNN discovered he’d regularly used highly offensive language on an online forum called AutoAdmit under the name CharlesXII.
Also known as XOXOhth, AutoAdmit is a somewhat unmoderated message board in the manner of 4chan aimed at lawyers and law school students, in which racism and sexism run rampant. The board's vulgar content has been the subject of much criticism, and two Yale students sued anonymous posters on the site in 2007 alleging they’d defamed them and made threatening remarks.
Neff worked at @foxnews for nearly four years & was @TuckerCarlson's top writer. - @CNN
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) July 11, 2020
In a recent interview in @DartmouthMag, Neff said "Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me."https://t.co/vLL7IQuGNN
Comments he posted included “black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down" and "honestly given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep”. As recently as this week, he responded to a thread started in 2018 with the subject line "Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?", saying “I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no”.
He also started and constantly updated a thread harassing a woman and posted information about her personal life, taken from her Facebook, over the course of five years, ridiculing her statuses documenting her experiences of dating various individuals, inviting other users to mock her and invade her privacy in the process.
“Neff's abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation. Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our work force,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace said in an internal memo.
another non surprise is carlson does not have the courage to say that Neff was only saying privately what they talked about all the time and which often made its way onto his show. which is obviously true. but carlson is a self promoting coward. https://t.co/gwKRw7eWa3
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) July 11, 2020
Carlson, who has referred to Neff as a “wonderful writer” previously, will address the issue on the 13th July instalment of his show. Neff worked at Fox News nearly four years, joining from The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet Carlson cofounded.
“Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me…We're very aware that we do have that power to sway the conversation, so we try to use it responsibly,” Neff said in a recent article in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.
When asked in a 2018 appearance on Fox's "The Five" about the writing process for his show, Carlson said he spends hours working on scripts, but referred to Neff by name, saying he was a "wonderful writer" and acknowledging his pivotal assistance. Neff is also credited in Carlson’s book Ship Of Fools.
Advertisers have often boycotted his show, with several – including Disney and T-Mobile — pulling their marketing from commercial breaks before during and after his program in June after Carlson said the Black Lives Matter movement was "not about black lives" and warned viewers to "remember that when they come for you”. A Fox News spokesperson later claimed Carlson was referring to Democratic leaders, not Black Lives Matter protesters.