In Spring of 2020, Tucker Carlson went to war with one of the most powerful figures on Fox News.
Carlson had become so enraged with Fox’s head of communications and public relations, Irena Briganti, that he tried to fire her, people familiar with the matter told Rolling Stone. Briganti, formerly a key lieutenant to the late and disgraced Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, had been an influential figure in the cable news industry for years, as the infamously aggressive enforcer of the public relations apparatus of Fox.
But after years of mutual dislike between the executive and the high-profile host, Carlson tried to force her out. Carlson made his case to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Fox chief legal officer Viet Dinh, Murdoch family heir and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, sources say. and even other Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity.
In pleading his case, Carlson argued that Briganti spent too much time abusing the channel’s live talent and staff; that he was generally incompetent and mean; and that he regularly engaged in dirty tricks against himself and other hosts and collaborators, when his job was ostensibly to protect them. A current Fox source with knowledge of the matter described the Carlson-Briganti feud as a “fight to the death” within the network.
“I know he said that [Fox executives] this [Briganti] they should be fired,” a former Fox News commentator tells Rolling Stone. “She’s terrible. He was very bold there.”
But despite Carlson’s high ratings, influence in Republican political circles and hyper-devoted fan base, he lacked the juice to oust Briganti. His ties to other senior executives were too close for Carlson to overcome. In some cases, executives laughed off Carlson’s attempt to fire Briganti, assuring him and others that Briganti wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Word of Carlson’s attempt to fire her got back to Briganti, exacerbating an already terrible relationship. Briganti “hates all talent,” says former Fox News commentator. “She was so disgusted by the level of fucking idiots who work there, in her opinion, and had to clean up their messes and overblown egos.”
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More importantly for Carlson, the failed attempt to oust Briganti helped erode his goodwill among the Fox News executive class.
“He really thought I was going to make a change, and I shook my head,” says a different former Fox News talent. “It was such a terrible idea. It was such a clear suicide mission. . . . But at the time I guess he thought he was big enough to do anything.”
Carlson was not, and last month he was forced out of Fox News, shocking the political media ecosystem and, within Fox, marking a decisive victory for Briganti.
The precise cause of Carlson’s firing remains unclear, as high-level sources at Fox and others have given a variety of explanations. But it is widely accepted, inside and outside Fox, that Carlson’s tensions with top executives, especially Briganti, helped lay some of the groundwork for his ouster.
One of the many factors looming large in their years-long feud is an episode now often described internally at Fox as “cuntgate,” according to current Fox staffers who spoke to Rolling Stone. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that following Dominion’s lawsuit, redacted legal documents revealed that Carlson referred to an unidentified senior Fox executive as the c-word. Several people familiar with the matter believe that the executive in question is Briganti.
“A thousand percent” it was Briganti, says the former Fox News commentator.
Several people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone that Carlson has repeatedly referred to Briganti in recent years, in text messages and elsewhere, as a “coconut” and other extremely pejorative terms.
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In recent months, as Fox’s legal authority investigated discovery documents ahead of the high-profile Dominion-Fox defamation suit (which has since been settled), some of Carlson’s private messages and texts be marked for senior executives and board members. some of which they now claim to have been totally destroyed by them. In that still-mostly-hidden tape were messages written by Carlson calling several people a misogynistic epithet, including Briganti, according to two sources familiar with the situation. When Fox lawyers questioned Carlson about the messages and Briganti, the then-host told them privately that his characterization of the senior Fox executive was “objectively true” and showed zero contrition about it.
Now, Carlson and Briganti may be gearing up for another round.
Axios reported Sunday that it was “ready to turn onFox News, saying he hoped to free allies to free the former host to start a rival media operation. And in the time since details of some of his private messages have been leaked to the press, Carlson has stressed to those close to him that he does not regret sending or is ashamed of some of the texts now public,” sources familiar with the matter say. This includes the vulgar text about the female chief executive, as well as a racist text revealed by The New York Times about how white men supposedly fight.
As for Briganti, as Rolling Stone previously reported, high-level Fox executives have maintained a secret dossier of labor complaints and alleged dirt on Carlson, and have prepared to leak parts of its files.
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“Fox News employees live in fear of Briganti and that’s by design,” says Megyn Kelly, a former Fox insider who also became a target of Briganti’s ire. “They know he will plant negative stories about them, publish unflattering private details about them [and] her work which may or may not be true, and generally do whatever it takes to remind them how dangerous it is to challenge it. She is one of the main reasons why Roger Ailes was able to cover up his harassment of women for so long. She was his most loyal protector. Crossing him meant making an enemy of him, which would invite attacks, public shaming and even career ruin. It is surprising that they kept her after the fall of Ailes. They obviously like what he does.”
Diana Falzone, one of the authors of this article, worked at Fox News from 2012 to 2018.
