We’re now a few hours out from the first reports that Fox News had canned its top rated host Tucker Carlson. As best I can tell there’s still no clear explanation of why this happened. There are reports he’d been too critical of Fox management. There are reports pre-pretrial discovery unearthed revelations that could be damaging to Fox News in other lawsuits. Yet another report says it was Carlson’s peddling anti-semitism or perhaps the hostile harassment-saturated environment he created at his show, according to the suit by producer Abby Grossberg. Many of these reasons are reported as ‘contributing’ to the decision to oust Carlson. And there seem to have been a lot of them. Indeed, there appear to be so many ‘contributing’ factors – of various different sorts – it’s a wonder Carlson lasted as long as he did.

We don’t have many details yet beyond a clipt press release from Fox and the note that the departure is effective immediately. There were a number of fall-out scenarios I envisioned after Fox’s settlement with Dominion. But this wasn’t in any of them.

There’s a key reason why.

It’s certainly not an unprecedented move, but it’s notable. Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is skipping this year’s Georgia GOP party convention. He’s set up a funding committee structure that will essentially operate as his own party apparatus, separate from the state GOP. They don’t want him and he doesn’t need them.

I wanted to share TPM Reader JL’s note because it reveals a key blindspot. I think it’s mine. But I’m actually not sure whether it’s mine or JL’s. In any case, the point is that Ron DeSantis’s campaign makes a lot more sense if you assume Donald Trump either wasn’t going to run in 2024 or was going to mount what amounts to a placeholder campaign to help as part of his legal strategy.