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'That Was the Key': Bill O'Reilly Shares What He Learned About Tucker Carlson's Fox News Exit

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  April 25, 2023 3:00 PM

In the wake of Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News, former anchors at the network have been weighing in to share their thoughts, encouragements, and insight into what went down on Monday. 

Bill O’Reilly, whose 8 p.m. primetime slot at Fox News was taken over by Carlson in 2017, appeared on NewsNation Monday evening to tell viewers what he knows about the parting. 

The former host of “The O’Reilly Factor” explained that each morning producers meet to discuss what content will go into their programs. Yesterday, Carlson’s production team was in the middle of their meeting when they heard their host would not be coming back—ever. 

The decision to part ways with Carlson was reportedly made Sunday evening, according to O’Reilly—something Fox News did not want to do given his ratings and popularity. 

“But there are lawsuits coming on the wake of Dominion…and now you have Smartmatic coming up and you have two individual lawsuits, actually one filed and one that may be filed and that was the key. So one of Tucker Carlson’s producers apparently taped a whole bunch of stuff, her lawyer went into the Fox attorneys and said ‘unless you pay so and so some money were gonna sue you,’ and Fox said 'we’re not paying,' and so they filed suit in New York City and they had the tapes and those tapes may be released to the public and they’re not good tapes for the Carlson program.”

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The second issue, according to O'Reilly, was the “60 Minutes” interview with Ray Epps, who accused Carlson of ruining his life through accusations about his role on Jan. 6.

“That was setting Epps up for a massive lawsuit against Fox News and Tucker Carlson, so that’s three lawsuits we know about and there will be more by shareholders who are angry about the $800 million [Dominion] settlement and they’re gonna go after the Murdochs and the board of directors. Faced with that, the board of directors said we gotta start cleaning this up.”

Carlson didn’t know this was coming, O’Reilly claimed. “That’s the nature of television news,” he said, “the most wicked industry in the United States of America.”