Tucker Carlson’s star writer has resigned from Fox News after secretly posting racist and sexist remarks online.
CNN reported Friday that writer Blake Neff used a pseudonym to write bigoted comments about Black and Asian people, as well as women, on an online forum called AutoAdmit.
Neff has long been heralded by Carlson as a “wonderful writer” and an important braintrust behind “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which recently became the highest rated cable news program of all-time.
In a recent interview he was quoted saying, “Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me.”
Before working on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in 2016, Neff previously worked as a reporter for the right-wing news outlet The Daily Caller, which Carlson co-founded.
Fox News executives on Saturday said they condemned Neff’s “horrendous and deeply offensive” comments.
Reports detail a laundry list of racist statements, including repetitive use of slurs such as “n***** and f*****,” to describe minorities, with inflammatory comments spanning as far back as 2014.
“We want to make abundantly clear that Fox News Media strongly condemns this horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior,” Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace said in a memo to staffers.
“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,” they wrote.
Scott and Wallace said Carlson would address Neff’s conduct on his show Monday.
The Associated Press contributed to this article