Fox News appears to have been pranked by a fan of the network’s former host Tucker Carlson during a live broadcast on Tuesday while covering a shooting at Morgan State University.
While discussing the shooting, which saw five people wounded at the Baltimore campus, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher took a call from a supposed witness.
The caller, who referred to themselves as Tyrone, claimed that the shooting had been sparked after a heated poker game before descending into a rant about corporate media.
“Well, first we were watching … we all get together every Tuesday night and we watch Tucker Carlson’s show on X,” the caller said. “We used to watch him on Fox News, obviously he’s not there no more, and still being the most credible guy in the media and in America, we always get together to watch Tucker Carlson and I think he’s probably doing better now that he’s not with Fox News becuase the corporate media always controls what the teleprompter readers are able to say and now that we don’t have that…”
After catching on, Gallagher finally cut the caller off before concluding to an off-screen producer that the individual was clearly “not a student at Morgan State University.”
The network and Carlson parted ways in April less than a week after Fox News was forced to pay $787 million in a defamation lawsuit to Dominon Voting Systems, which was repeatedly accused of helping rig the 2020 presidential election by Carlson.
The short prank call made its way to social media not long after and was celebrated by fans of Carlson.
Chaya Raichik, the person behind the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok, applauded the moment as “epic.”
“An absolute savage just trolled Fox news,” she said. “Must watch!!! This is epic.”
Many progressives, on the other hand, argued that the prank was made in poor taste given its relation to a shooting.
“Sounds about right for a Tucker fan, using a tragedy to promote their hero. Just wow,” another said.
Mark Dice, a far-right conspiracy theorist known for such pranks, later took credit for the call in a post on X.
Dice argued that the call was not a prank but an example of “culture jamming” while defending his alleged actions.
“While shootings of any kind are terrible and it’s important to inform the public about a potential danger—cable news always exploits tragedies in order to keep viewers glued to their screens and fill the airtime with anything available to them,” Dice wrote. “In this case, some random caller whose name and identity they didn’t even bother to verify before putting on air as someone who supposedly knows what really happened.”
Neither Carlson nor Fox News have publicly commented on the incident.
