Fox News host Trace Gallagher has been pranked live on air by an apparent fan of former Fox host Tucker Carlson.
In a segment reporting on a shooting at a residence hall at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, Gallagher spoke to a caller claiming to be a student there.
“We’ve got Tyrone on the phone with us now,” Gallagher said. “Tyrone, when you say poker game, what exactly happened? What transpired?”
The caller replies: “Well, firstly we’re watching… we all get together every Tuesday night and we watch Tucker Carlson’s show on X. We used to watch him on Fox News, obviously he’s not there no more.”
Carlson is still “the most credible guy in the media in America,” the caller continues. “We always get together to watch Tucker Carlson and think he’s doing probably better now he’s not with Fox News because the corporate media always controls what the teleprompter readers are able to say.”
Gallagher then cuts the caller off, saying “clearly that was not a student at Morgan State.”
Mark Dice, a conservative YouTuber, took credit for the incident.
“Yeah, that was me who culture jammed Fox News live on air,” Dice wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“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,” he said. “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.”
In an email to Newsweek, Dice described the call as “a culture jam, not a prank call.”
He said: “Culture jamming is when you subvert the media in a creative way in order to use that same form of media to critique media itself.”
Fox has been contacted for comment via email.
Carlson was fired from Fox News in April, after the network agreed to pay more than $787 million to settle a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over airing false claims regarding the 2020 presidential election.
He has since touted his firing as a “great” experience.
“It’s great to get fired because it keeps you from being a truly horrible person,” he said. “The problem with men when they’re successful is they start to think they’re Jesus. It just happens. Getting fired reminds you that, no, you’re just like everybody else.”
Since launching his own show on X, disinformation experts have told Newsweek that Carlson has been been playing the role of a “useful idiot” for the Kremlin by echoing Russian propaganda.
Update 10/4/23, 3:35 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Mark Dice and additional information.