Even for Tucker Carlson, his supposed Obama sex exposé was ridiculous | Arwa Mahdawi

The ex-Fox host's segment on a convicted con man who claims he had druggy liaisons with Obama was embarrassing to watch

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. This time last time year Tucker Carlson had a primetime spot on Fox News where his hate-heavy, fact-light sputtering drew an audience of over 4 million. Then, in April, he was summarily fired. Fox didn't explicitly say why. Carlson has claimed that it was a condition of the media company's $787.5m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems relating to the broadcast of Donald Trump's lies about election fraud; both Fox and Dominion have denied that Carlson's firing had any relation to the settlement.

Once cock of the walk, a humiliated Carlson quickly revived his show on the social network formerly known as Twitter, calling it Tucker on Twitter. (Elon Musk's rebrand to X really messed with his alliteration.) Over the last few months he's resorted to increasingly cheap tactics in order to keep himself relevant. If someone's controversial, Carlson wants them on his show.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

This article was amended on 7 September 2023 to reflect that both Fox and Dominion deny that Carlson's firing had any relation to their legal settlement