Regardless of who takes over, Carlson has already changed the network — and the country. For years, he used his cable news platform not only to broadcast racist conspiracy theories, but to bring televised racism into the 21st century.

Carlson beat a pathway from far-right corners of the internet into millions of Americans’ living rooms, laying the groundwork for Donald Trump and dozens of other high-profile Republicans to seize on racial grievance as an animating issue for voters.

He’d occasionally aired his repellent views before reaching Fox News. During the George W. Bush administration, when he was employed at MSNBC, Carlson vilified Iraqi citizens, claiming during a radio appearance that they “don’t use toilet paper or forks.” Iraq is “filled with a bunch of semiliterate primitive monkeys,” he said in 2008.

But once he took the main chair for Fox’s 8 p.m. hour, Carlson fired with both barrels. He used his prime-time slot to deliver talking points that were manufactured on the internet’s most noxious message boards and websites, normalizing them for a nightly audience of millions. Carlson’s message sounds familiar at this point because of its dominance in politics: America’s liberal elite, he spent years alleging, is destroying the country by subverting white people’s place atop the U.S. political hierarchy.