Tucker Carlson leaving The Daily Caller

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is selling his stake in The Daily Caller, the conservative publication he co-founded a decade ago, as he focuses more time on his prime-time show.

“I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” Carlson told The Wall Street Journal. “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night [on Fox News].”

Neil Patel, the publisher of The Daily Caller who founded the site with Carlson, told the Journal he bought out Carlson’s roughly one-third stake in the company.

Patel, who is of Indian heritage, said the growing venture is now the largest minority-owned and -run digital media company in America.

“America needs independent news outlets alongside the huge corporate media conglomerates,” Patel said in a statement. 

Patel and Carlson were roommates at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and began publishing The Daily Caller in 2010 as a conservative counter to The Huffington Post.

Carlson was editor-in-chief of the site until 2016. He became the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News in 2017.

Patel, who ran the business side of the news organization, was a White House policy adviser for former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The only reason the Daily Caller still exists is because the guy running it is one of the very rare conservative intellectuals who understands business,” Carlson said of Patel. “There’s no magic secret, as far as I know, other than he keeps costs in line with revenue.”

The publication, which has faced past controversies over writers who were found to have white nationalist ties, has over the years moved toward original reporting as opposed to primarily opinion writing.

“Our mission is to do high quality news reporting,” Patel said. “We will couple that serious reporting with entertainment. More than anything though, we will be a place committed to civil debate. Not enough people in our country are talking openly with those outside their bubbles. I sincerely want us to be a place where that happens.”