Tucker Carlson's top writer quits after secretly posting racist and sexist remarks in online forum - CNN

I kind of edited this article which is rather long. Much of it goes into what this Neff guy has said on various internet forums. You can see the entire CNN Business article at the link. 

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New York (CNN Business)Editor's note: This article quotes racist, homophobic and sexist language, much of which has not been censored.

The top writer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson has for years been using a pseudonym to post bigoted remarks on an online forum that is a hotbed for racist, sexist, and other offensive content, CNN Business learned this week.

Just this week, the writer, Blake Neff, responded to a thread started by another user in 2018 with the subject line, "Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?"

Neff wrote, "I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no." (The subject line was not censored on the forum.)

On June 5, Neff wrote, "Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down."

On June 24, Neff commented, "Honestly given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep."

On June 26, Neff wrote that the only people who care about changing the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins are "white libs and their university-'educated' pets."

 And over the course of five years, Neff has maintained a lengthy thread in which he has derided a woman and posted information about her dating life that has invited other users to mock her and invade her privacy. There has at times also been overlap between some material he posted or saw on the forum and Carlson's show.

CNN Business contacted Neff for comment Thursday night. After he or someone acting on his behalf passed that email to Fox News spokespeople, a network spokesperson on Friday morning told CNN Business that Neff had resigned.

A Fox News spokesperson said Carlson could not be reached for comment.

Neff did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Read More Neff worked at Fox News for nearly four years and was Carlson's top writer. Previously, he was a reporter at The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet that Carlson co-founded. In a recent article in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Neff said, "Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me."

He also acknowledged the show's influence, telling the magazine, "We're very aware that we do have that power to sway the conversation, so we try to use it responsibly." When asked in a 2018 appearance on Fox's "The Five" about the writing process for his show, Carlson said he spends hours working on scripts, but referred to Neff by name, saying he was a "wonderful writer" and acknowledging his assistance. And Carlson credited Neff in the acknowledgments of his book, "Ship of Fools," for providing research. In the acknowledgments, Carlson said that Neff and two others who helped with the book "work on and greatly improve our nightly show on Fox."

During the years that Neff wrote for him at Fox, Carlson has hosted one of the most influential shows on cable news. In the last quarter, Carlson had not only the highest-rated program in cable news, but the highest-rated show in the history of cable news. Carlson also counts President Trump among his most loyal viewers. On multiple occasions, the President has tweeted out videos of Carlson's program. Which is to say, the scripts that Neff likely helped write and shape were being shared by the President of the United States. 

While working at Fox News, and while a reporter at The Daily Caller, Neff was a frequent poster on AutoAdmit. Also known as XOXOhth, it is a relatively unmoderated message board like 4chan aimed at lawyers and law school students in which racism and sexism run rampant.

The board's vulgar content was previously the subject of much criticism, and two Yale students sued anonymous posters on the site in 2007 alleging they had defamed them and made threatening remarks. The Hartford Courant reported in 2009 that the lawsuit was quietly settled after some of the posters were identified. Neff, who posts on the board under the username CharlesXII, is widely revered on the forum, with many posters knowing the person behind the account works on Carlson's show.

He has spent years posting about history, offering his political opinions, and detailing aspects of his personal life. After learning of Neff's posts on the board through an email from an anonymous tipster, CNN Business was able to positively identify CharlesXII as Neff by reviewing messages he has posted throughout the years on the forum and matching them up with publicly available information about him.

While at Fox News, Carlson has been accused by critics of making racist and inflammatory comments on air. His show has long appealed to extremists who agree with his hardline views on immigration, his emphasis on the preservation of Western culture, and his commentary on topics of race. Carlson has at several points in his Fox News career found himself in hot water when commenting on such topics. In August 2019, for instance, Carlson became engulfed in controversy when he said the very real problem of white supremacy in America was a "hoax." Most recently, Carlson saw more advertisers — including Disney and T-Mobile — flee his program in June after he said the Black Lives Matter movement was "not about black lives" and warned viewers to "remember that when they come for you." (A Fox News spokesperson later said Carlson was referring to Democratic leaders, not Black Lives Matter protesters, when he made the comments.) Carlson himself has in the past pushed back against allegations of racism. He told The Atlantic in December 2019 that such accusations are "so far from the truth" that it has "no effect at all other than to evoke in me contempt for the people saying it" because he thinks "it's that dishonest."

Bigotry and vitriol

In 2015, Neff started a thread on AutoAdmit mocking a woman, with whom he was friends on Facebook and whom he described as an "Azn megashrew," sharing posts she had written about her dating life. He has continued to post to the thread and mock the woman, whom CNN Business is not identifying, as recently as late last month. In his first post in 2015 starting the years-long thread, he explained that "through circumstances" he couldn't "quite recall," he became Facebook friends with the woman and thought her posts about dating were amusing. "So, I thought I'd post them," Neff wrote. "I won't put up a pic but it's probably relevant to say that she's a slightly overweight Azn woman who is in her mid-30s and definitely looks it." Through the years, the thread has generated nearly 1,000 comments — many of which used vulgar racist, sexist, and dehumanizing language to mock the woman. Neff also said he did not want other posters to harass her, but did not stop them from identifying her and posting links to her account