A message in discovery led to the eventual firing of the Fox News host, the New York Times reports

A text message obtained by The New York Times shows Tucker Carlson describing a video depicting a “group of Trump guys” beating an “Antifa kid,” and stating that “It’s not how white men fight.”

The message, discovered on the eve of the jury trial for Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News, reportedly led to the abrupt firing of Carlson — who hawked racist rhetoric on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight for years.

The former host reportedly sent the message on Jan. 7, 2021 to one of his producers after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the message, Carlson described how Trump supporters beat “an Antifa kid.” Carlson then expressed a desire to see the men kill the person he had described as the Antifa kid. “Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously,” he wrote. “It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it.”

“Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me,” Carlson continued. “I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed,” Carlson continued, per the report. “If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”

The previously unreported text was part of redacted court filings. Fox’s board reportedly worried that Carlson’s text would become public if he testified on the stand, and told Fox executives it was contracting a third-party law firm to review Carlson’s conduct.

Carlson, long the network’s foremost purveyor of white supremacist rhetoric and the “great replacement” theory, was ousted from Fox last week.