Tucker Carlson says Simon & Schuster executives can’t stand him or his new book: ‘They really hate me’

Fox News host Tucker Carlson says high-powered executives running Simon & Schuster can’t stand him or his latest book, "The Long Slide," which was published by the company – but he doesn’t seem to particularly care. 

"They hate me and they hate the book, probably more than they've ever hated any person or any book they've ever published. I mean, they really hate me," Carlson told Fox News Digital. 

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Simon & Schuster famously canceled a scheduled book by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., earlier this year on the heels of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Hawley, one of the GOP lawmakers who helped lead objections to the certification of several states in the Electoral College, publicly criticized the "Orwellian" decision while Carlson sought answers behind the scenes. 

"I was preparing to deliver a manuscript to them when they canceled Hawley’s book," Carlson said. "So I felt like I was implicated in it. I mean, it's a company I was working for was doing harm, not just to one person, Josh Hawley, but to our entire system, to the idea of a free country, they were attacking that idea and I was implicated."

The "Tucker Carlson Tonight" namesake felt a moral obligation to learn as much as he could about the process that led to Hawley’s book being canceled. Carlson laid out his attempt to understand why Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp pulled Hawley’s book during the introduction for "The Long Slide," but a glance at the acknowledgement section indicates he was left unsatisfied by the publishing executive’s decision. 

"I’d like to acknowledge Jonathan Karp of Simon & Schuster, whose descent from open-minded book editor to cartoonish corporate censor mirrors the decline of America itself," he wrote. "It’s been a sad education watching it happen." 

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"The Long Slide" was published on Aug. 10 by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Karp’s Simon & Schuster, but Carlson’s book didn’t meet the same fate as Hawley’s despite mocking the company’s top executive. 

"I think they felt in the end, that it would be worse for them to cancel a book about how they canceled other people's books than to just let it get published," Carlson said. 

Carlson added that Simon & Schuster has allies all over corporate media so Karp and other influential book executives probably assumed nobody would even notice. 

"You think NBC News is going to write a piece highlighting my attack on Simon & Schuster? No," he said. "I didn't do it to try and bring down Simon & Schuster. I just did it because I felt I was part of it. I was working for them. So I couldn't not say anything. I didn't want to be complicit in it."

Carlson referred to Karp as "not only dishonest but also kind of stupid," and said he has invited him onto "Tucker Carlson Tonight" to tell his side of the story. The book executive hasn’t taken him up on the offer. 

"He’s afraid so he just sits in his office and stews," Carlson said. 

Simon & Schuster did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

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"The Long Slide" is a collection of nostalgic magazine pieces Carlson wrote over the past 30 years, annotated with new commentary to highlight how the media has evolved. He doesn’t think many of the pieces would get published nowadays in an era when executives like Karp can censor the book of a sitting United States Senator without a coherent explanation. 

"The way we communicate, the way we consume information is totally different and it's changed us," Carlson said. 

"The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism" is available now.