Openly gay TV producer ’emboldens’ Tucker Carlson in his hateful, anti-LGBTQ+ shows

A senior executive producer of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News programme – which has consistently campaigned against LGBTQ+ rights – is a married, openly gay man.

Justin Wells is in charge of Carlson’s often anti-LGBTQ+ programmes, which include Tucker Carlson Today and Tucker Carlson Tonight, according to an article by veteran journalist Michelangelo Signorile.

Carlson is notorious for pushing various far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ talking points, such as the idea that drag is “sexualising children”.

A former Fox employee told Signorile that the executive producer has been “promoted to a level that no other producer has been”, comparing him to producer David Tabacoff, who worked closely with Bill O’Reilly from 2001 to 2017.

“There’s not another show that out-rates it,” another anonymous Fox employee said. “Influence-wise, everyone who’s conservative wants to be on Tucker.”

Wells’ own website is littered with photos that suggest his significant influence, from pictures of him laughing with Carlson – who once said teachers who discuss gender identity should be “beaten up” – to photos with 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“Justin Wells helped promulgate the kind of hate that leads to violence,” Signorile wrote.

“Now he’s aided the extremists who deny that sense of safety and liberation to every future generation of queer people.”

The American journalist notes a 22 November segment in which Carlson talks to ‘Gays Against Groomers’ founder Jaimee Michell, who remarks that the Club Q shooting was “expected and predictable“.

Michell said that the Colorado Springs shooting, which cost the lives of five people, was the result of a so-called “evil agenda” that perpetuates gender-affirming care.

This seeming determination to jump straight back into pushing an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda so soon after a mass shooting has shocked and appalled both the LGBTQ+ community and Signorile himself.

“Tucker Carlson was undaunted, continuing his relentless smearing of LGBTQ+ as ‘groomers’ who are dangerous to children,” he wrote.

He called the campaign “twisted,” but was especially disgusted at Wells’ influence in the show, saying that he helped “craft, mould, and disseminate these blood-curdling distortions and the horrendous demonisation against his own community.”

But for some former Fox employees, it’s unfortunately not surprising.

One said that they weren’t sure if “he’s just completely blinded by the money”, while others said it was a “very clear manifestation of someone who showed their true colours”.

“It really blows my mind that he – who he is as a person and what he does as a job – it’s beyond the scope,” another employee told Signorile.

The journalist concluded that Wells, as a gay man, “only emboldens Carlson further” by giving him the “permission to launch the ugly attacks” and to help Carlson validate “the vitriol he espouses”.

“That makes Justin Wells’ presence as the powerful gay man behind Tucker Carlson all the more newsworthy. And all the more dangerous.”