“We’re a better country without him bagging on our military every night in front of hundreds of thousands of people,” one senior DOD official told POLITICO. The official claimed that Carlson “made a mockery” of the free press and “repeatedly cherry-picked department policies and used them to destroy DOD as an institution.”

A second DOD official added, “Good riddance.”

Carlson responded to a request for comment from the publication about Defense Department officials being happy about his departure from Fox, replying in a text message: “Ha! I’m sure.”

[Here’s a question: why are DoD officials speaking at all about this? And why did Politico offer them anonymity to take shots at a broadcast journalist? If this is what “senior DoD officials” have on their minds, we have more problems than a media shake-up. And if this is what gets anonymity from media outlets, the media industry has larger credibility problems than what happened at Fox. — Ed]