Tucker Carlson

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“”It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

—Upton Sinclair

“”Listening to that Fucker Carlson, I'd like to add that traffic lights have always seemed to me to be an infringement of my personal liberty, and that people's slavish obedience to them shows the alarming effect on individual freedoms brought by such socialist nanny-state measures.

—John Cleese's tweet from April 28th, 2021

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (1969–) is an American white nationalist and fascist political commentator, propaganda-spewing news correspondent, Donald Trump supporter, Russia supporter, TV dinner heir, and professional jackasshole. He started his career as a semi-respectable journalist (though his open racism and homophobia was documented in college), and has been sinking lower ever since. He co-hosted the CNN political show Crossfire (until it was cancelled), and the MSNBC show Tucker (until it was cancelled). He was also a major host at Fox News from 2016–2023, taking sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly's prime-time spot, with his show Tucker Carlson Tonight, also known as the White Power Hour. He is also the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of the propaganda outlet The Daily Caller. Previously known for holding libertarian views on economic issues, he flipped to a faux-protectionist economic analysis in which he consistently blames immigrants for every problem in the US.

Carlson is arguably fully fascist because he embraces several of the aspects of Robert Paxton's definition: obsession with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood, white nationalism, working the masses with less-than-uneasy collaboration with elites (specifically Rupert Murdoch, although Tucker himself is also an elite), and support for the anti-democratic violence of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. According to Erik Wemple of The Washington Post, Carlson's modus operandi is to blindside "his guests and keeping them from issuing fully formed answers", as well as falsely claiming that his guests are ill-prepared to refute his arguments. When his guests object to his loaded questions, he'll keep badgering them for not answering his question and then subsequently declare victory.

The "elites" are a frequent target of Carlson, which is ironic, since who owns Fox? And it just shows how he is playing a character with regard to anti-elitism, although with regard to his racism and other bigotry, one should believe that it's the real deal. Carlson's father, Dick Carlson, was wealthy and politically-connected. Carlson went to exclusive private schools. His father remarried the heir to the Swanson Enterprises fortune, which eventually made Carlson an heir to the fortune as well. Carlson's net wealth as of 2022 was estimated $420 million, which puts him at the poorer end of the ruling class — remember that next time he tells you that the elites are oppressing you. Foreshadowing Tucker's career, Dick lost a defamation case against then-San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto because he had falsely and maliciously accused the mayor of having mafia ties, implicitly smearing Alioto's Sicilian ancestry.

Crossfire debacle with Jon Stewart

On October 15, 2004 Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire and although he criticized the show as a whole, Carlson took it as a personal attack. Stewart attacked the show for sensationalizing political debate and failing to provide hard-hitting interviews with those they agree with, comparing it to professional wrestling. Carlson decided to engage in the tu quoque method of debate by pointing out that Stewart did not ask John Kerry tough questions. Stewart responded with: "You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls! What is wrong with you?"

Stewart doubled down on his criticism on an episode of The Daily Show the following Monday. Specifically, he mocked them for claiming to be a show about serious political debate even though their show is "named after the stray bullets that hit innocent bystanders in a gang fight" along with pointing out the irony of him getting criticized for expressing an opinion on an opinion based news show.

The show was cancelled a few months later with the president of CNN stating that he felt Stewart was right in his criticisms. However, whether or not this is the real reason is still debatable. Rather pathetically, Carlson is still under the delusion he won the debate, and has made claims such as that a Daily Show producer called him to say he was sorry and that Jon Stewart lectured the show's staff for over an hour. These claims have never been backed up and, given his history of dishonesty (see Keith Olbermann incident below), this leaves him open to skepticism.

Sexism

He appears to consider 1950s gender roles applicable in modern society, believing that the idea of a woman paying for her man's meals is "disgusting." His attitudes are also sexist towards men as well since he does not consider statutory rape a crime if the victim is male and the perpetrator is female, further adding that it is "whiny" for the boys to report it. He has attacked rape shield laws that protect the identity of victims, and he has defended pedophile Warren Jeffs.

Media Matters compiled disgusting comments over the years that Carlson made about women, among other topics:

Toxic masculinity

A related recurring theme in Carlson's broadcasts is hyper-obsession with masculinity — or, at least, Carlson's definition of masculinity, a cartoonish projection of macho "strength", tough-guy swagger, misogyny, and an obsession that modern society (especially feminism) has devitalized American men and made them "weaker". Similar hyper-masculine themes were common in World War II fascist regimes, and are also common themes in the modern strongmen (or strongman-wannabe) authoritarian leaders Carlson admires, such as those of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Viktor Orbán. Like others with this obsession, this may in part be a mask to cover for Carlson's fearful hatred of independent women. This hatred was confirmed in an interview with Ben Smith in July 2022 where he admitted that the archetype of the type of person he really hates is a "38-year-old female white lawyer with a barren personal life".

Due to this, Carlson will be happy to promote people that share similar hyper-masculine misogynistic asshole qualities, regardless of their repulsiveness. For example, Carlson hosted the notoriously toxic manosphere grifter Andrew Tate on his August 25 2022 show, shortly after he was banned from most social media. On Carlson's show, Tate wailed that he was being banned for what he called called flaunting "very traditional masculine values". According to social media companies, the actual reason for the bans were due to "misogyny", "hate speech", and "content that attacks, threatens, incites violence against, or otherwise dehumanizes an individual or a group". Tate was arrested (along with three others) in Romania in late December 2022, with the allegations against Tate being the "very traditional masculine values" of human trafficking and rape. Subsequently, remarks from this interview resurfaced and were freshly scrutinized. In the interview, Carlson (using his usual just asking questions mode) defended Tate and downplayed any notion of wrongdoing concerning an April 2022 police raid on Tate, which occurred due to reports that a woman had been held captive in Tate's house.

In early July 2023, Carlson (who by that time was fired from Fox News and was reduced to broadcasting his show on Twitter) once again hosted Tate for an interview (who by then was officially indicted for human trafficking and rape). Bizarrely in the interview, Tate "forgot" about his long history of running a pornographic webcam businesses and went on to lament how porn is destroying "masculine virtue", before launching into an anti-immigration discussion as typically one would find on Carlson's show. While Elon Musk gave props to the interview (calling it "interesting"), many other conservatives (among them Joe Walsh, Erick Erickson, Benjamin Domenech (of The Federalist), and the Washington Examiner) were appalled by Carlson choosing to do an interview with an indicted rapist and confirmed pornographer, especially since Carlson was portraying Tate as a "hero".

Also due to this, Carlson will go out of his way to make disparaging and baseless attacks on any organization as "woke" for the mere "offense" of having women in it. For example, in March 2021, Carlson went out of his way to complain about the United States military being "feminine" and a "mockery" simply for designing combat uniforms and body armor for women. These remarks were widely condemned by The Pentagon, veterans, and people in service, with many senior military leaders (among others) responding with praise for the women in military service, calling them "beacons of freedom" in contrast to Carlson's "divisive" rhetoric (which, of course, was based on "zero days of service in the armed forces"). Later, in December 2021, Carlson, having learned nothing, hosted a right-wing talk show airhead named Jesse Kelly, who insisted that "we don’t need a military that’s woman-friendly" and that "we can’t even get women off of naval vessels… that should be step one, but most of them are already pregnant anyway.”

Carlson's peculiar brand of "masculinity" led to widespread mockery on social media when in April 2022, Carlson unveiled a trailer for an upcoming special for Fox's streaming service Fox Nation called The End of Men, with the premise concerning "the total collapse of testosterone levels in American men". The trailer featured images of hunky shirtless men wrestling, tossing tires, and chopping wood. Such images were naturally widely considered unintentionally homoerotic by many commentators, including a definitive affirmation of such from George Takei. The trailer also featured an unusual "treatment" for the supposed (unproven) "problem" of low testosterone: red light therapy, where for some reason you become an instant High-Testosterone Manly-Man by shining some red lights on your balls. This bizarre "testicle tanning" broscience was widely mocked on social media as proof that Carlson had, indeed, gone completely nuts.

Assorted dickishness

1991: Voted most likely to become jackasshole supreme

• During the weekend that Keith Olbermann was suspended from MSNBC, he actually pretended to be Olbermann in a back-and-forth e-mail exchange with Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky. In the exchange, Carlson slandered Olbermann's boss. It turns out that Carlson's right-wing website The Daily Caller purchased the domain KeithOlbermann.com over the summer and Carlson's e-mail address there is "Keith@KeithOlbermann.com."
• His insanity includes attacking his own network, Fox News, as anti-gun (no really!) for reporting the importance of gun safety around children.
• Like a lot of conservatives he is against affirmative action, abortion, and, … seat-belt laws.
• When interviewing a Washington state elector about his intention to urge electors to vote their conscience, Carlson engaged in an extremely disingenuous argument. Hold on to your hats and pay attention here: Carlson claimed that electors wanting to support the candidate with the most popular votes rather than the one with the most electoral votes is against democracy. He was essentially arguing against his own (stupid) position while making it seem like his guest was guilty of the same thing he is. Absolutely crazy spinning.
• He is known for his uncomprehending expression when he cannot understand basic science and is a denier of the overwhelming evidence of global warming. Whenever he realizes that his opponent on the Republican-biased Fox News debate is making a valid point, he chortles in a failed attempt to try to undermine the scientific evidence but deepens his reputation to further stupidity.
• He referred to transgender people transitioning as "the act of a crazy person", and compared it to "setting your hair on fire or blinding yourself."
• He said of California's pro-LGBT curriculum "It sounds weird but California public schools could soon be required to teach kids about the sex lives of historical figures. It‘s all part of an effort to force kids to approve of homosexuality."
• In 2019, he attempted to re-ignite a culture war that was already (mostly) won by idiots like himself in the 1980s, keeping English units in the US instead of the metric system.
• Another example of Tucker not being a journalist on any level: he claims that some "damning, authentic" documents that are somehow the only documents to exist in one copy on Joe Biden's son Hunter has "disappeared in the mail". Sure, Tucker, we believe you.
• He casually engaged in JAQing off regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, speculating that "maybe it doesn't work". Anthony Fauci responded by calling Carlson's blabbering "typical crazy conspiracy theory". Carlson responded to Fauci with even more JAQing off regarding COVID-19 restrictions, showing a complete misunderstanding of the public health guidelines for fully vaccinated people at the time. Carlson kept at it by cherry picking data and demonstrating that he did not understand the concepts of causality or control groups: if millions of people get the vaccine, of course some of them will die within a month but Carlson didn't think about comparing that group to people who weren't vaccinated. He also compared businesses requiring people be vaccinated to "medical Jim Crow".
• Carlson has repeatedly invited antivaxxer/anti-masker Alex Berenson onto his show. In 2021, Carlson urged people to call the police on parents who have children wearing facemasks.
• In late April 2021, Carlson went off on a hyperbolic rant regarding face masks. He first compared mask mandates as being the equivalent to living in North Korea for some reason. He then showed that, regardless of how angry he was at the mask mandates, he really doesn't mind authoritarianism all that much if it's Tucker Carlson style authoritarianism, by suggesting that parents who have their children wear face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic were actually committing child abuse, and encouraging all his viewers to call child protective services on these parents if they see this. Tucker's opinions on whether masks actually work, meanwhile, change based on what the Democrats are saying about the subject.
• In January 2022, Carlson got mad at (of all things) changes made to some animated characters used in advertising M&M's candy. In particular, Carlson was mad that the high stilettos and go-go boots worn by some of the characters were being replaced with "less sexy" shoes, which meant that he was "totally turned off" from the animated talking candies now. One year later, Carlson again got mad at M&Ms after the manufacturer (Mars Inc.) debuted a new promotional wrapper featuring three female M&M cartoons, along with a campaign to support professional pursuits by women. This led to Carlson bizarrely complaining that a new purple M&M character (representing a peanut M&M) was "obese" and somehow thinking that the green M&M was a lesbian.
• And to top it all off, Fox News, in late 2020, defended itself in a defamation lawsuit (brought by a former Trump mistress whom Carlson said was committing "a classic case of extortion") by arguing that Carlson cannot be trusted to provide accurate information on his show.

Federal crimes

• Tucker Carlson has admitted to violating endangered species law by taking a feather from a bald eagle home with him after being explicitly told it was an illegal thing to do; he described his actions as "thrilling". This infraction alone means he potentially faces 1 year in prison and a $100k fine.

Racism and xenophobia

See the main articles on this topic: Racism and Xenophobia

Meme made to mock Tucker Carlson.

“”Tucker Carlson is basically ‘Daily Stormer: The Show.’

—Daily Stormer post, August 24, 2018

Carlson has a long and storied history of spouting out white nationalist rhetoric.

• His racism and extreme homophobia dates at least as far back to his 1991 college yearbook, where his biography listed "History, Christian Fellowship 1 2 3 4, Jesse Helms Foundation, Dan White Society". Dan White was the assassin of San Francisco City Councilmember and gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
• He claimed that California is becoming a third world country (it's not) because of Latin American migrants. He believes Mexico has interfered in American elections more successfully than Russia by "packing our electorate".
• On his MSNBC show, he called Canadians "stalkers" and "like your retarded cousin". After the controversy, he went on the CBC program The Hour and gave an equally offensive non-apology.
• He promoted the alt-right social media platform Gab on his show.
• He claimed Ilhan Omar was "living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country", citing "values are simply antithetical to ours."
• He called Iraqis "semiliterate primitive monkeys" and said that Afghanistan is never going to be a civilized country because the people aren't civilized."
• He promoted the racist, islamophobic, and anti-semitic alt-right "Great Replacement" theory on Fox News, both implicitly and explicitly. The Anti-Defamation League responded to this by, in a public letter to Fox News, calling for Carlson to be fired, citing multiple racist and bigoted incidents in the past. Carlson responded to this criticism by doubling down on the racism and xenophobia, wailing that the Democratic party was "trying to replace the current electorate" with "more obedient voters from the Third World."
• Carlson claimed that George Floyd died of drug overdose.
• Prior to being dumped by Fox, Carlson had primarily veiled his antisemitism by attacking Jewish financiers George Soros and Paul Singer. Since that time he has become more overtly antisemitic on Twitter.
• Tucker once complained a demographic shift in local communities was occurring "without debate," leading Cody Johnston of Some More News to ask if he lived in "the racist town from Blazing Saddles."

Due to Carlson's racism and other toxic dickish behavior, by April 2021, Carlson was too toxic for all but the sketchiest of advertisers (such as bullshit artists like Mike Lindell's MyPillow, and bogus nutritional supplement promoters), despite being (depressingly) the most-watched host in cable news at the time.

Tucker Carlson, racist Kremlin propagandist

Like much of the far right and similar to his idol, Donald Trump, Carlson's white nationalism has fostered a bromance with Vladimir Putin, who also shares similar white nationalist views. This has led Carlson, on occasion, to be somewhat out of step with other conservatives who were still more in the neoconservative camp (or other forms of conservatism that aren't quite so openly racist), and still considered Russia America's number one geopolitical foe, as Mitt Romney notably did in 2012.

Throughout late 2021 and early 2022, Tucker Carlson publicly supported the idea of Russia invading Ukraine and criticized US support to help Ukraine's defenses (obviously, Carlson was unconcerned about innocent people dying). Helping defend Ukraine against a potential Russian invasion was one of the few issues in 2022 that attracted bipartisan support from most Republicans and Democrats. Carlson, however, was opposed to any sort of assistance, preferring instead to defend Putin's aggression against Ukraine by regurgitating Kremlin propaganda.

For instance, when Republican representative Mike Turner appeared on Carlson's show in November 2021 and defended assistance to Ukraine, citing the "strategic importance" and the need to defend democracy, Carlson countered by openly wondering "why wouldn’t we be on Russia’s side?" To explain this stance, Carlson cited Russia's energy reserves (perhaps hinting at the threat of Russia cutting off natural gas to Europe), insinuated that Russia for some reason would help counterbalance "the actual threat, which is China", and wondered why military troops weren't being used instead for an issue of vastly more importance to Carlson: closing the US-Mexico border. Later, Carlson created a conspiracy theory that US defense contractors were the real people behind the crisis, building a bizarre narrative based on a single quote cherry-picked from a Biden press conference concerning shortages and geopolitical concerns on a completely unrelated topic, semiconductors. In another show, Tucker ranted that all of the pundits and politicians who were demanding strong action from the Biden administration (from Joe Scarborough to Bill Kristol to Dan Crenshaw to Adam Schiff) were just "pathetic" "Twitter trolls" spewing "ad hominem" attacks against his other idol, Vladimir Putin (in the same opening segment where he complained about people saying mean things about Putin, Carlson demonstrated his vapid geopolitical knowledge when he insinuated that no one knew what NATO is).

This created a small rift in the bipartisan consensus on Ukraine when a few of the more extremist and not-so-bright Republican representatives (such as insurrection supporters Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene) migrated towards Carlson's viewpoint.

Later, the day after a major development in the Ukraine situation — where Putin declared two regions of Ukraine to be "independent states", bizarrely asserted that the regions were no longer part of Ukraine, and authorized Russian forces to be deployed to the region as "peacekeepers" — Carlson went out of his way to defend Putin. During the rant, Carlson embraced culture war whataboutism tactics to try and assert that Putin was really a swell guy ("Has Putin ever called me a racist?... Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years?"), quote mined remarks from Kamala Harris made at the 2022 Munich Security Conference and used them to insinuate that her completely understandable remarks regarding NATO and Ukraine were somehow completely incomprehensible and asserted that everyone should love Putin because if you don't, energy prices will go up.

Carlson's pro-Kremlin viewpoints on Ukraine in 2022 are, of course, nothing new. Carlson had previously exclaimed "why shouldn't I root for Russia? Which, by the way, I am." in a November 2019 show, in regards to Russia's long armed conflict with Ukraine's democracy.

Russian media were delighted to find such a prominent useful idiot and frequently broadcast Carlson's Russian propaganda after it was aired. A leaked memo from the Kremlin even went so far as to call him "essential" to the Russian government.

In a political discussion program on Russian state controlled TV, there was consensus that Carlson was an American who should not be killed.

In February 2024, Carlson confirmed his position as Putin's most prominent American useful idiot by actually being granted an interview with Putin himself. Carlson was the first American "journalist" to interview Putin since October 2021. This wasn't for a lack of trying; multiple Western news organizations tried to arrange an interview with Putin, but were denied access for not being pro-Putin propaganda outlets. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred in 2022, the Kremlin criminalized criticism of the war and drove out virtually all independent Russian media organizations, along with hundreds of journalists. At the time of the interview, two actual American journalists, Evan Gershkovich (of the Wall Street Journal) and Alsu Kurmasheva (of Radio Free Liberty) were being detained in Russia on flimsy espionage or foreign agent charges that were widely condemned by the West as politically motivated. It has been suggested that Carlson could face sanctions by the EU for airing the interview of a charged war criminal, since Carlson has long been a propagandist rather than a journalist.

After the interview, Carlson filmed some segments fawning over how Moscow purportedly was "so much nicer than any US city". Bizarrely, in order to demonstrate just how much better life is in Moscow, he glowingly showcased decades old shopping cart security technology that was already quite common in many US grocery stores already. Carlson also praised the low prices (in US dollar terms) at the Moscow supermarket he visited, and claimed that these low prices "radicalized" him "against our (United States) leaders". This demonstrates that Carlson is unaware (or at least pretends to be unaware) of the concept of purchasing power parity. Reality is different: compared to the United States, food is much less affordable in Russia for the average citizen. After the Ukraine war began in 2022, the percentage of disposable income Russians spent on food doubled to 40%. In contrast, in 2022, the USDA reported that Americans spent 11.3 percent of their disposable income on food, with half of this figure coming from food away from home. Carlson's glowing propaganda contrasts with the brain drain Russia was experiencing at the time. From 2022 to 2023, an estimated 1 million Russians left the country entirely, with the technology sector particularly hard hit by emigration.

Tucker Carlson, antisemitic authoritarian asshat

Russia is not the only authoritarian government that Carlson has formed a bromance with.

In January 2018, the government of Hungary, led by Viktor Orbán, passed Bill T/333. This bill, framed as the "STOP Soros" act due to Orban's obsession with the billionaire philanthropist, criminalized the activity of providing assistance for asylum seekers. Widely condemned by human rights organizations, the bill was loaded with the type of nativist xenophobia and strong whiffs of authoritarianism that appeals to many of Orbán's voters.

As Carlson (and his audience) is no stranger to xenophobia and authoritarianism, it is no surprise that Carlson also ended up idolizing Orbán. In late January 2022, Carlson created a documentary for the streaming service Fox Nation called Hungary vs. Soros. There, he created propaganda straight from Orbán's playbook, depicting Hungary as a traditional conservative Christian paradise, and applauding Orbán's strict immigration policies (no matter how dehumanizing they were). Unusually, Carlson was even allowed to visit Hungary's southern border fence, and he actually was able to interview Orbán — practices normally not allowed to media outlets not known to be an Orbán lapdog. Naturally, Soros ended up being the boogeyman of the documentary, which used standard propaganda documentary tricks (black and white imagery, ominous music) to complain that Soros was trying to force a liberal, globalist, open-borders agenda onto Hungarian society. Another recurring visual motif in the documentary is a supposed contrast between chaotic, scary footage of non-white migrants and tranquil images of happy, white families, as well as an underlying concern over white demographic decline.

A few Hungarians who responded with a review of Carlson's "documentary" noted how similar Carlson's propaganda was to Orbán's, which was widespread and well known in Hungary. Thus (similar to Carlson's bromance with Putin) Carlson was basically acting as a useful idiot in creating propaganda that suited Orbán's agenda. Unsurprisingly, the pro-Orbán television channel HírTV aired Carlson's documentary just a couple weeks after the documentary premiered on Fox Nation. Other reviewers commented on the racism that underpinned the documentary. For instance, one reviewer thought that the documentary could easily be summarized by taking the white nationalist phrases of the "14 Words" and swap "Hungarian" for "white". Several reviewers, not to mention activist organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, also commented that Carlson's framing of Soros as a shadowy puppet master was, simply put, a nasty antisemitic trope.

Carlson, of course, has endorsed other authoritarian governments when it conveniently fits his narrative. In September 2021, Tucker praised the Chinese government as "virtuous" for intervening in its citizens' private lives and placing restrictions on gaming and celebrity culture and argued that the Biden administration should do the same. This is in spite of him attacking the CDC for promoting COVID-19 vaccinations and restrictions.

Of course, Carlson doesn't see anything wrong with the behavior of governments like Putin or Orbán. Instead, Carlson prefers to assign authoritarian labels to leaders of democracies. For instance, in the wake of the 2022 Canada convoy protest, Carlson declared "there's no more fearful despot in the world" that is more dictatorial than... Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Additionally, in February 2022, Carlson insinuated that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was elected in April 2019 with 73% of the vote, was "a dictator who’s friends with everyone in Washington", instead of the leader of a fledgling democracy that was being threatened by Carlson's authoritarian bud Putin. He later called Zelenskyy "sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of BlackRock", "shifty", and "dead-eyed".

Tucker Carlson, domestic terrorism and hate crime apologist

On multiple occasions, Carlson has deflected, engaged in whataboutism, or even blamed the victim whenever an American mass shooting has occurred. Of course, Carlson never blames the sort of racism, homophobia, and hate that Carlson likes to promote... or other American right-wing cause célèbres, like firearms policy and culture.

• 2019 El Paso shooting (August 3 2019): Three days after a white supremacist committed a mass shooting in El Paso, Carlson dismissed white supremacy as "a hoax", "just like the Russia hoax". (He then declared that he never "met anybody, not one person, who subscribes to white supremacy", suggesting that he hasn't looked in a mirror lately).
• 2022 Buffalo shooting (May 14 2022): A hate-motivated mass shooter killed 10 Black people due to racist ideology he picked up on the Internet. The shooter wrote a "manifesto" which in particular was littered with the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Carlson was well associated with promoting this theory — according to one analysis, at the time of the shooting, he had pushed the concept in more than 400 of his shows. Therefore, his rhetoric was under fresh scrutiny by the media. Carlson, of course, refused to acknowledge his connection to the "great replacement" bullshit the shooter promoted. Instead, he responded by first engaging in whataboutism ("Many other metro areas recorded murders over the weekend. That's typical now."). Then he deflected from the issue by complaining that Democrats have some nerve being ticked off about hate speech. In the process, he made up a new definition of hate speech as "speech that our leaders hate", and then complained that "the left" is somehow not allowing racists like Carlson to "express your political views out loud". (Of course, he was stating this as host of one of the most depressingly popular cable news shows at the time.)
• Highland Park parade shooting (July 4 2022): Carlson, operating in his usual "just asking questions" mode, responded to this shooting first by blaming SSRIs (or, as he describes it, "endless psychotropic drugs that are handed out at every school in the country by crackpots posing as counselors"). Noting that many mass shooters are young men (who in Carlson's mind live in "a solitary fantasy world of social media, porn and video games" smoking "government-endorsed marijuana"), Carlson then tries to push his "theory", using all the anti-feminism misogyny he can muster, that the reason "a lot of young men in America are going nuts" is due to "the authorities in their lives, mostly women" lecturing men about "their so-called privilege".
• Colorado Springs nightclub shooting (November 19 2022): On this date, a mass shooting by a person identifying as non-binary occurred at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. Although hate crime charges were being looked into, the motive was unknown for several days after the event. That did not stop Carlson from using the shooting as a launchpad to go on a transphobic rant on the following Monday and Tuesday about Boston Children's Hospital "sexually mutilating kids", a wildly exaggerated conspiracy theory regarding transgender care that had already led to several bomb threats aimed at the hospital. In addition, on Tuesday November 22, Carlson hosted a guest named Jaimee Mitchell who reportedly ran a group called "Gays Against Groomers". Mitchell first claimed that people who accurately describe the anti-LGBTQ slur "groomer" as a homophobic conspiracy theory were "putting a really large target on our backs". Then she blamed the victim by declaring that "the tragedy that happened in Colorado Springs the other night, it was expected and predictable" and she speculated these sort of attacks wouldn't "stop until we end this evil agenda (of gender-affirming care) that is attacking children".
• 2023 Covenant School shooting (March 27 2023): On this date, a mass shooting occurred at a private Presbyterian parochial school. In contrast to the archetypes of the perpetrators of other mass shootings Carlson has commented on, initial information indicated that the shooting was committed by one of Carlson's Others, a transgender individual. This allowed Carlson (who in a previous segment broadcast a few days earlier insinuated that transgender people arming themselves for self-defense was "not the exercise of the Second Amendment" but "political hysteria") to use the shooting as an excuse to hyperbolize during the next couple nights of Tucker Carlson Tonight, using cherry-picking as well and second-guessing of the perpetrator's motive, that this was evidence of an emerging movement of "trans terrorism" which specifically targets Christians, of whom he declared transgender people were a "natural enemy". In one instance, Carlson supported his arguments using a Twitter hoax post with a modified version of a racist 4chan copypasta; Carlson quoted the modified version of the copypasta verbatim. If you have paid attention to the insanity going on at Fox for long enough, you may recall a similar moral panic whipped up by Carlson's predecessor against an Other that was more fashionable to hate at the time.

Tucker Carlson, double agent

It was revealed in June 2021 that not only is Carlson a frequent source for journalists of unflattering material about Trump, but that he is also a primary source for Fox News' internal politics. Playing both sides like this not only makes Carlson a hypocrite, but feeding internal politics on the down-low to journalists ("cringing animals who are not worthy of respect", as Carlson calls them) is the kind of thing that gets an ordinary person fired for violating the non-disclosure agreement.

Tucker Carlson, insurrection cheerleader

See the main article on this topic: 2021 U.S. Capitol riot

Leading up the riot, when Carlson was having election-denialist guests such as Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, Fox Vice President Raj Shah and Carlson's then-producer Alex Pfeiffer discussed the insanity of their denialist claims while balancing the needs of Carlson's audience. In internal communication, Pfeiffer went so far as to refer to Carlson's balancing act in speaking to the audience as:

“”Like negotiating with terrorists, but especially dumb ones. Cousin fucking types not saudi royalty.

Tucker Carlson has frequently defended the perpetrators of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. Carlson's general tactic on the issue has been to engage in gaslighting in order to downplay the nature of the violent, anti-democratic insurrection attempt. On his show's alternate reality, the insurrection attempt really is an event where "many of [the indicted individuals] did nothing wrong" and the mob (which had members of groups like the Proud Boys in it, and waved Confederate flags) "wasn’t an armed invasion by a brigade of dangerous white supremacists." Individuals with clear violent intent, such as Eric Munchel (who stormed the Capitol in tactical gear, carrying disposable handcuffs), were referred to as merely someone who "just walked into what we used to refer to as ‘The People’s House’" whose "only crime was trespassing in the Capitol". Naturally, according to Carlson, the fault for any viewpoint grounded in reality (that is, this was a violent insurrection attempt) lies with social media.

Carlson hasn't hesitated to also use the racism so prevalent on his show to bizarrely downplay the riot, either. In later April 2021, after Joe Biden gave a speech obliquely referring to the riot as the "worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War", Carlson responded by saying that the worst attack on democracy in 160 years actually was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, because "the law completely changed the composition of America's voter rolls, purely to benefit the Democratic Party."

On multiple occasions, Carlson even has alluded to the riot being a supposed false flag, infiltrated by an "agent provocateur" who was there to make Donald Trump look bad "for reasons we cannot comprehend". Of course, one of the accused "agent provocateurs" clearly documented (via his Facebook posts) not only his full willing participation in the riot, but also how much he loved Donald Trump, how much he believed Trump's "Big Lie", and how much he loved Carlson's show. In another instance, Carlson's argument for the riot being "organized at least in part by government agents" was based on a bizarre interpretation of an early indictment of one of the participants, Thomas Caldwell (an Oath Keeper who has frequently appeared on Carlson's show).

On November 2021, Carlson made a pseudohistorical schlockumentary on the insurrection, called "Patriot Purge", that added further crazy claims to support his notion that the Capitol Attack was a false flag to take ‘way err reigghts!!!!!! This special pissed off Jonah Goldberg (along with his business partner, Stephen Hayes) enough to sever all ties with the Fox News network.

One year after the riot in 2022, Carlson's power over the Republican party was demonstrated when Ted Cruz had to beg Carlson for forgiveness and walk back his words after calling the riot participants who attacked Capitol police terrorists. According to Carlson, actually denouncing the violence that occurred at the insurrection like Cruz did was scandalously "repeating the talking points" of the Biden administration, and such made Carlson's audience feel that the Republican party was "worthless" for not fully embracing Carlson's gaslighting and conspiracy theories.

On January 13, 2022, 11 Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy for not only merely participating in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot but allegedly actively plotting to undermine the lawful transfer of presidential power by force. On January 14, 2022, one of the accused Oath Keepers, Thomas Caldwell, once again appeared on Carlson's program. Carlson downplayed Caldwell as a "senior citizen who walks with a cane", a "devout Christian", and a "thoroughly loyal American."

On January 8 2023 in Brazil, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro (who had recently lost an election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) attempted their own version of a "January 6th" style insurrection and stormed the Brazilian presidential palace and other government buildings. Unsurprisingly, Carlson cheered these insurrectionists on as well. Carlson described the recent Brazil presidential election (without any evidence) as "very rigged", and claimed (without any evidence) that Brazil's "democracy has been hijacked possibly forever". Carlson then extended sympathy to the rioters, and also (without any evidence) claimed that "Lula is working to turn Brazil into a Chinese-style dictatorship". Carlson had previously given a very sympathetic interview to Bolsonaro on his show in late June 2022.

Tucker Carlson, insurrection footage whitewasher

In late February 2023, after the Republicans took the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, the new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, decided (in a pandering to the MAGA voters) that the best person to have exclusive access to roughly 40,000 hours of security footage from the coup attempt was Carlson. Shortly after this, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that providing the footage would probably merely be fodder to boost his claims that the coup attempt was a "false flag" attempt... a warning that proved to be, fairly obviously, quite correct.

On March 6 2023, Carlson released the first Tucker Carlson Tonight episode devoted to this exclusive footage. Carlson, along with New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, attempted to promote a gaslighting style propaganda narrative, using cherry-picked clips, that the coup participants were "politely queuing, very peaceable" and were "orderly and meek" sightseers instead of participants in a violent coup. In addition, Carlson insinuated that there was no connection whatsoever between the death of officer Brian Sicknick and the coup, even though Sicknick died one day after the coup attempt and was assaulted by coup participants during the event.

Even among Republicans the reaction was incredibly negative, with a strong rebuke from, among many others, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney (who compared Carlson's whitewashing attempt to Alex Jones's portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre) and Thom Tillis (who simply flat out called Carlson's untruths "bullshit"). In addition, the Sicknick family also lambasted Carlson and Fox News (comparing the network to the former Soviet Communist newspaper Pravda). Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger also ripped into Carlson, and the downplaying of Sicknick's death in particular, in a letter sent to the rest of the Capitol Police force. Of course, predictably, Donald Trump was full of praise for Carlson's propaganda, using Carlson's program as the premise to write an all-caps tirade on his Truth Social platform demanding to "LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO".

Tucker Carlson, bullshitter for profit

Privately, as exposed in 2023 in several documents for a defamation lawsuit against Fox News instituted by Dominion Voting Systems, Carlson was ticked with the Big Lie direction Trump undertook, acknowledging that "there wasn't enough fraud to change the outcome", and complaining that Trump and his team of "lawyers" were "fuckers (that) are destroying our credibility". Carlson also speculated that Trump "could easily destroy us if we play it wrong", and was particularly irked with Sidney Powell, calling her a "lunatic", "crazy person", and a "nutcase" in multiple texts. Later documents reveal that Carlson privately "passionately" hated Trump, and appeared to also privately believe that Trump's presidency was a "disaster" in contrast to his opinions about Trump on air. In April 2023, Fox settled the lawsuit with Dominion for $787 million, conceding the obvious from their disclosed internal documents.

Excerpts from the disclosed Fox News internal documents:

Alex Pfeiffer (Carlson's producer): Trump has a pretty low rate at success in his business ventures.

Carlson: That’s for sure. All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that.

Carlson: I’d heard that about the inauguration. Hard to believe. So destructive.

It’s disgusting. I’m trying to look away.

Carlson: I had to try to make the WH [White House] disavow her [Sidney Powell, Trump's election denial lawyer], which they obviously should have done long before.

Laura Ingraham: No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.

Carlson: But they said nothing in public. Pretty disgusting. And now Trump, I learned this morning, is sitting back and letting them lose the senate. He doesn’t care. I care.

Carlson: We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.

I hate him passionately.

Carlson: Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters.

Carlson: He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.

Pfeiffer: You’re right. I don’t want to let him destroy me either. [REDACTED]. The Trump anger spiral is vicious.

Carlson: That’s for sure. Deadly. It almost consumed me in November when Sidney Powell attacked us. It was very difficult to regain emotional control, but I knew I had to. We’ve got two weeks left. We can do this.

Despite his personal opinions, Carlson appeared to acknowledge that there was financial incentives for Fox News to kowtow to Trump's Big Lie, in order to prevent their audience from migrating to fringe "news" networks that enthusiastically embraced and promoted Trump's bullshit. (As Carlson put it: "an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us".)

Tucker Carlson, criminal fanboy

In 2022, Carlson made a special trip from his 'coastal elite' house in Maine to California to give a tribute at the funeral of Sonny Barger, founder of the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle club. Barger had been convicted of drug dealing, conspiracy to transport explosives with intent to commit murder and damage buildings, and domestic violence. Realistically, Barger committed many other crimes that he was not convicted of since he was a Hells Angel (murder, kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon). Nonetheless, Carlson delivered his squeaky-voiced eulogy, quoting Barger:

“”Why is it left to Sonny Barger to say, ‘Stand tall, stay loyal, remain free, and always value honor?' The president of the United States should be saying that every single morning as he salutes the flag, but only Sonny Barger is saying it. I thought to myself, if there is a phrase that sums up more perfectly what I want to be, what I aspire to be, and the kind of man I respect, I can’t think of a phrase that sums it up more perfectly than that.

Speaking before the Hells Angels, Carlson looks and sounds like someone that the Angels would happily turn into hamburger meat.

Tucker Carlson, ex-Fox News host

“”There is no Tucker on tonight. Tonight, no smirk, no squint, no sneer, no racist rhetoric, accompanied by a stifled giggle. Tonight, if you turn on the TV, it will not stare back at you perplexed and angry as though you are a startling typo that has made the Bible sexy. You will not be all but directed on whom to harass or threaten. You will have to make things up as you go along. Tonight, if you say, "Roku, show me the exact diametric opposite of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,'" your TV will not have a ready answer.

—Alexandra Petri

Shortly after Dominion settled with Fox News, on Monday April 24 2023, Fox News announced that they "and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways." The announcement was sudden and unexpected; on the previous Tucker Carlson Tonight program on Friday April 20 2023, Carlson cheerily told his viewers that "we'll be back on Monday". Ads for Carlson's supposedly-forthcoming show were still running the Monday morning that Carlson was pushed out the door.

One source reported that the decision to terminate Carlson came directly from Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch himself. Aside from Carlson's role in the defamation lawsuit, reportedly negatives comments about Fox management by Carlson (that were revealed in the Dominion case), as well as vulgar misogynistic slurs directed at guests and management (as reportedly found in private messages that was redacted from public legal filings), also played a significant role in Carlson's departure. An additional factor cited was a sexual harassment (and other alleged wrongs) lawsuit against Fox by a former Tucker Carlson Tonight producer named Abby Grossberg, which claimed that Grossberg was subject to a hostile and discriminatory environment while working for Carlson, which included frequent use of vulgarities to describe women and frequent antisemitic "jokes".

The New York Times also reported that a text message sent to a producer around the 2021 U.S. coup attempt, where Carlson flirted with justifying political violence (with a hint of overt racism) before moralizing the temptation away, played a role in the dismissal. One of the reporters of this article, Michael S. Schmidt, claimed in a later interview that many of the texts that had not been released to the public were actually far worse than anything revealed to the public, and when Fox executives saw them, "they didn't think it was survivable for the network to have known about it and to allow him to stay on the air."

In early May 2023, Carlson announced that he would be relaunching a new version of his political commentary program on Twitter. Reportedly this would be in violation of Carlson's non-compete clause with Fox News, but Carlson's legal team shortly before the announcement tried to get ahead of any contractual disputes by firing off a letter accusing Fox News of fraud and breaching Carlson's contract themselves. Carlson apparently wasn't content to remain a mere Twitter personality, so he announced in December 2023 that he'd launch his own paid streaming service, the "Tucker Carlson Network", with Neil Patel (who he co-founded the Daily Caller with) as his CEO.

In 2023, Carlson stated that he had an "open mind" about the flat Earth conspiracy theory. His 'open mind' is despite his stating that there's gun nut evidence to the contrary, "As far as the curvature of the Earth, that's a thing in shooting. I like rifle shooting and past a certain distance you have to take that in account. That suggests it's real. Because one thing I know that is guns. Guns are real." The amount of deflection is indirectly caused by Earth curvature and rotation (Coriolis & Eötvös effects), and only causes a 0.03m adjustment per 900m (i.e., only sharpshooters might care about this).

We pause now for a few moments of not being a dick

See the main article on this topic: Stopped clock

While he supported the Iraq War at first, he would later criticize it and the Bush Administration in general. In August 2018, he dedicated a segment of his Fox News show to calling out Amazon, Walmart, and Uber for not paying workers a living wage (and thus, forcing taxpayers to pick up the slack instead), in weighing the benefits of the "Stop Bezos Act" proposed by Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna. He has also been strongly critical of the Trump administration's attempts to start a war with Iran.

Follow the money

“”It works by you taking (the Koch family's) money, it's as simple as that. You are a millionaire funded by billionaires, that's what you are.

—Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, in an interview for Tucker Carlson Tonight that Carlson refused to air

Many journalists who have followed the career of Carlson have asked, what happened to the serious reporter of the 1990s, who still believed in integrity and, while conservative, wouldn't hesitate to take potshots at George W. Bush in the Weekly Standard?

In 2009, when Carlson still had a shred of credibility left, Carlson gave a speech at CPAC. During the speech, he defended accuracy in reporting news and felt that there was a need for more conservative news organizations with the accuracy and integrity of newspapers like the New York Times. The mere suggestion that accuracy in reporting was a good thing was met with a chorus of boos. Perhaps this was the point when he realized that the profitable side of conservative "news" really wasn't in actual factual reporting. Instead, the real money was in the Rush Limbaugh-pioneered style of outrage, where shock-jock verbal stunts (accuracy be damned) were combined with "good old days" jingoism about "real Americans." Historically, after all, it certainly has been very profitable in America to bash the "elite", portray oneself as an underdog, and babble about conspiracy theories. (The fact that, as someone whose mother is an heir to the Swanson frozen dinner fortune, Carlson is part of the elite is irrelevant to the target audience.)

It's not like there wasn't a little bit of the Carlson white grievance demagogue in the past, when he was doing things like writing stories in Esquire that all but accused Al Sharpton of reverse racism. But his stint at the Daily Caller (where Carlson followed in Breitbart's footsteps and devolved the Caller into truthiness and bullshit for the future Donald Trump-worshiping crowd) and maybe a few appearances in the 2000s on a radio program run by a shock jock named Bubba the Love Sponge seemed to have taught Carlson that there was no need to bother with difficult elements of journalism such as "facts" and "accuracy", especially when outrage is such a profitable enterprise. And so, Carlson set out on his path to lie and shock all the way up to the highest viewership of any cable news show in US history.

As stated by Republican speechwriter Michael Gerson in a Washington Post op-ed, Carlson provides his audience with "mass-marketed racism", sophisticated sounding (but intellectually empty) "rationales for their worst, most prejudicial instincts." Even if mainstream advertisers flee Carlson's program due to the content, this type of message is depressingly popular with a lot of Americans, which translates into high TV ratings. As long as Rupert Murdoch, the puppeteer pulling Carlson's strings, thought that Carlson's political shock jock performance was both good for Fox News's business and good for the businesses aligned with the Republican Party (businesses that, say, certainly approved if Carlson inserts a rant against measures to prevent climate change in the middle of his white grievance spiel), Carlson's racist conspiracy theory-promoting shitshow was allowed to continue. At least until April 2023, when in the wake of a costly defamation lawsuit by Dominion against Fox, Tucker left Fox News. And nothing of value was lost.

Mash notes with Alex Jones

Although Carlson and ultra-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have attempted to keep a distance from each other in public, apparently in an attempt to keep some vague sense of respectability for Carlson on Fox News because of Carlson's previously stepping over the line in 2019. The dump of Jones' phone text conversations with Carlson revealed that they are basically on the same page.

External links

• SWANSON: Eldritch Tucker Carlson