Tucker Carlson
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator and writer who hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. Since his contract with Fox News was terminated, he has hosted Tucker on X. An advocate of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Carlson has been described as "perhaps the highest-profile proponent of Trumpism",[3] and as "the most influential voice in right-wing media, without a close second."[4]
Tucker Carlson
- Television journalist
- commentator
- columnist
- writer
Republican (since 2020)
Democratic[a] (2006–2020)
- Conservatism
4
- Dick Carlson (father)
Carlson began his media career in the 1990s, writing for The Weekly Standard and other publications. He was a CNN commentator from 2000 to 2005 and a co-host of Crossfire, the network's prime-time news debate program, from 2001 to 2005. From 2005 to 2008, he hosted the nightly program Tucker on MSNBC. In 2009, he became a political analyst for Fox News, appearing on various programs before launching his own show. In 2010, Carlson co-founded and served as the initial editor-in-chief of the right-wing news and opinion website The Daily Caller, until selling his ownership stake and leaving in 2020.[5] He has written three books: Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites (2003), Ship of Fools (2018), and The Long Slide (2021).
Described as a leading voice of White grievance politics,[6][7][8][9] Carlson is known for circulating far-right ideas into mainstream politics and discourse.[8][9][10][11] He has promoted conspiracy theories on topics such as demographic replacement,[9][12][13] COVID-19,[14][15] the January 6 United States Capitol attack,[16][17] and Ukrainian bioweapons;[18][19] and has been noted for false and misleading statements about these and other topics.[8][9][17][20][21] Carlson's remarks on race, immigration, and women – including slurs he said on air between 2006 and 2011[22][23] – have been described by some as racist and sexist, and provoked advertiser boycotts of Tucker Carlson Tonight.[24][25][26][27] In April 2023, Fox News dismissed Carlson and canceled his show without any explanation.[28][29][30][31][32][33] Tucker Carlson Tonight had at that point been one of the most-watched cable news shows in the country. Carlson was among the hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines that Fox News settled for $787.5 million and required Fox News to acknowledge that the broadcast statements were false.[34][35]
Carlson is a critic of immigration.[36] Formerly an economic libertarian, he now supports protectionism.[37][38] In 2004, he renounced his initial support for the Iraq War,[39][40] and has since been skeptical of U.S. foreign interventions.[37][41] He was said to have influenced some of Trump's decisions as president, including the cancellation of a military strike against Iran in 2019, the dismissal of John Bolton as National Security Advisor the same year, and the commutation of Roger Stone's prison sentence in 2020, and would criticize Trump when he believed he was straying from "Trumpism".[42][43][44][45][46] Carlson has often defended Russian President Vladimir Putin. In February 2024, he became the first Western journalist to interview Putin since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Writing
Carlson authored the memoir Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, published by Warner Books in September 2003, about his television news experiences.[217] It received favorable reviews from Publishers Weekly and the Washingtonian, who both complimented the book for its humor.[217][218]
In May 2017, Carlson, represented by the literary and creative agency Javelin, signed an eight-figure, two-book deal with Simon & Schuster's conservative imprint, Threshold Editions.[219] His first book in the series, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, was released in October 2018,[220] and debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list.[221] His second book, The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism, was released in August 2021.[222]
In 2023, a biography of Carlson titled Tucker was released. The book was written by Chadwick Moore with the help of Carlson, who had given the author more than 100 hours of interviews.[223] Moore had stated that the book was intended to tell the story of Carlson's exit from Fox News from the former host's perspective. The book performed poorly, with just over 3,000 copies sold during the first week after its release.[224][225]
Rhetorical style
Carlson's rhetorical style and debating tactics have drawn close attention from writers and other public figures.[37][52][1][561][562]
In arguments, Carlson can quickly shift between personas as a devil's advocate and a moralizing truth teller, and simultaneously appear outraged and blasé – a use of contradiction that Lili Loofbourow, writing for Slate, referred to as a "joking/not-joking loophole" historically used by radio shock jocks.[561] James Carville, a Democratic strategist and friend of Carlson who has appeared on his shows, called Carlson "one of the world's great contrarians". Touching upon this, Kelefa Sanneh, writing for The New Yorker said that one of Carlson's gifts is to make any position he takes on an issue "seem like a brave rebellion against someone else's way of thinking."[1]
Carlson has said he especially targets the "moral preening" of people he sees as having a sensibility of "I'm a really good person, and you're not."[37] According to Philip Bump of The Washington Post, Carlson presents his perceived opponents "as endlessly cynical and duplicitous", and agitates his audience against them by cherry-picking and misinterpreting information.[563][564] Charlotte Alter of Time wrote that Carlson "sanitizes and legitimizes right-wing conspiratorial thinking, dodges when you try to nail him down on the specifics, then wraps it all in an argument about censorship and free speech".[13] Elaina Plott in The Atlantic summed up Carlson's style as "a gleeful fuck you" to his opponents.[37]
During remote interviews, Carlson's producers will keep his face close-up onscreen so viewers can watch him react, often in disbelief.[1] His trademark scowl lets viewers "share his disdain" toward opposing views, foreshadowing a "scathing rebuttal".[562][565] Carlson is known to interrupt guests repeatedly with direct demands to answer questions he poses, sometimes focusing on an embarrassing episode or statement from a guest's past.[562] Jack Shafer wrote in Politico that "When the host barks questions in your earpiece, you can't help but jolt to life like a puppet on a string", suggesting that successful guests on Carlson's show must match his quick-wittedness and unflappability.[562] Lyz Lenz of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that this debate maneuver mirrors Jon Stewart's confrontation of Carlson on Crossfire in 2004, describing Stewart then and Carlson now as both "com[ing] out of the gate with an impossible line of questioning and a disingenuous defense".[52]
Charlotte Alter of Time wrote in July 2021 that Carlson sometimes tells "outright falsehoods", but generally "avoids assertions that are factually disprovable, instead sticking to innuendo". As an example, Alter wrote that Carlson did not endorse Sidney Powell's specific claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but he did say, "The people now telling us to stop asking questions about voting machines are the same ones who claim that our phones weren't listening to us".[13] In September 2020, on The Rubin Report, Carlson said that, unlike TV newscasters who he said "systematically lie", he will only lie "if I'm really cornered or something", saying, "I lie. I really try not to. I try never to lie on TV. ... I don't like lying. I certainly do it, you know, out of weakness or whatever."[566] Bump argued in 2022 that compared with other television anchors, Carlson is loath to acknowledge factual errors in his commentary.[20]
Carlson's use of hyperbole as a rhetorical device was cited by Fox News in its successful defense in 2020 of a slander lawsuit by Karen McDougal, after Carlson incorrectly argued in 2018 that Donald Trump had been a victim of extortion by McDougal.[167][168][567]
Carlson describes George Orwell as his favorite writer and cites Strunk and White's The Elements of Style as having an influence on his writing.[121]
Reception
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Carlson has been "recognized for his success in helping to bring far-right viewpoints and vocabulary into the mainstream of American politics" through his promotion of "extreme positions on a range of political and social issues, for his embrace of white nationalism, for his support of authoritarian leaders of other countries, and for his regular reliance on arguably false or misleading claims, including baseless conspiracy theories" and for "exert[ing] an unusual influence on Republican Pres. Donald Trump, who was a regular viewer of Carlson's show."[9] In 2021, Time said that Carlson could be the most powerful conservative in America, with Republican strategist Jeff Roe adding, "He doesn't react to the agenda, he drives the agenda."[13] Mediaite named Carlson the most influential person in news media in 2021.[568][569]
Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and a former colleague of Carlson, said: "Tucker is a tremendously good writer and I always thought it was a real shame that he kind of got sucked into this TV mania thing."[52]
On February 23, 2017, The Atlantic wrote that "Carlson's true talent is not for political philosophizing, it's for televised partisan combat. His go-to weapons—the smirky sarcasm, the barbed comebacks, the vicious politeness—seem uniquely designed to drive his sparring partners nuts, frequently making for terrific television".[40]
On September 19, 2017, journalist Stephen Rodrick wrote in a GQ profile of Carlson: "On his show, Carlson mocks and verbally body-slams those who disagree with him, a passel of easy marks such as Democratic politicians, well-meaning liberal activists, and young reporters. He shares with Donald Trump a deep reluctance to apologize for his mistakes, and he lobs insults that seem suspiciously like subconscious self-assessments: He loves to accuse his guests of 'preening', and he derides 'pomposity, smugness, and groupthink'."[89]
In an interview for a 2021 Time profile of Carlson, a former NewsCorp executive, Alex Azam, described Carlson as having some impunity within Fox News, "because of the signal that touching him would send to the viewers that Fox never wants to lose".[13] In 2021, he was included in the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[570]
In April 2022, The New York Times published a three-part 20,000-word investigative series on Carlson called "American Nationalist". The investigative series documents Carlson's rise to prominence and his rhetoric on immigration, race relations and the COVID-19 pandemic, describing Tucker Carlson Tonight as "what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful."[8][571][572][240][573] Carlson responded by saying that he has not read "American Nationalist" and does not plan to. He also denied allegations from the Times about obsessing over ratings, saying that "I've never read the ratings a single day in my life. I don't even know how. Ask anyone at Fox." He also claimed to have taken positions unpopular with his audience, saying, "Most of the big positions I've taken in the past five years — against the neocons, the vax and the war [in Ukraine] — have been very unpopular with our audience at first."[571]
Personal life
Carlson is married to Susan Thomson Carlson (née Andrews).[52][574] They met at St. George's School, where she was the daughter of the school's headmaster and priest.[75][575] They were married on August 10, 1991, in the school chapel.[574] They have four children.[68][576] Carlson is left-handed and dyslexic.[121]
Carlson was baptized as an Episcopalian but has said he grew up with secular beliefs; he credits his wife for his religious faith.[575] In 2013, Carlson said, "We still go to the Episcopal Church for all kinds of complicated reasons, but I truly despise the Episcopal Church in a lot of ways," citing his opposition to the church's support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights.[575] He has said he stays in the church because he "loves the liturgy" and "likes the people".[575][1]
Carlson quit drinking alcohol in 2002.[1] A few years earlier, he quit smoking cigarettes (a habit begun in eighth grade) and took up nicotine gum, which he "chews constantly", and nicotine pouches.[1][121] Carlson is a Deadhead (a fan of the rock band Grateful Dead); he has attended more than fifty Dead concerts,[577] and the title of his 2018 book Ship of Fools was inspired by the Grateful Dead song of the same name.[121]
In 2011, a group of protesters gathered outside his house in Kent, Washington, D.C.,[578] to protest Carlson. In 2017, Carlson sold his home and purchased another nearby.[579] In late 2018, protestors gathered in front of their home. In 2020, Carlson sold his home in Kent and bought a house on Gasparilla Island, on Florida's Gulf Coast, and in the summer of 2022, a second home next door.[580][581][582]
They now also live part of the year in Maine near his "favorite place in the world", Bryant Pond, Woodstock, Maine.[583]
In September 2022, Carlson spoke at the funeral of Hells Angels president Sonny Barger. Carlson said that he had been a fan of Barger since his college years, quoted Barger as saying "stay loyal, remain free, and always value honor", and added "I want to pay tribute to the man who spoke those words".[584][585]
