Tucker Carlson Doesn’t Respect His Audience

My first experience with Tucker Carlson came about in 1995, when he was a staff writer at the now-defunct Weekly Standard magazine. Carlson, Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, Ramesh Ponnuru, and others were, like me, Generation X conservatives who brought a freshness to political commentary and debate seen through the eyes of people under the age of 30.

Carlson wrote for a wide variety of publications including New York Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and more. He wrote an essay for Esquire detailing his trip to Liberia with Al Sharpton that later received a nomination at the National Magazine Awards.

Fast forward to 2023, and that Tucker Carlson is gone. People often change their political views. It is not unnatural. I know people who were far more conservative than I was at 25 who are now card-carrying Democrats and vice versa. It happens. Tucker admitted his views had changed, going from a Reagan-like conservative to a much more nationalist conservative in the vein of Josh Hawley and JD Vance (who underwent the same metamorphism as Carlson, but in a scant 3-4 years). There is nothing wrong with that at all.

However, Carlson fell victim to what so many people did in the Trump era — he became a slave to ratings as many digital publications became slaves to website traffic (see The Federalist). In doing so, Carlson became what he decried in his 2003 book, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites. In the book, he described how he had respect for ideologues, but couldn’t stand partisans. Why? Because the latter adhered to whatever position was most beneficial to themselves personally, and not what they believed.

Carlson has the highest rated cable news show in the country, and as we learned from the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, Carlson, along with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham decided it was better to lie to their audience in the wake of the 2020 election, rather than watch some of them flock to Newsmax or OAN who were happy to serve up a mountain of lies. Carlson was so incensed by a tweet from Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich for fact checking the nonsense about Dominion that he wanted her fired. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott in a text to other executives at Fox said Heinrich “has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.” Serious nerve for telling the truth?

The Dominion filing revealed that all involved knew the “stolen election” narrative was bullshit, and they did it, anyway. Now, Carlson took it a step further.

For whatever reason known only to God and Kevin McCarthy, the newly minted Speaker of The House handed over 40,000 hours of security footage to Carlson and his producers only. It’s a weasel move by one of the biggest weasels in political history. When a person gets so hell-bent on reaching a particular spot in the world of politics, they are corrupt or willing to do whatever they can to remain in the good graces of a small segment of the population.

Naturally, Carlson and his producers aired segments of the footage that showed people inside the Capitol, wandering around, not doing much of anything and proclaiming, “See! It wasn’t some violent attack!” Carlson, of course, is doing what famous left-wing Twitter people such as Ron Filipowski, Aaron Rupar, and Rex Chapman do. They are experts at airing out of context video clips and triumphantly beating their chests, knowing their followers won’t bother to further examine what they posted, but run with it.

The last time I checked, Capitol tours don’t allow people to sit in the Speaker’s office and put their feet on the desk. They’re not allowed on the House of Senate floor. They’re not allowed to vandalize the building, break windows, chant “Hang Mike Pence!” or ignore the direct orders of Capitol police without consequence like Ashli Babbitt did (Tucker falsely said she was “murdered”). The video of people engaging in violent acts against Capitol police is there for all to see and to say with a straight face that what millions saw happening in real time didn’t happen borders on evil.

Carlson also took to igniting the “stolen election” narrative again. But if you read what he said, he cleverly chose his words to give him plausible deniability. Carlson is not dumb. He’s a very smart man, and he knows how to cover his ass. This is what he said:

“The protesters were angry: They believed that the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted. And they were right. In retrospect, it is clear the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy. Given the facts that have since emerged about that election, no honest person can deny it.”

If someone says, “You claimed the election was stolen” he can easily respond, “I said no such thing.” But what he said means nothing. “Unfairly conducted” is a subjective, not objective viewpoint. Stacey Abrams used the same language about her 2018 loss to Brian Kemp. It is the same with a “grave betrayal of American democracy.” How does one prove the election was a betrayal of American democracy? In what way? “It is clear.” Is it? To whom? And what exactly is clear? And what “facts” have emerged? Tucker doesn’t say.

Finally, Carlson engages in the fallacy of argumentum ad populum or the appeal to popularity when he says, “no honest person can deny it.” His appeal is to the supposed “honest” people who see it the way he does. Only those who are “dishonest” would disagree. It’s garbage.

Rupert Murdoch, Fox Corporation’s chairperson, didn’t believe the stolen election nonsense. In the Dominion filing, Murdoch referred to the voter fraud allegations as “really crazy stuff” and “damaging.” The filing also said Murdoch told Fox CEO Suzanne Scott, “It’s been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won.” He said doing so “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”

There is a viable solution. Remember the News of The World scandal? It was the top selling newspaper in Great Britain and it was revealed that the paper illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages of murder and terror victims, politicians and celebrities. Murdoch shut the entire operation down, eliminating 200 jobs.

Once the Dominion lawsuit gets settled (which is the likely outcome), Murdoch can restore some credibility to the channel by firing Suzanne Scott and other executives that allowed Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham to lie to the audience to maintain ratings and keep some of them from going to Newsmax or OAN. He can also fire the three prime-time hosts for their malfeasance. They purposely went on air, repeating and promulgating “facts” they knew were lies.

Tucker Carlson continues to do that to this day. He doesn’t respect his audience at all. He has contempt for them.

If Rupert Murdoch has respect for the audience, he’ll get rid everyone at Fox who had a hand in it.