Some More News - REVISITING SOME NEWS: Why Is Tucker Carlson?

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Hi. Cody Johnston takes a look back at our March 2019 episode, "Why Is Tucker Carlson?," providing some updates on what's happened to Tuckbo since then with this brand new audio commentary to accompany our original episode. And here's the 2019 article about Fox News from The New Yorker we reference during the episode: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Some More News and Even More News audio podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews

Hello there tuckheads and fuckheads and normal heads. Welcome to a spectacular old and new question mark ish question mark episode period of some more news exclamation point for reasons innumerable reasons wild and good reasons. There's no new episode of this particular podcast slash show today. We will be back for normal, horrible news next week, but this week we wanted to revisit an oldie, a goodie, a terrible-y, a Tuckbee. Our deep dive into one Tucker, fancy middle name, Carlson. Early on in the Some More Newsiverse, we did an episode that had a segment about Tucker's racist feelings about Hispanic people moving to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, despite residents notably growing and learning from that experience. And then we dove deeper into the who, the wait, what, and perhaps most importantly, the why of Tucker Carlson.

Many things have happened to and about Tucker since this episode aired, which we will get into a bit later in this episode. Some updates, a retrospective, a little bit more some more news, if you will. Does Tucker still have a job? Does he still have a Nazi as his head writer? Very interesting questions that we will get to and hopefully answer.

But first, now, let us begin to explore the most pressing question. Why is Tucker Carlson? Oh, here's some news. Tucker Carlson can eat shit, whoa! If you say so. Tucker can eat it. The poo, in like a bowl or something, with a ladle. Slurp it all up.

Now that's just what the paper says. And you might be saying, hey, dude of news, cool your jets. Does Tucker Carlson really deserve to eat all of our poops? To which the paper says, and thus I say, yes. I will support this wild, inflammatory claim with the following video you are watching, which, and I'm so sorry about this, is going to be entirely about Tucker Carlson. Again, I apologize. I'm sorry for a lot of things that have happened so far. And it's easy to simply write Tucker off as one of a long line of right wing propagandists, which that's a lot of what he is.

But to be fair and balanced, my slogan and no one else's, Tucker is also a white nationalist propagandist. Currently, he is the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight and editor-in-chief for the Daily Caller, two outlets one could spend literal hours pointing out the falsehoods of. But we're mostly not going to do that. And we're mostly not going to talk about how often he regularly spouts white nationalist talking points and how white nationalists openly love him for it. Instead, we're going to run off the assumption that everything I've already said about Lil Tux

is something you, my beautiful, beautiful viewer, already suspected. I'd much rather talk about the evolution and life of this formerly bow-tied ruffian and potential future poop eater so that we could perhaps understand him better. It's The Ballad of Liar Tuck. Gather ye children, start a small fire around your computer and roast a delightful treat

as you hear my tale. Much like a Tolkienesque adventure, I am going to start at the end. Picture in your mind's eye a storybook slowly getting closer, the pages magically opening to one perfect moment. But you're not part of the solution, Mr. Carlson. You're part of the problem, actually. AOC, wait, what can I just say? You're all like, oh, I'm against the globalist elite, blah blah blah. It's not very convincing, to be honest.

Why don't you go f*** yourself, you tiny brain, and I hope this gets picked up, because you're a moron. So first we have Tucker Carlson, the Tuck Man. Tucky Tum Tums. Completely losing dignity and control after Dutch historian Rutger Bregman points out that Tuck's is an obvious and terrible liar who scapegoats immigrants for billionaires.

Then, one month later, this happened. She seems like a, she seems awful. Yeah, she is awful. They're very. She seems extremely. I like that word, oh yeah, Later, this happened. That's from a clip you've no doubt seen from Media Matters, who resurfaced a series of crude interviews between Tux and an adult human man called Bubba the Love Sponge, where Tucker defends a rapist as well as makes a long list of racist and sexist comments he seems to think are funny.

He also talks like a predator about a teenage beauty pageant contestant and suggests that adult men fucking girls is probably bad, but adult women fucking boys doesn't count as rape and is good actually. It's quite possible even more things like this will come out by the time this video is released, but the audio all adds up to a deeply unserious and toxic depiction that forced the T-Dog Snarlson to give an impassioned anti-internet mob retort on his own show. The great American outrage machine is a remarkable thing.

There's really not that much you can do to respond. It's pointless to try to explain how the words were spoken in jest or taken out of context or in any case bear no resemblance to what you actually think or would want for the country. You must pretend this is a debate about virtue and not about power. That your critics are arguing from principle and not from partisanship. Why are the people who consider Bill Clinton a hero lecturing me about sexism? We've always apologized when we're wrong and we'll continue to do that.

So, firstly, I've always considered Bill Clinton a rapist. Bill Clinton, rapist. Secondly, it's pretty fun that Carlson accuses his critics of pretending to argue about principle instead of partisanship. The idea being that internet outrage culture is secretly about faking a moral stance in order to attack your political enemies.

Because this is clearly something that Tucker Carlson would never do and certainly hasn't built his entire television persona around. I've worked in newsrooms my whole life, but that one word that she used, I don't know any man who uses that word. Well, Tucker, it turns out you know at least two men that use that word. But hold on, you say.

His comments were a whole half a decade ago. Surely we can't attack this man for some naughty things he once said. Otherwise, we're no better than the people who went after the likes of James Gunn or Dan Harmon. Even the head of Media Matters was discovered to have some old blog posts that he claims to be satire and those are...

But Libs, I mean, do you want everyone fired for everything they've ever said? And here's the thing about all that. Shut up about all that. Because anyone disingenuously using that argument is ignoring the fact that nothing from these Media Matters clips is different from anything that Tucker Carlson says on his show right now. It's just wrapped up in a less vulgar package. Tucker claims it's pointless to try to explain how the words were spoken in jest,

or taken out of context, or in any case, bear no resemblance to what you actually think or want for the country. Tucker, you say this stuff all the time. Even the stuff about female teachers fucking their students and shit. He says that like as recently as slightly more than a year ago. A news anchor who reports current events and his opinions to 3 million people who want his opinions talked about how Iraqis are

semi-literate primitive monkeys. Side note Tucker, before the Iraq war, Iraq's literacy rate was higher than some US states. You racist. He's on state TV talking about immigration and foreign policy. To act like any of this is somehow removed from the context of his career is just not worth anyone's time or at least any more time than I've already spent on it which was too much time so enough about what he has said let's talk about what he does we're going to break down just one of his segments about those

aforementioned immigrants to see just how totally not terrible he is just one segment I swear for Democrats it's understandable because the calculus is simple. Having abandoned the concerns of the middle class here, they need millions of new voters and they need them fast. Otherwise, their party risks becoming a permanent minority. Replacing ungrateful citizens with obedient immigrants is their only hope. At exactly one minute into the video, Tuckums has claimed that the Democrats' only motivation for supporting DACA,

or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is that more immigrants get them more voters. He offers absolutely nothing as evidence, so a reasonable person might assume that the rest of the video is designed to support it. You know, like, like if you started a video by saying a specific person should eat poop, you would then need to spend the rest of your video explaining why, You know, like, if you started a video by saying a specific person should eat poop, you would then need to spend the rest of your video explaining why, which I still intend to do.

But Tucker never intends to explain why. He's essentially starting with a speculative conclusion that's laughable on its face, and then just moving on, as if it's now true. So okay, Tucker, what is the next, uh, fact for us? Every Democrat who's thought it through for even a minute knows this well. They can't say it in public, though, because obviously it's horrible. So instead, they're trying a new talking point. Illegal immigrants are terrific people.

Every single one of them. Far more noble and law-abiding than you are. How dare you complain about their presence? You must be a bigot. The one problem with this line of argument is that it's vulnerable to facts. Now we're nearing minute two, and Tucky Tumsbo claims that Democrats and liberals

will scream bigot at anyone who disagrees with immigration, despite the cold, hard facts, saying that immigrants cause more crimes. He then cites a study seemingly proving just that. In the border state of Arizona, for example, illegal immigrants commit two and a half times as many murders as American citizens do. They're almost 50 percent more likely to be in gangs. They commit more armed robbery and more sex crimes against children. Overall, they're about twice as likely to be convicted of crimes of all kinds, non-immigration related.

And that's just in one state. So John Lott, who's a researcher, a social scientist, got a hold of the conviction numbers, which the government of the state of Arizona has hidden from the population, because it's lying to the population about the effects of immigration, as you know. Now, if the name John Lott sounds familiar, that's because we literally just did a video debunking his study. This study that Tucky Carbo is citing, which is inaccurate, and made by a weird fraud who peer reviews his own work, which is largely created for conservative talking points, and there's a bunch of other studies that have shown immigrants to be equally if not less

prone to crime as the rest of America, but again, I literally just did that already. So go watch that other video I did. It's fantastic. The main takeaway here is the study that Tuck Everlasting is referring to is bad and wrong, and it's going to be the entire foundation of his segment. And this is mostly how he operates. He starts with a bold lie or inaccuracy that his audience doesn't have the time or desire to fact check or learn the nuance of, and then he builds a bigger lie from that. It's like a magician saying

there's nothing up his sleeve and the audience thinking, okay magician, I trust you, magician. Whatever you say, magician. In California, an illegal alien named Luis Brasamantes murdered two police officers. So next, he immediately follows up his wrongness with a single story about the worst immigrant criminal he can find, using it to ramp up anger via anecdotal evidence while ignoring literally everything he previously said about the importance of facts. He then establishes the idea that liberals are letting these immigration crimes happen because of a foolish and emotional idea that diversity is our strength. Except,

I thought it was because of the votes, Tucker. What the fuck, Tucker? But what follows after that is the gooey, gooey center. Is it true the less we have in common the stronger we are? Is a marriage stronger when spouses have radically different beliefs? Are you closer to your kids when you share no common points of reference? Do you speak the same language as your best friend? Could you be best friends if you didn't? These are important questions, given that our leaders are radically and permanently changing our country wholly on the basis of their faith that diversity is in fact our strength.

Now let's break that one down. Because the fact that Tucker Carlson can't imagine being friends with, or in a marriage with someone who has different beliefs as him, or in the same town as someone who speaks a different language… it's pretty telling. He's either saying that because he A truly can't imagine a universe where he could psychologically handle diverse thought, or B he's trying to appeal to specific viewers who can't imagine being friends with people from other cultures. Racists. That thing Tucker is one of.

Also, in terms of immigration and America, it's a colossally batshit point because, well, personal relationships and marriages aren't the same thing as a country with millions of people, Tucker. What the fuck, Tucker? Oh, it's a false equivalence designed to hook scared old people who don't like things that are different from them, I see. Now in fairness and balancedness, T. Carl clarifies that he's not actually talking about race, and is therefore not a racist.

Don't the left lie to you. That doesn't mean we have to look alike. Doesn't mean we have to come from the same places. It does mean we have to share common beliefs. Otherwise we'll hate each other and the whole enterprise will fall apart. You see? It's not about your race. We can have all of the races, even the bad ones, as long as everyone in America shares a common belief. We all need to think the same, apparently. Like the board. Look, I don't know, Tucker. I'm trying to be fair and balanced here, and I guess you could argue that maybe you're just talking about like broad ideals like like freedom of press and speech Respecting each other, but I don't know man for one

Then why did you bring up common frames of reference and language and for the second thing it sure does say Illegal alien crime in huge letters behind you while you're talking about it so But lucky for him, he keeps it so vague that every one of his viewers can plug in their own specific religion or belief. So ultimately, he's not saying anything beyond a broad justification for people to reject the idea of diversity and immigration. He literally has zero facts or coherent points.

And in fact, Tucker, when you went to Twitter to defend your dumb as fuck things you said, you repeated them. Quote, How precisely is diversity our strength? Can you think of other institutions, such as marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Yes, Tucker. In fact, studies on the effects of diversity literally cite the military.

It makes teams better, more innovative. And while it can make some teams inefficient in the short term, quote, scientists have found that the very friction inherent in bringing together a group of individuals with different worldviews is what causes them to work harder, think more deliberately, and learn how to communicate more effectively. Literally the military, Tucker. In fact, Tucker, here's you debating your views at Politicon, and it's before or after

you are explained to your face once again about low immigrant crime and the benefits of immigration, and you mention Robert Putnam. And there's a lot of study on this. Robert Putnam at Harvard, who's hardly a right-winger, the bowling-alone guy, has done a lot of really interesting study on this. Again, he's a liberal, but an honest one, and he's like, people, when they feel

threatened, when things have changed too much, they get really angry and tribal and they don't trust other people and civic institutions collapse, and we're seeing this across the country. Putnam is cited a lot by people like Tucker because his study says that in the short term, diversity makes people hunker down and be more tribal. But they never bother to point out the literally second sentence of the abstract. In the long run, immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. Going on to describe illustrations drawn, quote, from the U.S. military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration. They, and Tucker, also don't point out that the author himself has described

his study as being distorted, and his, quote, extensive research and experience confirmed the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society. including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society. And ho, we must not forget the only statistic you even tried to give is based off an incorrect study by this self-peer-reviewing weirdo who once made sock puppet accounts to defend his weird self-peer-reviewed incorrect studies. Hey Tucker, remember how you just said this thing about those things you said? We've always apologized when we're wrong and we'll continue to do that. That's what decent people do.

They apologize. So can I expect that apology from you about how you're wrong about everything I've said so far? I'm on the Twitter, which you're kind of like a soft Nazi. I'm sure you love Twitter. So hit me up, brother, for you to administer that apology. The last half of Tucker's already incredibly wrong segment of lies is when he brings on a guest,

a council member of Phoenix who supports DACA, Phoenix being a city in the state that Bull's Poop John Lott study was about. As painful as this will be to watch, it really explains why that Bregman fellow from earlier could push Tucker's buttons so easily. Because Tucker is actually terrible at debate why that Bregman fellow from earlier could push Tucker's buttons so easily. Because Tucker is actually terrible at debate, and relies completely on bombarding guests

that are too polite to handle his absurdity. So if bringing in more people illegally and making them citizens makes you more prosperous, then why wouldn't you bring in 10 million and become really, really rich? So how many is the optimum number? If bringing in people illegally and giving them citizenship makes you more prosperous, what's the number, the ideal number of people we should give citizenship to?

Our country and our community was built by immigration. Okay, you're not- And we have so many stories in this community. So I know stories, but- Yeah, person who supports immigration, give us an exact number of humans that would equal economic prosperity. If you can't give an exact number, then I, a really smart person, win! Why won't you answer my totally reasonable question?

Also- But I'm looking for facts and I think it's fair to ask for facts. Fuck you, Tucker. Fuck your nose. The exchange ends with Tucker grilling the woman on that good study of his from before, prompting her to explain that the crime statistics she has seen from Phoenix don't support his conclusion. Because again, it's a false study. She answers his question twice, says that the numbers she personally saw don't coincide with the study he's citing,

because again, false study, but instead of acknowledging her, he just keeps repeating the question over and over, and when she refuses to repeat herself a third time, old Trucks Carlson declares victory, because he's a very good debater. And that's the secret to his expert tactics. He shouts lies at a more serious person,

and when that person tries to answer with any kind of nuance, he calls them the real liar. The woman doesn't have crime numbers in front of her and probably doesn't want to ignorantly assert something. Tucker on the other hand has no problem assertively vomiting torrents of vomit, and can therefore be quicker in the moment, declare a victory, and not worry if he's wrong later. Or he just, he flat out ignores their answer and moves on too fast for viewers to notice. He's profoundly disingenuous with how he discusses these topics, often blatantly contradicting himself. Most immigrants are nice.

Sure, Tuck. That's what you think. You nailed it. That's the secret of Mr. Tuck's. He's already decided that immigrants are bad and is now finding the pieces that will fit his narrative, which I hope I'm not doing. But it doesn't matter what topic Tucker talks about, he always brings it back to immigration. Automation. Amazon. The family unit. Even your old limp penis.

Or your family unit. More than a million new immigrants enter this country every year legally. A large but unknown number come illegally. Most of these are low-skilled. All of them are looking for work. These new rivals compete primarily with the very Americans most likely to have lost their jobs.

And the effect is lower wages. One well-regarded study released last year found that when men's wages fell relative to women's, families didn't form. According to the authors, a falling male wage reduced, quote, the attractiveness of men as potential spouses, thus reducing fertility and especially marriage rates. To Tucker, when you get down to it, everything is the fault of immigrants, and every solution to a problem involves fewer immigrants. And if someone calls him out for being a racist, something he is, Everything is the fault of immigrants, and every solution to a problem involves fewer immigrants.

And if someone calls him out for being a racist, something he is, well, he's already decided that it's just a tactic from the left, who don't want to hear all the facts. He's cherry-picked. It's this facts versus PC culture stance almost constantly applied to an anti-immigration stance that's probably why Nazis love him so much. And, you know, it's general racism. Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semi-literate primitive monkeys. Did you know that about how much Nazis love Tucker Carlson? I mentioned it in passing earlier, but they super do. They love him and what he talks about, and he parrots their talking

points, and he sounds like them when he talks about the things they want him to talk about. But... I don't ever speak in dog whistles. Oh good. And I could talk about this a lot. I could talk about how if Nazis and fascists think that your show in particular is helping their cause and that after mass shootings media's vies to not broadcast the shooter's face or views, to avoid spreading their message or creating copycats, maybe after a shitposting far-right white supremacist fascist terrorist kills

49 Muslims on a livestream because of white genocide and birthrates, where have I heard that before? Well, maybe, maybe don't show his face, Tucker, or share his manifesto, Tucker, and then use it to foment fear about the rising authoritarian left. Maybe don't highlight the Nazi and his beliefs on your show that Nazis love. Unbelievable, man.

Oh man, we are talking about Tucker Carlson. We are loving talking about Tucker Carlson. We are loving talking about Tucker Carlson. There are just so many beautiful things about Tucker Carlson. For example, I think it might be a good opportunity to point out that after this episode originally aired, much time passed and people would continue to point out that, hey, Tucker, a lot of your segments sound like they were written by a racist person. Or like, hey, Tucker, a lot of Stormfront users and racists and actual Nazis love your show.

They talk about how amazing it is to have you saying this kind of stuff on TV, and people continually take segments of yours and point out how they're racist or wrong or misleading, and so on and so forth. And then miraculously, it was revealed that your head writer had a bunch of racist posts unearthed. So that's weird, right?

Not really, of course, because if your racist show that everybody recognizes as racist because all these racists like it is revealed to have a head writer who is racist, that would actually be, you know, expected. It would be the most expected thing that your head writer was actually racist. Because, hi folks, it was revealed

that his head writer was racist and they fired him. And that's it, that's all that happened. Because of course, we live in the Teflon age. So Tucker was able to fire that head writer and then make a statement about how, obviously, they have nothing to do with the show. His views don't reflect the show's views. The head writer writing all the racist stuff

that everyone for years was saying was racist and that you defended as being not racist. The guy who you acknowledged in your book as contributing greatly to your nightly show. Well, he had nothing to do with the show, actually, apparently. Literally, Tucker's response, the quote about the head writer being revealed to be racist

of the racist show was that they had, quote, "'No connection to the show. Okay, cool story, man. Hey, Tucker also included some mealy mouth statement about how judging people is wrong. And as soon as you think you're above it all, they come for you or whatever, which is really a weird thing to say,

to defend somebody who you apparently are acknowledging is very racist, but also distancing yourself from, but also saying it's no big deal because who are you to judge? But he's also very racist and should be fired for the reason that you're also not saying is a good reason or something? It's unclear and may never be clear unless you acknowledge that Tucker Carlson is a fraud and a liar and pretty racist, in which case it would be very clear. So I guess that's the update for now. Talk soon, back to the show. And sure, I could talk about that,

but that's a bummer actually. So at least for now, today, what I'd much rather do is expand into the larger question. What exactly happened to Tucker Carlson? Like, how does such a terrible person come to be? Was he birthed like this? Did he suffer some kind of soul injury? Was he bitten by a radioactive swastika? I'm not the first person to ask this as a profile by Liz Lenz ventured to pinpoint his exact metamorphosis. It is a harrowing read that I highly recommend. And it points out that a lot of Tucker's media colleagues seem to agree that he did change since moving to Fox News.

You can even see evidence of this, such as this clip from the 2009 CPAC, where he actually defends the New York Times as a legitimate news source. I'm merely saying that at the core of their news gathering operation is gathering news. And conser—no, no! And conservatives need to do the same. Yes, they are liberal. Yes, they twist it. But they are still out there finding the facts and bringing them to people. And conservative—you can believe it or not! Only to be booed for trying to say that conservative news should be... more like the news?

And we're going to circle back to that moment because it explains a lot, but my point here is that while Tucker has always been a conservative, he didn't appear to be the same person ten or even five years ago. He was seemingly less angry, less toxic, more bowtied. Well, unless he was on shock jock radio apparently, something we are now discovering. But there's a reason we didn't notice those appearances all those years back, mainly because he wasn't such an overt racist when actually running his main news show. Over on MSNBC, he'd actually engage in polite debate with the likes of Rachel Maddow, actually

coming across as a moderate conservative. Here to debate that, Air America radio host Rachel Maddow joining us tonight from New York. Rachel, welcome. Hi, Tucker. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. I am convinced this is a subject on which decent people can disagree.

In fact, I know, because I know decent people who are on both sides of this question. He was on Dancing with the Fucking Stars! And while he was really bad at dancing, Cha-cha one, cha-cha two, cha-cha three. Okay. He was also a really good sport about it. He's been to over 50 Grateful Dead concerts, and he once wrote a piece idolizing Hunter S. Thompson.

So, what happened? Or did anything even happen? wrote a piece idolizing Hunter S. Thompson. So what happened? Or did anything even happen? His hate ramblings to Mr. Sponge seemed to indicate that Tucky didn't change nearly as much as we might think. And this is the point in the Ballad of TC where the screen goes all wavy, and we flash back to a little Tucker, to when his birth mother left his family when he was six years old to practice a

bohemian lifestyle in France. According to Tucker, it was a totally bizarre situation that he never talks about because it wasn't a big part of his life. Yep, his liberal bohemian mother walking out of the family when he was six years old totally didn't inform his life in any way. His father then remarried Patricia Carolyn Swanson, an heiress to the Swanson frozen food fortune, meaning that Tucker, the boy who totally wasn't affected by his liberal bohemian mother, grew up in extreme wealth, and we'll get more into that later, and it will be great. But cut to his learning years and Tucky was sent to a boarding school on account of being, and this is according to his own words, not very good at school. He then became head of the debating society because you don't need to be good at school or know much about

anything to be good at arguing. A statement that we should all be painfully aware of by now. A statement that we should all be painfully aware of by now. According to a 1999 Washington Post article profiling Tucker, he once strode to the edge of the stage and challenged any member of the faculty to debate him on any subject. Because of course he did that. Of course he did that. Of course he did that. According to the New Yorker, Tucker was later accepted into Trinity College, despite having poor grades, because he was dating the daughter of his school's headmaster. He then tried to join the CIA and failed because he wasn't any good.

Is college still worth it? By all accounts, Tuvok Carlsbad wasn't too shabby at print journalism. But then he shifted to television in the 2000s, and things got... Stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. How old are you? 35. And you wear a bow tie.

Do you like lecture people like this? Do you come over to their house and sit and lecture them? And you know, they're not doing the right thing, that they're missing their opportunities, evading their responsibilities? If I think they are. Look, I wouldn't want to eat with you, man. That's horrible. I know, and you won't. Things got pretty grim for Tuck.

Shortly after being disassembled by Jon Stewart on his own show, Tucker was let go from CNN and moved to MSNBC, where he lasted a few years before once again being let go for low ratings. This was the time in which we see those more moderate clips of Tricky Handstand, and also when he gave this 2003 interview with the Washington Post where he called Fox News, and this is a direct quote, A mean, sick group of people, after the network, and this is totally real, doxxed his wife

and kids. Fox News doxxed Tucker Carlson, and at the time, Tucker was outraged that they would put his family in danger. Man, that's like poetry. It's poetry. For everything Tucker Carlson has ever said, somewhere there's, well... They were threatening my family to get me to stop talking. And obviously I'm not going to because it's my job to talk and I have the support of Fox News and I'm grateful for that. Anywho, 2003 was the same year that Tukob had an interview with Salon, where he not only said that it would be hard to imagine him ever working at Fox News, but also criticizes the demagoguery of folks like Bill O'Reilly and the use of straw men in the national discourse.

All while using the word like way too much. Oh, sweet Tucker. So we're getting into the really nitty gritty here, the history, the foundation, you know, the bedrock, the real fellow inside. And so I'm interrupting that because I think for extra context for this next section or previous section, I'm interrupting that because I think for extra context for this next section or previous section, not really paying attention, it's

important to hear another quote from Tucker. It wasn't included in this original episode, though maybe it should have been, but it wasn't. So keep your comments to yourself or keep them to the comments of the video from five years ago. Huh? Did you suggest to use this quote five years ago? No? No. Unless you did, actually. I don't know. I don't read the comments. The point is, the quote in question is about Bill O'Reilly, who passed me just mentioned in the episode, I'm pretty sure. This quote is viewable on C-SPAN, and it truly, really, really, truly speaks to what Tucker is all about and many

other things we are about to discuss. Terrorism in its proper context. Didn't see it as important as it was. Another quote from your book, Bill O'Reilly's success is built on the perception that he really is who he claims to be. If he ever gets caught out of character, it's over. That's right. I say before that, that Bill that Bill Reilly's really talented.

He's more talented than I am. He's got a lot more viewers than I do. He's a better communicator than I am. But I think there's kind of a deep phoniness at the center of his shtick. And again, as I say, the shtick is sort of built on this perception that he is the character he plays. He is every man. He's not right-wing. He's a populist.

This kind of Irish Catholic populist fighting for you against the powers that be. And that's great as a shtick, but I'm just saying the moment that it's revealed not to be true, it's over. The moment he gets caught, you know, slapping a flight attendant on the Concorde for not bringing his champagne fast enough or barking at, you know, one of his subordinates to take the, you know, brown M&Ms out of my bowl and get me a bottle of Evian or something like that, the second that makes page six, it's over, right? Because the whole thing is predicated on the fact that he is who he says he is, and just nobody is that person, especially not someone who makes a million dollars, you know, or many millions a year. Fascinating analysis from Tucker Swanson Dinner Man.

He's not wrong about half of it, which is that Bill O'Reilly's schtick was deeply phony, although Tucker was wrong that it mattered to his viewers. Of course, O'Reilly was not let go from the network until they lost lots of money because of his apparent need to sexually harass women in the workplace. So the disconnect between his character and reality was not actually a factor,

that's an amazing O'Reilly factor pun for you, in his legacy falling apart. And while in this episode, we do get into a lot of the why of Tucker. Why is he like this? What drives him? Where does he come from? What's that face of his mean?

I think this clip more closely answers the how of it all. How is Tucker Carlson able to do it and get away with it constantly? This quote speaks to that. It's because he saw the clear phoniness in Bill O'Reilly's populist schtick, saw that it didn't matter to people and that it actually worked,

and then just did it himself. He makes millions and millions of dollars a year. He's married into the Swanson family. He named his kid Buckley and wrote a personal thank you to then Vice President Joe Biden for helping his son get into an elite college. But actually, actually, he's a working man's working man with a wood shop that is spotless for some reason.

And he cares about the little guy, by which I mean the Monopoly man. You know, the little extremely rich guy who's tiny but very wealthy. All right, little guy, very rich little guy. It's quite obvious and is even more obvious as this episode continues, which it is about to do, though I will be back in a few.

So see you soon with my voice. But then, after repeated rejections from more centrist and left-leaning news organizations, he held his nose and took a job at Fox News in 2009, not long before starting a daily caller. This was, as you can probably remember with your brain, right around when Barack Obama was elected the president. Tucker was now 40 years old, right around when Barack Obama was elected the president, Tucker was now 40 years old, having spent his 30s being bounced around networks. It's not a stretch to imagine that he was ready to settle down. Or, in his own words,

Rupert Murdoch, I've got to give him credit. When you talk about media conglomerates, he really knows what he's doing. He is? He is smart. He's very smart. Really smart and tough. You're his bitch. I'm 100% his bitch. Whatever Mr. Murdock says, I do.

Gee, it's almost as if he secretly has no standards at all and doesn't actually believe in anything and kind of knows that and is therefore joking about it. Like obviously this interview from 2010 is meant to be a little bit in jest, but have you noticed that everything Tucker claims to be a joke has that funny-because-it's-true vibe in his voice? Like, when he's not hosting his show, every other interview seems to be him ironically talking like a monster and flat-out saying that he's a Fox News puppet. Because he knows that's what he is, and thinks it's a real hoot.

It's almost as if, uh, I don't know. You're doing theater when you should be doing debate. Yes, that's it. Thank you, John. Along with being the year Tucker officially announced his bitchhood to Rupert Murdoch, it's also when he begins the not-so-mysterious change from asshole conservative to racist Trump mouthpiece bitchhood to Rupert Murdoch, it's also when he begins the not-so-mysterious change from

asshole conservative to racist Trump mouthpiece who tries really hard not to talk about Trump specifically. Because, along with marking his hiring by Fox, Obama's presidency also marks a big shift in the network itself. Now this is an entirely different deep dive, but if you're really interested, I highly suggest you read this 10,000 word New Yorker article chronicling Fox News' transformation from a conservative news channel to the closest thing to state TV America has ever seen. Some highlights include the ideological shift from Rupert Murdoch being vocally pro-immigration

in 2015 to the acceptance of Trump's, their criminal rapists narrative not a few years later. It's the story of a network that once canceled the likes of Glenn Beck for his conspiracy mongering and is now more than willing to float the idea that the DNC killed a man. That reprimanded Sean Hannity for attempting to appear at a Tea Party fundraiser

only to later ignore it when he does the same for Trump events, Trump being the President. It's the epic tale of a network that routinely swaps staff with the Trump administration, speaks privately with the President, and gets special treatment during press events. A network and company that, when attempting to sell its assets to Disney, got no pushback from the Trump administration, despite that same administration

trying to block other competing media mergers. It's really dark stuff. And I know it's a lot of words, but you should really read it. And maybe do something about it. Like all of us? All of us maybe do something about Fox News? Because the shift I'm describing is not conservative. It's exclusively pro-Trump.

And you can see this in the nightly work of Turok Karlsorhunter. The spectacle of illegal immigrants separated from their children at the border has ceased to be a news story in any traditional sense of the term. It is now an event, a kind of competition in which elites vie to see who can reach greater heights of rhetorical excess and self-righteous posturing. It is performance art, really. On Facebook, Senator Ben Sasse called the administration's policy wicked, as in immoral and devilish. Former First Lady Laura Bush likened it to the internment of the Japanese during World War II, a moral stain upon this nation.

Yeah, can you believe these liberal elites like Ben Sasse and Laura Bush and their outrage for Trump's practice of child detention? And sure, fuck Laura Bush and Ben Sasse specifically, but Tucker fans will identify this as him being fair and balanced, not his slogan, and he often presents himself as a centrist on his show. His main target? The rich elite! You see, just like Trump, a millionaire hotel owner, Tucker is a man of the people. He's down in the trenches, calling out the upper crust who are pitting the working class against each other with race baiting and partisan politics.

He doesn't answer to one party, he's just calling it like it is. If that happens to coincidentally coincide and support all of Trump's anti-immigration policies while demonizing his opposition, well that's just a coincidence. So she doesn't want other people using planes, but she'll use a plane going back and forth between DC and New York because she's important. It means she's she's the ruling class. She's powerful. She's important. So she gets to do these things. But for you and me, we're just, you know, the serfs along the way. Little racist Tucker fighting for us, the serfs, like him. He's also that thing.

Let's all unite with him, A serf. The person definitely not also elite and also race baiting and playing partisan politics. Divided countries are easier to rule, and nothing divides us like the perception that some people are getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have. See? It's easier to control people by dividing them, and the best way to divide them is to say that some people are getting special treatment. Also, some people are definitely getting special treatment, and you should be mad, and Republicans are the only people who can stop it. Now that's from a particularly insane and rambling segment that, as promised, I'll

try not to dwell on, but I do need to point out that it starts with him talking about how poverty in rural America is a growing concern in what appears to be a thoughtful premise, only to somehow blame the problem on women in the workplace and weed smoking. In many areas, women suddenly made more than men. Before you applaud that as a victory for feminism, consider some of the effects. Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them. A huge number of our kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that because new technology has made it all but odorless, but it's everywhere.

And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich fromless, but it's everywhere. And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana, marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or decriminalized it. Now, I've never smoked weed before, but I just want to point out that yes, everything he's saying is a lie

and that marijuana use among teens has been the lowest in two decades. Also, lawmakers didn't legalize it on a whim. It's something we voted for. And I don't know, maybe the reason he's blaming women and pot and rambling about how the American family is dying is because Fox viewers are super old and out of touch and want to complain about their grandchildren. Try having dinner with a 19 year old

who's been smoking weed. Yeah, I bet they'd rather be listening to the Grateful Dead, Tucker. But again, I'm not going to repeat what other articles fact checking this video have already said. I mostly want to focus on this. For our ruling class, more investment banking is almost always the answer.

Are you paying attention? According to Carl Tuckson, the problem is the elite ruling class, the investment bankers who care more about foreign charities than supporting the working man. You good so far? Now this. And more to the point, who's going to pay for that? Not the people you've been watching on television today. Their kids go to private school if they have them. Their neighborhoods look exactly like they did in 1960. No demographic

change at all, just like they like it. There's no cost to them. The cost is entirely on you. So again, his enemy, the people to blame for illegal immigration, are the elite trying to divide us on national television while hidden away in affluent neighborhoods, putting their kids through private schools. Meanwhile, Tucker, the serf, is simply telling it like it is, man. He's one of us, just a regular schmo with a television show. He's downgrading his $4 million home in Kent, D.C. for a $2 million one. Just a regular guy living in a rural neighborhood with four times the national median income, struggling to put his four kids through private schools.

Just a normal Joe whose mother was an heiress, growing up and going to school in not one, but two castles. Little Lord Tucker and his brother Buckley schooled in castles, folks. Like a couple of non-special Harry Potters. How do you pay your bills? Well, I'm extraordinarily loaded

just from money I inherited from my number of trust funds. From the Swanson. Yeah, totally. Once again, it's funny because it's true. Also, fun fact for the Daily Caller, that awful news site he runs, its biggest investor is Foster Fries, not that one, a wealthy mutual fund manager who is well known

for giving to international charities. He's literally funded by banker elites giving to charity overseas. That thing he's saying hurts the country. Because the hilariously transparent thing about Tucker is that he pathologically rallies against the exact thing that he is, a... You are a millionaire funded by billionaires.

That's what you are. That's it. That's the thing. He's an obvious fraud and a racist and a liar. All things you probably already assumed. So what happened to Tacker Corporal Stan? Did the seemingly resolute conservative just bend to the will of Fox News when it shifted to be more pro-Trump?

To answer that, I'd like to go all the way back to his decision to move from print journalism to television, as described by his own autobiography. Quote, I was heading back to my desk with a takeout hot dog one afternoon when I ran into the receptionist. She asked me what I knew about the OJ trial. My instinct was to answer honestly, just about nothing. But for some reason, I caught myself. I asked her why she wanted to know. For some reason, I caught myself. I asked her why she wanted to know. Well, she explained, Dan Rather's booker just called looking for an OJ expert to go on 48 Hours tonight.

Everyone else is still at lunch. Can you do it? Within a few hours, I was on my way to CBS in New York. And there it is. So there it is. Tucker just wants to be on TV. He'll say whatever he can to whoever he can, whenever he can. Unfortunately, he got fired from being on TV, and now he has to post weird aspect-ratioed videos on Twitter instead.

I'm sure he loves that. Part of the Dominion lawsuit revealed the obvious truth that Tucker hates Donald Trump. It was clear, but it is now documented information. He hates Donald Trump. He said it, we all saw it. But if he has the opportunity to get some X points, formerly Twitter points, then of course he will smile and pretend that he loves him in an interview

that pulls attention from the Republican debate. Tucker has a popular clip that goes around from 2018 where he talks to my bandmate Ben Shapiro about self-driving cars and trucks. Tucker very plainly says that if he were emperor, he would ban self-driving technology to save the jobs of American truckers. This is often shared with like, wow, how populist he is.

Oh, whoa, is he actually, damn, pretty based? Wow, pretty based and socialist of Tucker Carlson, wow. Except banning a new technology to keep workers in poor conditions for 14 hours straight so they can get low pay is not actually very populist. You can support self-driving technology in conjunction with worker safety and wages and ensuring the jobs simply don't disappear.

But he doesn't wanna help workers, he just wants to stop progress. He's not saying that he could maybe even use this technology to share the load or lift the load of these overworked truckers who are trying to stay safe on the road. He would rather them get hopped up on caffeine pills than consider something benefiting workers

instead of the bosses. And speaking of bosses and benefiting them, it's interesting that just a few years ago after this based interview, Tucker Carlson would have a sit down interview with Elon Musk, the owner of the platform that his show is now on. And Elon Musk is also arguably the most prominent figure

who, you know, symbolizes self-driving cars. It's like his thing during this interview. Does the truth to power speaker and to worker, carer abouter, Tucker Carlson bring up, I mean, his labor practices, but most importantly, does he bring up self-driving trucks at all? Does he address this thing that he so strongly believes in? That if he were emperor, he would ban the technology

being loudly championed and developed by the man sitting in front of him. Once again, this episode is full of not surprises because no, he doesn't bring that up. He didn't bring it up because who even knows what he believes again, as this episode tries to make clear. Tucker doesn't really believe stuff beyond want to be on TV and want to make the money.

That's why he's so mad that he has to post his little show on Twitter now. You think he wants to post a show on Twitter? Do you think he likes pretending that Twitter.com or X.com is the place to be? You think Tucker really enjoys saying, well actually, actually, I don't enjoy my multi-million dollar job at the most watched news show

in the nation where I could and did say whatever I want. I prefer paying $8 a month to post my video on something called X that looks like it's sponsored by Dude Wipes. I mean, maybe he thinks that, but I suspect what I am positing is actually maybe not. Tucker saw an opportunity to be special, brushed off the fact that he was completely ignorant,

lied about his qualification, and then plowed ahead despite having no clue what he was talking about. Him getting booed at CPAC in 2009? Most likely it signaled that he would have to push farther right to be more popular. And so he did that. For money. In other words, he's just a… what's the phrase? You're partisan. What do you call it? Hacks.

Yes. Thanks again, John. A colleague of mine. Tucker is just a kid who applied to the CIA and then fell back on journalism. And Tucker did do a good deal of reporting in his early years, but finding the truth was never his passion. He just wants to be popular, have a job, and make money. And he doesn't care what he has to say or do or who he hurts to get that. Had he killed it on Dancing with the Stars,

I guarantee he would've just done that instead. He's not like an impressive guy, and honestly, he doesn't deserve our attention or an entire video devoted to him. But because he somehow failed his way into a national spotlight and sucks, we have no choice. And maybe he should just go away. Or at least eat it, Tucker.

Eat the poop. You actually don't get the ladle anymore. Sorry, you gotta do it with a fork? Holding the plate close to your mouth like you're slurping linguine without a napkin? Slurp the shit spaghetti, Tucker. It's not outrage mob culture to point out that he's a liar and a racist and sexist and homophobic and for reasons, should definitely not be in charge of the news. He's not an entertainer like James Gunn or Roseanne Barr. He's a fucking news anchor who is watched

by three million people, and therefore, responsible for informing his giant audience about everything from foreign policy to popular culture to immigration. And he's on the record joking that Iraqis are semi-illiterate primitive monkeys and mocking an entire gender of people with palpable contempt. And frankly, whether he was joking or how long ago he said these things have no business being debated.

His flaccid challenge for people to come on his show is just more gaslighting and pretty much the epitome of everything we've just talked about. He lies so often on his show that I'm genuinely wondering why we can't have a law against professional news anchors purposefully misleading the American people, which is, it's kind of fascism. Like, like he's making me want to do a fascism against him because he's so frustratingly and obviously grifting a large portion of America and no one is doing anything about it. And like, maybe he'll stick around forever.

And that's, he shouldn't. But in the meantime, if you ever get the opportunity to talk to him on camera to his face, show him this video. Or like paraphrase it. Say your own thing. My point is that people should go on Tucker Carlson's show and describe his show to his face more often.

Because he does not like it. Come up with your own thing. Make a game out of it. Roll the credits. I'm vamping. I don't have a watch. And so it is now time to bid our sweet Tuckums adieu. We had some laughs, we had some cries, we had some thing else, maybe.

Probably just like, you know, sort of sitting and listening. You don't always have to emote for every little thing that happens. You know, if something's more informative, maybe it's not in a jokey way, you don't have to laugh. You also don't have to laugh at all the jokes. So we had some laughs, maybe some snorts, maybe some air pushed lightly through your nose.

You know, you know the sound I'm talking about. So we've had a wild expected ride is my point, I think, if I even have one. And so thank you for listening to this again, again. Maybe you didn't hear it the first time. It is from 20,000 years ago, it feels like. We will be back next week with a brand new episode. We will be back other weeks with something like this,

where we revisit an oldie. Maybe we'll have on guests. Maybe we'll have a chat. Maybe we'll do a Q and A. Maybe we'll ask our patrons, "'Hey, do you have any questions "'about this one particular episode?' "'And then you'll ask and then we'll answer.

"'We'll do that.' "'We don't know. But, hey, thank you for listening. We appreciate your listening and your support. Also, we love you very much. There, I said it, me. I usually don't say it, but I am this time because it's true. It's true all the other times when I don't say it,

but it's also true now when I do say it. It's true all the other times when I don't say it, but it's also true now when I do say it. It's always true. We always are love you very much. The end of this episode, not the show in general. All right, bye.