Today, Explained - The Republicans breaking up with Tucker Carlson

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

The Fox News host aired a splashy exclusive this month about the January 6 insurrection. Some Republican senators saw his coverage — and publicly called “b******t.” This episode was produced by Haleema Shah with help from Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait. I hate him. Passionately. That's Tucker Carlson in a text message to a producer that was recently made public. And here is Carlson speaking to millions of his viewers around the same time. You've heard a lot over the past few days about the security of our electronic voting machines. You remember that days after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, a conspiracy theory emerged that the election had been stolen.

Fox News personalities trained their blame on Dominion Voting Systems, a company whose hardware was used during the election. Dominion then sued Fox for defamation, and as part of the discovery process, the private messages of Fox personalities were made public. Coming up on Today Explained, what does Tucker Carlson really want or think, and what story is he telling more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves?

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I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. OK, so the $1.6 billion Dominion lawsuit illuminates the private thoughts of Fox personalities. Tucker's mess is now on main. In text to his producer, he's calling Trump a demonic force, a destroyer. And as this is happening, Tucker decides to retell one of the most memorable and disputed events in recent American history, the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. And some of the people you'd expect to be on board turn on Tucker Carlson. I asked Eric Wimple, the Washington Post's media critic, to start at the beginning.

We learned through this lawsuit and the discovery in the lawsuit that there's a tremendous gap, an enormous disparity between what Fox News broadcasts and what they really believe in their heads. Basically, a lot of Fox News and executives, including some of their most prominent faces, were saying basically that these stolen election claims were bogus, were a lie, were total BS. Fox's powerful chairman, Rupert Murdoch, wrote to a top executive

denouncing Powell's voting machine conspiracy as really crazy stuff. There's a text message in which Tucker Crowson, several ones in which he is expressing, I would say a level of trepidation about Trump. And then there's also this expression, I hate him passionately. According to court documents, host Tucker Carlson texted a producer on January 4th, 2021, just two days before the Capitol attack. We're very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I hate him passionately.

I can't handle much more of this. Of course, for Tucker, hate is really part of his fiber. He hates everybody, seems to have a lot of hatred. But even more than that, he loves to tell his audience that other people hate them. You know, he's constantly saying, oh, these people hate you. They hate America. That's the kind of position that gets you rewarded by Joe Biden. Hate America? Perfect.

So the thing is that when he said, I hate Trump passionately, I guess I believe him. But I don't necessarily believe him on a text message any more than I believe him on air. Well, maybe a little bit. Maybe a little. But he says, you know, he passionately hates Trump. But I think that his main focus and purpose throughout the Trump presidency was to attack the Trump attackers. And every time he did, he said, I'm not defending Trump. I'm just saying this person who's attacking him is an idiot. The crowd at the 2017 inauguration was not the largest ever measured on the National Mall. Sorry, it wasn't. Why did the president claim it was? Well,

because that's who he is. Donald Trump is a salesman. He's a talker, a boaster, a booster. What infuriates official Washington is not when Trump lies. It's when he tells the truth. Truth is the real threat to their power. You know, basically, that was it for four years. So it's a complicated answer. But I would say that, you know, when Tucker Carlson's livelihood is threatened, he'll hate anybody. So your take as an informed media reporter seems to be, we don't really know what Tucker Carlson's politics are. We know that he's a pragmatist.

We know that he will say what will get him ratings. We don't really know who he likes or dislikes. Right. I think there are a few things that you can believe that Tucker Carlson really believes. He hates immigration. He liked the United States when it was a more white nation. I think that's clear. He wants to control the borders. Oftentimes, that veers into very racist and hateful rhetoric, as we've seen on many occasions. And I also believe, you know, that he has some socially conservative values as well. Outside of that, everything I think is up for grabs. And this is particularly up for grabs

whether he likes a particular politician. He really does try to paint himself as this sort of iconoclast who, you know, is sticking up for regular working Americans who don't want to be oppressed by their elite rulers. No country can continue with elites this corrupt and stupid, and normal people recognize that. And as some of his personal feelings or personal thoughts or personal DMs, at the very least, and texts are being exposed to the public. Tucker Carlson makes a move. He decides to jump into coverage of what happened

on January 6th outside of the U.S. Capitol and inside of the U.S. Capitol. The thing that Tucker Carlson has that is new now as a Fox personality and anchor is access to January 6th security footage. Tell us about how he got that and why it's significant. Okay, so when Kevin McCarthy back in early January was waging his very difficult and marathonic campaign for Speaker of the House, Tucker Carlson was one of the people in the media who was saying, you know, don't despair.

This is democracy in action. This may be sort of historic in the media was saying, you know, don't despair. This is democracy in action. This may be sort of historic in the sense of the number of failed votes for Speaker of the House. But if you prefer democracy to oligarchy, if you prefer real debates about issues that actually matter, it's pretty refreshing to see it. Yes, it's a little chaotic, but this is what it's supposed to be. He was kind of like getting in there on behalf of McCarthy saying, is this guy really that bad? We know he may not be as conservative as some of us may be,

but he may be a good guy or whatever. But he said, here are the things he needs to do to bring together a coalition. And there were a number of things he listed on his show. One of them was... Release the January 6th files. Not some of the January 6th files and video, all of it. And not to some phony committee that will hide them, that in fact is designed to hide them from the public, but put them online. Release them to the public directly. So somehow that, I don't know what, I don't know exactly what happened in terms of their negotiations, but weeks later, Tucker Carlson ends up with an exclusive on 41,000 hours of security footage at the

Capitol. So that's a rather remarkable scoop because news organizations have wanted this. And indeed, after he got the exclusive, there's been a lot of news organizations saying, we want this too, give it up. McCarthy has said, we're giving Fox News an exclusive here. But yeah, we'll ship it around. Tucker Carlson has used the January 6th footage, his exclusive, to press what narrative? What am I seeing on Fox about January 6th that I'm not reading in the Washington Post or in the New York Times?

That the protesters were meek. A small percentage of them were hooligans. They committed vandalism. You've seen their pictures again and again. But the overwhelming majority weren't. They were peaceful. They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists.

They were sightseers. And let's be fair here, okay? There were, I guess, hundreds, maybe thousands of people circulating through the building, especially after the doors and the windows were broken down and pushed their way through. There were some people that were milling around. There were reports, too, that the Capitol Police was trying to de-escalate the situation so they weren't putting everybody up against the wall and cuffing them simply because they were outnumbered. Like that was one of the biggest dynamics in terms of law enforcement

there that they were outnumbered. And so that is the basically the concept that Carlson wants to get across. He wants to show this other footage that shows people just behaving like they're just, oh, here's the Capitol. Let me walk through. This is really interesting. But it should be noted too that Carlson did show some of the violent scenes as well on his broadcast, especially on Monday, March 6th.

But he was just trying to kind of provide that counterbalance that he always does. And so often it's based on ****. So often it's based on falsehoods. Is the narrative that he is pushing, that the protesters were meek and peaceful and orderly, is that what he's been saying for the past two years? Is this a change for him at all? Or is this just, look, I'm going to keep telling you the same story, but now I've got footage to back it up?

No, I think his main message, you know, it's certainly an evolution, but I think his main message before was, tell me how this is, you know, tell me how, why is this a national moment? Why is this a huge media obsession? Why are we doing all these prosecutions? Why is Jacob Chansley, you know, the QAnon shaman, sentenced to nearly four years in prison? You know, he has had a similar theme. I think it just sharpened of, you know, the idea that the January 6th was an assault on democracy. Okay, so Carlson uses this exclusive footage to back up his retelling of January 6th. And then the Republican Party responds, and it is not one Republican Party that responds to Carlson.

Right. So you have a Capitol Hill response that's really a little bit bifurcated in the sense that Senate Republicans have really, you know, said this is nonsense and so on and so forth. Some of them have used rather salty language, I believe. I think it's ***. House Republicans have been a little more timid simply because obviously their leader was the one who supplied this. So the Senate may feel a little more independence about how they speak about this. But I think that the reason they have done this is simply because they live this. You can't lie to them about this. You know, you can lie to them, I think, about a lot of stuff that they don't have such personal and visceral contact with and experience with.

But I think that's the reason why you see this, is that it's just like, I think Carlson took it, in this particular instance, took his propaganda one or two tiers too far. Coming up, some leading Republicans turn on Tucker over January 6th. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames.

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It's Today Explained. Earlier in the show, Eric Wemple of The Washington Post told us that when Tucker Carlson began to rewrite the events of January 6th, some leading Republicans turned on him. But is their anger at Carlson real, or is it more politicking? To answer that, we called Paul Kane, the senior congressional correspondent for The Washington Post, because Paul has spent 20-plus years covering the House and the Senate and the people that make up those bodies. I asked him which Republicans are speaking out. Most of the focus has been from Senate Republicans, the so-called upper chamber. It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this

in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at Capitol thinks. And it's everybody from the top of the mix with Mitch McConnell on down to rank and file conservatives such as Kevin Cramer and John Kennedy. You know, McConnell, the morning after Tucker's first show, he walked up to his weekly news conference, essentially waving a letter that U.S. Capitol Police Chief Manger had written to his subordinates saying that this was a terrible airing. It was a cherry-picked bunch of ways to look at January 6th. They went through thousands of hours and found the most benign possible moments to say all this. And so McConnell was waving that and said,

I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol police about what happened on January 6th. Kevin Cramer was even more blunt, and he was once one of Trump's really staunchest supporters. He said to somehow put bracket January 6th in the same category as permitted peaceful protest is just a lie. Interestingly, all of the critical voices you've mentioned are in the Senate. Is there something unique about the Senate or is criticism coming from House members as well? The House members have been more muted. The way the sort of House and Senate have broken down among Republicans in the last two years is that there are just more Senate Republicans with the benefit of having six-year terms that are comfortable in stating how they truly feel.

Over in the House, there are a large number of very, very rabid conservatives who genuinely believe in a lot of what Donald Trump has to say, including about the 2020 election. And there's an even larger chunk of House Republicans that do not believe those comments, but simply are afraid of their own voters back home. And they therefore will go along to get along in order to keep their jobs. And then there's about a third of House Republicans who are, you know, open and honest with their voters and the public at large. So part of it is just this fear of the two-year term in the House where if they state the obvious truth that Joe Biden won and won in a fairly convincingly way over Donald Trump, that they will lose a primary back home. So those House Republicans try to avoid any discussion of Trump at any cost at all because

they just don't want to talk about it. I think there is an assumption that Tucker Carlson is kind of the anchor of the Republican Party, that he is their guy. Is that assumption incorrect? Tucker Carlson is the biggest voice on the right now by leaps and bounds. Punchbowl News, a startup organization, started doing something that they call the Canvas.

And they got the contact info for a ton of chiefs of staff, legislative directors, comms directors, the most senior staff in Congress. And it is a pretty scientifically sound grouping of Democrats and Republicans. In, I think, 2021, they asked Republican staff, who is the most important conservative voice, not an elected official, not a politician? And Tucker Carlson was far and away the number one most important conservative voice to House Republican staffers. And I think Senate Republican staffers were involved in that as well. But Sean Hannity was a distant second. Tucker is a commanding force among House Republicans in particular. He waded into the House majority whip race late last year. He was trying to influence the outcome and steer House Republicans in a secret ballot race.

He was trying to steer them to vote for Jim Banks, who finished second in the race, who also happens to employ Tucker Carlson's son. This is the sort of thing, this is a mid-tier leadership race, and Carlson was weighing in trying to influence the outcome of this. Carlson is a commanding figure for House Republicans. Very, not so much for Senate Republicans, but House Republicans really do just listen to him in a way that is only comparable probably to Rush Limbaugh in 1995. And he was a commanding figure. And that is who Tucker is today. As some Republicans turn on Tucker Carlson and say, uh-uh, that was not how it happened, man, where does Kevin McCarthy then fit in? Are those Republicans looking over at Kevin McCarthy and saying, and on top of that, you shouldn't have given him the footage? Are they criticizing him at all?

No, they're sort of shrugging their shoulders. They're trying to avoid directly criticizing McCarthy because as much as they disagree with his decision, they look at it as if, you know, well, we still need him to govern. We still need him to have some sort of control of what goes on. So let's not criticize him. Let's not undermine him. They just sort of know that this is the price they have to pay in order to have a speaker. Kevin Cramer told my colleague Liz Goodwin about McCarthy. He referred to it as, quote, political calculations as he tries to govern. He said, quote, if making these concessions to his right flank gives him room to maneuver as speaker,

it's probably fine. Maybe it gives him some maneuvering room, and I don't dismiss how important that is, which is a pretty, you know, a pretty naked admission of, I know he's just trying to appease Tucker to try and get him off his back. And if that works and, you know, maybe we can get a debt ceiling deal or something like that down the road, then maybe this was worth it. Is this normal kind of behavior? How do you characterize this? No, there was 10 years ago, John Boehner was the speaker and he was frequently being undermined by his right flank.

And so he had a lot of friends in the Senate back then who genuinely really really liked him and they had served in the house with him and they would say similar things to us usually off the record or on background and they would explain to us that you know they loved boehner and they were trying to work to help him and shore him up and try and lobby some of those hard right house members to make things work. They wouldn't go on the record and undermine him by saying he's really weak and he has to make all these concessions. How badly does Kevin McCarthy want this job? 20 of his colleagues have just publicly disavowed him loudly and again and again. So to

win them back, McCarthy is going to have to give them something real, not more airy promises, which he specializes in. He's going to have to give them actual concessions. And Paul, let me ask you lastly, what do you think Tucker Carlson is about? What do you think he wants? He wants attention and opportunity. I moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1990s, at which point Tucker Carlson was really an incredibly thoughtful, smart, conservative writer. It was the sort of profiles of Texas Governor George W. Bush and those types of stories back then that anyone, liberal, independent, hardcore conservative, whatever, you wanted to read because it was so thoughtful. It's incredible to think, but he had shows on CNN. He was part of the remake of CNN's Crossfire, but they were good and smart. And that got him into the Fox News imploded with a couple different people going down around Me Too allegations, including Bill O'Reilly, who used to be the number one cable news host in America in the 8 o'clock. And at that point, it was all about, you know, seizing the opportunity and going after as much outrage as possible.

And the only way to keep generating that three million viewers a night was to keep generating outrage. And it was no longer about, you know, thoughtful, wonderfully written pieces and profiles of conservatives. It was just about anger and keeping the viewer. And that's because he just wants to keep his audience. He's really a sad, pathetic character in 21st century American media whose

story arc just tells you so much about the media environment of today. Today's show was produced by Halima Shah and edited by Matthew Collette. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.