Today, Explained - Tucker Carlson’s America

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

The most popular host in the history of cable news returned from a week-long vacation after his head writer was exposed as a raging bigot. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple explains why the scandal won’t stick. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. All right, Eric Wemple, as the media critic at The Washington Post, can you describe Tucker Carlson for me in one word? I would describe Tucker Carlson with one word as mendacious. And if you had another word? Intelligent. Rule of three, one last word. And ruthless. Mendacious, intelligent, ruthless.

What if I gave you a few words? What space does Tucker Carlson occupy in the American imagination right now? I believe he is viewed among Trump supporters as a truth teller, really tells it like it is. This is America. We're allowed to disagree with what our leaders do, however we like, and we're allowed to express that disagreement in public. That's our birthright. Has no allies in Washington. He's a guy who grew up with the ruling class, you know, in San Diego, in Georgetown, but has grown to despise them

and is one of the few people who's willing to call them out for their hypocrisy and for their hollowness and for their fecklessness. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They're day traders, substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They can't solve our problems.

They don't even bother to understand our problems. And he has succeeded, at least, with enough people to make his show, in the second quarter of 2020, the highest-rated cable news show ever. Ever. Not just right now, but ever. That is a record. It is 4.331 million viewers on average per night over the course of the second quarter of 2020. And of course, that covered coronavirus and that covered the George Floyd killing in police custody that drew an enormous and righteous backlash, a protest movement. Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Here's a funny thing that we noticed the other day. So how exactly does the highest-rated cable news show ever and its host land in hot water a week or so ago? It's important to note that Tucker Carlson lives in hot water as a Fox News host, okay? And what happened here essentially was that CNN disclosed that the person who claimed to write every first draft of Tucker Carlson's segments had been writing racist, sexist, homophobic remarks of the most vile sort on a website called Auto Admit. And the comments from this person were so vile as to you know not

really be even repeatable on my platform which is the Washington Post here's an example he responded to a thread in which someone asked quote and this is really offensive so just prepare yourself would you let a jet black Congo n-word do LASIK eye surgery on you for 50% off. To which Tucker Carlson's top writer responded, I would not get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no. There was also just the most sexist and misogynistic thread where this fellow posted information from a woman who follows him on Facebook, mocking her and exposing her to ridicule. You know, the thing that makes me wonder about this fellow, he's a Dartmouth graduate, relatively young, and obviously he has had a platform on Tucker Carlson

tonight in the sense that he wrote the first draft for all of these segments. Those segments go out to millions of viewers. And you know what? We don't know for sure if this writer had actually written the monologues that the president has shared, but Trump does share a lot of Tucker Carlson's monologues. Yet he felt the compulsion to post all these comments sort of in their unvarnished form on this hate site. And, you know, you got to wonder why. What gives a person that sort of motivation? I don't have the answer to that. But it's clear that, you know, on many people on Twitter basically said, and this is kind of a cliche, he was saying the quiet part out loud. One of the comments that you uncovered, black dudes staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down. From my analysis of Tucker Carlson's show,

this fellow was merely taking what he said on this hate site and sanding off the edges for presentation on Tucker Carlson tonight. So what does Fox News do once the out loud part is revealed? Fox News media strongly condemns this horrific, racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior. Neff's abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation. Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our workforce. But then they let Tucker address this matter on Monday night and they slinked away.

We want to say a couple of things about this. First, what Blake wrote anonymously was wrong. We don't endorse those words. They have no connection to the show. It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control. You know, he never even said what Fox News said, which is that they are racist, sexist, and homophobic. And then he lashed out at the people who had brought it to light and who had been discussing it on social media. But we should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests in triumph at the

destruction of a young man that self-righteousness also has its costs. We are all human. When we pretend we are holy, we are lying. When we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all, and we will be punished for it. There's no question. And in my view, what he showed more than anything was, one, he didn't really view this as a scandal. Two, he has no respect for his audience because he cared not to inform them of what had happened. And three, he was utterly unapologetic about the situation. And it affirmed every single attack on Tucker's show that has ever been made about his racism,

about the way that his show divides people, and the hatred that runs from it. He called the detractors of Blake Neff ghouls. He attacked the people who were calling out a blatant bigot. Yes, but the point is that none of these people were in any way complicit with what this guy did. In fact, I would venture that 99% of them had never heard of auto-admit before this story broke. Auto-admit? What the hell is that? It sounds like a portal for,

I don't know, confessions. So Tucker calls out the detractors of his bigot writer. He says, I'm going to take a long planned vacation this week, which sounds fishy. I'm going to spend the next four days trout fishing. If something dramatic happens, of course, we'll be back. What's the fallout? Does his show suffer at all? Do advertisers pull out? Does anything happen?

Well, I think this question about, you know, sort of the consequences of all this for Tucker Carlson tonight is a really interesting and good question. And it breaks down in a few different baskets. I mean, advertisers, including, you know, like Disney and Papa John's, a lot of these name brand companies have said no more Tucker Carlson for us

to the extent that it rests uncomfortably on my pillow. But it's not that big a problem for Fox News because advertising represents not the majority of its revenue. That comes from subscriber fees. And Fox is ruthless about subscriber fees. Fox negotiates a very high price with cable providers, with cable distributors for its content. And that's the reason why it scores more than a billion per year in profits. So Fox News is a money machine, and it's able to stay in business despite the hate on Tucker Carlson in large part because controversies, especially ones around race, especially ones around immigration, assist him in building his audience.

Because what happens is he says something like, We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided. Which he said, I believe it was December 2018, or he says, White supremacy, that's the problem. This is a hoax. And this may be a lot of things this moment we're living through, but it is definitely not

about black lives. And remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will. So, you know, there is a backlash, and Tucker thrives off of those backlashes, and he produces them very frequently. And I believe they are in some degree calculated. And that is a dynamic that I believe that Roger Ailes, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity want to ignite. They want that explosive reaction among liberals that triggers their people

and that motivates them to turn on the TV. And so I definitely believe that what happened last week with Tucker Carlson's show, with respect to Blake Neff, is another episode that is going to fortify and amplify his audience. Who are the millions of people who eat it up? Who's watching? I've gone to a lot of these Fox News confabs. Like, they have Fox Nation, which is their streaming service, and they love Tucker. My assumption is they are middle-aged to elderly white people.

That's exactly what they are. They are very nice, and they love Tucker. I mean, it's not just like Tucker's okay. It's like Tucker is it. And a lot of the women find him attractive. They think he's cute. Especially since he dropped the bow tie. Yeah, especially since he dropped the bow tie. And so you can see why Fox News, when faced with a crisis like this, if they think that there's a PR problem with Tucker's hatred on air, they would have another PR problem with their own base if they dumped Tucker. People would go nuts.

More with Eric Wemple after the break. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Thank you. They give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

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Eric, you spoke a little bit of Tucker Carlson's origin story. He grew up in San Diego, D.C., a member of the ruling class. How does he get to be the host of the highest-rated show in the history of cable news? Yeah, it's a really good question about how sort of Tucker got to where he is, because it wasn't the straightest of lines. I mean, Tucker got himself into journalism pretty quickly and wrote for the Weekly Standard. He was regarded in the 90s covering the Clinton impeachment and the Clinton presidency, always, always a very silver-tongued commentator. Tucker Carlson is a voracious reader, which is one of the reasons why I pointed out that

he was intelligent to begin with. It doesn't mean that he uses that intelligence towards good ends. I don't believe that he does. But he's very well read. I've listened to him in tons of podcasts, tons of speeches, and he uses that polemically. He has always been motivated by the prospect of pummeling someone in rhetorical combat. And that is obviously one of the things that he does on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But anyway, he went from magazine journalism to punditry on cable news, MSNBC. He had a CNN show, Crossfire, which was, you know, of course,

the locus of that famous tête-à-tête with Jon Stewart. How old are you? 35. And you wear a bow tie. Yeah, I do. I do. So this is… I know, I know. You're right. wear a bow tie. Yeah, I do. I do. So this is... No, no, I know, I know.

You're right. Let me just go. Now, come on. And listen, I'm not suggesting that you're not a smart guy, because those are not easy to tie. But the thing is that you're doing theater when you should be doing debate, which would be great. You do debate.

No, it's just not true. It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I'll tell you why I know it. Doesn't that tete-a-tete with Jon Stewart result in basically the end of Crossfire? Yes.

And this is the next sort of phase of Tucker Carlson, which is sort of the mid-aughts to like 29, 20, 10, where he was sort of just casting about. He was on CNN. Then he was on MSNBC. And he really wasn't nailing it. He had sort of lost his mojo. And he finally gets hired at Fox News, I believe it was 2009 or 2010. But he gets hired at Fox News to not such a great gig. He's like this commentator. He eventually does weekends, Fox and Friends weekends. He's the sort of, come on, he's like this commentator. He eventually does weekends, Fox and Friends

weekends. He's the sort of, come on, he's the weekend Fox and Friends guy. He's not even a second banana at Fox News. He's like a fifth banana. Yeah, he's like a fifth banana at Fox News. And there's even a great clip of Tucker Carlson falling asleep on the set of Fox and Friends weekend. I got to look it up. I got gotta look it up. You go. It's amazing. He's really asleep. Oh, no. I'm watching it. He's literally just slumped asleep on the chair and his co-hosts are just laughing at him. Oh, it's so unfortunate.

Oh, my gosh. And then he wakes up. Welcome to Fox & Friends. I know we're not on television, so don't bother me. No need to be embarrassed. Is this honestly live? In the 15 years of this program, I don't think that's ever happened. Oh, no. Whoa, that is rough. Yeah, right. He is just bouncing around. He's not really going anywhere. But all the while he is doubling up. He's also

editing The Daily Caller, which, by the way, is a training ground for white nationalists, or at least a holding pen for them, and just sort of bumping along. And then Tucker Carlson breaks into the Fox News primetime just after Trump's election. And this is his big opportunity. You know, I have sources telling me he was just pacing the streets at night, thinking of a way to conceptualize this show that would work. And what he did from the start was he'd get liberals on the show, and he would just pound them and pound them. Anybody would do.

And I should know, because I was one of them, that he pounded. This is Eric Wemple. He's a media reporter for The Washington Post. And he joins us tonight. Eric, thanks a lot for coming on. Oh, pleasure. So how'd it go? It went awfully. I mean, he just lied. And he, you know, for his audience, it was great. They still troll me about it. I mean, he just clobbered me with falsehoods. How can you attack others when you don't know that your own paper

makes money from taking propaganda from the Russian government? I wish you had told me you wanted to talk about this, but no, those inserts are interesting. I mean, they are part of... But why didn't you write about them? You know, I got a lot to write about, but I, you know, I am interested in that topic. But it's your own paper. Hold on, hold on.

I mean, you covered the media. I should have been better prepared for what he was doing, but I had no idea what he was going to do. You thought you were going to get an honest interview? No, I didn't. No, I knew I wouldn't get an honest interview. I wasn't that naive, but I didn't know exactly what falsehood he would foist upon the audience,

so I couldn't particularly counter it too well. But, you know, that's my bad. You know, this was his thing, though. If I were to go to a rally and people said, I'm just pulling this out of thin air, pigs in a blanket fry like bacon about police officers advocating the killing of cops, I mean, you would say that's unacceptable.

That should not be allowed. Is that what you're saying? I'm saying if student group wants to have a discussion about police brutality or racism... If they were to use that phrase, pigs in a blanket, fry like bacon. I'm not interested in the phrase. I'm not going to debate you over this phrase. Because you have no principles. That's why.

And that really helped him, I believe, establish an identity with Fox News viewers as the guy who was going to own the libs, you know, as the guy who was just going to take a mallet to them. He's one of the biggest names in news, but now Bill O'Reilly is out of a job, fired after troubling allegations unearthed by investigative journalists. So how do his fortunes continue to change when Bill O'Reilly gets me too'd out of Fox News? His ratings have increased and improved throughout that time. And he does it simply by posing as this guy who is going to hold everybody accountable, who is this fearless, you know, sort of honest broker in the middle of it all, sorting through all the hypocrisy that comes at you from both sides of the political spectrum.

One of the reasons progressives say they hate Donald Trump is because he lies a lot. Donald Trump is a salesman. He's a talker, a boaster, a booster, a compulsive self-promoter. At times he's a full-blown BS artist. Most people know this. It's obvious. So is lying really the reason the left despises Donald Trump? Or could the problem be, as is so

often the case, it's when he tells the truth. Truth is the real threat to their power. What is he? Is he a pundit? Is he a host? Is he a journalist? Is he a commentator? Is he a comedian? I would say that he's just a liar. But whenever you say Tucker Carlson did this, is wrong, blah, blah, blah, you'll get all the supporters like, he's an opinion host, you idiot, you loser. And my response is that as long as the bug in the corner of the screen says Fox News,

he must be held to a journalistic standard of accountability. If they want to take Fox News off the screen and call it Tucker time, they can do that. But as long as news stays on the screen, my governing sort of standard is that they are working as journalists. And yes, journalism encompasses opinion and straight news. Okay, that's the way it works at The Washington Post, the way it works at Vox, that's the way it works everywhere. But I think that they should be constrained by the facts. I think that opinion journalists must be constrained by facts and decency too. And I think that in both of those cases,

Tucker Carlson runs afoul of those particular standards. I think the difference between what we do here at Vox and what the Post does in its opinion columns is that we maybe don't have so much of an agenda, a prevailing ideology that we're trying to advance. Whereas when you watch Tucker Carlson or a lot of the quote-unquote opinion programming on Fox News, there is clearly an agenda. And that agenda, as of late, seems to be get Donald Trump re-elected at all costs. Yes. I think there's a difference between a political orientation or worldview and agenda-driven work. And the thing about it is, to bring it back to Tucker Carlson, he does this form of political agitprop, this form of political propaganda, more cannily, more savvily than anybody else in right-wing media.

He takes something that Donald Trump does. He doesn't examine the depravity of what Trump did. He doesn't say, you know, this is absolutely insane, which it clearly is on his face, and I give you millions of examples. We're constantly writing about them. What he does is he takes the liberal reaction to it, and he finds instances where liberals have overreacted. And for every Trump action, there is someone on the left who overreacts. I happen to think that's pretty reasonable given the sort of things that have happened, but, you know, fair enough. And he always says, I'm not defending Donald Trump here.

Or he says, I'm not defending Rudy Giuliani. I'm not defending Putin. I'm just pointing out the obvious. I'm just saying that the left is a bigger threat to America. It's this brilliant, brilliant way of taking scandals that Trump has spun up and moving the eyes and the attention of millions of people to a distractive element on the left and convincing them that that's the real threat to America. It really is a brilliant way to construct propaganda. Eric Wemple is The Washington Post's media critic and a former contestant on The Tucker Carlson Show.

Tucker found himself in even more hot water since I spoke with Eric on Monday. A regular guest on Fox News filed a lawsuit alleging Tucker Carlson sexually harassed her, invited her to his hotel in New York while his family wasn't around. Tucker returned from vacation last night. He spoke about protests, COVID, Kanye, and then protests again, and then Kanye again. He tried to pick a fight with the New York Times, but never addressed the sexual harassment allegations, nor did he address the departure of his head writer, Blake Neff, in any greater detail. We reached out to Tucker Carlson and Fox News for comment on this episode.

They said we will pass on this interview, but thanks for reaching out. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. Thank you.