A behind-the-scenes power player emerges as an unexpected threat to Trump

Source: Alternet.org · Bias: Left

Summary

It’s well known that Donald Trump consumes television broadcasts and often makes policy based more on Fox News punditry than advice from political or government advisors. So it’s unsurprising that one of his most influential advisers, Tucker Carlson, has never held a political or government appointment.Of course, Carlson, an early sceptic about the Iraq War, last week called the attack on Iran “absolutely disgusting and evil”. Trump responded by saying “Tucker has lost his way” and “he’s not MAGA”.While this may signal the end of his hold over Trump, they’ve weathered disagreements before – as when Carlson attacked last year’s strikes on Iran, as well as consistently pressing Trump over the Epstein files.But if Carlson’s ruptures with Trump widen, some observers told the author of a new book, “he could then portray himself to a disillusioned MAGA base as the true leader of their movement – and run for president himself in 2028”. The great mystery of Tucker Carlson is how a once-serious journalist, whose writing for the likes of New York magazine and Esquire was admired, wandered into the crazy world of the American far right and came to dominate it.In his book, Hated By All the Right People, Jason Zengerle (a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine) traces Carlson’s evolution over past 30 years. It is, he writes, the story of what has happened to the United States in that period. Origin storiesCarlson was born in 1969 to a prominent conservative father and a bohemian heiress mother: they divorced before his eighth birthday and Carlson’s father got sole custody. His mother lived mostly abroad. “I don’t know this person,” Carlson reported feeling as she was dying. She left him a dollar in her will.He failed to graduate from college, where, Zengerle writes, he was an “abysmal student”, but charmed his way into a succession of small conservative media outlets, and a few national magazines. By the turn of the century, he discovered the lure of television and went through a series of attempts to break into mainstream broadcasting. First CNN, where Jon Stewart essentially ended Carlson’s contract and his show by savaging it, at length, while appearing as a guest. Then PBS, and MSNBC – where Carlson picked liberal self-described “butch lesbian” talk radio host Rachel Maddow to be his sparring partner. (Maddow is now one of the most high-profile media defenders of progressive politics in the US.) At his lowest point, he became a political analyst at the only cable-news network he’d yet to work at, Fox News – or, as he’d once described it, “a mean, sick group of people”. His rise (and increased air time) was tied to Donald Trump’s: he was the rare conservative or Fox News pundit who didn’t initially dismiss him. Fox gave him his own show days before Trump was elected in 2016.For seven years, Carlson was a mainstay of Fox right-wing cheerleading, until he was unceremoniously dumped in 2023. Just why he was removed is not clear. Carlson came to believe it was part of Fox’s settlement in the Dominion lawsuit. Zengerle speculates Rupert Murdoch finally lost patience with Carlson (despite his closeness to Lachlan Murdoch), as he had on several occasions with Trump too. Considered for Trump’s ‘veep’Carlson bounced back, creating his own successful network, on which he hosted interviews with Andrew Tate, Nazi apologist historian Darryl Cooper and Trump himself (including an interview aired on X at the same time as Fox’s first presidential primary debate, in which Trump refused to participate). In 2024, he campaigned vigorously for Trump’s second term. Trump even told reporters, Zengerle writes, that he “was entertaining the idea of tapping Carlson as his veep”.Carlson had endeared himself further by presenting a three-part series, Patriot Purge, which presented the riots at the Capitol on January 6 2021 as “a false flag operation, instigated by undercover FBI operatives in the crowd, so that the Biden administration could then persecute Americans for the crime of being conservative”.During the Biden years, a bizarre crowd of conspiracy seekers and racist right-wingers paid court to Trump. Carlson was among the most important: possibly even more than Elon Musk. As Zengerle writes, he was active behind the scenes in the vice-presidential selection of JD Vance, whom he had helped mentor into politics, and at least two cabinet members: Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard.Vance’s “remarkable dressing-down” of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was “a direct echo” of Carlson’s criticisms on his shows for the previous three years. Carlson’s criticisms of Zelensky drew on antisemitic tropes, calling him “ratlike” and “a persecutor of Christians”.Zengerle credits Carlson with providing much of the mismatch of policies that have marked Trump’s second term (as well as the border wall with Mexico, which Carlson argued for as far back as 2005).

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A behind-the-scenes power player emerges as an unexpected threat to Trump
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A behind-the-scenes power player emerges as an unexpected threat to Trump

Left

It’s well known that Donald Trump consumes television broadcasts and often makes policy based more on Fox News punditry than advice from political or government advisors. So it’s unsurprising that one of his most influential advisers, Tucker Carlson, has never held a political or government appointment.Of course, Carlson, an early sceptic about the Iraq War, last week called the attack on Iran “absolutely disgusting and evil”. Trump responded by saying “Tucker has lost his way” and “he’s not MAGA”.While this may signal the end of his hold over Trump, they’ve weathered disagreements before – as when Carlson attacked last year’s strikes on Iran, as well as consistently pressing Trump over the Epstein files.But if Carlson’s ruptures with Trump widen, some observers told the author of a new book, “he could then portray himself to a disillusioned MAGA base as the true leader of their movement – and run for president himself in 2028”. The great mystery of Tucker Carlson is how a once-serious journalist, whose writing for the likes of New York magazine and Esquire was admired, wandered into the crazy world of the American far right and came to dominate it.In his book, Hated By All the Right People, Jason Zengerle (a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine) traces Carlson’s evolution over past 30 years. It is, he writes, the story of what has happened to the United States in that period. Origin storiesCarlson was born in 1969 to a prominent conservative father and a bohemian heiress mother: they divorced before his eighth birthday and Carlson’s father got sole custody. His mother lived mostly abroad. “I don’t know this person,” Carlson reported feeling as she was dying. She left him a dollar in her will.He failed to graduate from college, where, Zengerle writes, he was an “abysmal student”, but charmed his way into a succession of small conservative media outlets, and a few national magazines. By the turn of the century, he discovered the lure of television and went through a series of attempts to break into mainstream broadcasting. First CNN, where Jon Stewart essentially ended Carlson’s contract and his show by savaging it, at length, while appearing as a guest. Then PBS, and MSNBC – where Carlson picked liberal self-described “butch lesbian” talk radio host Rachel Maddow to be his sparring partner. (Maddow is now one of the most high-profile media defenders of progressive politics in the US.) At his lowest point, he became a political analyst at the only cable-news network he’d yet to work at, Fox News – or, as he’d once described it, “a mean, sick group of people”. His rise (and increased air time) was tied to Donald Trump’s: he was the rare conservative or Fox News pundit who didn’t initially dismiss him. Fox gave him his own show days before Trump was elected in 2016.For seven years, Carlson was a mainstay of Fox right-wing cheerleading, until he was unceremoniously dumped in 2023. Just why he was removed is not clear. Carlson came to believe it was part of Fox’s settlement in the Dominion lawsuit. Zengerle speculates Rupert Murdoch finally lost patience with Carlson (despite his closeness to Lachlan Murdoch), as he had on several occasions with Trump too. Considered for Trump’s ‘veep’Carlson bounced back, creating his own successful network, on which he hosted interviews with Andrew Tate, Nazi apologist historian Darryl Cooper and Trump himself (including an interview aired on X at the same time as Fox’s first presidential primary debate, in which Trump refused to participate). In 2024, he campaigned vigorously for Trump’s second term. Trump even told reporters, Zengerle writes, that he “was entertaining the idea of tapping Carlson as his veep”.Carlson had endeared himself further by presenting a three-part series, Patriot Purge, which presented the riots at the Capitol on January 6 2021 as “a false flag operation, instigated by undercover FBI operatives in the crowd, so that the Biden administration could then persecute Americans for the crime of being conservative”.During the Biden years, a bizarre crowd of conspiracy seekers and racist right-wingers paid court to Trump. Carlson was among the most important: possibly even more than Elon Musk. As Zengerle writes, he was active behind the scenes in the vice-presidential selection of JD Vance, whom he had helped mentor into politics, and at least two cabinet members: Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard.Vance’s “remarkable dressing-down” of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was “a direct echo” of Carlson’s criticisms on his shows for the previous three years. Carlson’s criticisms of Zelensky drew on antisemitic tropes, calling him “ratlike” and “a persecutor of Christians”.Zengerle credits Carlson with providing much of the mismatch of policies that have marked Trump’s second term (as well as the border wall with Mexico, which Carlson argued for as far back as 2005).

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