Inside the Strange New World of Tucker Carlson

[Geee]

WSJ

The road to Tucker Carlson’s rural home meanders among the pristine lakes and ancestral forests of western Maine. Moose and black bears sometimes descend on the nearby village of Bryant Pond, looking for food. The landscape, dotted with clapboard houses and birch-white churches, feels familiar from the works of another famous Maine resident, Stephen King.

Carlson’s remote home in the woods feels like a world away from this week’s Republican National Convention, but he has been in the spotlight in Milwaukee, attesting to his resurgent role in the conservative movement. Carlson appeared alongside a bandaged Donald Trump earlier this week at the convention, and he is scheduled to speak Thursday night, ahead of the former president’s acceptance speech. Carlson is also close to Ohio Sen. JD Vance, whom he actively boosted for the V.P. spot on the ticket. Some Republican insiders believe that Carlson himself could someday make a serious run for high office. “Tucker has the power to raise difficult issues that the public needs to confront…He’s proven he is here to stay atop the conservative movement in a powerful role,” said Richard Grenell, a leading figure in the Trump campaign.

I interviewed Carlson in late May in Maine. It took me a long way from my day job as a Berlin-based Wall Street Journal correspondent covering European politics, but I had interviewed Carlson for a piece after his controversial interview with Vladimir Putin last February. I wanted to know what the Russian strongman had told him about my colleague Evan Gershkovich, who has now been held in Russia for more than a year on false accusations of espionage and is facing a sham trial. Carlson concluded our conversation by inviting me to visit him at his home.

 

What ensued was an extraordinary five-hour discussion of his familiar and less familiar preoccupations, ranging from his critique of what he calls U.S. imperialism and “gay race ideology,” to his disgust with America’s current political system, admiration for Putin’s leadership, hatred of social media and belief in aliens as manifestations of demons and angels.

A large wooden barn, resembling a mountain lodge on the inside, is now the hub of Tucker Carlson Network, or TCN, his media startup. From here he reaches millions of people across the internet, broadcasting political and ideological views that many observers consider radical, even dangerous, and that a younger, more conventionally conservative Carlson might have considered beyond the pale.

 

In April 2023, Carlson was ousted from his Fox News show—at the time, the highest-rated show on prime-time cable news—amid mounting friction with the network’s management. Some of Carlson’s private messages, in which he showed disregard for management and colleagues, had been made public in the defamation lawsuit by the voting-machine company Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for its reporting on alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. Fox later settled the case for $787.5 million.

Carlson’s new show made its debut on Twitter (before its rebranding as X) in early June 2023, and that December he launched TCN, which became profitable, he says, within weeks. Most of its revenue comes from over 200,000 paid subscribers, according to CFO Faizaan Baig. Carlson’s Putin episode last February gained 200 million impressions on X and 20 million views on YouTube. His podcast has had over 26 million downloads since its December launch and is currently No. 1 on Spotify’s news podcast chart.

[Valin]

34 minutes ago, Geee said:

WSJ

What ensued was an extraordinary five-hour discussion of his familiar and less familiar preoccupations, ranging from his critique of what he calls U.S. imperialism and “gay race ideology,” to his disgust with America’s current political system, admiration for Putin’s leadership, hatred of social media and belief in aliens as manifestations of demons and angels.

1. Wish I could  read the whole thing BUT paywalls being what they are.

2. I can just imagine what The Tuckerites said.

3. Thing  is about Tucker is he says things I like, then he's off to Nutterville and isolationism.

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OTOH

UFO's Are Demons

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The thing is politicians/people in The Media (Tucker IS A Talking Head), for the most part are not all that much smarter than you & I. They have skills you & I may not have (how to communicate ideas). So Just because Tucker says something, does not make it true.