The Next Stop on Our "What Have I Done?!" Tour: Tucker Carlson
Breaking News: Tucker Carlson is officially off the Trump Train!
From NBC News:
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed regret over supporting President Donald Trump, saying in a video released Monday that he would "be tormented by it for a long time" and apologized for "misleading" people.
"I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences," Carlson said on "The Tucker Carlson Show," referring to the role of his and others' support for Trump. "You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional."
Carlson, once a staunch supporter of the president, pointed in the video to having campaigned for Trump, saying, "We're implicated in this for sure."
"It’s not enough to say, 'Well, I changed my mind,'" Carlson said during the show, during which he interviewed his brother, Buckley Carson. "Or like, 'Oh, this is bad. I’m out.' It’s like, in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us for the reason this is happening right now."
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the world's smallest violin.
Tucker Carlson has been one of the most vile and reprehensible Republican media personalities over the past quarter-century. Along with Sean Hannity, he was the face of Fox News for well over a decade. He would still be the face of Fox News had he not been forced to be the fall guy for the $787 million Dominion settlement, which prominently mentioned a series of his text messages where he clearly understood how bogus Trump's stolen election claims actually were. Even after his dismissal from Fox News, Carlson has remained a prominent voice in the conservative ecosystem, with his latest podcast climbing into the top 10 on Spotify as recently as last summer. With three published books and a net worth of upwards of $50 million, Carlson has been doing quite well for himself and, like his former colleague Sean Hannity, has found a way to keep profiting off conservative rubes for over two decades and counting.
So it's complete and utter bullshit when he says he's "sorry" for misleading people and that "it was not intentional." It absolutely was intentional. It was a Grade-A grift that he and so many others in conservative media have mastered over the past 25 years. Carlson knew the hatred and racism of the right, and he played into it time and time again. No conspiracy theory was too absurd to be portrayed as true. No vulnerable community was off-limits to stereotypes. No Democrat was provided with the positives of their actual platform or position. It was sheer GOP propaganda in the form of a nerdy college dropout wearing a goofy ass bowtie. And at no point did Carlson ever publicly express doubt about the words he was saying.
Republicans don't get to burn the house down and then get redeemed for thanking the firefighters on their way out. Especially someone like Tucker Carlson, who has burned down plenty of houses over the past two decades. Monday's revelation isn't born out of honest self-reflection; it's born out of knowing that Trump is no longer the cash cow he once was. Recently unemployed Marjorie Taylor Greene has seen the writing on the wall with her recent teaming up with Ro Khanna. Joe Rogan has recently been critical of Trump's Iran War. These are individuals who found a place in TrumpWorld and were profiting quite nicely as Trump himself set the globe on fire. But with Trump's approval rating at an historic low and Democrats looking more and more likely to take the House in November, we're seeing a coordinated pivot from even some of Trump's most committed supporters. Pretending that Trump has somehow crossed a red line is laughable with every terrible act he's committed over his 5+ years in office. For people like Tucker Carlson, Iran is simply a convenient off-ramp at a time when Donald Trump has proven to be no longer profitable for their bottom line.
For a decade, Tucker Carlson was more than Donald Trump's Frankenstein creator. He was also his #1 hypeman, who consistently told his listeners to ignore the monster's dangerous acts. Personally interviewing Vladimir Putin to praise him was Carlson's grotesque way of trying to justify Trump's man crush on the Russian president. There's no way that Trump earns 3 million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020 without lackeys like Carlson continually normalizing him while simultaneously attacking Democrats. Carlson knew a second Trump term would help his brand and did everything he could to make that happen. It wasn't until Trump's most recent poll numbers showed him to be a poor investment that convinced Carlson to finally drop the act and admit that his Lord and Savior may not have been all that he was cracked up to be. Monday's confession was nothing more than a clean break from a bad investment, an investment so bad that not even Carlson could justify sticking with him in the months to come.
While it's nice to see the fog finally lifting, the truth is that people like Tucker Carlson chose to tie themselves to Donald Trump for better and for worse. They don't get a gold star for understanding what Democrats did in 2015: that Donald Trump was an existential threat to American and global peace and prosperity. Carlson rode the gravy train for over a decade without remorse. He didn't care that people like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were attacked and bullied as a result of his and his network's 2020 election denial. All he cared about was his bottom line. While it'd be easy to say that Carlson sold his soul, the truth is that he never had a soul to begin with. He has always been lecherous, a conniving conveyor of codswallop committed to peddling false narratives and conspiracy theories to maintain his audience and his advertisers. People like him don't change; they simply reorient themselves to the way in which the wind is blowing. With Trump shitting the bed 15 months into his second term, Tucker Carlson sees no choice but to cut his losses and admit that Donald Trump wasn't everything he claimed he was. A confession based not on good conscience but on understanding that Donald Trump is no longer marketable to his audience. That realization doesn't override Carlson's 25 years of harmful, hateful rhetoric. It simply is the latest grift of someone intent upon continuing to fleece the Republican rubes for years to come.
A grift that continues without the toxic Donald Trump weighing him down.