If being disingenuous were an Olympic sport, Tucker Carlson would be a favorite for the upcoming Paris games.
Although his hit show on Fox, Tucker Carlson Tonight, was canned in 2023, the presenter is still very much active in conservative circles. In fact, he was recently announced as a speaker at the Republican National Convention, alongside political heavyweights such as…Amber Rose.
But what else is Carlson up to in this pivotal 2024 election year? Given his long history of spreading mistruths about everything from vaccines to Democratic policies, and the fact he remains an influential voice that crosses the right’s divide between MAGA and more establishment Republicans, the answer to that question will be illuminating. To know what happened to Tucker Carlson, read on!
Carlson’s early career
Carlson, a media nepo baby of the highest order (his father was the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) was ironically a fact checker for the conservative Policy Review as his first job in the media. However, he soon began writing for all kinds of magazines and periodicals, including WSJ and Esquire.
The fame-hungry Carlson made the jump to television where he co-hosted shows on CNN. The first, The Spin Room, only had a short run, but the second was Crossfire, which he was on for much longer. For a while, Carlson developed a habit of wearing a bow tie on stage, until Jon Stewart famously bullied him for it. Carlson rarely, if ever, wears bow-ties in public anymore.
Additionally, the presenter worked on shows with PBS and MSNBC, gaining fame as a right-wing voice on these traditionally centrist and left-leaning networks. Like many other dangerous right-wing thought leaders, he also had a brief stint on reality television, becoming the first contestant to be eliminated on season 3 of Dancing with the Stars.
Carlson then went on to launch The Daily Caller, a conservative website that became widely known for conjecture, generous usage of so-called anonymous sources, and utilizing a complete lack of evidence in its stories. During the 2016 election, Daily Caller subscriber information was sold to the Trump campaign, which then proceeded to email the readers multiple times.
However, what Carlson is more known for is undoubtedly his time on Fox.
Fox and Tucker Carlson Tonight
While Carlson was always one for bad-faith arguments, his real nadir was reached during his stint on Fox. His career on Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment channel began with him being hired as a contributor, but by 2016 he had his own show.
Over time, Carlson began pandering to his increasingly extreme right-wing audience, channeling his inner Rush Limbaugh, and was also clearly influenced by non-mainstream voices like Alex Jones. The ratings positioned the show as a hit, even when advertisers shelved their ads on his show in protest of Carlson’s racist rhetoric about immigration. Even more advertisers did the same when Carlson criticized the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, yet his ratings continued to rise.
However, like a terrible, neo-fascist Icarus, Carlson flew too close to the sun. In 2023 his show was abruptly cancelled, although no official reason was given. Some believe that it came down to Carlson’s coverage of the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, whereas others think that he offended Fox management by insulting them in private text messages that ended up being a little more public than Carlson realized.
What is Tucker Carlson doing now in his post-Fox era?
Not satisfied with poisoning America for nearly two decades, Carlson then moved his show online, choosing Elon Musk’s increasingly bot and Nazi-filled X as his platform. He was now allowed to be fully unhinged, claiming that America had recovered a UFO and its pilot, among other more damaging unsubstantiated statements. He also interviewed Donald Trump.
Carlson’s name was back in the mainstream press when he traveled to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. The result was an embarrassingly sycophantic spectacle, in which Putin was allowed to ramble about why his invasion of Ukraine was moral and justified. Carlson did face a lot of pushback after this, especially when Putin’s foremost domestic critic Alexei Navalny died in prison in Russia just days after the interview aired.
Carlson’s show continues to air on X, and as of 2024, he is being given one of the most prestigious platforms in the American right: the Republican National Convention. There, he’ll no doubt continue his long track record of lying to his audience by endorsing Donald Trump, and claiming that the convicted felon is the best choice for America.
