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Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born: May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator and writer who hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. He has hosted Tucker on X since being fired from Fox News. Carlson has been described as "the most influential voice in right-wing media, without a close second," and as "perhaps the highest-profile proponent of Trumpism," an advocate of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said.
Personal life[]
Early life and education[]
Tucker Carlson was born at the Children's Hospital in San Francisco on May 16, 1969. he was the eldest of two children born to Lisa McNear Lombardi Carlson, an artist, and Richard Warner Carlson, a media executive. His brother, Buckley Peck Carlson (later Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson) is nearly two years younger and has worked as a Republican Party political operative and a communications manager. His parents divorced after the nine-year marriage "turned sour" reportedly in 1976. Tucker and his brother were granted custody by Carlson's father. When he was six years old, his mother left the family and moved to France, where she died in 2011. Tucker and his brother moved to La Jolla, California with his father where they attended primary school after his parents divorced. When he was ten years old, Patricia Swanson was married to his father, whose Swanson Food Company had been founded by the family. He and his brother received secondary education at a private boarding school called St. George’s School in Rhode Island. Tucker met his future wife, a fellow student and the daughter of the school’s headmaster Susan Andrews. Tucker applied for admission to various prestigious universities; however, it was turned down. The Trinity College accepted him with the help of his future father-in-law in Hartford, Connecticut.
Career[]
Carlson attempted to join the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after receiving his degree from Trinity College in 1991, but his application was sadly denied. Carlson turned to journalism after receiving advice from his father, a former newspaper and television reporter himself. He started as a fact-checker for the conservative publication Policy Review[1] and later contributed opinion pieces to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas. He joined the staff of a conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard in 1995. He later wrote several columns, opinion pieces, profiles, and other articles for various print and online journals, magazines, and newspapers, such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Esquire, The New Republic, Slate, New York Magazine, and The Atlantic.[2] His 2003 piece "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" for Esquire, which described a journey he and other activists and intellectuals had conducted to Liberia, was nominated for a National Magazine Award.
He first appeared on television when he was interviewed by the CBS newscaster Dan Rather on the program named 48 Hours about the controversial trial of OJ Simpson in 1995. After that time, he appeared as a conservative commentator regularly on various news and political debate programs. He became the co-host of a new CNN debate show called The Spin Room, which was soon canceled due to low ratings. He was invited in 2001 to cohost another CNN debate show Crossfire, which premiered with a Democratic strategist and political commentator Paul Begala in 1982. Jon Stewart, then the host of the politically satirical The Daily Show, declared that both hosts were "political hacks" who were "hurting America" by engaging in partisan political theatre rather than meaningful debate in a Crossfire interview with Carlson and Begala in October 2004. CNN's president decided to cancel Crossfire after three months, stating in an interview that he agreed with Stewart's evaluation of the program.
He then moved to MSNBC from CNN where his next show, Tucker, ran until 2008. In 2010, he co-founded The Daily Caller, a conservative news and opinion website, with Neil Patel, a Republican political advisor and Carlson's Trinity College roommate. Carlson sold his ownership stake in The Daily Caller to Patel in 2020.
In 2009, before The Daily Caller was launched, Carlson was hired as a commentator and guest host by the conservative Fox News Channel. His frequent appearances on the network increased his prominence among conservative pundits and eventually led the network to offer him his show, which was launched in 2016 as Tucker Carlson Tonight. An immediate success in terms of viewership, the show eventually became one of the most popular news programs in the history of cable television.
In 2009, Carlson was hired as a commentator and guest host by Fox News before The Daily Caller was launched. His numerous appearances on the network raised his profile among conservative pundits, prompting the network to offer him his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, which premiered in 2016. The show was an early success in terms of audience, and it went on to become one of the most popular news shows in cable television history.
Tucker Carlson Tonight's structure included one-on-one interviews with guests in which Carlson examined current events from a far-right perspective—one that many detractors, including some conservatives, deemed radical and extremist. Many episodes of the show focused on Carlson's contention that efforts to protect nonwhite Americans' civil rights, address race-based inequalities, or even acknowledge the continued existence of racism in the United States were part of a larger liberal scheme to blame whites for racial minorities' problems and give racial minorities unfair advantages over whites. Carlson regularly denied the legitimacy or significance of widely publicized acts of violence against Blacks, especially episodes of police brutality, and attacked the subsequent popular protests, particularly those spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement. Carlson cautioned his white viewers that the protests were "not about Black lives, and remember that when they come for you."[3]
Regarding immigration, Carlson stated the Republican talking point that immigrants from Latin America were taking jobs away from Americans, adding strain to the nation's social welfare system, and raising the crime rate. He also threw in the conspiracy theory of white nationalists, who claimed that liberal elites were trying to “replace” white Americans with nonwhite immigrants. Critics of Carlson claimed that his endorsement of the fundamental ideas of white nationalism and "white grievance" politics demonstrated his bigoted views toward non-white people.
In November 2016, not long after Trump's election to the U.S. presidency, Tucker Carlson Tonight made its debut. Carlson supported many, but not all, of Trump's early statements and initiatives, including his ban on immigration from most Muslim-majority nations,[4] his desire to build a wall along the US-Mexico border,[5] and his denial of climate change.[6] Carlson also expressed Trump's respect and apparent enthusiasm for authoritarian leaders in other nations, particularly President. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary. In this regard, Carlson supported Trump against allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia's efforts to meddle in the election on Trump's behalf and that Trump obstructed the U.S. The Justice Department is investigating Donald Trump's campaign's ties to Russia. Carlson later warned Trump for attempting to coerce Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, into announcing an investigation into Trump's political rival Joe Biden and Biden's son Hunter for alleged wrongdoing in connection with a Ukrainian energy company—though he maintained that Trump had not committed an impeachable offense.
In early 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Carlson announced to his audience that the virus posed a severe threat to public health and persuaded Trump to take the virus seriously. Carlson soon began criticizing the public safety measures put in place to limit the spread of the virus—including business closures, stay-at-home orders, and mask-wearing mandates—and later questioned the necessity and safety of the vaccines developed quickly by American and European pharmaceutical companies. In doing so, he urged his viewers to reject the scientific professionals and public health organizations in charge of the country's pandemic response, falsely alleging that Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. The virus was produced by the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, which was also responsible for its propagation throughout the United States.
Trump subsequently adopted a similar perspective on the country's pandemic response. Trump and many Republican congress members and other Republican officeholders across the country, protested that the election had been "stolen" by Democrats through widespread voter fraud after he lost the 2020 presidential contest. However, there was no solid evidence to support this claim. Carlson agreed with their claims, albeit not necessarily in the same language or in the same detail. In response to a mob of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—an attack aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden's victory—Carlson advanced another baseless conspiracy theory, this time alleging that the attack was not a genuine insurrection but rather a "false flag" operation by the FBI. Hundreds of internal messages between Fox News Channel hosts and executives were made public in 2023 as part of a lawsuit against the Fox News Channel alleging that the network had knowingly aired claims accusing an election-technology company Dominion Voting System of rigging the 2020 presidential election to ensure Biden’s victory. Fox News Channel agreed to settle the lawsuit by paying Dominion $787.5 million in April. Fox News Channel announced that his show had been canceled as Tucker Carlson was fired less than a week later.[7]
References[]
- ↑ The mystery of Tucker Carlson. (n.d.). Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php
- ↑ Kurtz, H. (2024, January 10). The Opinionated Journalist. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1999/08/17/the-opinionated-journalist/4340b332-e33d-442b-b681-fbb97cffee71/
- ↑ Tucker Carlson: “This may be a lot of things, this moment we are living through, but it is definitely not about black lives and remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.” (2020, June 9). Twitter. Retrieved April 17, 2024, from https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1270151261934030852
- ↑ C. S. (2015, December 8). Donald Trump on Muslims (C-SPAN). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sz0KY-3PbQ
- ↑ C. (2017, January 24). Trump pledges to build a wall. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBW8mTHDgvk
- ↑ C. S. (2019, August 26). President Trump on Climate Change. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl1Rnz4zNkg
- ↑ T. Y. T. (2023, April 25). TUCKER CARLSON FIRED by Fox News!!! YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25GHBXP1O3I
