I first met Tucker Carlson in 2008 at the Vanity Fair after party for the White House Correspondents Dinner. It was held at the apartment of Christopher Hitchens, who was a friend and nice enough to lower the qualifications for entry to let me and my date into the exclusive private party. The only person that night nicer than Tucker was the cast of The Wire, especially Jamie Hector, who played violent drug dealer Marlo Stanfield. Little did I know I was hanging out with a horrible white supremacist.
What’s funny about the idea of this is how absurd everyone parroting it knows it is. Many of the media pearl-clutchers professing outrage over Tucker’s existence now were at that party that night, and none said a thing or stormed out of the room. If memory serves (it’s been a while and I had been drinking), they were all laughing together. Weird, right?
After that night, I had Tucker on a podcast I was doing with a friend at the time (and eventually went on to be the first person he hired when starting what became the Daily Caller). He couldn’t have been nicer to someone he had absolutely no reason to be nice to at all. He could have politely declined or said he had better things to do, because in 2008 pretty much everything was better to do than agree to be interviewed for a podcast. It never occurred to me that he only agreed to do the show because our skin colors closely resembled each other.
Of course, that’s a joke. It’s such a stupid idea that even the people who thought CNN+ was a good idea recognize it as dumb. But the New York Times would have you believe that under the bowtie was a Klan robe the whole time. They know it’s a lie, but the point of stories like this about anyone not on the progressive side of the ledger isn’t to tell the truth, it’s character assassination.
The problem for the Times is the people who believe them already hated Tucker for existing, no one else believes them. And there are a lot more people in the latter group.
Tucker isn’t a racist, he isn’t a sexist, he isn’t whatever else the left slaps an “ist” or “phobe” suffix onto in an attempt to weaponize. He’s exactly what he seems like on TV. Having met many famous people I can tell you few live up to what you think they’re like, Tucker is one of those who do.
Being transparently yourself all the time makes some people uncomfortable, especially when you’re a fraud. And that’s who the people behind this latest failed hit are.
Part of the Times hit piece goes into how Tucker has “stopped” having on people who disagree with him. This is somehow presented as evidence of how he’s “gone extreme!” Has Rachel Maddow ever had anyone who disagrees with her? Serious question, I can’t think of one time. Tucker does try to get Democrats on his show, they stopped doing it because they got sick of being exposed. Why do Tucker when you can slide under the warm blanket of CNN or MSNBC?
Of course, the last time the New York Times ran an opinion piece that strayed from the progressive thought plantation the opinion page editor was fired as “journalists” at the Times whined that the opinions of Senator Tom Cotton made them “unsafe,” “especially” the non-white staff. If uniformity of thought is a sign of trouble, what does that say about the Times or Maddow?
Nothing they claim in the piece holds up to common sense to the point that you almost feel bad for the people who were assigned to write it. At least until you remember they did so willingly. That they can watch Maddow deliver a monologue for a half an hour and think nothing of it while finding conspiracy in Tucker’s monologue getting longer (though not anywhere near as long as Maddow’s).
If I had to guess, and keep in mind that I’m no New York Times “reporter,” but the length of the monologue might have something to do with there being fewer commercials during the show because the leftist mob chased off advertisers, which is funny because the show’s popularity caused the remaining ad times to be more valuable, more than making up the difference of “lost” revenue and then some.
Anyone who believes the Times already didn’t like Tucker, anyone who likes Tucker isn’t going to believe the Times. What the Times may end up doing is making Tucker more popular as its casual readers decide to check out the “modern day Father Coughlin” for themselves, because who wouldn’t want to watch, if only to condemn, this monster? Once they do they will discover he’s not as the Times portrayed him, which could lead to them questioning the validity of other things the Times told them. It happened with the hit piece the Washington Post tried on LibOfTikTok, with the account’s following doubling by the end of that week.
Of course, the most absurd part of this whole “Tucker is a white supremacist” garbage is a simple fact I haven’t bothered to mention – his best friend since high school, and business partner in the Daily Caller back when we started it, is not white. Neil Patel is an Indian-American. You can hear leftists responding with what they always say when someone accused to being a racist says, for example, that they can’t be racist because they have black friends – “That’s exactly what a racist would say!”
Actually, that’s exactly NOT what a racist would say. A racist wouldn’t have a carve-out for some people with the skin color they supposedly hate. If Tucker is a white supremacist, he’s really bad at it.
But the New York Times is really bad a journalism. No one need this three-part joke of a hit piece to know that.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily nationally syndicated radio show, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter
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