Sometimes, when Tucker Carlson is in the shower, he takes a quiet moment to reflect on whether his haters may be right about him. I know this not firsthand but because he recently mentioned it to a few thousand fans in Rosenberg, Texas. He said, "I have been through this process for so many years, where they call you something"-in his case, a very incomplete list would include "ven9966 omous demagogue," "crypto-Nazi blowhard," "anti-science ignoramus," and "a dick" "and I actually do try to take stock.
Like, am I that person?" These reveries always lead him to the same conclusion: he's clean. It is the haters who are wrong. That night, in Rosenberg, the epithet he lingered on was "extremist." He drew out the syllables in a derisive growl, followed by his foppish hyena bark of a laugh-a familiar sequence to anyone who has watched Tucker Carlson heap scorn on his enemies, which is to say, anyone who has watched Tucker Carlson. "Whatever else I am, I'm the opposite of an extremist," he continued. "My parents got divorced.
I'm totally opposed to change." He claims that his vision for the country's future is actually a vision of the country's past, one that strikes him as modest, even obvious: "I liked America in 1985." This was the ninth stop on the Tucker Carlson Live Tour-sixteen arenas, this fall, from Anaheim, California, to Sunrise, Florida, but mostly in the heartland.
At each stop, before bringing out his special guest (Kid Rock in Grand Rapids; Donald Trump, Jr., in Jacksonville), Carlson delivered a semi-improvised monologue, usually starting with some geotargeted pandering. In Michigan, he praised the local muskie fishing before slamming the state's "brain-dead robot" of a governor. In Pennsylvania, he extolled the beauty of the Conestoga River before describing that state's governor as "evil, actually." In Texas, he said, "There's something about being in a room full of people you agree with that is so great.
This story is from the November 11, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the November 11, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
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